Chapter 24 I Have a Baby on My Spine #3
“Yes,” Lainey said. In her heart of hearts, she knew who Elliot was, and he wasn’t cruel or underhanded.
He fretted over the well-being of turtles and liked bees.
He noticed the slope of the ceiling and angle of the light shining through the windows.
He cared for her when she was sick. He listened fiercely to every word she said.
He looked at her like he was memorizing her every freckle and curve.
Like he would die if he forgot even one small detail.
It didn’t matter how he’d protected himself when he hadn’t known her. She knew who he was now. Elliot and her were alike in so many ways, and one of the ways was this: they didn’t hurt the people they loved.
“Then I think you have your answer,” Bree said, reaching for Elodie, who was beginning to root around the bib of Lainey’s shorteralls.
“As your best friend, I reserve the right to never forgive him for the house bullshit as long as he lives—such is my right—but if you wanted to forgive him, I don’t think that would be so crazy. ”
Lainey nodded, overwhelmed by how much she could feel all at once—for herself, for her friend, and for the tiny human in her lap. “Hey,” Lainey said, placing Elodie into Bree’s eager arms. “You made a person.”
“I know, right? I kind of want to hang it up, since I absolutely crushed it right out of the gate, but I also feel like I owe it to the world to continue producing perfect babies.”
Lainey nodded with great solemnity. “People don’t talk enough about the responsibility that comes with possessing such phenomenal bone structure.”
Bree narrowed her eyes. “I’m too tired to tell if you’re making fun of me, but I also don’t care.”
Colin flew back into the room, holding a beige-colored pudding cup in the air like a trophy. “Butterscotch,” he announced triumphantly.
“How…?” Bree let her question fall away as Colin tore open the cup and scooped a dollop of pudding onto a plastic spoon.
“Be quite quick about it. I snuck into the doctor’s lounge and stole it from the lunch of an orthopedic surgeon. He’s a large man, and I’d like to dispose of the evidence, so open up.”
Lainey left the family to enjoy their contraband pudding in peace and wandered into the waiting room. The hallway lights were dim, a not-so-subtle signal that visiting hours were coming to an end. Disappointment circled above the empty waiting room. What had she expected?
But then she spotted them—a pair of shoes and a familiar-looking olive rain jacket slung over the back of a bench facing the television. She wasn’t sure anyone had ever been so elated to spot a piece of fabric in a hospital common area.
“I was hoping you’d stay,” she said, dipping her head over the bench.
“Huh? Wha—?”
A blond-haired woman, who was most definitely not Elliot, yanked herself from the throes of sleep.
“Sorry.” Lainey blinked. “Your jacket…I knew someone with a similar one.” Heartbreak sank through her limbs.
She took the elevator down to the main floor and walked out into the ambulance bay.
It was quiet, which was probably a good sign for the people of the Lake Superior region of northwest Wisconsin.
Stopping beside a lonely looking bus stop bench, she looked up at the sign, hoping that one of the routes would get her close to where she needed to go, when her eyes caught on a man across the street.
“Hey,” he called out to her. “Need a ride?”
Her heart floated inside her chest at the sight of Elliot, his hair rumpled like he’d been combing his fingers through it all night while he stood there behind his silver truck, waiting. “Have you been out here this whole time?” she yelled across the street.
“Yes. Well, I went home to let Waffle out. Then I came right back.”
A bus pulled in front of the stop, blocking their view. The driver eyed her impatiently, and she waved him onward. Elliot was still there, looking at her with that familiar intensity that unspooled her.
“What would you have done, if I’d gotten on that bus?” she asked, her voice skipping across the wet pavement like a pebble.
He lifted a shoulder. “I would’ve driven home to feed Waffle.”
“What a waste of a night.”
“I got to see your face. Best night I’ve had in weeks.”
She tried to look embarrassed for him, but it wasn’t convincing. Her smile was too wide. “You’ve got lines, Hodges. Did you spend all this time on the side of the curb thinking that one up?”
He tilted his head up to the dark sky, like she was simply too much. “Are you letting me drive you home, or what?”
She walked across the street and let him open the passenger door for her. She accepted his hand, sparks flying between their fingers as he guided her onto the passenger seat.
“You’re still wearing your ring,” he observed.
“I don’t like taking it off,” she responded, feeling every ounce of the painful honesty in her words.
“Me neither,” he said back, a glint of a smile.
He didn’t make a move for the driver’s side. He stood in her open door, looking down at her like he might never see her in the moonlight like this again.
She looked down at their woven fingers. “You loved me when we went to the Shell Station? That was the moment?”
“It wasn’t one moment; it was hundreds of moments that all led up to me looking at you in the sunset and wondering how I was going to cope now that I’d fallen for my wife.”