Listed: Volume IV (4 page)

Feeling
even worse.

Until
she finally died.

She
didn’t want to do it.

She
just didn’t want to do it.

She
wanted Paul, and he wasn’t here.

A
few tears slipped out of her eyes, and she brushed them away impatiently. Being
sick was definitely making her emotionally unstable. She’d cried more in the
last month than she had her entire life. She took a shaky breath and tried to
control herself.

Emily
gasped in surprise when Amy’s voice broke into the silence. The nurse must have
come back in to check on her, since she was standing in the bathroom doorway
now. She must have seen Emily crying.

“Let
me get your husband for you.”

Fighting
the impulse to accept the offer, since it was exactly what she wanted, Emily
shook her head. “I’m really fine. This has been hard on him. He shouldn’t have
to help me all the time.”

Amy
was silent for several moments. Then she said in a voice that was
matter-of-fact, almost bland. “I’ve been doing this a long time. And, in my
experience, it’s easier for someone who loves you to be able to help—in any way
they can—than to sit around and do nothing.”

Emily
didn’t correct the other woman’s assumption. She didn’t have the energy to
explain that Paul didn’t really love her. She kind of liked the way it sounded
anyway.

She
shook her head again, shifting her position and making the bathwater ripple.
“Please don’t get him,” she mumbled.

“Okay.
It’s your choice.”

*
* *

Emily spent the
afternoon in a groggy, uncomfortable haze—sometimes dozing off and sometimes
just tossing restlessly on the bed. Her fever didn’t spike so high she became
delirious, though.

She
hadn’t seen Paul all day, not since the previous evening at the Masons’ party.
If he occasionally came to look in on her, it was when she was asleep. Somehow
his absence made everything worse.

Slowly
waking up again, out of a restless, feverish sleep, she felt a cool cloth on her
face. “Paul,” she gasped instinctively, although she was becoming lucid enough
to realize her caretaker was almost certainly Amy.

“I’m
here, baby,” a familiar, male voice broke through the heated darkness. “I’m
here.”

Emily’s
eyes flew open and she saw him, leaning over her. She saw his face, his rumpled
dark hair, his eyes. She gave a silly little sob of relief.

Paul’s
face twisted briefly, but his voice was mild when he said, “It’s not quite time
for more medication yet. Can I get you anything else?”

She
shook her head, realizing he must have misinterpreted her sob. “I’m okay.” She
looked around the room and realized it was otherwise empty. “Where’s Amy?”

“She’s
getting some rest.” He stroked the cool cloth gently over her face again,
dampening her hairline and then sliding it down to her neck.

“Oh.”
She tried to think clearly, but she couldn’t do so. She stared at the bedside
clock, and it took a long time for her to register that it was almost eight in
the evening. “Did you get a lot of work done today?”

“Not
very much.”

“Oh.”
She experienced another hot wave of achiness and twisted on the bed,
desperately trying to find a cool spot and get comfortable. When she was able
to speak again, she mumbled, “Maybe you should go back to the apartment so you
can focus better. I’m fine here with Amy.”

There
was a long silence, during which Emily earnestly but futilely tried to adjust
her covers so she wouldn’t somehow be both hot and cold at once.

Then
Paul replied, “I will take that suggestion as a symptom of fevered delirium and
thus won’t be offended by it.”

Emily
sucked in a surprised breath and tried to focus up at his face. While his voice
had been very dry, his expression did look a little stiff. “Sorry,” she
muttered, guilt doing nothing to ease her physical condition. “I just hate for
you to have to deal with all this.”

“You
need to stop worrying about me.”

“I
do
worry about you.” She squirmed some more and tried to shake her
sheets into feeling better against her skin. It didn’t work. They were hot,
slightly damp from her perspiration, and smelled like sickness. She gave a
little whimper of frustration.

“Amy
said you could have another bath if you wanted one,” Paul told her, standing up
and looking down at her. “And I can make the bed up with clean sheets while
you’re in there. Does that sound all right?”

“Yes,
please,” Emily rasped, desperately wanting to get out of the icky bed. Acting
on instinct, she reached her arms up toward Paul, so he could help her get to
her feet.

He
reached down for her and eased her up, but his face twitched slightly with what
looked like amusement. Emily had no idea what would be funny.

“Are
you laughing at my hair?” she asked, a little dazedly, as she leaned against
Paul and tried to get her balance. Her legs felt ridiculously weak.

 “How
could you possibly think I would laugh at your hair when you’ve been so sick?”

“Oh.”
She clung to his gray t-shirt and looked up at his face. She was too groggy to
effectively read his expression. “Why were you laughing at me then?”

“I
wasn’t laughing at you.”

She
wasn’t sure she believed him. She was too ill to pursue the matter, though, so
she let him help her into the bathroom.

When
she got there and stared down at the empty bathtub, she was suddenly stumped.
“Oh.”

“I
didn’t have a chance to get the bath ready,” Paul explained, leaning down to
turn on the faucet and check the temperature of the water. When the water was
the temperature he wanted, he pulled the tub stop and took a couple of small
bottles from a shelf. He poured in a few drops of each. Then he turned back to
Emily, who was still staring at the puzzlingly empty tub. “It will just be a
minute before it fills up.”

“Oh.”
She blinked up at him. “
That
’s why you were laughing at me.”

“I
told you I wasn’t laughing at you,” he said with a smile that was almost fond.

“Liar.”
She wasn’t insulted. In fact, his expression was intimate in a way she liked. She
was hot and shaky, though, and she desperately wanted to get into the bath. She
should never have gotten out of bed until it was ready.

Paul
had leaned over to feel the water in the tub again. Evidently satisfied with
the temperature, he straightened up. He looked at Emily for a moment, and then
he sat down in the white accent chair that had seemed to her completely useless
when she first saw its position in the bathroom.

“Come
here,” he murmured, reaching an arm out toward her.

Emily
was far too hot and sticky to feel like cuddling, but she let him draw her onto
his lap anyway. She didn’t have the strength to keep standing, and she didn’t
want to sit in only an inch of water in the tub.

Paul
was hot—way too hot—but she liked the way his arms wrapped around her tightly,
and she liked the inexplicable tension she could feel in his body as he held
her.

She
buried her face in his soft shirt and felt like she was falling apart, felt
like he was barely holding her together.

When
the tub filled most of the way up, she pulled away from him. He exuded too much
heat—it was making her too hot. And the churning emotion she sensed in him was
making her confused and shaky.

The
bath was cool and mild and peaceful, and Paul was none of those things.

*
* *

She was ice-skating on
fire.

The
whole rink was on fire, and she kept falling down, the ice burning her as much
as the flames were.

She
struggled to pull herself up, but every time she did her ankles or knees would
buckle again. Over and over again.

Paul
was skating too, except he was on the opposite side of the rink. He skated like
a professional, doing turns and jumps and even a couple of spins. She called
out to him frantically to help her. She was burning alive and needed his help.

But
he was too far away or too focused on his skating. He didn’t hear her. He
didn’t save her.

She
kept falling, kept burning, kept struggling to get off the smoldering ice.
Until she made it to the edge of the rink and stumbled off.

But
she stumbled off into
nothing
.

She
was falling, kept falling, helplessly falling through the air into a vast, blue
emptiness.

She
was skydiving, but her parachute was burned away. And she was on fire, falling
at a sickening speed, all by herself. Her heart pounded, and panic surged
through her scorching body.

She
was a falling like Lucifer in a ball of white-hot fire, with only hell waiting
at the end of the drop.

She
screamed for help, and then she saw Paul. He was skydiving too, but he still
had a parachute. He was good at this. He could catch up with her, grab her,
save her. She cried out to him for help, over and over again.

He
could hear her. He
had
to hear her. But he didn’t respond. He pulled the
cord to his parachute and surged upwards as it deployed.

She
kept falling. Far away from him.

She
should have died when she hit the ground, but she didn’t. She landed in a lake.
But the lake suddenly erupted in fire, and she was trying to swim through it
naked.

She
didn’t want to skinny-dip in a lake of fire, and she flailed her arms and legs
desperately, trying to get herself out.

Through
the smoke and flames, she saw that Paul was standing on the shore. But his back
was to her, since he didn’t want to see her naked body.

She
shrieked for him to save her, but he never even turned around.

And
then the lake turned into her old house. And it was
hell
. Scorching,
sulphurous, pitch black despite the fire.

She
was burning alive, and she saw her father in the flames too, much farther into
the depths of the house than she was.

She
cried out to him to come back to her, not to leave her alone.

Then
she saw Paul behind her, near the entrance.

She
sobbed for him to help her, to please help her and her father. But Paul
wouldn’t dare step into hell. Not for her.

Demons
came to drag her farther in, and she fought them off as hard as she could. She
needed to get to Paul. She needed to get to her father.

And
she couldn’t seem to reach either one of them.

Then
the demons dragged her down into a molten lake, and she screamed. She screamed.
She screamed because she knew this was finally going to kill her.

But
the lake was cool. Somehow, it was cool, and she sobbed. She sobbed. She sobbed
with relief.

“Daddy,”
Emily gurgled, breaking out of her delirium so suddenly it felt like the world
had ripped into pieces. “Daddy, help me!”

“Emily,”
someone said. It was Paul, she realized, not her daddy. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

She
was sobbing, she realized. Genuinely sobbing. It hadn’t just been a dream. She
was in the bathtub, and Paul was basically in it with her, his arms wrapped
around her tightly to control her writhing. “Paul!” she choked, overwhelmed
with relief and gratitude that she was alive and Paul was here.

And
broken again at the realization that her father had been dead for two years.

She
clung to Paul blindly, trying to climb out of the water so she could get even
closer to him. “Paul,” she gasped, incapable of saying any other word.

He
held her so tightly she couldn’t breathe, and he buried his face in her wet
hair. “I’ve got you, baby,” he rasped, as if his voice was too strained to use.
“I’ve got you.”

It
wasn’t until Amy spoke that Emily realized she and Paul weren’t alone. “I think
her fever has finally broken,” the nurse said with a calm, matter-of-fact tone
that was like a balm on all the frantic urgency. “If you’re able, Mr. Marino,
it might be a good idea to dry her off and get her back to bed. We don’t want
her to get chilled.”

Emily
was wet and naked, and Paul was just as wet, although he still had on his
clothes.

She
realized that Amy must be right. Her body wasn’t aching the way it had been.
She wasn’t scorching with heat. She was actually a little chilly in the cool of
the room. She couldn’t seem to let Paul go, though—not even to dry off and get
back under the covers.

Since
she wouldn’t let go of him, Paul ended up carrying her back into the bedroom.
He released her just long enough to help her into the clean pajamas that Amy
had retrieved. Then he pulled off his soaked t-shirt. His trousers were damp
too, but Emily didn’t care.

She
huddled against his warm, hard body, dragging him into the bed with her. Her
teeth were starting to chatter, but she nestled against his heat. He pulled the
covers up over both of them.