I cross to her quietly. Pick up the notebook. Set it on the side table. Reach for the quilt to pull it back up.
She stirs.
Opens her eyes.
"I fell asleep."
"You needed to."
She doesn't sit up. Just looks up at me from under heavy lids, hair messier than it was an hour ago, and my hand is still on the edge of the quilt an inch from her thigh.
"You were gone a long time."
"Checked twice."
"Was there anything to see?"
"No."
She keeps looking at me.
I should step back.
I don't.
Her hand comes up slow. She catches two of my fingers. Doesn't grip. Just rests her fingertips against mine where my hand is braced on the arm of the chair.
"Stay a minute."
I crouch. Get eye level. Her eyes are the brown you see in river stones when the sun hits them right.
"Delilah."
"Mm."
"You're concussed and you just woke up."
"I'm not concussed anymore. Cade looked at me yesterday. You were there. You heard him."
I heard him. I also heard him tell her to rest.
"You're on pain meds."
"Ibuprofen. Hawk."
The way she says my name every time does something to me that isn't smart and isn't fair. I'm forty years into a life where women don't say my name at all and now this one does, and it sounds like a joke and a prayer at the same time, and my chest is cracking open a little bit every time she uses it.
Her thumb brushes the side of my index finger.
Light.
Deliberate.
My breath catches.
I lift my free hand, slow enough to give her time, and I tuck a piece of her hair back behind her ear. My knuckle grazes her cheekbone. Her eyes fall half closed.
I lean in.
