I feel a smile twitching at my lips as I reach out to scratch the cat behind one ear.
“Thanks for bringing him, Mrs. Hendrickson.”
“Don’t thank me, dear. Just get better.” She smiles. “After all, I’ll need you to look after Bigelow again in a few weeks, when I go back to Phoenix to watch my youngest grandson graduate high school. And you know he’s quite an active cat – he can’t be with someone who’s confined to a hospital bed all day.”
“Of course not,” I agree, my voice choked with laughter.
Chase chuckles full-out as his hand tightens on mine, and the sound is so packed with joy, it warms me down to the core of my bones.
***
Later, it’s dark and quiet in my room, the only sound that of the machines gently whirring and our slow breaths, mingling in the space between our faces as we share a too-thin pillow on my cramped hospital bed.
“You look exhausted,” Chase whispers in the darkness, his lips finding mine in a soft kiss. “Go to sleep, sunshine.”
“Will you still be here, when I wake up?” I ask sleepily.
“Stupid question.”
I smile. “Good.”
He chuckles against my hair. “I think the nurses have given up on trying to kick me out.”
“I told them to leave you alone.” I shrug. “I figure if I slip into a coma again, I’d like it to happen in the arms of the man I love.”
He goes completely still and when he speaks, his voice is low, intent.
“Care to repeat that, sunshine?”
I turn to look into his eyes, smiling and crying at the same time. “I know it’s crazy and way too fast and I probably should wait to say it until we’ve figured things out – important things, like whether you snore and where all my books are going to go, because your shelves are already full, and obviously your stance on real, sugary Pop-Tarts versus the gross, healthy-alternative filling ones.” I pull in a breath. “But the thing is, I almost died yesterday, and I guess none of those little details seem super important anymore. I don’t know when my expiration date will come around – it might not be for fifty years, or ten years, or two months. It might be tomorrow, or five minutes from now. I don’t know when I’m going to leave this earth. But, whenever that is… I want to go knowing that I came clean. That I told you everything. And the truth is… I love you, Chase Croft. I really,reallylove you.”
His eyes go soft as they move over my features and when he speaks, his voice is more emotional than I’ve ever heard it – tender and hopeful and happy.
“For the record… I like the sugary Pop-Tarts.”
I blink in surprise before his words catch up with me and a grin overtakes my face. “Really?”
He nods, staring at me for a beat with something a lot like awe in his eyes. “You love me?”
My voice cracks. “I love you.”
“Does this mean you’re officially moving in?”
I sigh. “God, you’re incorrigible.”
He grins. “You’re moving in.”
“This doesn’t mean you get to boss me around.”
“Uh huh.”
“There will be absolutelynomacho-man, bossy-pants shenanigans allowed.”
“Whatever you say, sunshine.”
“You’re doing that thing, where you pretend I’m getting my way just so I’ll let you off the hook, aren’t you?”
His grin widens. “See? You know me so well, already.”