Savor It

Chapter 31. Sage

The next forty-eight hours pass by in a daze. When Silas shows no signs of infection and his vitals all continue to look good, his doctors tell us they’ll be taking him off the ventilator and out of the coma.

Day three is when I finally see Ellis cry. He never leaves the bench outside Silas’s room. I’m not sure if he sleeps. It’s only when Wren shows up to the hospital with Sam and Indy and pulls him away that he lets himself fall into her arms.

You’d think Silas had a funny mishap by the way he himself behaves, rather than having nearly one whole leg and a chunk of his side covered in third-degree burns. I understand that he’s high as a kite, but it’s like he is actively trying to agitate the rest of us to avoid our pity. He’s a ruthless (albeit sloppy) flirt with all of his doctors and nurses, happily showing off his bandages and letting himself be poked and prodded with a dozy grin.

Fisher gently herds me to one of the hotel rooms he’s rented nearby on day four, where I proceed to shower and collapse into my own sort of coma, tucked securely into his side. I know if I had the energy, I would be panicking about spending some of our last days together this way.

When I wake alone in the room on day five, I find that he’s brought me a bag of things from home, including my journal and a few books I’d had on my nightstand. A swarm of emotions collide behind my sternum. I set out to find him, and like his chemistry has altered to magnetize with mine, my feet carry me to where he’s asleep in a lounger by the pool. I rouse him with kisses until he softly wakes.

“Where’s Indy?” I ask.

“Wren took both kids back,” he says. “She thought the festival would be a welcome distraction.”

My chest caves a bit when realization dawns on me. By now, we’ve missed both of the buy-in competitions. Tomorrow is the race, but it all feels so trivial in light of everything else. My chin still wobbles nonetheless.

I remind myself that it’s absurd, that life is not a meritocracy. Just because you do everything right, even if you know you deserve it, doesn’t mean that it will all be perfect in the end. Just because you accomplish a dream doesn’t mean it’ll make you happy forever. Sometimes wonderful people get sick, and sometimes people who were terrible to you have everything go according to plan. It really is what you do with it, what you take with you when you go to bed at night that counts. I try to remind myself that I know I can do it, that I proved this just the other day. I got my win.

So why does it still feel like I’m losing so much?

“Hey,” Fisher coos, pulling my head into his chest and rubbing circles on my shoulders. A labyrinth pattern he traces onto my skin. “Shh. You need more rest. Let me get you back to bed.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t want to sleep. But yes, take me to bed.”

Love me, love me, love me, I silently beg. Before we’re out of time.

It’s the least scenic place we’ve made love yet, but we make that hotel room feel like hallowed ground. We bring each other to the edge time and time again, until I can’t tell if we’re making demands or desperate invocations.

His hands tangle in my hair when I taste my way down his warm skin, his fist tightening against my scalp when I tease my lips across the tops of his thighs, a litany of my favorite raspy pleas in the air.

He toys with me endlessly with his hands in turn, coaxing up heat into a slow rolling burn. He follows every subtle response, whispers curses and words of praise, and knowingly tells me, Not yet, not yet, in a way that makes my body surge toward it more. Before I can recover from the first, he rolls me onto my side, lifts my knee, and enters me from behind, my head lolling against the cradle of his arm. He stretches and fills me, his hand sliding across my hip to touch me where we’re joined, until I’m impossibly on the verge again, until his deep, broken whimper in my ear sends me over the peak once more.

It’s like every release makes me need him more desperately. The closer he is, the closer I want him. When I don’t think I can take any more, he shifts me under him again, cupping a hand to my hip. He waits for me to meet his eyes before he says, “I love you,” as he enters me.

“I love you, too,” I whisper back, voice tight and airy.

A tear streaks down my temple when it ends.