“Yeah, right,” I scoff, but I’m still kind of crying and my breath is wobbly.
When we get out to his truck, Jack opens the door for me, since I’m holding an ice pack against my injured hand. Neither of us really says anything on the drive. I look over at him out of the corner of my eye. He looks angry, but I can tell he’s actually nervous because he speeds the whole way there. The tires squeal when he brakes and turns into the parking lot.
After he parks, Jack hops out and rushes around to get my door for me again. “Is this what it takes to get you to be a gentleman?” I tease, but my voice is too shaky for it to hit right. Jack snorts, but doesn’t pop back with a crack like I’m expecting.
Inside, I follow him as he makes a beeline over to the registration area. A thought strikes me. “Shit, I forgot to grab my wallet! Do I —”
Jack digs into his pocket and holds it up with a sigh. “Not my first rodeo, Bunny.” He’s being so serious with me, but he’s weirdly subdued, without a trace of his usual sarcastic humor.
The bureaucratic banality of checking in to be seen by one of the on-call nurses lulls my mind into a kind of stupor, although it’s not quite enough to block out the pain and self-pity sloshing around in there. I let Jack rifle through my wallet and answer the woman behind the sliding window when she asks questions. I don’t quite catch one of them, but when I hear Jack’s deep voice respond, “I’m his husband,” a glow rises in my chest.
I’m gritting my teeth by the time Jack takes me by the elbow and steers me over to a chair in the waiting area, and I’m trying not to cry by the time a middle-aged guy in scrubs pokes his head out and calls my name. Jack stands up and comes with me. Behind his wire-frame glasses, the guy’s eyes dart between us, but I don’t have the energy to answer the unasked question they hold.
“His husband,” Jack says in that brusque tone of his that doesn’t invite discussion.
That warm, safe feeling blossoms inside of me again. When I lean my head against his upper arm, I hope he can sense my telepathicthank you. He kisses the top of my head.
In the treatment room, I sit on the exam table and wince as the nurse treats my injured hand. Once he’s got it wrapped in gauze, the fog of pain in my mind lifts enough for a single, urgent thought to get through. “How long will this take to heal?” I demand.
The nurse looks surprised, probably because it’s the first full sentence I’ve spoken to him. “If you take care of it, I’d say a couple of weeks. You got lucky; it’s more superficial than I thought at first. The most important thing is just keeping it clean and avoiding infection while it heals.”
I nod. When I pantomime holding a pen, the pain makes me grimace. “Gotta tell Olivia I might need extra time for the next cover,” I mumble.
The nurse’s eyebrows go up behind his glasses. “What do you do?”
Jack answers before I can. “He’s an illustrator. Makes art for book covers.”
In spite of my throbbing hand and a looming worry about my work deadlines, I find myself fighting to hide a smile. I’ve never heard Jack so unabashedly proud of me before.
“Do you need a note for work?” the nurse asks.
I shake my head. “No, thanks. I work for myself.” My concern about the healing time isn’t just because of work, though.
Once we’re back in the truck driving home, I realize I should probably tell Jack what I’ve got planned. In spite of his protestations about his fast-approaching birthday, when a crazy, dumb-bunny thought whispered itself in my ear, I took it and ran with it. I’m still confident it will go over well. Mostly.
I take a deep breath. “Um, so I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you. I made an executive decision.”
Jack raises his eyebrows without taking his eyes off the road. “Did you, now?”
I frown. “Don’t make fun of me. I’m trying to do something nice. I know you said you didn’t care about your birthday, but that didn’t seem fair to you!”
“Jesus Christ, Bunny. I told —”
I interrupt him. “Don’t worry, I’m not making a big thing of it with, like,people.” I roll my eyes. Not like I’d even know who to invite anyway.
“Just the two of us,” I tell him as I pull out my phone with my uninjured hand. “I booked us a campsite a few weeks from now at the big park upstate where Sarah said you guys camped when you were kids. I picked a site with a view of the lake that’s close to both the main trailhead and the shower building —I made sure it’s one with hot water.”
“Thank you,” he mutters without sounding especially enthusiastic.
“We’re going to have a good time,” I assure him. “I promise.”
9
ADAIR
Almost two weeks after the grill incident, I get back from running errands to find a box sitting on the front steps. I drop the groceries off in the kitchen and go back out to investigate.
I don’t recognize the company name on the return address. The box isn’t very heavy; I give it a shake and nothing makes noise. But it’s addressed to Jack, so even though I’m dying of curiosity, I resign myself to waiting with a sigh.
