“Hey,” he echoed, reaching for her hand and smiling with satisfaction when she didn’t hesitate to give it to him.
“Your mom and dad are getting a room at the Hilton Garden, and Bax is going to stay the night.”
Great.
“Apparently, my days of living alone are over.”
She gave a little shrug. “They’re just worried, Gray.” She watched him a moment, almost weighing her words. “Bax and your dad will go back to New Orleans in the morning, but your mom is staying.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
Meredith squeezed his hand. “I knew you’d say that, but there are worse things. Trust me.”
At the look on her face, Gray stifled his objections. Meredith hadn’t told him much about her parents, but when the topic of family came up, he could read the pain in her eyes. He’d seen it first on their one outing to Academy and the same look had passed over her countless times in the weeks he’d known her. The look made him want to find her parents and grab them by their throats. Shake them. Shame them.
“Anyway, we’ve worked out a sort of schedule,” she continued. “She’ll stay here while I’m at school, and I’ll come back in the afternoons. On nights when I can’t stay, she will.”
Gray felt a check of surprise. “You mean Mom’s not insisting on moving in?”
Meredith’s lashes lowered, and she brushed a lock of hair from her face. “Um… no… She said that she wanted you to have your privacy,” she explained, blushing deeply. “I think seeing us at the front door was… a factor.”
His chuckle sounded wicked, even to him. “Somehow, I knew kissing you then was a good idea.”
Rolling her eyes, she grabbed both of his wrists and held them gently by his sides. “Well,” she said, leaning forward. “Kissing you now is going to pale by comparison.”
She touched her lips to his with three quick kisses and drew back.
“That’s all I get until tomorrow?” he asked, giving her his best look of devastation.
She pursed her mouth to keep from smiling, but her look was unyielding. “Yes. Your whole family is still out there, and I don’t want them getting the wrong idea.”
Now that keeping whatever they had private was no longer an option, Gray didn’t really care what they thought, but clearly Meredith did. Still, he wasn’t ready to let her go. And maybe he’d never be. So he shifted his wrists until he gripped hers as she held on.
“Okay, no more kisses. How about a hug?” He expected her to resist, but instead, her whole posture melted.
“A hug?” she asked, her voice soft with disbelief.
He nodded gently, wanting the choice to be hers. And she collapsed into him, her arms slipping under his before he wrapped her tight. Whenever she chose him — with her words, with her eyes, with her touch — Gray’s heart somersaulted. She nestled against him, her head fitting just under his chin. Gray pressed his nose and lips into the satsuma sweetness of her hair, and bliss made his lungs fill and empty with a boundless sigh. She felt just perfect.
“Thanks,” he murmured into her hair.
“Anytime,” she said, sounding just as content.
Neither of them moved. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to roll her down onto the bed and show her what being near her did to him. He wanted to take all night.
But he didn’t. Gray just hugged her.
After he told her goodnight a few minutes later, he closed his eyes and welcomed sleep while he could still feel her warmth on his skin and taste her scent in the air.
THE NEXT MORNING, with his mom only smothering him a little (the pancakes, bacon, and coffee were appreciated, but she made far more than he could eat), Gray finished his fourth novel. His eyes were still wigging out, as though there were a little short in his optic nerve, so instead of going through the manuscript one last time before submitting it, he took a break and called his lawyer.
Giving his name and explaining the urgency of his situation to the man’s assistant was all it took to get him patched through to André Washington, or “Dré-Dub” as he’d been known back when they both worked at Habitat.
“Gray-Gray-Gray,” André said, the usual greeting pitching like a song.
“Dré-Dré-Dré,” he echoed, their routine always making him smile.
“What’s wrong? Simone says you need to make a change to your will,” Gray’s old friend sounded lost. The last time he’d called him was to ask him to go over his most recent publishing contract. Gray had an agent for this, but he trusted Dré implicitly, and he knew the man would tell him if he found any clauses that weren’t in his best interest. They hadn’t touched his will since Dré had drafted it for him two years ago — when it was obvious that he needed to make a plan for his assets should anything happen to him.
And since Gray didn’t have any dependents, what he hadn’t allocated to his family was going to go to Habitat for Humanity and a few other non-profits he regularly supported. But now he needed to make one important change.
Of course, he had to level with his old friend first.
“Fuck…“ Dré muttered after Gray had said the words “brain tumor.” And he kept muttering the curse as Gray detailed the tumor’s location, the proposed treatment, the risks involved, and the potential setbacks after surgery.
He finished, finally, and listened to André drop a few more f-bombs before the man recovered.
“Shit, man, you told me you were having headaches when I saw you before Thanksgiving,” he lamented. “And I said it was because you were spending too much time squinting at a computer instead of using your eyes to check the ladies on the dance floor.”
Chuckling at the memory, Gray let his buddy off the hook. “You don’t know how bad I wish you were right.”
Dré groaned. “How long you been knowing about it?”
He stopped chuckling and cleared his throat. “Since the Monday after Thanksgiving.”
Silence.
“And this is the first I’m hearing about it?” Gray could hear the offense in his friend’s voice. “I thought we were tight. I mean, I know you not the type to hang at the house and watch the game or go to a club every Saturday, but you didn’t think to tell your buddy, Dré, you just might drop dead any second?”
Gray sighed. “André, listen, apart from my family and my team, I haven’t told anybody.”
Dré didn’t miss a beat. “I thought I was on your team.”
Ouch. André Washington knew how to make an argument. Gray gave him the truth he deserved.
“You are. I just couldn’t. When I found out, all I wanted was to finish this book. I don’t know what’ll happen after surgery. I don’t know if I’ll even be around—”
“Whoa, man, don’t put that shit out there in the universe,” Dré interrupted, and Gray had to smile.
“Still superstitious,” he mumbled.
“You don’t tempt fate, 3G.” It sounded ridiculous with André’s favorite nickname, but Gray knew he was completely serious.
“All right. Whatever. Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m telling you now,” he said it, and he meant it. “You going to help me out?”
“Yes, today. Yes, tomorrow.”
“Good, because I met a girl.”
“What, now?”
Gray told him about Bax’s insistence on hiring help. And he told him about finding Meredith. But he stumbled over how to explain what she meant to him.
“She…she won’t leave me alone.”
“What? I thought you liked this girl?” Dré asked in confusion.
“I do. I’m crazy about her,” he said, pushing up from his desk and pacing the study. “I don’t mean she won’t get out of my business. I mean she stays in my head… in my blood. When she’s with me, I’m laughing, I’m teasing, and there’s nothing dark. And when she’s not with me, even the dark loses some of its darkness.”
Gray closed his mouth, stunned at his own words.
“Gray-Gray-Gray, I never thought I’d see the day,” his friend riffed.
> He could hear Dré’s smile over the phone. He was never living this down.
“So y’all been together, what, a couple months?”
Gray blinked. Together? He turned over the word in his mind. As far as he was concerned, they were absolutely together. He felt when she entered the room. He relaxed when she touched him. He went wild at the thought of someone hurting her.
“You could totally kick his ass. And if he knew how I felt about you, he might actually make you.”
Hearing her touch on how she felt about him made him weightless.
He didn’t doubt it. It was new and it was incredible and it was the last thing he expected, but Gray believed in it. They were together.
But they weren’t together. Not in the sense André meant. They weren’t dating. In all honesty, they hadn’t even gone on a date. Not a real one. They had not spoken of commitment. Hell, she was living with another man.
“It… uh… it hasn’t been quite that long,” he hedged.
Like Gray, Dré didn’t miss much. It was why Gray had picked him to be his attorney and not just his friend. “Well, how long have you known her?”
Gray laid it out. “Almost a month.”
André gave a low whistle like he did when something didn’t sound right. “Mr. Ain’t-Got-Time-For-Nobody? Caught in a snare? You sure that thing in your skull isn’t making you think some crazy thoughts?” He spoke carefully, but Gray still didn’t like what he heard.
“Hey, Dré… look, I can’t deny that being sick is the only reason I met Meredith, but it’s not the reason I can’t stop thinking about her.” It didn’t matter whether André heard the conviction in his voice or not. He didn’t need to justify his feelings for Meredith. All he needed to do was live up to them. “But if I would’ve met her under different circumstances, I’d been interested from the start. I would’ve pursued her, and, sooner or later, what I felt would’ve led me here. If anything happens to me, I want her to be okay.”
He waited to see if his old friend had anything else to say. Gray took it as a good sign when silence followed the end of his little speech.
“So, are you going to help me or what?”
André Washington sighed over the phone. “When you gonna learn? I’ll always help you.”
Twenty minutes later, Gray hung up. With papers to sign, André and two of his staffers who would serve as witnesses would come by the house as soon as the new will was ready.
His headache was merciless, and he had to grip the banister as he descended the stairs as the kaleidoscoping strip across his vision messed with his depth perception. But a sense of peace settled over him.
Gray had one less fate to fear.
If he came out of the surgery with minimal damage, he’d be able to resume his old life — this time with Meredith as part of it. He’d be free to share everything he had with her. But if disaster struck, and Gray didn’t make it out of the operating room, now, she’d still have a measure of protection and support, even if he wasn’t around to do the job himself.
Only the last monster remained. The one he’d feared the most all along. The possibility that he would survive, but left damaged beyond repair. That he wouldn’t be able to take care of himself — or anyone else — afterward.
Writing gave him absolute control. If he wanted a character to be a closet alcoholic, he’d write her sitting in the stands at her son’s soccer game, nursing a Yeti full of hot chocolate and Maker’s Mark and chewing cinnamon Trident to cover her breath. If he wanted to give a young woman a reason for being alone, he’d have that soccer mom cross the centerline in her minivan on the way home and kill a handsome fiancé.
But he couldn’t write a bridge over this uncertainty, not one that could carry him safely into the future he wanted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
OSCAR WOKE UP crying. Meredith reached for him in the darkness, and as soon as she touched the simmering heat of his skin, she understood. Her baby hadn’t been fussy simply because she wasn’t at home. Oscar was sick.
A glance at the clock told her it was just after four in the morning.
“It’s okay, baby,” she whispered. “Let’s get you some medicine.” But before she could scoop him in her arms, Oscar whimpered, turned toward her, and threw up. On her. On himself. And on the bed.
“Oh boy,” Meredith muttered, cringing against the sickening splash. It ran down her chest and soaked into her shirt as Oscar’s cries turned to wails. “Jamie, wake up. Oscar’s sick.”
She flipped on the bedside lamp, and Jamie grunted in protest, but he didn’t move. Getting to her feet, Meredith surveyed the mess. “Jamie, you’re about to roll in puke. Please help me.”
“Fuck!” Jamie shot up just as Oscar gagged again, and Meredith bolted for the bathroom. She made as far as the tub before he was sick again. At least it wouldn’t require a mop, Meredith thought, closing the shower curtain and turning on the water. In her arms, Oscar began shivering, and Meredith hoped this meant the worst was over.
“It’s okay, Oscar. We’ll get you clean and warm.”
Jamie stomped into the hallway. “Are you going to clean that up?” He jabbed a finger back toward their bedroom and glared at her.
How? How did I ever find him attractive?
Reaching in and checking the water temperature, Meredith ignored him. The water was just right, and when she stood and moved toward the bathroom door, she saw Jamie take in the mess she and Oscar both wore.
He narrowed his eyes at her as though she’d planned it. As though she’d chosen to have their baby vomit all over himself and her. Meredith closed the door in Jamie’s face and turned the lock.
“Mom!” she heard him yell behind it.
“Seriously?” She knew he heard her. Leona and Big Jim might have even heard her. Meredith didn’t care. She peeled off her fouled T-shirt, tossed it in the sink, and got Oscar undressed. By the time they stepped into the shower, his shivers shook him almost violently. But he sighed in relief once she moved him under the warm stream, and Oscar slumped against her in her arms. She shampooed and rinsed his hair and soaped off his body. As fast as she could, one-handed, Meredith washed her own hair and got herself cleaned up. When they were both rinsed, she aimed the showerhead down and set Oscar on his feet.
“Stay in here where it’s warm until I can get you a towel.”
Oscar whined, looking exhausted, but he stayed on his feet, so Meredith twisted the water from her hair and stepped out. When she was dry and her hair and body wrapped in towels, Meredith shut off the shower and dried her baby.
She could hear voices.
“Hell if I know, Mom… asleep… woke up in puke… Ask Meredith.”
And then someone tried the bathroom knob. “Meredith? Is he all right?” This was Leona.
She ignored this, too, putting a fresh diaper on her son and wrapping Oscar’s towel tightly around him before moving to the medicine cabinet. First, she grabbed the baby Tylenol and then she found the thermometer. Sitting on the lid of the toilet, she carefully positioned a weakly protesting Oscar on her lap before slipping the reader into his ear. A few seconds later, the thermometer told her Oscar had a fever of 102.6.
“My poor baby,” she cooed. “I’m sorry you’re sick.”
Oscar just leaned against her chest. She reached for the bottle of Tylenol, filled the dropper, and brought it to his mouth.
“Swallow this, Oscar. It’ll help.”
Oscar whined again, but he didn’t fight as she gave him the medicine. He made a face when he swallowed, but his eyes were already half-lidded.
“Let’s get you into some clean pajamas and go back to sleep.”
Meredith opened the door to find Leona McCormick practically suctioned to it. “What’s wrong?” she asked, reaching for him.
“Let me get dressed,” Meredith said, veering away.
Leona seemed to realize she was trying to pry Oscar away as Meredith struggled to keep the towel wrapped around her.
“Oh.”
Leona never apologized to Meredith, but the look in her eyes was as close as she’d ever come. “The bed’s clean. I can rock him once he’s dressed.”
“Thank you,” Meredith forced herself to speak graciously. “I think he’ll go right back down. I gave him Tylenol.”
Leona gasped. “He has a fever?”
Meredith stepped into their bedroom and put a hand on the door. “Yes, 102.6.”
“Oh, mercy. Could be the flu.” Leona’s worried look struck home.
Please, God. Don’t let him have the flu.
Meredith hid her fear and thanked Leona for the help. She closed their bedroom door and turned to see Jamie lying in bed with his back to her.
Such an asshole, she thought with a sigh.
She dressed them both and climbed under the covers, cuddling Oscar too her. He already felt a little cooler, but Meredith knew she’d need to give him some Motrin in a few hours to kick in before the Tylenol wore off.
Please don’t let him have the flu. She prayed again. Since he’d awoken crying, all of her thoughts had been for Oscar, but now that he drifted off safe in her arms, her mind and her heart turned to Gray.
She’d left him the night before certain she’d see him in a matter of hours. Now she was not so sure. Not only was Oscar sick, but Meredith couldn’t risk spreading whatever he had to Gray. Sighing, she planned her next moves. Go to class. Surely, Leona wouldn’t bat an eye at watching Oscar while he was sick. Whether she was willing to admit it or not, the woman had to see that Jamie would not be a comfort to him. After class, Meredith would take him to the pediatrician for a flu test.
“IT’S STREP. NOT the flu,” Dr. Conrad said. Kendra Conrad was rail thin with skin the color of hot chocolate, a natural afro, and a voice like flute music.
Meredith loved her because the woman was gentle and friendly, and she took her time with each visit to make sure Meredith understood everything concerning Oscar’s health.
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