Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Samantha
As soon as I knocked on the guys’ cabin door at around four that afternoon, a flutter of nerves made me second-guess my errand. It’s all right , I told myself. I’d find out how Caleb was doing. Simply a friendly gesture from someone who’d shared his scary ordeal and cared about him. I left just as everyone was getting ready for the evening. I’d be back shortly and never miss a beat.
I didn’t know how he’d feel about company. Maybe he was irritable and exhausted. Maybe Lilly had won him back with her sudden attentiveness and care.
That was the real issue here. How had he received her emotional outpouring, her insistence to be with him?
I scratched my leg. And then my arm. The bugs were terrible out here.
Who was I kidding? This was more than care. I was worried sick about him. What if his head injury was worse than they’d thought? What if the break was much worse than it had seemed? What if he’d injured his internal organs when he rolled down that hill or?—
“Come in,” a groggy voice called, interrupting my catastrophizing.
It sounded like I’d probably just woken him up, and that made me second-guess myself even more. I pushed open the door to find the main room full of slanted rays of sunlight in the late-afternoon light. In the bedroom, Caleb was lying on a bottom bunk with his leg stretched out, toes sticking up from the bright green cast. With all his height, he seemed pretty squished into that bed. His head was a little sideways so that his cast could fit. Otherwise, his leg would be hanging off the bed.
“Hi,” I said. I thought about trying for a joke with dumb lines like “That cast is so bright I need my sunglasses,” or “It took a broken bone to finally keep you from springing to the door,” but I was too nervous to say anything.
“Hi,” he said back, looking a little surprised. He instantly started smoothing down his hair, which cracked me up a little inside. His voice kind came out kind of wobbly—the way it does when someone feels something. Could he have been nervous like I was?
I didn’t know. I’d always been someone who made sure she didn’t ever feel too much. This was novel territory.
Everything seemed different between us. There was nothing to argue about. The air, void of our usual back-and-forth, was quiet—too quiet. It was charged with something else entirely.
I was so relieved to see him. And then—how embarrassing—I got a little teary. I had to swipe at my eyes because—well, because tearing up was just plain weird.
“Are you okay?” he asked. Oh no. He was asking me.
“Yes! I mean, there’s nothing to get emotional about. You broke a bone, and it wasn’t even bleeding or sticking up out of your skin. It wasn’t even your femur, which would have been a much bigger deal, and your head injury wasn’t even enough to keep you in the hospital overnight.” Could I have babbled on any worse?
He was going to be just fine. Yet I sank down on the bed, trying to control my shaking.
His gaze resting on mine in that intense way of his threw me. Wiped my mind of all thoughts, humorous or otherwise. And so I just sat there, brown paper bags in hand.
He inhaled deeply. “I smell meat. You do care about me.”
“Of course I do, you lug head. I mean, jeesh. You could have plunged to your death!”
“But I didn’t. Because of your quick thinking. You slowed me down enough that I didn’t go straight over the edge.”
A sob escaped me. I clamped my hand over my mouth, but it was no use. This time I couldn’t hide the emotion. I was overcome with tears.
“Sam, come here.” His voice was calm yet commanding in the nicest way. He scooched over in the creaky bed and tugged on my arm, which brought me down lying sideways with my back next to him on the narrow bed, his arm around me.
Oh, it was heaven.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“I think I just realized what could’ve happened.”
He cleared his throat. I felt the warmth of his body through to my skin. And his gentle strength. “But it didn’t. Thanks to you, I live to torment you another day.”
That wonderful, joking way of his. I never wanted to move.
I laughed, which meant I was laugh-crying, which was terrible. And now my back was itching. And my legs. Like, furiously itching.
Finally he pointed toward the items I’d abandoned on the other bunk. “Is that food?”
“Oh. Yes. Here.” I shook out of whatever trance I’d been in, bolted upright, and grabbed the bags. “Mia said you didn’t eat much lunch.” Actually, she’d told me the salad story. That’s how I got the double cheeseburger idea. Because if I’d been through all that he had, which in a way I had, minus the broken bone of course, that’s what I would’ve wanted. Plus fries. And a shake, which I pulled out and placed it at his bedside, then fished out a straw. “You’d be proud. I didn’t even have to kill anything to get Pierre the chef on board.”
He laughed, shoving a handful of fries into his mouth. “How’d you do that?”
“I asked Pierre to fire up the burgers. And I might’ve said that it was a matter of life and death.” I snuck a fry. I’d had no appetite all day from all the worry, but now suddenly I was starving. “And of course you’re a big hero around here, so he did it ASAP.”
He peeked into the other bag. “There are two giant burgers in here.”
“One of those might be mine.” I turned red. “You don’t mind if we eat together, do you? I mean, if you’re in too much pain…”
“Please stay. I need a distraction,” he said with a full mouth. “Also, I’m starving.”
“Near death will do that to you.”
He held out the fries to me while he took a bite of the giant cheeseburger.
He grinned. Then I grinned. And then I opened the container of ketchup Pierre had tucked in the bag. We reached at the same time for the same exact fry.
Awkward. But also funny. I withdrew my hand.
“You let me have this fry?” He sounded incredulous as he held it up between us. “Just like that?”
I shrugged and snagged another one. “Well, you are the one who had to go to the hospital,” I said.
“You must really like me.”
“I don’t hate you.” But not hating him, I was learning fast, was very dangerous.
Hate is a powerful emotion. It keeps people away. So does disdain and disinterest. I was great at those. I was a literal star at driving men away. Now it felt as if some kind of barrier had come down between us. I felt raw and naked. This had been so much easier when we argued all the time.
“Kind of you.” He reached for the shake. “Is this chocolate?”
“Yes.”
“Then I love you.”
I laughed, the tension finally broken. “From like to love in seconds. Your favorite?”
He held it out to me. I took some from his straw.
Suddenly my autonomic nervous system went off the rails again. My hands were shaking, and I felt warm—too warm—all over. I could feel my heartbeat thumping in my ears. Why did drinking from the same straw feel kind of… intimate?
“Oh, I almost forgot.” I pulled a permanent black marker out of my back jeans shorts pocket. “You can have everybody sign your cast before we leave.”
He pointed to it. “You be the first.”
“Oh. Sure.” Somehow I wasn’t expecting that. As I turned and leaned over his leg, some impulse grabbed me to make my signature memorable. Before I could think about what I was doing. I wrote Sam in cursive, right at the base of his cast near his toes, my signature ending in a giant curlicue with a heart inside. Then I colored in the heart.
As I sat back, remorse promptly kicked in. The heart was a big, feminine touch in a place where he—and everyone else, for that matter—would be sure to see it. What had I been thinking?
As I sat back, he assessed my handiwork and wiggled his toes, clearly unbothered by those kinds of thoughts. “Nice,” he said.
We ate for a few minutes in companionable silence. “I better stop eating your fries,” I pushed the remainder toward him.
“I like it when you eat my fries,” he said. “What I mean is, I like sharing my food with you.”
I changed the subject. “Are you in a lot of pain?”
“At least now I don’t have hunger pain on top of the other pain.” He’d devoured the burger in no time. Balling up a napkin and tossing it into the bag, he said, “Thanks for the food. Can I say something about today?”
“Depends on which part of today.” Hopefully not the Lilly part.
“Thanks for what you did—it was good to have company on that ledge. You were calm and levelheaded. But then that’s how you are in the OR too.”
“Well, I guess I wouldn’t be an anesthesiologist if I wasn’t.” I flicked my gaze up at him. “And you’re welcome.”
More awkward silence.
I didn’t want to, but I guess I needed to ask about Lilly. I wanted to know what had happened, why she’d suddenly seemed so into him now.
I rubbed my forehead. Jealousy of Lilly, the shakes when I tried to eat or drink, not eating at all while he was gone because I was upset—all this was adding up to something that I didn’t want to admit to myself.
I hated how I felt around him—giddy and excited and fluttery. I hated that I loved how his face had lit up when I’d walked in, and that I was the one—not Lilly—who’d figured out what he wanted.
Anesthesiologists had kahunas. Why did I keep forgetting mine?
He was right that I never took risks with my personal life.
I decided to grow some. And take a risk now. “I’m not sorry we kissed,” I said firmly. “But—are you? I mean, were you delirious and didn’t mean it? Because if you didn’t, I need to know that right now, before this goes any furth?—”
He grabbed my hand and held it. “I wasn’t delirious.” He smiled and rubbed his thumb inside my palm, something that made me even more giddy. “I told Lilly I was glad we were friends—twice. I hope she got the hint.”
Oh joy . Relief flooded through me. I blew out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
He still chose me, even on solid, safe ground.
I felt safe and solid with him. I didn’t doubt what he said. I knew he didn’t love Lilly anymore. I knew he wanted a chance with me.
He kept hold of my hand, his solid and warm and a little rough. “I know all this with Lilly has been… a lot,” he said. “But I want you to know that I was serious about everything that I said on that cliff. And while I loved the life-and-death kisses, I wondered if you might go out with me on a real everyday-life date when we get home?”
I thought that was really sweet. I respected that he wasn’t just rushing to kiss me again. That he wanted to make it official.
“I’ll have to check my calendar.” I pulled out my phone and pretended to check. “I’m free Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.”
Caleb oddly didn’t laugh at my antics. Suddenly he released my hand. I became aware that he was examining me—my entire face, specifically, with a puzzled expression.
“What is it?” I brought my hands up to my face, which felt flushed. At first I thought I was just revealing all my embarrassing feelings. But then I realized my face was not just warm but also a little bumpy.
“What’s wrong with my face?” I asked in a panicked voice.
Caleb calmly placed his finger under my chin and tipped my face this way and that, the practiced move of a clinician. “Did the bugs get to you?”
I realized just then that I’d been scratching my sides without even realizing it. Come to think of it, my butt and legs were feeling kind of itchy too. I lifted my arms and examined them. There were bumps there too—tiny, all-over ones. “Darn mosquitoes.” But a creeping dread was coming over me. I knew it was far worse than bug bites.
“I think it’s more than mosquitoes, Sam,” he said gently.
In a panic, I stood up and crossed the room to a spot on the wall where an old mirror hung.
My face was covered with the same tiny, angry red bumps. A scratch mark ran up my cheek, and that was filled with bumps too. On my sides, more of the same, some of which were filled with fluid and blistering.
Oh no .
Caleb frowned. “Lift up your shirt.”
“Excuse me?”
He gestured from the bed with his hand. “Raise the end up a little. There you go.”
I complied, only because by this time I knew something was really wrong.
He let out a long, low whistle. “Holy shit, Sam. You’re covered in poison ivy.”