Divine Intervention Read online

  Table of Contents

  Love is an Open Road

  Divine Intervention – Information

  Divine Intervention

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Author Bio

  Love is an Open Road

  An M/M Romance series

  DIVINE INTERVENTION

  By JC Wallace

  Introduction

  The story you are about to read celebrates love, sex and romance between men. It is a product of the Love is an Open Road promotion sponsored by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group and is published as a gift to you.

  What Is Love is an Open Road?

  The Goodreads M/M Romance Group invited members to choose a photo and pen a letter asking for a short M/M romance story inspired by the image; authors from the group were encouraged to select a letter and write an original tale. The result was an outpouring of creativity that shone a spotlight on the special bond between M/M romance writers and the people who love what these authors do.

  A written description of the image that inspired this story is provided along with the original request letter. If you’d like to view the photo, please feel free to join the Goodreads M/M Romance Group and visit the discussion section: Love is an Open Road.

  No matter if you are a long-time devotee to M/M Romance, just new to the genre or fall somewhere in between, you are in for a delicious treat.

  Words of Caution

  This story may contain sexually explicit content and is intended for adult readers. It may contain content that is disagreeable or distressing to some readers. The M/M Romance Group strongly recommends that each reader review the General Information section before each story for story tags as well as for content warnings.

  Each year, a dedicated group of Volunteers from the M/M Romance Group work hard behind the scenes to bring these stories to you. Our Editors, Formatters, Proofreaders, and those working on Quality Assurance, spend many long hours over a course of several months so that each Event is a success. As each and every author also gives freely of their time and talent, it was decided that all edits suggested may be accepted or rejected by the author at any given time. For this reason, some stories will appear to be more tightly edited than others, depending on the choice of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved worldwide.

  This eBook may be distributed freely in its entirety courtesy of the Goodreads M/M Romance Group. This eBook may not be sold, manipulated or reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the author.

  Divine Intervention, Copyright © 2015 JC Wallace

  Cover Art by JC Wallace

  This ebook is published by the M/M Romance Group and is not directly endorsed by or affiliated with Goodreads Inc.

  M/M Romance Group Publication

  DIVINE INTERVENTION

  By JC Wallace

  Photo Description

  Photo 1: A man in tight leggings with a muscular body faces away from the camera. His head is down and he’s holding his hands in front of him.

  Photo 2: A very attractive man looks at the camera. He is young, with smooth, unmarred skin. His eyes are blue. He is in good shape, strong, and he takes care of himself. His body is lean, muscular, and he doesn’t have any scars. He is beautiful and he knows it.

  Story Letter

  Dear Author,

  I see two guys— both strong willed.

  MC1: big, dark and brooding. A car accident a year ago has left his body broken and scarred. As an active sportsman, he used to be proud of the way his body would do what he wanted. With a perfectionist nature, he always drove himself to perform harder and better. Now he’s a recluse, unwilling to look at himself or be seen by others. He knows he’s ugly and useless, so he has no interest in the latest of his sister’s attempts to force him into the world. He managed to scare the others off before they even got through his door. He intends for this one to be no different, especially once he sees how perfect the guy would have been for him before the accident. His sister has set him up!

  MC2: a massage therapist with a special interest in rehabilitation. He’s been enlisted to gain access to the fortress and force the man to rehabilitate his body and attitude. Mission accepted. Caring and compassionate, but tough, MC2 has no intention of being chased away. His stubbornness is legendary amongst friends and family. What he isn’t prepared for is the powerful attraction he has to try to resist. He can see the amazing man behind the gruff exterior, although sometimes even the gruffness can be so very hot!

  I’d love angst, heat and a HEA.

  Sincerely,

  Mel

  Story Info

  Genre: contemporary

  Tags: hurt/comfort, lawyer, medical personnel, PTSD, sportsman, accident, recluse

  Word Count: 41,298

  DIVINE INTERVENTION

  By JC Wallace

  Chapter 1

  Five hours.

  Five hours of pain, icy sweat, gut-churning nausea, and muscle spasms.

  Five hours on a hard, unforgiving tile floor with no respite, my remaining pride and dignity slowly being sucked away.

  A waking nightmare that never ended.

  Struggling across the floor, I fought to stay out of my head, out of the darkness. But that was hard when the suffocating pain from my back radiated out in a fiery spiderweb over my nerves. Relentless and all-consuming, it was hard to focus on where I was. Too easy to fade into my head than remain in the present.

  While I should have been grateful for the reprieve, there was another nightmare waiting for me in the darkness. The images, and sights, and smells filled my head: blinding headlights, the deafening crunch of metal, shrill screams, shattering bones, tearing ligaments, coppery blood. My body seized with terror, shaking, fading. Once again in my mangled Maserati… dying, slowly. And then those amber eyes in the darkness. Hands, strong and sure. A low, reassuring, husky voice.

  Safe in those eyes, I hadn’t been alone… because of them, at that moment on the floor, I no longer felt as lonely.

  “Fuck,” I whispered, opening my eyes, shaking my head to clear the fog.

  Now wasn’t the time to get lost. Three more feet, and I’d have my hands on my cell phone. It was my own fucking fault for chucking it across the kitchen after hanging up on my sister, Wendy. Ended the argument, but now I was sorry I had thrown my phone. I groaned, but not from the pain. If Wendy found me there, helpless, locked in spasms on the floor, that would be a nightmare of a different kind. God, why couldn’t my sister leave me alone like everyone else in my life had? What else could they do when a once vibrant, successful, and beautiful man had been mangled and shredded during one split second on a dirt road?

  Worthless, ugly, pathetic, useless…

  Disgusting.

  Yeah, I looked like a monster, even if others didn’t agree with me. They told me I looked good or it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Those were the lies told to ugly people, those who weren’t pleasant to look at. And I could see the disgust in their eyes. I’d rather lock myself away from the world, away from their critical, uncaring stares, their avert
ed glazes, their pity, their need to treat me as an invalid. I hadn’t needed them and told them as much. And they’d listened. Every single one of them but my sister… until now.

  Who told the last person who gave a shit about them to fuck off?

  But I’d done just that earlier while waiting for my toast to pop. My anger-filled rant might have been what set off the familiar seizure-like spasms in my back. The muscles had knotted, stabbing me with pain until I’d wanted to scream. Each effort to move had ended in a brief, dark salvation from the pain only to start again when my vision cleared, worse off than I had been.

  While I just wanted the world to leave me alone, the realization that I was in serious trouble had become undeniable. Fucking useless body. No one would come to check on me, no one would wonder if I was all right, if I was in pain, or if I was even alive. And why would they? No friends, no other family except my sister who hadn’t written me off, and I’d finally alienated her as well. I had sealed that deal with my bitter and vile anger. I loved my older sister, had no desire to hurt her, but her constant nagging, begging me to get help along with her expressions of pity and disappointment were as sharp as a knife cutting through my skin.

  Another spasm hit my lower back and brought tears to my eyes. The last physical therapist Wendy hired for me had quit. Maybe with a little help from me. Maybe I should have allowed her to help me.

  “Only you can help yourself, sonny boy.”

  I squeezed my eyes tight as another wave of nausea forced a smelly pool of bitter bile to heave from my stomach. I licked my parched lips, rolling my forehead on the cool tile. Death at that moment would have been too much of a reprieve. But I was strong, had always taken care of myself, had always been self-sufficient, needing no one, even as a child. Proud, defiant and able. I wasn’t going to fail, wasn’t going to prove them right.

  Gritting my teeth, I lifted my head, my blurred vision on the black phone resting on a sea of light-colored wood. I grunted and rolled onto my back. I bent my knee and dug my heel down, pushing my body forward. Stars shot through my vision, the pain so strong I felt as if my mind and body were separating. Another push and I’d moved farther in those few minutes than the last five hours. I fought the darkness, willing myself, screaming at myself in my mind…

  Come on you fucking useless piece of shit! Dig down, pull it from your balls. Get that fucking phone, you pansy ass loser! You’re nothing but a waste of skin, of air. You’re nothing!

  Sweat streamed down my face, teeth threatening to crack under the pressure of my locked jaw, tears leaking from my eyes, muscles screaming, and vision fading. All the while I fought off that fucking annoying childlike voice that wished amber eyes would come and save me, again.

  ****

  “I really don’t give a fuck what you say anymore, Paul! I’ve had it! I’ve tried to be patient. Tried to tread lightly because of all you’ve been through, but you’ve pushed away everyone I’ve found to help you. You didn’t even give them a chance and look what happened. You were on that floor for over five hours!”

  My sister slammed her fist against her palm. Her normally white complexion flushed red, and her narrowed ocean blue eyes brightened with anger. The volume of her voice didn’t match her petite body. She pushed her long blonde bangs from her eyes and pointed her finger at me from the other side of the ER cubicle. She probably would have punched me had she been closer. “Do you know what it was like finding you like that, half out of your mind in pain and fucking smelling like puke all because you’re too fucking stubborn to let someone help you!”

  Of course I was stubborn. I was also a strong, self-sufficient man. People were only out for themselves, as my father had taught me from an early age. “Don’t count on anyone, sonny boy, because they won’t be there when you need them most. Look out for number one.” Over time, that truth had become second nature to me.

  If I needed something done, I did it myself. If I had a problem, an issue, a dilemma to solve, I didn’t run to others like some needy, incompetent person. People like that disgusted my father and the last thing I wanted was to lose the respect of the man who’d raised me. The last year, the humiliation and shame had cemented the truth that my so-called friends couldn’t be relied upon— not that I’d needed them. So, I did everything for myself, because I was stronger than they were, more capable and…

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Wendy raised her hand. “Don’t even say it. If you tell me you can take care of yourself one more time, that you don’t need help, then I’m out of here.”

  My eyes widened slightly. While, in the past, she had threatened to tie me down until I got my head out of my ass, had even threatened to have me declared mentally incompetent— which she could try to do since she was a lawyer like myself and worked for our father’s law firm as I did. But through everything, not once since the accident, had she threatened to give up on me. Even if I had tried to convince myself earlier that she truly had, I hadn’t really believed it.

  Wendy was my older sister by only two years. When I was eight, our parents split. Having been given the choice, Wendy had chosen to live with our mother. Convinced I’d done something to cause my mother’s abandonment, I hadn’t expected Wendy to leave as well, but she had. My father had informed me that I’d be staying with him. No choice. That was my first lesson that, sooner or later, everyone left.

  When I didn’t answer, Wendy heaved a sigh and turned away. “I’m not sure what to do, Paul.”

  I tried to reach for the nurse’s call button to break out, but it was out of reach. I was certain that hadn’t been by accident. Just being in the hospital was enough to cause me to break out in hives. Four weeks I’d been stuck in that cinder-block-wall prison called a hospital. Dozens of torturous surgeries had reconstructed the left side of my face and repaired my shattered pelvis and the disks in my back. Just that antiseptic smell, which barely masked the stink of illness, was nauseating. Wendy had experienced firsthand many of my premature “discharges” from the hospital. One more might send her fleeing from me for good.

  But if I didn’t get out soon, I’d freak out.

  “You know,” Wendy said quietly, continuing to stare at the scuffed floor, “I get it. You’re strong, proud and confident, a brilliant lawyer…”

  “Was a brilliant lawyer,” I mumbled.

  “You are a brilliant lawyer. You’re self-sufficient, did it all on your own and took pride in that, no thanks to Dad drilling that shit into us constantly. I got it as well. But you and your damned competitive nature, you had to be the best at it, like everything you’ve ever done. But, Paul…” She peered at me from under those bangs, swept over her suspiciously shiny wet eye. Was she… crying? “No one is meant to do it alone every minute of their life. Letting someone help you won’t make you less of a man. It takes a stronger man to accept help than to go it alone.”

  I couldn’t stop the snort that came from me. “And who told you that one?”

  While Wendy had been on the periphery of our father’s lessons, I had been in the full immersion program on self-sufficiency, eradicating weakness, and winning at everything. There had been constant reminders from my father that needy and whiny people didn’t win, didn’t succeed, weren’t loved. Which was funny when I thought about it, because my father had never showed me an ounce of parental love, even when I became the very man my father had raised me to be.

  And, being the real man that I was, when Wendy sniffled and tears filled her eyes, I had to fight my instinct to flee. God, even the sound of sobbing made my skin crawl. Luckily, the nurse walked in and took one look at my sister and wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulder.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” the nurse cooed.

  Fuck, I needed to get home. The pain had receded to a manageable four on the pain scale, my muscles had unknotted, and my throbbing headache had dulled. I wondered if they’d notice if I snuck out. Although, it was hard to sneak out when you had to shamble along with a limp. Also, I’d have to get a cab.
Even if I had a car there, I didn’t drive anymore. The one time I’d tried after my accident had been a nightmare. Even riding in a car had been a white-knuckle roller-coaster ride of flashbacks and panic. Luckily, that had settled down to an uneasy anxiety while I was a passenger— always in the backseat on the right.

  The nurse handed Wendy a tissue. She hiccupped and blew her nose.

  “Are you okay, dear? I’m sure your brother gave you an awful fright.”

  Awful fright? I had been the one stuck on the floor for most of the day.

  Barely managing to stop myself from rolling my eyes, I did what I suspected a brother should do at a moment like this. I ate crow and apologized— for what, I wasn’t sure.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to give you a fright.”

  I ignored the death glare from Wendy, who hadn’t bought my apology, and asked the nurse when I could go home.

  The smile she drew up was suspiciously smug. “Well, Mr. Breaux, the doctor on call has reviewed your chart. He found your level of care since your accident immensely lacking. The episode today is proof that you’re in need of a specialized level of care that you haven’t been able to attain at home.”

  “Excuse me?”

  That was when Wendy’s expression of death morphed into one of a big fat take that. Oh, she‘d been busy while I had been recovering on the hard-as-cement gurney.

  “I hope you aren’t suggesting that you can keep me here against my will. I’m a lawyer as well, and unless I’m not competent or a danger to others, I can walk out of here at any time.” I crossed my arms and scowled.

  “Agree to see someone at home, and actually let them help you, and you can leave now,” Wendy told me. “Don’t and Dr. Grunell will order a few lengthy and extensive tests.”

  I clenched my jaw, until I feared I’d break a tooth. Whatever Wendy had gotten the doctor to agree to, she wouldn’t win, but she could make my life a living hell for the next twelve to twenty-four hours. There really couldn’t be that many qualified professionals left in the area to give me the therapy I needed. Whoever she found would most likely be easy to get rid of. She thought she had me, but she hadn’t seen anything yet.