Callie
The hallway is bright with natural light, clean in that homely way of daily vacuumed plush carpets and vases of fresh cut flowers on the windowsills. It’s all too hopeful for the kind of fear that’s currently crawling under my skin.
I rush ahead, practically running, and it’s only when I reach the doorway of her room, her new room, that I freeze.
Grandma is sitting up in bed, a knitted blanket over her lap, sunlight pouring in through large, wide, windows.
The kind of sunlight she hasn’t had since the illness took her memory piece by piece.
There are photos on the nightstand, framed, not taped to a wall like in the last place.
Her favorite perfume and face cream laid out like someone actually applied them for her this morning.
“Oh…” The word leaves me on a sob.
“Callie-girl?” Grandma looks up, squinting like she’s trying to be sure she isn’t dreaming.
I’m across the room before I can blink, arms around her, holding tight to a frame that used to have more softness, less bony edges.
She hugs me back with surprising strength.
“You’re late,” she chides softly. “I kept telling them you’d come.
They kept telling me to eat more breakfast, but it was no hardship.
It was my favourite.” The smile she gives me is almost conspiratorial.
Her old self breaking through for a moment that I want to hold onto and stretch out.
Her voice is thinner than I remember. But stronger, too. More grounded.
“I’m here,” I say, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She pats my cheek. “Your face… you look tired.”
I shake my head quickly, wiping my eyes. “Just worried.”
“That’s my job,” she says, giving me one of the crooked smiles that was her way of telling me off when I was a kid, because she never once raised her voice at me. “Not yours.”
A soft knock and a doctor enters. She is mid-forties with friendly eyes; her coat properly buttoned rather than wrinkled and half-open like the last doctor who barely cared.
“Good morning,” she greets us with a smile, looking at both of us. “I’m Dr. Hirsch. We completed Juliet’s transfer this morning.”
“Transfer?” Grandma frowns, confused. “I liked the other place.”
“No, you didn’t,” I say gently.
“But they had pudding.”
The doctor smiles, and it lights up the room. “We have pudding here, too. Better pudding.”
Grandma brightens at that.
The doctor continues, flicking her finger over her tablet.
“Juliet has vascular dementia with intermittent breakthrough agitation. Her cognitive tests this morning suggest she may respond well to a small medication adjustment. If so, we can move her to one of our lower-dependency apartments, more community access, more autonomy. More living your own life without our unnecessary interference.”
My chest cracks open with hope.
“She could have her own place again?” I whisper.
“With the right support,” she confirms. “You’re not quite there yet, Juliet, but I’m optimistic.”
Grandma pats my hand. “See? Told you I’d outlive all the bad days.”
I try to laugh, but it comes out thick and wet. I glance behind me and find Dariy standing silently in the doorway. Watching us. Watching me. Making sure I don’t say anything I shouldn’t no doubt.
Grandma’s attention drifts as the doctor checks her vitals. Eventually she tires, and the nurse suggests she rest. I fuss too long over her blankets and kiss her cheek twice before forcing myself to leave the room.
The moment the door clicks shut behind us, the tears I’ve been holding spill over.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I say as we leave the building, Dariy nodding goodbye to the nurse at the desk, pausing to tell her something I don’t catch.
“This is more than I could ever do for her. You gave her dignity back. Hope. It’s like bringing her here has added time on that the other place was taking away.”
Dariy’s jaw flexes like the words hurt him.
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I do,” I whisper. “Whether you trust me or not. This means so much to me.”
His gaze sharpens. “We met under extenuating circumstances. It’s natural for you to behave in a way to save yourself. How can I trust what you say, when you could be saying what you think I want to hear?”
That strikes bone.
I step back, hugging myself. Because now I know I’ve been fooling myself. Last night meant something more to me than it did to him.
He turns to face me fully, and I’m struck again by his looks.
All dark angles sharpened by a life I could never begin to understand.
Eyes so light they look like ice crystals, but I also saw when they darkened to flint when he touched me.
The scar over his left eyebrow, only noticeable in certain lights, and the scars on his body, hidden amongst tattoos that I would one day hope to understand.
I was stupid to think this could be anything more than amazing sex. Because in the cold light of day, it’s clear we are from two different worlds. Two different galaxies.
But then he transferred my grandma to this place, this amazing facility with doctors who care enough to look into her diagnosis, test for different solutions. Unless it’s just his way to pay for my silence.
“So what am I to you?” I ask. “Really? Am I a loose end you’re trying to contain? Am I a body you got to use along the way? Is this just your way to pay for my silence? And why the fuck was that nurse looking at you like she knew what your cock felt like?”
His brows lower, his expression turning lethal.
“Because I thought…” I choke on it. “I thought you wanted something more. I thought being claimed by you actually meant something. But that must have been pillow talk because now all I hear is threat and control. You might not trust me, but you want to own me while she,---” I thrust my pointed finger towards the reception desk, “looks at me like I pissed in her cereal and you whisper to her on the way out.”
He moves so fast I gasp. One of his hands fists in my hair while the other holds my jaw, and he brings his face inches from mine. His voice is quiet enough to shake me.
“Do you think I would have moved your grandmother into the best care facility in the city if this was only about sex? Do you think I kept you alive just because I wanted to get my cock wet? Do you think some past fling, I can’t even remember the name of, measures up to you?”
My eyes sting. “Then what is this? Because I gave you everything I am and I’m still falling short.”
He breathes like the answer burns.
“It’s something I don’t know how to handle,” he says.
“And I’m going to make mistakes trying to keep it alive.
But I won’t lie to you. I fucked the nurse a year or so ago when I was in here recovering from surgery for a gunshot wound.
So yes, she does know what my cock feels like but it doesn’t mean anything, not to me.
Not like you do. And those whispers? I was telling her to make sure your grandma gets pudding every single day because we don’t know how long she has left and I want every one of her days to be as great as they can be so it eases your burden just-a-fucking-fraction. ”
His thumb sweeps my cheek, tender and terrifying.
“And I can see that you’re hurt because I don’t trust you,” he says low. “But I don’t trust myself around you either.”
That stops me.
He continues, the confession dragged out of him:
“I look at you and every bit of sense inside me evaporates, and I just want to touch you. But I know if I touch you, I’ll lose my fucking mind.
You could be my downfall and I wouldn’t see it coming.
And not only would you destroy me, but you could potentially destroy everything my family has built.
You have that kind of power over me.” He drags in a breath that sounds so ragged, it sounds like it’s tearing his lungs apart.
“You walked into my world and saw death in front of you, and you didn’t beg to be saved.
You begged me to look out for your grandmother instead of sparing you.
” He swallows. “You think that didn’t ruin me?
That someone as bright and beautiful and fucking radiant as you are, would give up the rest of your life for your grandma to have a quality of life for her last few days. ”
My breath stutters. His lips are so close to mine now, my jaw held so firmly in his grip, that I know my skin is bruising. But all I feel is the swell of something so much larger than what my life was before, begin to slot into the space that used to be filled with worry and exhaustion.
“I know I’m insane. I know I lost my ever-loving mind the minute you walked into that room.
So perhaps moving your grandma without your knowledge was an idiot move and something we should have discussed, but I’ve never had to operate that way before and I didn’t think.
I just wanted to do something so you could find the space you needed for you to want to survive that room. To want to survive me.”
Tears are welling in my eyes again, but now it isn’t gratitude or rage, it’s being seen so completely and profoundly by someone for the first time in my life.
“Callie, I was supposed to kill you because of what you saw. But I couldn’t. And in my world, there’s only one way to keep you alive now.”
The landscaped garden feels too small for the weight of what’s hanging between us.
Realization dawns on me slowly. As if each part of the complete thought wants to enter with such singular clarity that I can’t mistake it for anything else.
“You need to marry me,” I say on a breath.
We’re close enough that I see his pupils dilate, see when my words register in his brain by the way his brows move with such a tiny movement it would have been completely imperceptible by anyone else.
“You need to make me yours by law. But please don’t cage me,” I whisper.
He drops his hands from me and steps back, thrusting his hands through his dark hair.
“Fuck, Callie,” he says in that way that I’ve only heard from him when he is in that desperate place between wanting me and taking me. Then he steps towards me and brings his mouth to mine.