Chapter 44 Healing Notes
Healing Notes
Brandon
I wake to the faintest touch, her delicate fingers tracing warmth against my hand. I know it’s nothing more than sleep-drift, yet each soft brush sends a small tremor over my skin and sets my heart stumbling.
She’s facing me, half-asleep. I stay completely still, terrified of startling her. God, she has no idea. One feather-light touch and my composure almost gives way.
A sliver of dawn light filters through the blackout curtains, pale and fragile.
I let myself breathe it in, just once.
I have to leave for work soon. Getting up would be the sensible thing, but a few stolen minutes seem impossible to give up.
Waking like this…I wish it could be every morning.
The thought lands with a muted ache. She’s injured and vulnerable. Whatever this is, it can’t be anything more—not right now.
I swiftly force my mind back into order.
Just a few more minutes, then I’ll go.
When I finally slip away, padding quietly down the hall, I go with the regretful knowledge that this tender closeness was a one-off, no more than a fleeting moment, no matter how fiercely I wish it to be more.
Except later that night, as I’m about to settle on the sofa, Lily asks me to join her again.
It’s a simple, wonderful request that she continues to make, night after night, and I go without hesitation, pretending our new evening ritual is nothing even while every part of me aches at the comfort of it.
At night, as we lie in my bed in the soft hush of the cottage, more often than not drifting to sleep holding hands, I can feel us threading together in ways I dare not hope for.
***
We settle into a routine of mornings that begin with Lily curled near me in sleep, my thumping heart betraying me long before I’m fully awake. It’s a sleeping arrangement I’ve already grown accustomed to, as natural as breathing out and breathing in.
She heals slowly as the weeks pass, her limp less pronounced, her laughter coming easier. There’s gentle domesticity to how we spend our days: morning coffees, reading in the afternoons, shared meals with the family, a glass of wine—just the two of us—at the kitchen island before bed.
I know she’s healing. I know that. But lately, as her spirits brighten, I’ve begun noticing her in another way.
Not that I wasn’t drawn to her before, but it was easier then to tuck that longing away; to focus on what she needed. Now…it’s different.
My eyes trace her figure as she sits on the barstool, gracefully cradling a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.
Endless blonde waves tumble over her shoulders, trailing down to hint at the curve of her waist. I catch myself staring at her mouth, her eyes, the delicate line of her throat—too easy to picture my lips beneath her jawline, pressing slow kisses as I breathe her in.
I try to follow the thread of conversation, lulled by her melodic voice, but I’m aware of how close she is, of how my body has turned towards her without instruction, knee angled in, shoulders aligned, every part of me yearning to slide off the stool, place my hands on her waist, and pull her to me.
I want her.
I want to make her mine—and I want her to choose me back.
The thought consumes me. She’s unravelling me, thread by thread.
I rein myself in. Her dangling foot in the cast is a visual reminder that she’s hurt. Lately, it feels like the only thing keeping my restraint intact.
I swear she feels it too. The way she lingers after dinner, long after Ellenor and Catherine have gone to bed.
Her bright smiles and the warm flickers in her gaze.
The candles she lights throw soft light over her face, leaving me more enthralled than I already was.
My heart races foolishly, and I’m hopelessly aware of her every move as I sit there, wanting her in ways I can’t ignore.
Those quiet evenings are difficult. The nights? Impossible.
I lie awake for hours, rigid in the dark and tormented by everything I don’t dare say or reach for. Her breathing is soft and even beside me, each breath a quiet temptation. I clench my hands into fists to stop myself from reaching out.
Holding her hand feels too dangerous lately. Each brush of her fingers sends a quiver through me, my restraint drawn taut like a bowstring.
It would be so terrifyingly easy to roll over and pull her against me; to banish the cold space between us. But she is healing. So, I stay on my edge of the bed, putting inches between us when I am desperate for zero.
The wanting is unbearable. It’s killing me slowly, compounded by the shame of desiring Lily when her nights are difficult for an entirely different reason.
She struggles to get comfortable, the ache in her foot waking her in soft, frustrated breaths.
Sometimes she startles from a nightmare.
I learn the shapes of her exhaustion, the way she relaxes when I’m near, how easily she drifts off when I adjust her pillows and murmur reassurances.
It should be enough for me. It is, but also, it isn’t.
As the second month since her surgery passes and winter edges closer, her discomfort eases—and with it, my own longing becomes something I can’t excuse or repress anymore.
The truth is painfully simple.
I love her. Unequivocally. Irrevocably. Transcending desire—and stoking it. I want her with every breath. Every day it becomes harder to pretend otherwise, and each night I come dangerously close to crossing a line I shouldn’t.
I’m tempted beyond reason to roll her onto her back and kiss her.
I’ve thought about it.
I’ve thought about it a lot.
I keep telling myself I’ll wait until her cast comes off next week. It will bring her such relief to regain her mobility, a sense of freedom she’s been missing. Just a week more…but my patience is wearing thin.
Especially now, when I’m waking with her curled against me, soft and warm, tucked against my front as if she’s meant to be there, her back against my chest. And sometimes—God help me—she presses back in her sleep, the soft curves of her body sliding sensually against mine in a way that leaves me trembling.
Is she asleep, or doing it consciously? If it’s intentional, she gives no indication at all as she slowly drives me to the brink of madness.
I’m left wide awake, burning alive, fighting every instinct I have. It takes every shred of willpower to disentangle myself and plunge into long, cold showers—which do absolutely nothing to help douse the fire in my veins.
And though I’m not one to presume…
I’m starting to suspect—quite strongly—that she knows exactly what she’s doing.
Later that night, in the quiet dark of our bedroom, she startles awake beside me. I feel her jolt before I hear her breath, sharp and urgent.
The shift snaps through me like a wire pulled tight, any trace of heat gone, replaced instantly by concern. For a split second, I’m certain she’s in pain, or caught in some nightmare, and I’m already reaching for her.
But she presses a hand to my chest, eyes bright in the dim light. She’s not frightened at all, but more…alight as though a kind of resolve has taken hold of her.
“Brandon,” she whispers, breathless. “I…I just dreamt of something. A melody. Could I—can I borrow your guitar?”
“Now?” I ask.
“Yes. Before I forget, I want to try and play it.”
For a moment, all I can do is stare. She hasn’t touched an instrument since her guitar broke. The thought of her wanting to try again on another instrument fills me with a mix of relief and hope.
“Of course,” I manage, my voice earnest as we look towards my guitar in the corner. “It’s yours.”
That afternoon, I come home from work to find her already outside on the patio. She’s bundled up against the autumn chill in something called an Oodie—half-blanket, half-hoodie—with my guitar balanced in her lap.
Her spiral notebook sits on the iron table, the empty mugs indicating she’s been here a while, and she’s playing, really playing, delicate notes threading into the cool air like something reborn.
Though I’m more than willing to lend her my electric guitar indefinitely, it isn’t right. Especially unplugged.
Buying a new acoustic feels wrong too—she deserves to choose her own.
But I know that for her, the idea of stepping into a music shop isn’t a joyful one.
It’s a threshold she isn’t ready to cross.
My quiet invitation to take her there last month was politely declined, and I haven’t brought it up since.
I hover at the glass door, listening. Her singing moves me, soft and luminous. When I join her at the table, she’s so lost in it she barely notices me, fingers shimmering over the strings. She tears her eyes away long enough to offer me a fleeting smile before she’s drawn straight back under.
The sight of that fire sends a swell of admiration through me—one I don’t bother hiding as I settle back in my chair to listen.
Over the next few afternoons, it becomes a pattern: I come home to find her outside again, cast propped up, guitar in her lap, entirely absorbed.
It’s as if the world falls away when she plays.
I like this change in her. She’s written music here before, shaping songs old and new, but this… This is different. There’s a sort of fervour in her now, a hungry, unstoppable stream of creation she doesn’t even try to temper.
And in this light, in this music, I see it clearly: she isn’t Natalie, nor an echo of Nova. She never was. The fear I’ve been carrying all this time was never hers to bear.
She’s Lily. Entirely, unmistakably Lily.
***
Two days before her cast is due to come off, she surprises me by putting her notebook down and asking if I’ll join her in the garden to start the third Harry Potter book.
It’s just as well, because I have a surprise for her too, though I wait until we’re finished and she’s set the book aside to give her the small silk bag.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“A present. I was meaning to give this to you with the roses.”