“No problem.” He grabs one of the rewarming kits Javi made after last year, and pulls out a pair of hand warmers. “Here.” He cracks the gel packs to activate them and passes them to me. Hisfingers touch mine, but don’t linger before he fishes inside the kit again.
The hand warmers are totally over the top. If the guys were here, they would make fun of both of us. But it feels nice, and it’s been so long since he’s taken care of me. Since anyone has.
He swaps the wet towel around my shoulders for a wool blanket, just like Javi did.
What if this is all in my head and Cole is dead and my brain couldn’t take it? I check the floor for him again.
Cole swipes the infrared thermometer over my forehead. “98.6 degrees.” He frowns at the screen, then at me. “You’re still shaking.”
“I don’t know why.” I do. It’s because I’m freaking out.
I really thought he jumped in. I thought he died again. I don’t want him to see me like this, when I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not, when I’m tangled up in the present and the past. He’s not my safe person anymore, and it kills me.
I bend to untie my boots, but I’m trembling too much. “Can you?”
He swallows. “Yeah. Of course.”
The past and present blend even more as he kneels to take off my shoes. The head bowed before me has sandy hair, not Javi’s jet black, but I can’t shake my anxiety.
“Are you real?” I ask.
He lifts his head, brows wrinkled. “What?”
“When I got out of the water, you were over there, covered in blankets, barely alive.” I point to the spot. “I asked Javi if he thought you would die, and he said yes. I was so scared. I couldn’t say goodbye. I couldn’t lose you. But he promised I wouldn’t have to do it alone.”
Cole covers his mouth with his hand.
“I was too weak to even reach for you, but he helped me lie next to you, then linked my fingers with yours so I could hold your hand one lasttime.”
“I’m sorry,” Cole whispers in a voice as fragile and fleeting as a feather on the wind.
I blink and swallow briny tears, returning my gaze to the floor. “Tonight I thought I saw you jump, and now I don’t know what’s real, and what’s not.”
“Morgan.” Cole frames my cheeks and forces my gaze back to him. “Look at me. I’m right here.” He takes my hands and dips them under his shirt. “I’m warm. I’m breathing.”
He flattens my hand over his heart. His pulse thumps against my palm, strong and hale and nothing like the night he almost died. “My heart is still beating.”
Finally, I believe him. I lunge forward, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, dragging him close enough to press my ear over his heart. The relief is so overwhelming, my tears spill over. “I thought I lost you again.”
He holds my head in place over his heart and rubs my back as I cry and cry and cry. I can’t stop. Everything I’ve kept inside crashes over me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers again and again, still hugging my head to his chest.
Distantly, it occurs to me that he’s never seen me like this. He was so sick when we got to the hospital. It took ten days for him to be stable enough to take the breathing tube out. He’d lost so much blood, but he survived. I couldn’t fall apart in front of him. I had to be strong for him.
“Come on.” Cole extends his hand, eyes tender, and lifts me to my feet, then wraps the blanket tighter around me. He bypasses my room for the stairs up to his. “We’ll have more privacy.”
Given his past behavior, for all I know, he wants to give me privacy to fall apart by myself.
“You first, in case you fall,” he says.
“I’m not going to fall.”
“But your blanket might.”
He opens the door for me, and his fingers graze my skin as he slides the wool blanket from myshoulders.
Goosebumps pebble across my body. It’s not the cold. It’s him.