Chapter 14 Emery
My pulse doesn’t get a chance to recover, because Luca is awake and trying to get up when I come back inside.
He’s sitting at the side of the bed, gripping the edge of the mattress, and seems to be steeling himself to push up to standing.
Honey sits near his feet, looking up at him as if thinking, Bro, be careful, I’ve been there.
“Hey, hey.” I run over, setting a hand on his shoulder before quickly pulling it back. “Still feeling groggy?”
Luca shrugs. “A little.”
“Do you know what day it is?”
He looks up at me, squinting. “I don’t think you told me what day it was when I woke up in that machine. But it was three nights and two days ago.”
Huffing a laugh out of my nose, I murmur, “Fair enough. It’s Monday.” Careful to give him space, I sit beside him. “Do you remember your name?”
“Luca Tómas Martín.”
“And mine?”
“Emery. You didn’t tell me your middle name.”
“It’s Rose.”
A smile flickers across his mouth. “That’s pretty.”
“I’ll tell my grandmother you said so. It’s her middle name, too.
” I almost move to bump his shoulder with mine but stop myself.
From the first night we met, there’s never been a moment where I couldn’t touch Luca, kiss him whenever I want.
It’s always been the simplest part of our relationship.
We gravitated to each other like charged particles, inevitable and inseparable.
It’s almost physically impossible not to touch him now.
Clearing my throat, I say, “Her name is Gin, short for Virginia.” I wait for any sign of recollection on his face, but there’s none, and I shake the sting of this off. Luca adores Nana Gin. “Roses are pretty delicate, but Virginia Rose certainly isn’t.”
He considers this. “Does she like me?”
“Are you kidding? Everyone adores you.” I turn to look out the bedroom window.
“Well, except Dave, two houses down. He’s always been kind of a dick to you, but I think it’s because you generously fixed his sprinklers when he drunkenly ran over one of the lines with his golf cart, and his wife, Alice, kept running out in her bikini to bring you snacks and iced tea. ”
Luca lets out a small laugh and reaches down to scratch Honey’s ears. “Who is this, by the way?”
“This is Honey, a fellow patient. She was our first.”
Now he meets my eyes. “The first who went through the BioVIVE, you mean?”
I nod, feeling wary. Is he going to remember the lab and how he thought I did something to him just so I could test it out? The thought makes me nauseated.
“Honey’s doing great,” I assure him. “A few hiccups at first: disorientation, some joint instability, and she had to relearn some basic things. But she’s healing beautifully and such a good girl. So smart, aren’t you, Honey?”
A tail thumps on the floor, and Luca smiles down at her.
“She hasn’t left your side.” I smile as she bumps her nose against his leg for more scratches. I inhale, building the nerve to ask, “You don’t still think that I…” I start, then trail off.
“No.” He swallows, but there’s the tiniest hesitation. “I believe that you thought it was the only way. It’s just sort of hard to wrap my head around it all. Being hit, dying, waking up in some secret machine with no memory of the wife who invented it all.”
“I’m sure.” I pull in a shaky breath. “I’ll—I mean, I promise to be here to help you work through it.”
We fall quiet for several long moments, the only sound in the room the scratching of fingers on Honey’s head and her soft, happy grunts.
“We always talked about getting a dog,” I tell him. “We were sort of waiting for it to be the right time.”
He nods, swallowing, and murmurs, “I could see that.”
I choke back a renewed swell of emotion. I know this man better than almost anyone on earth, but not only does he not know me, he doesn’t know himself.
It must be frustrating, scary, bewildering.
“Did you need something?” I ask, remembering he was getting up.
“I can bring it to you. Your leg—the worst of your injuries—will have been mostly treated in the machine, but the skin and underlying muscle are still healing, and you’ll experience some discomfort for a while.
” I look at my watch. “You’re due for your pain meds. What’s your pain level right now?”
Luca swallows, thinking. “About a five, maybe.”
This hurts my heart. I won the husband lottery in many ways, but this very specific one has always been something I particularly noted: Luca never complains about pain or illness.
“Let me grab your meds and some water.”
He stops me with a hand on my forearm when I move to stand. “Emery?”
I look down at him, trying not to cry. I have to swallow a few times. “Yeah?”
“I really need a shower, too.”
“Oh.” I mean, obviously. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me the moment I saw he was awake. My husband is an objectively gorgeous man, but right now I must admit he looks a bit worse for the wear and smells… not great. “Of course. Sorry. Um…”
We both frown and then look away. It’s clear to me just watching him work to balance his torso while sitting on the bed that there’s no way he’ll be able to stand up yet, let alone shower by himself.
And I’m not sure I’d be comfortable leaving him alone in the tub.
Maybe I can wash him in a bubble bath? With lots of suds over his lower half so he can have some privacy?
Given how sensitive he seems to be to contact, I’m afraid to even touch him.
How am I going to manage to help him bathe?
God, this is just… so weird.
“Let me help you up.”
We sling his arm around my shoulders, and with careful, shuffling steps, make our way into the hallway and to the bathroom.
Luca braces his hands on the sink, and we lower him slowly to the toilet lid.
He’s out of breath from the exertion it took to make it just one room over.
I crouch beside him while we catch our breath and figure out the logistics of what comes next.
Our bathroom is nice enough, but beyond paint and some new plumbing fixtures, it’s pretty much exactly how it was when we bought the bungalow a couple of years ago.
Luca always hated the bathroom. He hated the tiny counter, the dinky bathtub and shower in the corner.
Since we moved in, he’s landscaped the front and back yards, remodeled the kitchen and bedroom, painted every wall, and crafted the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the living room. The bathroom was next on his list.
Luca reads my uncertainty. “Emery, if we’re married, you’ve seen it all before. And you’ve seen it recently—I was naked when I woke up in the machine. You put these clothes on me.”
I laugh. “I know. But I also know this is all new to you and don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“This is just one of many things that are going to be weird and new, so let’s just do away with the awkwardness.” He gazes down at me with those clear blue eyes and my God, Luca is still Luca, even without any of his memories. He’s always been pragmatic, sunny, and calm.
And I’ve benefited from it.
Time for me to treasure it.
“Good point.” I lift my chin toward the tub. “I think a bath would be safest.” He scrunches his nose at the tiny tub, and I laugh. “Okay, yes, I expected that reaction. Shower it is.”
I stand and turn on the water to get it warming. Putting on my mental big-girl pants, I help Luca stand to undress him. He lifts his arms, and I guide the shirt up his torso and off, tossing it into the laundry hamper in the corner.
Under any other circumstances, I would be giddily running my hands up his flat stomach, over his toned chest, and pulling him down to me.
Our sex life was the one area of our relationship where I never felt like the weak link; no matter how tired I was, how late I came home, Luca and I always found a way toward each other in bed, in the shower, in the living room.
A terrible thought occurs to me: What if the last time we had sex was actually the last?
The darker thought resurfaces: What if he doesn’t fall in love with me again?
And an even worse thread winds its way into my brain: Why did he ever love me to begin with?
Stop it, I hiss internally. You need to work to earn his love back. You need to believe that you can. But I have to focus on getting him safely into the shower; none of these are paths I can explore right now. Straight to the to-solve-later file they go.
I turn my attention to the tie at his waistband, tugging it loose and coaxing the soft pajama pants down his hips.
Intentionally averting my eyes from the part of him I most definitely would not, under normal circumstances, ignore, I shift my attention to his injuries.
The wound on his thigh is so much better than it was a couple of nights ago—the BioVIVE really is amazing—but the skin is still shiny and red, the muscle beneath slightly puckered.
Bruises usually look worse before they look better, but Compound Y lowered his body temperature enough to minimize swelling, while the BioVIVE used lasers to target hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that gives bruises their color.
It means he’s healing much faster than he would have on his own, but it all still looks incredibly painful.
Carefully, I help him step out of his pants and those, too, go into the hamper.
Luca has never been self-conscious—not that he has anything to be self-conscious about—and it’s reassuring to see another aspect of him that wasn’t changed by the BioVIVE.
He doesn’t move to cover himself or even reach for a towel.
Instead, his arms hang loose at his sides, eyes trained on where I’m kneeling in front of him.
And all I can think now is the hundreds of times I’ve been in this position, with him staring down at me.