Sweep Me Off My Feet Ch. 01

It had been five years since the accident, but sometimes, late at night, Zayne Lennox would dream of it as if he was there again. They had gone on a skiing trip in the Swiss Alps; Zayne, his twin, their friends, their significant others, and all of their families. Even at the time, Zayne had been aware that this was a particularly privileged life they lived. Him and his twin brother, Zachariah, had gone to the best private schools, and they were both at an Ivy League together.

They were spending their winter break from schooling skiing and snowboarding, getting some much needed rest from their workload at school. They had taken to the slopes a day before Christmas Eve, with Zayne and Zach both on snowboards, as well as Zayne's best friend Elias Harris. The rest of their group, including Zayne's boyfriend Daniel Williamson, were on skis.

They were up on one of the more advanced slopes, enjoying the skill it took to maneuver their way down the snowy mountains. They had all been skiing and snowboarding for their entire lives, so they had long ago left the bunny slopes behind. They were taking bigger jumps each time, and swerving around the trees and rocks as if they were nothing.

Zach had decided to take over the construction company their dad owned after college, but Zayne had dreams of being a doctor. He wanted to be a surgeon, specifically, though he hadn't chosen which area he wanted to specialize in. He could do general surgery, but he could also focus on cancer, brain, the heart, or more. He just wasn't sure which type of difficulty he wanted to go into.

Zayne was free of those worries right then though. Zach and him were standing on top of one of the slopes, looking down at an area where they could take a pretty big jump. The twins got along well, and were always connected at the hip, but they were also incredibly competitive.

Elias stopped next to Zayne and looked down before grinning. "Okay, whoever goes the farthest with the best trick wins."

Zach went first, going down the long hill effortlessly. As he came back up to the jump, he soared into the air and pulled the snowboard up behind him and to the side. He brought the board down a little before he hit the ground again, ending it perfectly. He dropped a red scarf on the ground where he had landed before continuing down farther before he stopped and turned back to them.

Elias was next, and he went into a flip once he was airborne. Their friends and significant others behind Zayne whooped and cheered as Elias hit the ground and dropped a blue scarf at his landing point before going over to join Zach. That left only Zayne left.

"Watch and learn, guys," Zayne called out behind him before he took off.

He quickly gained speed as he went, wanting to get as fast as he could before he came up to the jump point. Zayne reveled in the adrenaline coursing through him as he took to the air. This was one of his favorite feelings, one that would never grow old for him. He noticed that his board scraped against what was probably a rock, but he was a pro in handling himself. He wasn't worried about correcting himself as he flew through the air.

As he looked back, Zayne wasn't sure now if it was the rock or that he tried to land a double flip, something he'd done plenty of times before. No matter what it was that tripped him up, though, the results were all that mattered now. The ground came far too soon and suddenly, and Zayne landed back first.

He would never forget the way his scream echoed off the mountains around them as he felt the pain tear through his body. He had hit otherwise ice or a rock below, and the pain that traveled the length of his body was unlike anything he had ever felt before. It felt like he lay there both for only seconds and also hours before he was surrounded by everyone. Elias was calling for help while Daniel took Zayne's hand and started asking him if he was okay.

Zayne couldn't remember if he ever answered his boyfriend. Eventually, he passed out from the pain and awoke in the hospital surrounded by doctors and nurses. He nodded his head when the head doctor asked in English if Zayne could understand her. She asked him if he could feel her poking his feet and then asked him to wiggle his toes. He was able to do both, though wiggling his toes hurt more than he would have ever cared to admit.

Daniel and Zach stayed with him in the ER as the doctors worked, though sometimes they had to leave for his parents to come in and speak with the doctors to make decisions. Zayne was too out of it, first from the pain and then from the morphine they had to give him just to get him to calm down. His blood pressure was too high and they needed him to stop screaming with every touch to be able to work on him. Any bit of pressure on his back had him practically climbing the ceiling, except it was hard to move his legs. He could do it, but it was excruciating no matter how much morphine they pumped into him.

His mom cried whenever she saw him, and he remembered his dad's stoic face as he tried to be strong for his three kids and wife. Zach always seemed on the edge of breaking down whenever he was in the room and Daniel was so quiet as he held Zayne's hand through it. Daniel looked so broken and defeated as he watched them pump meds into his boyfriend, or watched as Zayne screamed when they examined his back. It was an expression that even in the waking world he could never quite get out of his head whenever he saw him at an event.

The dream ended as he was taken to the OR to get back surgery, and Zayne opened his gray eyes to see the wall in his bedroom. What the dream never showed was multiple back surgeries and having to relearn how to walk again, or how his boyfriend had left him a year later because he couldn't deal with the changes. Zayne could walk, but not long distances and generally not up stairs easily. He lived most of his life in a wheelchair now, or with arm crutches that helped him get around.

Since that breakup, he'd only dated a little bit, but most of the people he had been with had been cautious about committing to him long term due to his physical issues. Zayne had always thought he would eventually propose to Daniel and they would get married, so it was still sometimes jarring to wake up remembering that Daniel had long since moved on. He'd heard through the gossip that Daniel was planning to propose to the woman he was dating, Brielle Weeks, who came from another affluent family of Cherry Hills Village, Colorado.

Zayne had been only twenty years old when the accident had happened, and now he was twenty-five. He had never become a doctor, and didn't even go into medicine. He ended up getting his computer science degree while Elias finished his nursing degree. Elias was working at a hospital, as well as working CFO of Lennox Construction, but Zayne worked from home controlling the entire online and digital side of Lennox Construction from his computer. It wasn't the life that Zayne had expected to live, but he made the best of it.

"Rise and shine, sunshine!" Zach called from outside the door to Zayne's room.

Zayne looked at the clock and groaned. It was already six AM. "You know I have an alarm, right?"

Zach pushed the door the rest of the way open and leaned against the door frame. "Yup, but I also know you sometimes have a hard time waking up from certain dreams."

Zayne frowned at that, hating the way Zach always seemed to know. That was why they lived together though, because he could tell what Zayne was feeling and what he needed. Their parents had bought the house they lived in now not too long after his accident and had the entire first floor gutted and rebuilt so it could be all handicapped accessible for him. They had ramps built in the front and back, and the master was on the main floor while Zach and Elias both lived upstairs.

The basement had been renovated as well to turn it into a rec room and home gym. It let Zayne keep up with his physical therapy exercises to keep his legs and back as strong as they could be. Sometimes he would carefully walk or crawl down the stairs but there was a walk-in part around the house in the back that led to the basement as well if he wanted to take his wheelchair with him. There was also a hot tub near the big double doors to the basement and an in-ground swimming pool in the backyard.

Zayne sat up, letting out a groan as he did so. His back and legs were always stiff and sore in the morning, especially when it was cold like it was now. Usually a hot shower helped that, though. The harder he slept, the worse it seemed to be. There were some days he had to have Zach or Elias get him into the wheelchair, but he tried to keep that to a minimum. Eventually, he knew his brother and best friend would want to have independent lives away from him, and though they always told him they would never let him live alone for safety reasons, he didn't want to be the reason they didn't get married and have kids.

"Do you need help?" Zach asked him.

Zayne gave him a flat look before he pulled his wheelchair over to his bedside and got into it. Zach chuckled at his twin and shrugged before he left and shut the door behind him. Zayne's wheelchair was a sleek sports model. It could be pushed if need be, but the handles were small and only there for an emergency. The wheels were tilted toward where he sat in the chair and there was a built-in section for him to rest his feet that kept his legs pulled up close to his body. The wheelchair he had was mostly black with some royal purple details in the seat and wheels.

His parents had offered to buy him an electric wheelchair when everything first happened, but Zayne still had his pride and had wanted to be as independent as he could be. He wanted to be able to maneuver no matter what wheelchair he was in, especially when he was in the hospital for surgeries. He had to go through a lot of physical therapy to be able to use his arms, as those also used his back muscles, but he had perfected his technique and abilities over the last five years.

Zayne used his hands and arms to wheel over to his dresser, where he pulled out a pair of jeans, a soft v-neck t-shirt in dark blue, and boxer briefs and socks in black. He put those in his lap and then moved into the bathroom where he deposited his clothes on the counter top before he pulled his towel down from the towel rack and placed it on the bench next to the shower. He pulled himself onto the bench where he got undressed and then carefully hobbled into the shower.

The shower they had built in his ensuite was large and the entire wall on all three sides was covered in a wooden bench that he could sit on easily and without too much pain. He had a waterproof cushion that he moved around for early mornings when he was sore like this. Once he had the cushion where he wanted it, he shut the door and sat down before turning on the water and letting it heat up.

Zayne's showers were always so hot they bordered on scalding, which really only bothered him when it was against his scalp. Laying on his back or stomach could always cause a lot of pain for him, but he would move in the shower so that the hot water could hit his lumbar area to loosen it up as he stretched the muscles out. He had lowered sensation in his back now, and would sometimes push the water temperature limits past where he should just to be able to feel it. That and heating pads had left him, at times, with burns on his back but it was hard to tell the old burn scars from surgery scars at times.

By the time he was done, his pale skin was red in color from the heat. Zayne moved over to the bench outside the shower where he dried himself off before slowly getting dressed. He finished by using the towel to dry off his auburn hair as best he could before putting some product in it to keep it from getting frizzy and then putting moisturizer and eye cream on his face.

When he got to his desk, he felt vaguely human again. Zayne put his headset on as he logged into his work portal and clocked in.

~~~

Brielle Weeks flitted around the restaurant her family and new fiancé, Daniel Williamson, were standing in to decide if they wanted to rent out the entire place for a night for her engagement party. It was usually a busy restaurant, but they were in there a little after the lunch rush to decide if it was where they wanted to hold it.

Brielle came back over to sit down at the table next to Daniel, a smile on her face. "It's perfect! Now we just have to decide on the menu with the restaurant and the guest list."

As Brielle and her parents started going over their options for the menu, Daniel looked over at her older brother, Brinxton Weeks, with an apologetic smile, trying to befriend his soon-to-be brother-in-law. "I'm sorry they dragged you along for this. I was sure Brielle and I could make these decisions on our own, but you know how family is..."

Brinxton shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. He wasn't particularly fond of his sister's boyfriend, but tried not to show it. There was something about the guy that just irked him. Maybe it was the smarmy way he had about him, or maybe it was knowing the guy was bisexual. He wasn't supposed to know that, but one of Daniel's friends had let it slip last night at the bar. He didn't think that was all of it, though, because he hadn't liked him since before he knew that.

Brinxton put some thought into it and decided it wasn't because he was particularly protective of his sister. At twenty-three, she was more than old enough to make her own mistakes and they had not been very close growing up anyway. Brinxton had been declared a "problem child" at a young age and had been shipped off to boarding school for nearly a decade, so the opportunity to grow up together just hadn't been present.

Brielle broke into his thoughts. "Well of course Brinxton needs to be here. He's my brother, and a groomsman. You will agree, right, big brother?" She batted her eyelashes at him over her dark eyes, despite knowing it didn't really work on him. It wasn't for him though; it was to gain the attention of their parents, who looked at Brinxton expectantly as they always did when he was supposed to go along with something they wanted him to do.

Brinxton looked to his parents, then rolled his eyes. They still seemed to run his life, even at twenty-five, and he wondered how much longer he would allow that to go on as he agreed to his sister's demand. Brielle gave a grin and they went back to their talk of the menu. Once that was done, they had to talk about the guest list. Of course, high society people needed to be invited.

"What about the Lennoxes?" Marionette Weeks asked her daughter.

Brielle turned hard eyes over to where Daniel was, but that name had gotten his attention. "They have to be invited, of course," he said to her while Brielle pursed her lips together in annoyance.

"Is that really appropriate?" Brielle asked in a low voice.

Daniel looked annoyed. "It's been four years, Brielle, and it's you I'm marrying. But Zee's family was like a second family to me. Despite us being a little awkward with each other now, I will not have them left out."

Brinxton watched this interaction with interest, the dialogue both confirming his suspicions and adding onto them a new layer of dislike for Brielle's fiancé. What kind of person would invite an ex to their wedding? Brielle seemed to have the same thoughts, but Daniel pushed back on any argument that meant excluding the Lennox family.

Finally, Brielle sighed and replied. "Fine, but does this mean we have to make accommodations for him? I'd hate to put the poor restaurant workers out just because you dated a cripple."

Brinxton, aghast at his sister's word choice, got up and walked away, no longer wishing to be part of this conversation. The last thing Brinxton heard as he walked away was Daniel hissing, "Don't call him that."

After a little more arguing, the guest list was set and the Weeks would work on getting them out ASAP. Within a week, formal invitations to the engagement party had been sent out through the post office, and it was the talk of the town. Zayne, Zach, and Elias even got ones sent to their address, though Zayne was sad to see both of them throw the invitations away. He didn't, though he wasn't sure he was going to go either. It seemed awkward and weird to be there.

They all would have stuck to that too, if not for Zayne and Zach's mom, who told them that it didn't look good if they all refused to go. For one, they had been invited, and everyone in town had known them as a group of four in high school. It showed bad blood if they kept this up.

"There is bad blood," Zach argued. "Lots of it. Like Carrie level of bad blood."

"It's been four years," Amelia Lennox admonished them all. "It's time to let it go, and find a balance. You don't have to be friends again, but at least be mature about it."

"Maybe we should consider what Zayne wants?" Aspen Lennox, the twins' little sister, piped up. "It's his ex after all."

Zach let out a huff and Elias' eyes went stony at that, but they both looked over at where Zayne was sitting calmly in his wheelchair, his hands in his lap. "Oh, is it my turn now?" Zayne asked after a moment. "I always thought this had less to do with me and more to do with you two feeling betrayed? Am I wrong?"

Zach sighed and sat down. "Well, what do you think then?"

Zayne shook his head. "I mean, I think it's weird he invited me in the first place, but I also know we were his only friends. Only good friends, anyway. I know his friends now are...not that close and not what you would call loyal. I get why he left. I get why he wanted out. It's my body and even I get tired of it all. It hurt, but I'm over it now. If he's trying to extend an olive branch, I don't see an issue with seeing if some sort of friendship can't be salvaged. We were all friends before him and I dated. Let's just...let go of the past and see what is there?"

Zach looked unhappy with that, while Elias looked thoughtful. In the end, they agreed to attend and see what happened. And that was why, a half a month later, they were all dressed in nice suits and dresses and headed to the restaurant. Zayne let Zach drive, even though he was capable of driving himself and even had a car that was modified to let him drive with his hands in case his legs were in bad shape.

Zayne felt a little nauseated as he wheeled into the restaurant, where the doors were held open for them by two staff members. The place was bustling with activity as people mingled around talking while having drinks. The food hadn't been served yet but there was the scent of fresh bread, searing meat, and vegetables all through the building.

Zayne didn't drink very often now, mostly because of medications, so when asked what he would like to drink he said a Shirley Temple would be fine. He drank about half of it before he put it between his legs so he could move around. He was coming around one of the tables when someone bumped into his wheelchair and sent him forward, where he accidentally hit Brinxton's leg.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry," Zayne said as he looked Brinxton over for any signs that he had spilled anything. "I'm such a hazard sometimes in crowded places. Are you okay? Did I run over your foot?"

When he finally lifted his gray eyes up to the man, he stopped talking because his breath was taken by how handsome he was. Brinxton was tall with tanned skin, dark hair that was cut short and stylish, and he looked like he did a lot of athletic activities. He was wearing a perfectly tailored suit, much like Zayne was, though Brinxton's was dark blue to match his eyes and Zayne was wearing black pants and a deep maroon jacket that made his freckles and hair stand out.

From the angle they were at, and with Zayne sitting down, Brinxton could tell that Zayne was a tall man who was only made short due to his circumstances of sitting in the wheelchair. Zayne's auburn hair was longer and fell down around the bottom of his ears, but he had it slicked back now. Zayne wore black rimmed glasses in a rectangular frame, and it made his gray, piercing eyes stand out. His face was dappled with freckles, but it made him seem endearing and sweet. Zayne's upper body was still well in shape, though his legs had a little less muscle mass than they used to. His legs were tucked into the footrests on his wheelchair, close to his body.