“Then spend the night here in the hospital room—”
“Absolutely not. I won’t be camping out at your bedside through the night anymore. You have nurses for that now.”
“Fine. Remy. What I want is for you to remain on the mainland for a while. Apparently, I have a house. You’re welcome to it.”
She looked out the window at the nocturnal scene, looked back to him. “Wendell lives here in Rockland. It would probably do him good to have me as a houseguest for a bit.”
“So you’ll stay on the mainland?”
Now was the time to tell him no, that she was returning to her beloved, isolated existence on Islehaven.
Now was the time.
Yet the words wouldn’t come.
She wanted to return to her isolated existence. But for the first time in six years, she wanted something else a little bit more.
She wanted to remain here with him. Just a while longer.
Why?
Because the two of them had come this far together and she refused to sabotage his progress. Plus, she had questions that needed answering. How had he ended up in the ocean? And why had his wife jumped off a cliff?
Based on her photo, Alexis was precisely the type of woman Remy would have expected him to marry. Alexis’s heart-shaped face had been strikingly, unbelievably beautiful. Her makeup looked to have been applied by a pro. In fact, the only thing that seemed completely wrong about Alexis was the fact that she’d died by suicide at such a young age. Even hours after learning that Alexis had passed away, Remy still felt dazed by that information.
Jeremiah was not going to receive the fairytale Remy had concocted for him. Instead of embracing a happy ending, he was slated to wrestle with a tragedy.
“Will you stay?” he repeated.
“Just until you’re settled and doing fine on your own?” she asked, quoting him.
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll stay until then.” She spoke lightly, trying to downplay it, pretending that following men to the mainland and making the impromptu decision to linger was something she did with casual ease.
In the middle of that night, Jeremiah came up from sleep toward the surface of waking. “Remy?”
The hum of a commercial heating system answered.
Disappointment and confusion shifted inside him. “Remy?”
“No, hon,” an older nurse said as she noted his blood pressure. “It’s just me. I’ll be gone in a sec.”
Several miles away, Remy lay awake in the guest bedroom at Wendell’s.
Her aloneness blanketed her more heavily than the darkness. How was she supposed to sleep without the sound of Jonah’s—Jeremiah’sbreathing? Without the rustling of his covers? The male scent of him? His nearness?
What if he was struggling tonight? What if his pneumonia was worsening and she wasn’t there?
That’s ridiculous, she told herself impatiently.He’ll do just fine without you.
But would she do just fine . . . without him?
ChapterNine
The following day, Saturday, Remy and Jeremiah sat on the loveseat in his hospital room, waiting for him to be discharged. He’d just given her a bite of the chocolate pudding they’d brought him on his lunch tray. She was tasting its flavor and consistency, pretending to be a pudding connoisseur, arguing with him about its strengths and weaknesses relative to the chocolate pudding she stocked on Islehaven.
A day’s worth of antibiotics and fluid had gone a long way toward curbing the chest infection. The doctors and nurses had tripped over themselves to flatter Jeremiah, citing his “outstanding fitness” and status as an “elite athlete” as contributing factors in his A+ response to treatment.
