Chapter 22
MALLORY
Rourke carries my bag himself. It's such a small thing that I almost don't know what to do with it.
The hotel has staff for this. Carmichael properties have bellmen, drivers, security teams, people trained to appear before a need finishes becoming a need.
For years, my life came with doors opened by hands I didn't know and luggage disappearing before I could bend to lift it.
This morning, Rourke stands beside the passenger door of his car with my overnight bag in one hand and his suit jacket folded over his arm.
His shirtsleeves are rolled to his forearms. There are shadows beneath his eyes.
His hair is clean but not perfect, like he dragged his fingers through it too many times after leaving the shower.
“Is the seat warm enough?” he asks.
“It’s August.”
He smiles and it shouldn't be as attractive as it is, all things considered. "Okay, but is it?"
"It's fine, Rourke."
“The air-conditioning,” he says. “I can turn it down.”
“It’s also fine.”
He nods once. “Okay.” He waits. For a second, I don't understand why he's still standing there. Then his gaze drops briefly to the hand I have braced on the car door. “May I help you in?” he asks.
This man has helped me into cars a hundred times. His palm at my lower back. His hand closing around mine. The absent, polished choreography of a husband who knows how to escort a wife through public spaces.
This isn't that. This is Rourke standing in the hotel drive the morning after he learned I'm carrying his child, asking permission before he touches me.
“Yes,” I say.
His hand comes to my elbow, warm and steady. Not possessive. Not hurried. He gives me exactly enough support to lower myself into the seat, then steps back as soon as I'm settled.
My body still feels unreliable. The clinician examined me last night and again this morning. Exhaustion. Stress. A fainting spell that terrified everyone more than it harmed me, thank God.
Rest. Fluids. Food. Mindful of stress.
I'm working on that last one.
Rourke places my bag in the back seat. No driver appears. No second car. No discreet security vehicle positioned half a block behind us. When he gets behind the wheel, he puts his phone face down in the center console and silences it.
I watch the movement. He sees me watching.
“I told Beatrice to handle anything urgent,” he says. “And if it isn’t urgent, it can wait.”
Once, that sentence would have sounded temporary, a kind of romantic performance he could afford for a few hours before the world reached through the hours and yanked him back to reality. Today, he doesn't look as if he expects praise for it. He starts the car.
For the first few miles, neither of us says much.
The city loosens around us in slow increments.
Glass towers turn into office parks. Office parks turn into warehouses, gas stations, and low strips of restaurants that advertise their specials on signs with lighted arrows.
The morning is bright in that hard summer way, every windshield throwing light, the road ahead trembling faintly with heat.
Rourke drives differently than I remember.
He's always been controlled behind the wheel, but now he's almost absurdly careful.
He gives trucks more room than they need.
He takes turns as if there's a glass sculpture in the back seat.
Every few minutes, his eyes move to me, then away before the look becomes too much.
“Are you nauseated?” he asks after the city drops behind us.
“No.”
“Too cold?”
“No.”
“Hungry?”
I turn my head against the seat. “Rourke.”
His hand tightens once on the wheel. “Sorry.”
“I’m not fragile.”
“No,” he says. "You're not fragile. But you are…"
His voice trails off.
"Pregnant," I finish for him, barely hiding a smile. "You can say it. I'm also not going to shatter if you hit a pothole too hard."
His mouth pulls at one corner. It's barely a smile, but it changes his face. “I’m afraid of more than potholes. When you went down yesterday…"
I look out the window. The memory of his face, panicked before I went down, comes back to me.
“I’m okay,” I say.
“I'm glad. I plan to do everything I can to keep it that way."
The first time we stop, it's because I shift too many times in my seat and try to pretend I'm not uncomfortable. Rourke notices anyway.
“Next exit,” he says. “Restroom, water, whatever you need.”
“I can wait.”
“We can stop.”
“I said I can wait.”
His jaw works. “Mallory, we've got to be honest with each other. I don't want you to not voice your needs because you're afraid it'll make me uncomfortable."
I close my eyes. It would be easier if he were doing this badly.
“No,” I say finally. “I don’t want to wait.”
“Then we’ll stop.”
The travel plaza has that scent. The one that's too many fried foods, coffee, and whatever they clean the floor with.
I make it to the bathroom and then back out into the main shop before the fryer oil turns my stomach. Rourke sees my face and stops cold.
“Crackers,” I say.
“Back to the car,” he says. “I’ll get them.”
“I can get them.”
“I know you can.” He holds the door open with his shoulder. “I’m offering because that smell is about to make you murder someone.”
A tired laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it. His eyes flick to my mouth. He looks almost startled by the sound, as if he's found something alive in the rubble.
“Plain crackers,” he says softly. “Ginger ale?"
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
I shake my head. “Not unless you want to watch me die in a parking lot.”
His face pales so fast I almost feel bad.
“Figure of speech,” I add.
“I would hope so.” He swallows. “But maybe too soon.”
He leaves me in the car with the air-conditioning adjusted lower and returns with crackers, the ginger ale, and two bottles of water.
He hands me the drink first, then opens the crackers before giving them to me, as if he's remembered that cellophane can be irritating when a person is tired and nauseated.
I eat three crackers while he stands outside the open door, giving me space without abandoning me to it.
“You can get coffee,” I say.
“I’m fine.”
“Rourke.”
“I’m fine,” he repeats. Then, after a second, he adds, “I was afraid the smell would make you nauseous.”
I stare down at the cracker in my hand. It's not a grand thing. Not a ballroom apology. Not a declaration fit for witnesses. It's just him forsaking his own comfort for mine.
He walks around to the driver’s side and gets in without looking at his phone.
Later, somewhere between one rural highway and the next, I fall asleep. I don't mean to. One minute, I'm watching fields slide past the window, my hand resting low against my abdomen. The next, I wake to stillness.
The car is parked beneath the thin shade of a maple at the edge of a rest area.
Rourke sits beside me with one hand loose on the steering wheel, his head leaned back against the seat.
His phone remains in the console, dark and untouched.
He's not working. He's not typing with one thumb while I sleep.
He's not stepping outside to take a quiet call.
He's not using the space my unconsciousness gives him to return to the machine that used to swallow him whole. He's just sitting beside me.
The sight opens something old and tender in my chest. For a moment, he's not Rourke Carmichael, heir to a dynasty.
He's the man from the coastal resort seven years ago, sitting on a low wall beside me with a ridiculous scavenger hunt list between us, giving his full attention to the serious business of finding a stranger in a flamingo-print hat.
He turns his head and finds me awake.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“You needed sleep.”
“How long?”
“Thirty-eight minutes.”
“Did you count?”
“I noticed the clock when you fell asleep.”
A little ache moves through me. “You didn’t make calls.”
“No.”
“You could have.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
I look at his phone. “Is everything all right?”
“At the company?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.” My breath catches a little, and he sees that too. “Beatrice would call the car system if someone were bleeding or the building were on fire,” he says. “Everything else can survive without me for an afternoon.”
“And can you survive without it?”
“I’m learning.”
We sit there in the running car, cool air brushing over my ankles, the smell of crackers and summer grass caught in the vents.
Rourke’s throat moves. “What did it sound like?”
I turn to him. "The heartbeat?"
He nods.
“Fast.” My hand closes around the edge of the cracker sleeve. “Too fast at first. I thought something was wrong because I didn’t know babies sounded like that. The clinician smiled, so I knew before she said anything that it was okay.”
He looks forward through the windshield. His eyes shine, but he doesn't make a sound.
“I was scared,” I say. “I had filled out the father’s information on the form, and I hated how much my hand shook when I wrote your name. I hated that I still wanted you there.”
His eyes close. “I’m sorry,” he says.
"You don't have to keep saying it."
“No.” His voice is rough. “I’m sorry you sat in that room with my name on a form and no husband beside you. I’m sorry you heard our child’s heartbeat for the first time while I was somewhere else trying to figure out how to fix the mess I made.”
“I wasn’t completely alone,” I say. “Coralee was there when I got home. Not in the room, but after. Dale fixed the porch light that week without asking for anything."
“I’m grateful,” he says.
I look at him.
“I’m grateful they were there,” he says. “I hate that I made their care necessary, but I’m grateful you had it.”
There's no jealousy in his voice. No wounded pride. No stiff resentment that another family stepped into the empty spaces he left.
My fingers loosen around the crackers. “Thank you,” I say.
He nods, and after another minute, he pulls back onto the road.