Chapter 28
REID
Maeve was waiting at the foot of the stairs when I came down.
The late-afternoon light reached through the open bay behind her, laying long bars of gold across the concrete. She had one hand hooked beneath the strap of her bag and the expression she wore when she had something important to say but did not want to alarm me.
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
“Asleep already.”
“Headache?”
“He rated it a three. No dizziness, no visual changes, nothing neurologically concerning.”
Some of the tension left my shoulders.
Maeve adjusted her bag but made no move toward her car.
“He told me he felt like a burden this morning.”
The word struck too close to another one Noah had used.
“Useless,” I said.
It had been sitting inside me since breakfast, sharp-edged and immovable.
Maeve’s eyes softened. “He said that to you?”
“He asked whether I was going to get tired of taking care of him.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I’ll document it,” she said. “Not because I think he’s in immediate danger. But recurring thoughts about worthlessness need attention.”
“He didn’t sound hopeless.”
“No.” She glanced toward the apartment windows above the workshop. “He sounded afraid.”
Fear, I understood. Fear had occupied every room in our lives since the accident, sometimes quietly, sometimes with its hands around our throats.
“He’s progressing remarkably well,” Maeve continued. “That doesn’t mean every day will feel like progress to him.”
“I know.”
“Are you still finding useful things for him to do?”
“Anything he can manage without exhausting himself or aggravating the hip.”
“He notices that.”
“Noah notices everything.”
“He appreciates it too.”
That did not surprise me. Even when his memory failed him, he read patterns, moods, pauses. His mind might take the long route now, but it still reached places other people missed.
Maeve started toward the parking area, then stopped.
“There’s something else.”
The measured tone returned.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” She faced me again. “He asked which sexual positions would be safest while his hip is healing.”
For several seconds, my mind supplied no response at all.
“He asked you?”
“This afternoon.”
“Did he say he wanted to—” I stopped, unable to make the rest of the sentence sound neutral. “Did he say he thought he was ready?”
“He said he expected to be soon.”
Desire came first, hot and instinctive. Fear followed so closely that the two became nearly indistinguishable.
Maeve lowered her voice.
“I gave him general medical guidance. Supported positions. Limited rotation. No sustained pressure through the injured side. But I made it very clear that physical capability and emotional readiness aren’t always synchronized.”
“I’m aware.”
“He trusts you, Reid.”
“I know that.”
“Then be careful that his trust never begins to feel like an obligation.”
“It won’t.”
She studied me long enough to decide whether she believed it.
Apparently, she did.
After she drove away, I went back to the workboat repair and spent the next half hour pretending corroded wiring required my complete attention.
It did not.
My thoughts remained upstairs with Noah, asleep in our bed after asking Maeve how we might have sex without hurting him.
I tightened a battery terminal, checked it, then tightened it again.
Owen leaned over the opposite side of the engine compartment.
“You planning to fuse that bolt to the post?”
“It was loose.”
“It stopped being loose five minutes ago.”
I reached for the next cable.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re grinning at a marine battery.”
“I am absolutely not.”
Caleb emerged from the break room carrying coffee that looked thick enough to repair hull damage.
“He was grinning at his phone earlier too.”
Owen nodded as if receiving confirmation from an expert witness. “Noah said something flattering.”
I looked between them. “What exactly do you think you know?”
“That he called you dreamy,” Owen said.
“Who told you that?”
Caleb took a sip. “You did.”
“I said no such thing.”
“Your face has become extremely talkative.”
I turned back to the wiring while they laughed behind me.
At lunch, we gathered around the scarred break-room table with cartons of soup and the stale crackers Owen insisted on hoarding.
Caleb talked about driving his daughter to tour colleges. Owen described helping his brother reroof a garage and discovering the rotten plywood by putting one leg through it.
For twenty minutes, no one mentioned rehabilitation schedules, legal claims, medical bills, or whether the yard could survive another quarter without a major contract.
They talked about children, bad roofing decisions, parking tickets, and a restaurant that had given Caleb food poisoning in 2009.
Ordinary lives.
I had forgotten how much I missed hearing about them.
Eventually, Owen took out his phone and showed us a photograph of a dark-haired woman standing beside a food truck, smiling into bright sunlight.
“She runs that place near the ferry terminal,” he said.
“The noodle truck?” Caleb asked.
“Yes.”
“You hate noodles.”
Owen slid the phone closer to himself. “I have reconsidered.”
“Because of the noodles?”
“Her name is Talia.”
I smiled. “How many dates?”
“Four.”
Caleb pointed his spoon at him. “For you, that’s practically a mortgage.”
“It’s dinner.”
“You drove to Portland last weekend.”
“She was working a festival.”
“And, by staggering coincidence, so were you?”
Owen looked at me. “You are the owner. Make him stop.”
“I haven’t enjoyed lunch this much in months.”
He sighed and put his phone away.
“She might come Sunday, assuming we’re still doing Harborside.”
The pub lunch.
I had forgotten about it entirely. Caleb had suggested it after Noah’s memory episode—a few hours somewhere outside the apartment and workshop, with a game on the televisions and enough familiar people around him to make the crowd less threatening.
“I’ll ask Noah,” I said. “It could be too loud.”
“I can reserve the small room,” Caleb offered. “The manager owes me.”
“For what?”
“I helped him move a freezer.”
Owen frowned. “That cannot possibly be worth a private room.”
“You didn’t see the stairs.”
“If Noah gets tired, we leave,” I said.
Caleb shrugged. “No one’s proposing we chain him to the bar.”
The idea appealed to me more than I expected.
Not only for Noah.
For myself.
A table with friends. Chosen noise. Food I had not cooked. A few hours in which no one needed me to make a decision that might determine the rest of our lives.
I checked the clock.
Noon.
Noah would probably sleep for another hour.
Then I remembered Felicity’s call.
She had confirmed the appointment at the settlement office for the following morning but refused to tell me the final amount over the phone. Noah had already been informed, she said.
He had not looked relieved after speaking to her.
He had looked stunned.
I decided I would ask when he woke.
Work swallowed the rest of the afternoon. A winch motor failed its load test. A delivery arrived with half the requested parts and twice the requested invoice. By three, I had accumulated enough reasons to swear at three separate companies.
I went upstairs.
The television murmured to an empty living room. Noah’s new walking pole stood against the wall where I had left it.
“Noah?”
“In the bedroom.”
I found him perched on my side of the mattress, surrounded by everything that had once lived in the bedside drawer.
Receipts. Charging cords. A flashlight. An incomplete deck of cards. Loose batteries. A small notebook neither of us remembered buying.
And a bottle of lubricant.
His face was pink.
I leaned against the doorframe. “Should I be worried?”
“No.”
“That answer would be more convincing if you weren’t dismantling the furniture.”
He picked up the flashlight, examined it gravely, then placed it beside the cards.
“I was looking for something.”
“What?”
“I’m not entirely certain anymore.”
“That narrows it down.”
He looked up.
The nap had eased some of the fatigue around his eyes, but embarrassment had replaced it, visible in the tension of his mouth and the way he rubbed his palms over his thighs.
I closed the door and sat beside him.
“Tell me.”
He stared at the clutter.
“Maeve asked whether you and I had discussed sexual health.”
“All right.”
“And I realized we hadn’t.”
“No, we haven’t.”
“I found that.” He gestured toward the lubricant. “But there aren’t any condoms.”
Understanding settled between us.
“You searched for them.”
“Only in the bedroom and bathroom.”
“The two leading habitats of condoms.”
His mouth twitched, but the humor did not last.
“I thought we must have used them before.”
“We did.”
He turned toward me. “For how long?”
“At the beginning.”
“And then?”
I reached for his hand, leaving him room to pull away.
He did not.
“We decided to stop several years ago.”
“Why?”
“We were exclusive. We both had tests done. We discussed the risks, looked at the results, and made the decision together.”
His attention fixed on our interlaced fingers.
“You haven’t slept with anyone else.”
“No.”
“Not even after the accident?”
“Not since you kissed me under the green lamp.”
His breath faltered.
“That happened before we were officially a couple.”
“I had confidence in the outcome.”
A small smile surfaced, fragile and brief.
“So after the tests, we never used them?”
“No.”
“Not once?”
“Not that I remember.”
He went silent.
I remembered our first conversation about it. Noah had arrived with a page of questions, asked half of them twice, and read every line of the clinic paperwork himself. He had wanted the intimacy, but he had wanted knowledge and choice more.
The man beside me might not remember that decision.
He still deserved to make it.
“I should have talked to you about this sooner,” I said.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was afraid any detailed conversation would sound like I expected something from you.”
His fingers tightened.
“But choosing not to tell me is still choosing for me.”
I accepted the truth without resistance.
“You’re right.”
He searched my face, perhaps looking for defensiveness.
There was none to find.
“I trust you,” he said.
“I know.”