“Give me a few minutes,” he called back without turning away from her. “Your mom knows I’m here and there’s no use keeping me from you. She wants you to be happy, and she believes I can make you happy. I’m going to do everything I can not to disappoint her. Or you.” He stole a quick kiss. “Get used to it, because the only place I’m sleeping from now on is next to you.” He kissed her again. “I need a cold shower. As you can plainly see.” He kept it light, teasing, no hint of expectation that she couldn’t fulfill in her condition. Just understanding and patience. “Do you need help getting up?”
She appreciated that he didn’t put any pressure on her but still managed to bring them closer together by putting her needs first.
“Everything is sore and tight and uncomfortable first thing in the morning, but I’ll loosen up the more I move.”
Cody took the pills from the side table and handed her four with a bottle of water. He helped her lean up to take them.
“Rest a little longer? Maybe try a little stretching if you feel up to it. When I get out of the shower, I’ll help you up. We’ll have breakfast together.”
“But you have a call to return.”
“I’ll take care of it later. I’ll work from home as much as possible over the next few days. I’ve got to go to court a couple of times, but otherwise I’ll be here with you.”
He walked away like it was settled and it was okay he’d changed his whole schedule to be with her because she was such a basket case she couldn’t be left alone.
She wanted him, but she didn’t want to be a burden.
She needed to find a way through her grief. She just didn’t know how.
Today felt like a better day, because she’d slept and woken up with him. For the first time in a long time, she felt safe. And sharing the loss of their daughter helped ease some of her pain.
“Brooke, you okay?”
“Yeah.” She met his concerned gaze. “I think I’m going to be.”
He sighed out his relief. “That makes me feel a lot better.”
She really hoped this was the start of their new life together. She hoped she could hold on to this feeling instead of getting sucked under by the crushing pain and sorrow.
She’d try.
For Cody.
For her daughter. She’d live in honor of her.
For herself, because second chances didn’t come often and she didn’t want to waste this opportunity and what could be a really happy life if she let herself accept it and believe in it.
That was easier said than done. Because she wasn’t sure how real or how serious Cody was about being with her. Not that he’d lie. But maybe he was just caught up in his grief and almost losing her.
Was that all this was? His reaction to the circumstances? Or did he really see a life together for them?
Chapter Seventeen
Adam sat in one of the common rooms made to look like a living room in someone’s home. This room was for guests to meet with patients. To make visitors feel comfortable. So they didn’t have to be confronted with the fact they’d locked their family members away for their own good.
The doctors had stitched him up and put him on several medications. They helped him see things more clearly, but that didn’t alleviate the remorse that consumed him.
Somehow, in the last year, his desperate need to have someone understand him, to see him as his own person, and that he was spiraling in his loneliness had turned into a fixation with Brooke that turned deadly.
He didn’t know how he’d gone from wanting to have coffee with her to obsessing over their brief conversations and creating a fantasy world in which he was her secret admirer. A delusion in which she knew all too well it was him and loved that they had a secret relationship.
He’d had other bouts of depression, but not this kind of total mental meltdown.
Even now, thinking about it, wondering how he’d duped himself into believing she wanted him to buy her those gifts, to watch over her on campus, to learn to be the man she needed him to be so he could go to her and show her how much he loved her… It was crazy.
It wasn’t real.
Yes, she’d been his friend. But nothing more.
