Chapter 11
eleven
One Week Later
I wake before she does and lie still, listening.
Her breathing is slow and even beside me. One delicate arm is tucked under the pillow, her hair is spread across my sheets in a dark, tangled spill.
I still can’t believe this incredible woman sleeps next to me in my bed. Morning light slips through the blinds and catches on the curve of her shoulder. I watch long enough for my heart to ache.
One week.
Seven days since she kissed me, pulled me under, and changed every part of how my body works.
I used to wake up thinking about code, deadlines, meetings, fixing bugs.
Now it’s skin on skin with the woman of my dreams. The scent of sex and warmth and the memory of all the things she’s teaching me.
My whole system runs on Hope Kristiansen. One look at her mouth and I’m done for. One laugh from the kitchen and my pulse jumps. We’ve spent most of this week inside my apartment naked, pursuing a private rhythm I barely understand and have no interest in escaping.
I’m desperately in love with her.
There’s no use in pretending I can keep perspective. Even before she took me inside her body, I crossed some line and never came back.
She stirs, eyes opening halfway. “You’re staring.”
“Probably.” I trace her nipple and it tightens immediately.
Hope glances at my finger circling her little nub. “You’re obsessed with fucking me.”
“No argument.”
Her mouth curves. She slides closer, presses her face into my chest for a second. Lies there as if this is our new normal. I rest my hand on her back and let myself have ten more seconds before the day starts asking anything of either of us.
She’s getting stronger. I see it in how she stands up without pausing first. She argues with her doctors now instead of nodding and doing whatever they say.
Her balance is back. The only overt physical evidence is when her headaches hit hard enough to stop her cold and bright light still bothers her.
It’s enough though. She isn’t cleared to work and it’s stressing her out.
I hate parts of it too, for different reasons.
The thing is, I want her to get well. I want her playing, laughing again, moving through the world without calculating how much motion or noise or light will cost her later. Or, stressing about money. Worrying about attackers.
I also know the minute she gets cleared, this strange little life we’ve built inside my apartment starts to dissolve. She’ll find another apartment. Her routines will stop including me. My evenings stop ending with her feet in my lap while I read to her.
I’ll go back to sleeping alone.
I’m thinking too much. So much, in fact, I’ve started acting weird.
Not openly weird, hopefully. Subtle weird.
I can’t seem to stop asking if she needs anything. Every ten minutes. Or offering to drive her places she doesn’t need to go. I catch myself lingering in doorways observing her and pretending I wasn’t.
She notices. How could she not?
By noon I’ve answered twenty-five emails, ignored twelve, and Hope’s made breakfast late enough to count as lunch. She picks at toast, abandons it for strawberries. My mom dropped them off yesterday, along with bags of groceries and three containers of different homemade soup.
When she finishes, Hope returns to the couch and picks up her doctor’s notes to study them.
I carry our dishes to the sink and stand there longer than I need to. In the reflection off the window above it, I can see her without turning around. Bare legs tucked under one of my old T-shirts. Hair in a loose knot. She rubs her temple once and closes her eyes.
“No live performance. No bartending. Reevaluate in two weeks,” she recites the recommendation as if saying it out loud might change it, voice flat with disgust. “I’m gonna lose my mind.”
“You’re not.”
She lifts a brow. “Bold claim.”
“You’ve made it this far.” I laugh under my breath, but she doesn’t.
Her fingers tap against the paper in an anxious rhythm. I know better than to tell her to relax. She hears pity in anything close to softness when she’s in this state.
“Alek, I need my life back.” She looks past me toward the window. “I need noise. Work. To do something useful other than watch you make cool game interfaces.”
“You are doing something useful.” I sit next to her on the couch.
Her eyes cut to mine. “Healing? Trauma therapy?”
“Staying alive seems very useful to me.” I place my hand on her thigh.
A small exhale leaves her, almost a laugh, almost not. She drops the papers on the couch.
Gratitude. Proximity. Need. Recovery.
Maybe all of this. Her confiding in me, our growing friendship and even the way she reaches for me at night is built from circumstance. Maybe I’m convenient. Safe. Filling time inside a room she can’t yet leave.
I squeeze her knee and remove my hand.
“What did your friends say?” she asks.
I glance back. “About what?”
“About you disappearing.”
“Jamie says I’ve gone domestic.” I lean back. “Daniel thinks I’ve finally had sex and have lost the will to do anything else.”
Her laugh comes quick this time, real enough to loosen something in me. “And?”
“He’s probably right.” I shrug. “Although, he also told me to stop hovering.”
Her expression sharpens. “You are hovering.”
“I’m trying not to.” I feel my face pinken.
“Why?”
Because I’m in love with you and every hour with you feels borrowed.
Instead I stand to get back to work. “Dunno. New territory.”
She studies me for a second. “Fair.”
A little while later, she falls asleep on the couch with one arm flung over her face. I let her rest.
I also sit in the chair across from her and pay bills.
Her bills.
I already handled the hospital and Insurance. What remains are the rest from the ugly stack of unopened envelopes she refuses to sort through: rent, utilities, phone, credit card balance. All shoved into her worn tote. I tell myself I only want to see due dates.
Then, I pay all of it.
Seven, maybe eight thousand total. More money than she can absorb right now.
To me it means rearranging a few transfers. For her it means oxygen.
I know she might hate it, but I do it anyway.
When she wakes, Hope blinks, sits up, reaches for water and squints at the neat pile of envelopes on the table. “What are you doing?”
“Paying bills.”
“Mine?”
I nod.
“Alek.” She sits straighter.
Too late now. “Don’t try to stop me, I already took care of them.”
The air changes.
“All of them?”
“Yeah.”
She stares at me as if I’ve switched languages. “Why?”
“Because they were sitting there.” I shut the laptop. “You don’t need collections showing up while you’re trying to recover. It’ll ruin your credit score. I can easily help so I’m gonna help.”
Her face goes blank. I’ve learned enough over the past few weeks to know stillness from her usually means she’s not happy.
“You keep taking over my life and I don’t seem to have a say,” she mutters quietly.
I shake my head. “Hope, I’m not trying to interfere…”
“You paid my fucking bills.” She throws her hands up.
“It isn’t a big deal.”
Hope grits her teeth. “For you maybe. For me, it’s one more thing I’m beholden to you for.”
“No.” I step closer. “I understand you—”
“No, you don’t.” She holds her hand up in front of her.
“You don’t seem to comprehend what it does to a woman, who prides herself on independence, by the way, to need assistance every second of the day.
From a man she’s only known for weeks. You have no fucking clue what it’s like to learn they’ve taken it upon themselves to solve parts of your life you didn’t give them permission to interfere with. ”
Hope isn’t yelling, but I almost wish she were.
“You seem like a genuine guy and you’re doing too fucking much.” She glares. “I should be grateful and I am grateful. I also don’t want to owe you everything.”
Her words hit square in the sternum.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I choke out, stunned.
Her eyes hold mine. “Easy for you to say.”
We stand there with too much unsaid between us.
Finally I drag a hand through my hair. “I didn’t do this so you’d have sex with me.”
“What? Alek…” Her expression flickers with hurt. Frustration. Maybe both.
“I did it because the idea of you walking out of here with debt on top of everything else made me feel sick.” I hate how exposed my voice sounds.
I keep going anyway. “I see you look at every envelope with apprehension. You apologize every time I pay for groceries and takeout and rides. I know you.” I stop, correct it. “I know enough.”
Her face softens a fraction.
“I’m not trying to own any part of you,” I swear solemnly. “I’m only trying to make the ground under your feet a little more solid so when you’re feeling better you have an easier path forward.”
Silence permeates the room.
Hope sits back down on the couch and presses her palms to her eyes. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Neither do I.
I sit beside her, leaving space. “Don’t worry.”
“What do you even mean?” Her hands drop.
Damn it.
“It means you don’t have to figure out all of it today.” I exhale and start again. “Be mad at me if you want. Tell me I crossed a line. You’re probably right, but I still would have paid them.”
A tiny sound escapes her, half laugh, half disbelief. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m aware.”
She turns toward me and something in her face changes. Not gratitude or obligation. More complicated than either. “You scare me a little.”
“Fair.” I nod once.
“Not in a bad way.”
My pulse jumps.
Hope reaches for my hand and looks at our fingers together instead of my face. “Other than my mother, nobody has ever shown up for me like this.”
I can’t answer right away. My throat works. Nothing comes.
She notices. Then she leans in and kisses me.
Not hungry or reckless. This one opens slow and deep and wrecks me in a way I never thought possible. I put my free hand on her waist and kiss her back with all the control I’ve got, which isn’t much. She moves closer until our knees tangle. Her thumb rubs once across my knuckles.
When she pulls back, her forehead rests against mine.
“I’m still mad,” she murmurs.
“I figured.”
“I’m also sorry for being a bitch when I should say thank you. You saved me. Again.”
Relief almost makes me laugh. “Good.”
“You’re still weird.” Her mouth brushes mine again.
“I know.”
She strokes the back of my neck. “You’re acting as though I’m going to vanish if you blink.”
I don’t answer. It’s exactly what I’m afraid of.
She leans back enough to look at me, and there’s too much intelligence in her face for me to bother pretending.
“Alek, if I’m honest, I don’t know what happens with us when I get my life back.
I care about you in ways I don’t understand.
I rely on you. My head is all scrambled up and I’m not fully myself. "
There it is. The fear I’ve been carrying around all week articulated in her voice instead of my brain.
I nod once. “Okay.”
Her eyes search mine, maybe looking for panic, maybe waiting for me to ask for a promise neither of us should make.
I don’t.
“Look.” She squeezes my hand harder. “I’m here now. Can you give me some time to figure things out?”
Her words slice through me. Ablate and a benediction.
Now.
Not forever. Not always.
Now.
It should wreck me. Instead it calms something I’ve been fighting all week.
I lift her hand and press my mouth to her knuckles. “I’ll take now because I love you, Hope.”
Hope stares at me for a second. Climbs into my lap. My arms wind around her on instinct. She settles her weight against me and lets out a long breath, all the fight draining out for a minute.
I hold her.
No speeches, strategies or pleas.
Truth.
Outside, the light thins toward evening.
Inside, her heartbeat taps against mine in a rhythm I’ll build a life around if she lets me.
Only time will tell.