“You weren’t?”
“No. I went back to the house to check on the kids and get a shower.”
There was a shunt in my head, and the memories I’d spent the last few hours searching for came rushing back. Rae. His housemates. Isha and his kids. Whatever rave my brain had enjoyed had happened in front of all of them, and I just about wanted to die.
I covered my face with a groan. “I’m so fucking embarrassed.”
Isha gripped my wrists, but didn’t try to pull my hands away. “I guess there’s no point me telling you not to be as I have no idea what you’re dealing with, but if it’s any consolation, I’m pretty damn embarrassed too.”
I took a deep breath and let my hands drop. “Why?”
“Because I’m a stubborn, narrow-minded prick who let the way things have always been dictate the way things should be.”
I was far too medicated to comprehend what he was trying to say. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to. It’s done.”
“Done?”
“Yeah.”
I still didn’t understand. The fact that Isha was with me should’ve been enough, but it wasn’t. I frowned. It hurt. A lot. Another groan escaped me, and Isha moved fast to wrap me in the kind of embrace I’d craved from him all along. I sagged against him, and the barrage of emotions that sometimes overwhelmed me after big seizures hit home.
Isha tightened his arms around me, as though he could wrestle the ragged sounds tearing from my chest to the floor. He rubbed my back, and hid me from the world, and when it was over, wiped stray tears from my face with his sleeve. “Tell me what to do,” he whispered. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need—” What the fuck did I need? The basics? The truth? Or did I just need him to fucking stay? “I can’t remember why we’re here.”
Isha dropped the bedrail and sat on the edge of the bed, angling himself so we were facing each other, but his hands remained on my shoulders. “If you mean literally, we’re here because you had a seizure, two actually, but you know that already.”
“Tell me something else.”
Isha chewed his bottom lip, nerves seeping out of him and into me. Yup. Definitely different. Something had changed, but what?
I rescued his lip from his teeth. “I love you.”
He jerked his head to look at me. “What did you say?”
“I said, I love you. That’s why I’ve been so pissed off with you. It’d be easy if I didn’t. We could fuck around some days, and hang out with the kids on others, but I can’t do—”
Isha silenced me with a single finger pressed to my lips. “You don’t have to. When you…fuck, it’s hard to even say it. When you dropped yesterday, I told the whole fucking world I loved you, and I should’ve done it the moment I knew it. I know it doesn’t mean much now, but I’m sorry I hurt you.”
I stared at him, the slam of my heart against my ribcage too much for my doped-up brain to cope with. I pressed my hand against my chest, computing his words, one by one, to make sense of later. For now, only a few mattered. “You love me?”
“Of course I do. That’s what’s killing me, Jude. That I never told you.”
I saw it then, the pain and torment in his liquid gaze. It cut me so deep I had to look away. He’d fucked up, but so had I. And we loved each other. The details of how we’d got to this strange, and yet wonderful place, could wait forever.
* * *
Isha
It was another twelve hours before the hospital let me take Jude home. By then, he was starting to seem more like himself, but I watched him like a hawk, stayed close so I could catch him when he wavered.
I helped him to my car and drove to Thorston while he studied my parking ticket with a puzzled frown.
“This was yesterday?”
“Last night, I think.” I eased onto the motorway and checked the heat was on. “I’ve lost track of time.”