Page 138 of Fate, Interrupted

“You pushed me,” he says.

“I believe I nudged you.”

“Norah.”

“I know,” I say. And I do. The rest of it can wait. I’m not at full capacity, and we both know it.

“You stayed all night in that crazy, uncomfortable chair,” I say.

“I’m starting to think this county is full of little people.” His eyes twinkle, and I have to laugh. My side erupts in pain, and I wince and go rigid on the bed.

He grabs my hand without the IV and squeezes gently. “Sorry.”

The word sits bigger than it is. Bigger than being sorry for making me laugh at an inopportune time. I’m sorry, too, and it’s not about taking a bullet meant for him or causing him to stay parked all night in a chair that would make a weaker man’s ass go numb.

“We should probably talk,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “We should.”

“Not right now,” I say. “Right now, I think I need another shot of whatever they’re giving me for pain. You know, for my liver situation.”

“Your liver situation,” he repeats.

“That’s what I’m calling it,” I say. “I find naming things helpful.”

I don’t stay awake long.

The pain medication makes the decision for me, pulling me back under before I’ve finished processing the conversation, and I go without fighting it because what I need right now is blissful rest.

I surface twice before it gets dark.

The first time there’s noise in the corridor, and I open my eyes to the ceiling and the dimmed overhead light and turn my head enough to confirm what I already know.

He’s still there.

His head is slightly bowed, his gaze on the floor with the stillness of a man who has been sitting with grief for a long time and has made his peace.

I close my eyes.

The second time the light has changed. It’s evening, and the window is going the color of purple and gray. He’s exactly where he was, and the hand that isn’t connected to an IV is warm inside both of his, and I don’t open my eyes all the way.

I think about what I can see from here without moving.

The blood on his sleeve has gone fully dark—evidence of a parking lot he’s been carrying on his body all day while he sat in this chair and waited for me to open my eyes. Nobody made him change. I don’t think it occurred to him as an option.

I think about the quarter inch, the math of it. One quarter of one inch, in one direction, and this chair is empty. The hand around mine is somewhere else. The road to Paxton exists but has a different shape, without him in it, and I’m lying on a different bed not having a conversation with myself about what comes next.

I don’t follow that thought all the way through.

I follow the other one instead. The one where I shoved him. Where my body made a decision before my brain finished the sentence. Where I moved, and what happened after happened to me instead of him. This is the one I’m living in—with his hands around mine.

I made that happen.

Not proudly, not as a calculation. I just moved. The way you move when protecting someone matters more than thinking first.

I close my eyes again.

He doesn’t know I’m awake.