“Have you been staying at the motor lodge?” I ask.
He turns to me. “Are you going to eat the soup or do I have to spoon-feed you?”
I take one more bite, then take the pill with some Pedialyte to wash it down. All the while, Ewan watches me with those dark eyes.
“Bossy, much?”
“You bring it out of me,” he says, smiling.
I finish the bread and take a bite of the apple. “That’s all I can eat right now,” I say. “Thanks for everything. Really. But I think I’m going to go back to sleep. You can go back to the motor lodge.”
Ewan stares at me. “You’re still cute and delusional as ever. Go ahead and snooze. I’m camped out. And no, I’m not staying at the motor lodge.”
I’m too tired to argue about this. I’m too sick to put up a fight about him being in my bed.
“You’re going to get the flu,” I tell him.
“I had the jab; don’t worry about me.”
My eyes drift closed. “You have an answer for everything.”
I feel him move in the bed, removing the tray, adjusting the blankets. The overhead light shuts off. The volume of the TV lowers. The mattress sinks as Ewan climbs back onto the bed.
“The ski lodge?”
“No,” he says.
“Fine. Don’t tell me. Stalker.”
I roll to my side, away from him, and drift off.
A warm hand brushes my hair away from my face. Lips touch my temple. A kiss. My estranged husband is kissing me on the head.
Okay. I’m sure that’s normal in Bizarro World.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t like it.
A coughing fit disrupts me for a moment, and Ewan isn’t bothered. His strong hand caresses my back until it passes.
It’s easy to accept how he makes me feel when I’m sick. I’ll just have to get over it once I’m better and he goes back to wherever he came from.
This is not the same feelings as having my girlfriends fussing over me and bringing me snacks and camping out on my bed for an impromptu sleepover when they’re worried about my mental health. It’s quite another thing when I haven’t had physical contact with someone I was attracted to for over a decade, and now the only person I ever cared to have that physical touch from is in here, stroking my hair, pressing his lips to my skin, caressing my back as I cough my ever-loving lungs out.
Once I calm down and nestle back into sleep mode, Ewan settles in behind me, so close that his body heat radiates against my back. The comforting caresses never stop. I recognize the fact that I don’t want them to stop. I’m sure it’s the flu or the medicine talking, but I could get used to this.
The last thing I hear is, “I don’t have all the answers. It only took me eleven years to figure out one of them.”
Chapter
Nine
Ewan
The next 24 hours go like this: Maddie sleeps, wakes up, eats some soup, takes her medicine, drinks fluids, and tolerates me as I regularly pop a thermometer in her mouth to monitor her fever, and goes back to sleep to do it all over again. I put my phone on silent and hide it away in a drawer—what used to be my sock drawer. I don’t want any distractions, and there’s no one I need to talk to other than Maddie. I leave her side to warm up soup and use the bathroom. Pascal doesn’t leave her side at all except to do his business.
On the second afternoon, Maddie sits up in bed rubbing her temples. “Ow, ow, ow, oh my god, headache!”
Pascal’s shaggy head comes up and his ears point in her direction.
