Chapter 37
I CURL UP BEHIND IAN, pulling myself to his back with a grip around his waist. His laugh rumbles against me, and I smile, my cheeks pressing against the sleep mask.
Between the skylights and the proximity of the city’s northernmost moon tower, eye coverings are a must the nights I sleep over.
Which, in the month since my dramatic ascent to his window, is most nights.
“It’s good effort,” he says, “but I don’t think that ‘big spoon’ is in the cards for you.”
“How about a jet pack?” I ask, and his laughter jostles me again. I kiss his shoulder. “What time is it?”
“Four fifteen. I’m going to have to coach soon.”
“Boo, that.” I snuggle closer.
“I’ll get coffee going?”
I huff into his shoulder. “Less boo. But not a lot less.”
“Glad to see I rate above caffeine.”
“Only you.”
He squeezes the arm I’ve draped over him, and I squeeze him back before releasing him to his noble task.
I hear the lamp on the bedside table click on and lift the left side of the mask to peep at him.
He pulls on a pair of shorts, cutting off my view of his impeccable backside. I whine my disappointment.
“Creeper.”
“Oh, are you shy now?” I laugh, pushing the sleep mask up and off my head, and rub my eyes. “You were flaunting it around here pretty casually last night, Mr. Let’s Try the Counter.”
He chuckles, and I hear him pad to the kitchen. “I think we can agree, that worked out pretty well.”
Grinning, I open my eyes—
My entire body flashes cold. No.
Wrong.
My vision is wrong.
I jerk upright, eyes wheeling around the room, desperate for something to explain the vacant sensation on my right side.
I close my eyes, bringing my free hand up to cover my left.
I recognize it as muscle memory; the first thing I did every morning during my bout with optic neuritis.
I’m shaking so badly, my hand rustles against my lashes.
The coffee grinder starts. Ian says something, but I can’t make it out over the grinding and the blood in my ears and the screaming in my skull. Every muscle tenses. My hand starts to get clammy.
The grinder stops. A small, desperate sound escapes me, but I open my right eye.
The room is replaced by a shadowy haze.
The world falls out from beneath me.
But this time I’m caught.
“What can you do now?” Ian asks.
“What?” We’re on the bed, my legs across his lap, Ian holding me to his chest. I don’t know how long we’ve been like this, but when I sit up, my ear has left a pink imprint high on his left pectoral.
“You plan.” He says it plainly, but his voice is strained. There’s tension in his face, too, pain in his eyes. He’s fighting to keep it together for me. His chest rises in a long breath, but it takes him a moment to continue speaking. “So, what’s the first thing you’re going to do?”
“I’m…” My mind churns. Canes. Fatigue. Memory loss. Urge incontinence. Paralysis—
“What can you do, Ellie?”
I shake my head, trying to disrupt the spiraling symptoms. None of that is up to me. What can I control? What can I do? “I have Dr. Hartman’s cell phone number. It’s on his card. I have that in my wallet. He told me to call him if”—I suck in a sob, and Ian’s hold tightens—“this happened.”
“I’ll get your wallet. Then what?”
“I don’t know. A lot will depend on when I get in with him, and then what he says—” My throat closes around the rest. But there is no rest. That was it. One thing. I could only come up with one fucking thing. There’s nothing else I can do.
My breathing starts to pick up, my body going tense—
“Okay.” Ian runs his hands over my back, and something crinkles against me before he releases it to the bed beside us. It’s the coffee filter. He came to me so quickly, he hadn’t even put the damn thing down.
He cares. It’s a given. Not presumed, or taken for granted, but as much of who he is as his strength and his eyes and his capable hands. He cares so much, about so many people and things. It’s what he does. It’s what made me fall in love with him.
But it’s too much. I don’t want this for him.
“What else can I do?” he asks. “What do you need from me?”
Not “Now what?,” but “What can I do? What do you need?”
The questions break me and mend me in the same breath. I need him here, but I don’t want this. Not for him. I don’t have a choice, but he does.
I stare into his face, his exceptional eyes watching me, forehead marred with worry. My head shakes. Or my whole body does. The thoughts start to spiral again. I shouldn’t have gone to him that night. It was selfish and shortsighted, and I knew better than to hope. It isn’t fair. It—
One of his hands goes to my cheek, but I keep shaking. I can’t get it out. I can’t let him go, but I can’t let him stay. Not for this.
“Speak to me, Hayes.”
“I don’t want this for you!” I force it out on a sob.
Tears fall down my face, heavy and hot. “I don’t want you to have to do this.
This is why I told you to go. Because I knew you would never leave over this.
But I—” I squeeze his hand, and I know I know I know I should let go, but I can’t.
I’m too greedy for him. “This is too much. I don’t want you to have to take this on. ”
He cradles my face in both hands now, thumbing away the tears. “It’s part of you,” he says, his voice unsteady but firm. “If it’s part of you, I’m taking it on.”
“I’m going to need you too much.”
“There’s no such thing.”
I grab his other wrist but still can’t make myself move either of his hands away. “You don’t know that! We don’t know what this means! We don’t know what it’s going to end up looking like. I already—” I halt, hating the question I haven’t even braved asking yet. “What about kids, Ian?”
He blinks. “What?”
“Have you even thought about what being with me will be like long-term? What it could really mean. What I already probably can’t do. And now this—”
“We’ll figure it out,” he rasps, brushing away more of my tears.
“You’re already doing too much! You’re supposed to be coaching!” I remind him. “But you’re here instead. Because of me.”
“Because I’m not going anywhere. I told you that.
” His hands leave my face, but I don’t let go.
“The class will be fine. Tom and Babs know the door code. You wrote the workout on the board before we came upstairs last night. I’ll call one of the guys and they’ll be here before five a.m.’s even finished the warm-up. ”
The fear has its claws firmly in me, but damn it all, that was a competent response. I want to climb into his skin.
A gentle hope softens his eyes. “Did that kind of work for you?”
I nod, weakly, a sense of defeat mingling with the terror. I release my grip on his wrists, and he slides his arms around me. He starts to pull me closer, but I resist, the final, unspoken fears holding me back from surrender.
“What if it’s bad?” I whisper. “Really bad?”
“You’re thinking about the worst—”
“Because that’s what I always get.”
“And you always find a way. You had a bad time teaching, but now, you have your own business doing what you loved most about that experience. You moved into the Dawghouse and turned it into a functional household. You found a disgusting bathroom and got me.”
I choke out a laugh.
He half smiles. “You saw value in what I do, and got me to see it, too.”
“I told you.” I can feel the praise softening me. “You make it easy.”
He runs his hands up and down my arms. “Your body has betrayed you before, but you adapted. And you’re going to do that here. I hate that you’re going to have to do it. But if there’s anyone who can, it’s you.”
“But what if I’m not me anymore?” The question is wrenched from me in pieces, bringing with it the last, ruinous truth.
“Ian, I could lose everything that makes me who I am. And I’m only just figuring it out.
There’s still so much that I don’t know if I can do!
I want to climb ropes and carry stupid, heavy shit and have stimmy sex with you after and be useful to the people I care about in ways I haven’t even come up with yet.
A few months ago, I didn’t even know any of it was possible.
It’s new and incredible and empowering and I love it, and I might lose all of it. ”
“Not all of it,” he says. “And not me.”
I push back one last time. “I don’t want this for you.”
His eyes are intent on mine, gentle, but utterly resolute. “You don’t get to make this choice for me, love.”
I close my eyes, letting the brutal, exquisite truth of that wash over me. One more thing I have zero control over. Surrender has never been such a relief.
My body goes slack, and Ian pulls me against him. I cling to him, shuddering against his chest. And I cry. Again, I lose track of time. He holds me and I cry and shake until I think I’ll break myself apart, but his grip is so solid, and I hold him so tightly, that I stay in one piece.