69. Chapter 66
Mari
T en days with nothing else to do but lay with Chance was a new form of paradise. Over the last fortnight, he’d gone from sleeping as much as a house cat to staying awake with me during the day.
Due to JJ’s name dropping of who exactly was staying in their hospital, the nurses had set up my recovery and observation bed right here in Chance’s room. With all of the machines and wires, we couldn’t lay completely side by side, but Chance still held my hand.
We played TV trivia, guessing all of the answers to the gameshow questions.
Turns out, we probably wouldn’t last very long on one of those shows.
We ate ice cream and shitty hospital food, but stuffed ourselves stupid when Al or Nan brought goodies with them.
Usually going on to fall into carb-comas and take long and uninterrupted rests.
JJ had been coming to visit too, just not as much. All of us had co-hosts standing behind us now, demons sitting on our shoulders. We needed a bit of time to learn those demons, to work with them instead of against them.
I wasn’t sure about Chance and JJ, but I remembered that night as if it was a bad dream I woke up to every morning.
To be fair, it was. Randy had been found, arrested, and charged just hours after the ambulances arrived to take all of us to Brown’s Hospital in the next town over.
But Talia? She was missing. Cops hadn’t found her yet, so she showed up in my nightmares every night.
But that didn’t matter right now.
Because after two weeks in hospital, we were finally going home.
Al had picked Chance and I up in his little Corolla. Since, if we put the seat back all of the way, he could stretch his leg and stomach out when he needed to.
Chance began softly snoring five minutes in. But Al waited forty, when Chance’s soft snores had turned into a nice, steady sleeping rhythm.
“I’m really proud of you, Mari,” Al said suddenly.
“What do you mean?” I replied with a yawn. “Mari, look at all you’ve done,” he said softly. “You always say that it’s me and your father who made Knock’s what it is and built its legacy. But it’s not. It’s you, darlin’. It’s been you all along.”
“I—”
“And what you’ve done for this young man here. Well … that’s something beyond special,” he went on.
“It’s always special when two people fall in love,” I countered.
“You didn’t just make him fall in love. You gave a man his worth back. A man who, for the last three years, had been told he had none. That’s not something to take lightly.”
“I didn’t give him anything, Al,” I said softly, looking over at the man still peacefully sleeping against the window. “I showed him.”
~
I must have fallen asleep during the drive back to Soggla, since it was Chance’s kisses and soft murmurs that woke me up.
“Hey, Sunny.” Those blue eyes greeted me with open arms, gleaming from the outside sunlight when he smiled down at me. “Wakey, wakey.”
“I fell asleep?”
“I can’t believe you didn’t wake yourself up with all of the snoring you were doing,” he teased with a wink. Leaning over my legs, he clicked the button to free my seatbelt.
His hands gently found mine and helped me out of the car. Chance was the one who had been shot and knocked up on death’s door, and yet here he was, helping me out of the car.
As I stretched my legs and raised my arms over my head, Chance’s eyes raked down my extended body. When his gaze finally found mine again, he wasn’t even subtle with giving me the eyes.
“Come on, lovebirds.” Al waved us on, up the driveway to Knock’s.
Chance and I took the walk nice and slow, neither of us in a hurry to get anywhere. His hand was in mine, and mine in his. There would never be a rush when we were together.
The sun shone down on us from directly above in the middle of a clear day. The perfect ‘welcome home’ for us in the place we both could call home—Knock’s.
Chance squeezed my hand three times, to which I eagerly returned the action.
Those three little squeezes had meant much more than touch all along. I’d figured it out during Chance’s weight cut. Those three squeezes had said what words couldn’t. And in those long twenty-four hours before weigh-ins, actions were how we’d communicated.
A slim figure crested the hill along with a large furry figure beside her.
Gus came running down towards us, skidding on the gravel, and landing belly-up in front of us.
A groaning laughter came from him when we scratched his belly.
Then he was up and bounding off for Nan, looking back every few seconds as if to say, “Come on, guys! Hurry up!”.
“Welcome home!” The entire town of Soggla was standing before us, bringing us home.
Gym-goers were standing inside, mostly warding people from standing on the mats with shoes on.
Patty, Nancy, and all of the Rustic Roo oldies.
The ladies from Nan’s gossip group, and the four ladies who worked between the bookshop and the florist. Paige stood next to Dylan, laughing at something he’d said before quickly snapping a picture of a nearby kid whooping and cheering for us.
Kids—there were so many young ones here too.
Children who might have a poster of Chance on their wall, who could look up to him and say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be just like him’.
And there, front and centre, stood Al, Nan, JJ, and Dylan.
“The king returns!” Wazza hollered from over the mats.
Chance grinned before bowing down to me, lifting my fingers to his lips.
“And so does his queen,” he replied, holding my hand in his, high for everyone to see.