Page 186 of Property of Bob

I caught her looking at me in the mirror. “Like what you see?” I asked.

“You really do look better.” There wasn’t a joke in her voice this time.

I dropped the towel around my neck. “Feel better.”

“I can tell.” Her eyes moved over me.

I’d put weight back on. Not all of it, but enough. My arms looked like mine again instead of something attached to a body that had spent too many weeks lying in a hospital bed. My legs didn’t burn after walking across the lot anymore. I could make it through an entire day without needing to sit down every twenty minutes.

My throat still reminded me sometimes. The scar probably always would, but I wasn’t waiting for my body to quit on me anymore.

“I think I’m back,” I said.

Ramona looked up at me. “Yeah.” She reached up and ran one finger lightly over the scar on my neck.

I didn’t flinch. Didn’t tense.

Her finger followed the raised skin before her palm settled against the side of my neck. “You scared me,” she said.

My hand went to her waist. “You weren’t even here.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t find out until after.”

“I know that too.”

“Then how the fuck did I scare you?”

Her eyes met mine. “Because I got here and found out you almost weren’t.”

I didn’t have anything smart to say to that.

Ramona had driven onto Skull Island looking for me without knowing I’d nearly died. If she’d come a few weeks earlier, she would’ve found me in an ICU.

If Shay hadn’t found me when she did… I wasn’t going there. Not anymore.

I covered Ramona’s hand with mine. “I’m here and apparently capable of shower acrobatics.”

“Well, that is because my vagina has healing powers,” she deadpanned.

“Thank God for the healing vagina,” I agreed. I kissed her forehead and moved past her into the bedroom.

Ramona followed me, still wrapped in her towel. I pulled on a pair of boxers and sat on the edge of the bed while she started digging through the dresser for clothes.

“You got your clothes in my dresser. Does that make it your dresser now?” I asked.

She glanced at me over her shoulder. “What do they say? What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is yours?”

“They do say that, doll.” I leaned back on my hands. “Your RV runs now, too.”

Her eyes connected with mine. “Okay.”

“Wade’s gone.”

“Also true.”

“You can leave whenever you want.”