Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Stop imagining. I’m here.”
He pulls his hands from mine and walks to the window. I watch him. He’s quiet for a long minute before he closes his eyes and draws a deep breath in, seeming to make up his mind. He turns back to me.
“You could have died, Blue. He could have killed you on that plane. He could have killed you in his house. He could have killed you a thousand times over.”
“It was the only way, Zeke.” I get up off the bed and walk to him, my bare feet cold on the tile floor. I reach up to touch his face, my eyes wet with warm tears. “You told me I shouldn’t care about you, but I do. I don’t have a choice. I think in a way it started that first night when you sewed up my hand. So stupid.” I shake my head at my own naïve longing, my loneliness. “And then everything else… I don’t know. Maybe I’m stupid and there’s definitely something wrong with me, but I couldn’t live with myself if something had happened to you. I couldn’t—”
“What about me, Blue?” he asks more forcefully, facing me fully and taking my face in his hands. Is he angry? “What about what I couldn’t live without?” The raw emotion in his voice, his eyes, stops me dead. “What about that?” he finishes, angry.
“I don’t… It was the only way—”
“What if you’d died?” he says through clenched teeth.
“I didn’t die.”
“What if I hadn’t been there and he’d—” he cuts himself off and I’m not sure either of us has realized that he walked me backward until we’re out of space when my back hits the wall. He searches my face as if needing to prove that it’s real. I’m real.
“I’m here, Zeke. I’m alive. I’m here,” I say, my hands over the backs of his.
He bends his head, his forehead coming to mine. He closes his eyes. “I couldn’t live without you. I can’t… Live without you.”
My heartbeats are thuds, the only sound that of blood pounding my ears. His pain is so raw. So visceral. I remember what I’d said to him, that all those emotions inside him are drowning him.
“Zeke.” I touch his face, tears toppling over my lashes.
He opens his eyes again and I tilt my head back to look up at him.
“I told you I can’t make love…” he starts, then trails off.
I shake my head, caress his face, reach up on tiptoe to kiss his mouth. “You’re wrong. You’re so wrong, you dummy.”
His eyes mist over softening that steely gray making them even more depthless. “What have you done to me, Blue?”
I smile through my tears, wipe my nose with the back of my hand before kissing him fully on the mouth. “I loved you, Zeke. I love you.”
29
BLUE
Zeke spends that night in the hospital with me. We lie together in that too small bed and hold each other, and we both sleep a little, I think. Every time I open my eyes, though, his are open and he’s watching me.
I’m released from the hospital the next day and Zeke and I drive to the Bishop house. I’m not sure what’s coming next and I’m not sure he is either. I get the feeling he’s processing what he’s done, what he said. In a way, it’s amusing to watch him like this. This self-assured man, the strongest man I know, uncertain, unsure what to do.
My sister is doing well and so is Rudy. They are swimming every day which Wren loves. Rudy is surprised at her skill in the water and I’m not sure if I should have hope or not, but I do because this is something of the old Wren. Her trauma is still in her somewhere. I see it in her eyes sometimes, like when she first saw Zeke, I saw that moment of hesitation, almost as if memory were warning her of danger because to her, I think most men equal danger. Is it possible to come back from where she is? Not fully, I know that, but I’ll take what I can get. All I know for certain is I’m going to do my best for her and now that we’re no longer running, no longer hiding, I can.
I’m not sure what state I expect the house to be in but when we walk in, I find it’s in perfect condition, everything picked up, anything that had been broken removed, furniture put back in place, debris cleaned up.
“Do you want to eat something?” Zeke asks as I peer into the study.
I shake my head. “I really want a shower first.”
He nods and we walk upstairs together. I let him lead me to his room where he switches on the shower and as it heats up, he strips off my clothes and his. He’s still wearing what he’d had on at the guest house and mine are clothes the hospital gave me.