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Her hand still fit snugly into his. That much hadn't changed. It was such a common gesture between them that he didn't need
his eyes to know what it looked like. Much like he didn't need to see her to know that she was worried.
"What's wrong, babe?"
"Nothing."
"Gail!"
"Really. It's nothing." She was lying. He couldn't blame her though. How could she come to him for help
with whatever was bothering her? He was blind and couldn't help her in the slightest. What made it worse was that she was
trying to protect him. This tiny wonderful girl of his was trying to protect him and her being near a foot shorter than him.
What use was he to anyone anyway?
Plus it wasn't like he couldn't figure out who was causing the problem, whatever it actually was. James.
He knows she's not telling him exactly what James has been doing because she's scared he's going to go after him. And
yeah, normally he would be that dumb. Only he knows he can't go chasing after James right now, because you can't smash a
guy six ways from Sunday if you can't even get out of your hospital room without help.
And then there's how he's not even right certain that he wants to chase after James. He thinks this must be the shock
the doctors keep talking about because despite all the evidence to the contrary, and it's starting to pile up now, he can't
get angry at James. He wants to believe that there's an explanation, this is all some double-cross to get the titles of LAX
because James is his best friend. Was his best friend. He was his tag team partner, damn it! There had to be a reason.
Because if there wasn't... then his best friend tried to blind him. For no good reason that Chris could see. Damn near
succeeded too. No saying he hadn't, actually, 'cause there was only so long the doctors could tell a guy to try to keep his
eyes shut 'fore he started wondering if maybe it's permanent.
Chris should be angry about it. He couldn't make himself though, was just shot through with 'why'? Maybe he'd be angry
once James had explained himself. Not like that was likely to happen. 'Cause they'd had fallings out before, who hadn't,
and there'd never been much in the way of explanations on either side, just some embarrassed shoe-gazing and side-to-side
shuffling and a general agreement to let bygones be. Chris couldn't see this being sorted out like that.
He should be angry. He sat there sometimes, in between when Gail came, and thought of all the reasons why he should be,
listed them even. The only one that came close to actually making him want to get up and hit James hard as he could was how
badly James was treating Gail, had been treating her even before the things that had happened. He could be angry on Gail's
behalf.
'Cause Gail was a girl. Not that she couldn't look after herself, if she ever heard him say anything like that, she'd
likely strike him where no man wanted to be struck. But she couldn't exactly defend herself against a guy a strong as James.
'Cause Chris knew exactly how strong James was, the man was as strong as him, and right now had two working eyes.
He couldn't rage against James when he was too busy raging against himself for being useless.
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