“Head-over-heels for you.”
I smiled and stole another fry. “Maybe I’ll give him a little treat. To buy my way into his good graces since I’ll be taking up some of the room.”
“He doesn’t need any gifts. Just you, Delaney. You being alive. Here. That’s gift enough.”
I knew we were no longer talking about the dog.
I crooked a finger at him. He raised one eyebrow, then leaned across the table. He was tall, Ryder Bailey, which was a good thing since bending forward wasn’t anywhere near a comfortable position for me yet.
And he could read my mind a little, or maybe just my heart. Because he kissed me, and I kissed him back.
~~~
Ryder drove me home and helped me pack a bag, and boxed up the perishable groceries with the ice from my freezer so we could put them in his refrigerator. He even remembered to grab my pillow and my favorite Grateful Dead T-shirt of Dad’s that I liked to sleep in, and my Chewbacca cup.
Then he drove me to Jame and Ben’s house because I asked him to.
“I’ll come in with you.” He wasn’t offering. He was stating.
“I can do this on my own. We don’t have to be joined at the hip.” I said this as he stepped out of the driver’s side of his truck and came around to open my door.
“I know you can do it on your own, but I think I’ve earned a little attached-at-the hip time, don’t you?” And that wasn’t really a question either.
“I’m not going to do stupid things anymore,” I repeated for maybe the hundredth time. “I promised Myra.”
“I know.”
“You made me sign a no-stupid contract.”
He grinned. “I did.”
We were walking to the door. “You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you, it’s just this town has a funny way of changing a person’s mind under the right circumstances.”
He knocked on Jame’s door. There was a long, long pause, and I wondered if Jame and Ben weren’t home. That they’d gone back to the hospital to make sure Ben’s remarkably quick recovery was still going well.
And then the latches shifted, the locks turned and the door slowly opened.
“Hello, De-la-ney.” Ben’s voice was a total wreck, a mix of ragged and whispers. I didn’t know if that was going to heal fully or not—none of us knew—but he was standing.
He was pale, brutally thin, with lines of red as if he’d been burned by hot lashes across the skin I could see on his face hands and wrist, but there was a wild living heat in his eyes.
The smile he gave me was victorious.
“Come in.” He shuffled back two steps, and Jame was there in the shadows, so close Ben couldn’t have taken another step if he wanted to. Jame’s hands found their familiar place on Ben’s hip, his back, as he gently steered his boyfriend, who made a half-hearted protest, into the living room.
I followed along, my own boyfriend in a very similar support position with me. When Ryder had me settled in a soft chair across from Ben, who was on the couch and tucked between a pile of pillows and the fluffiest pinkest blanket I had ever seen in my life, I rolled my eyes at Ben and he rolled his back at me.
“Hush now,” Ryder said.
Jame growled.
Ben and I grinned at each other.
And that’s how I knew Ben was going to be okay, and really, so was I.
~~~
