“Good news. You need some clothes.”
Right now, he felt like the only thing he needed was her.
She stepped back to let him in, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to greet him.
He wanted to touch her, to draw her into his arms. But he’d been fixing cars all day, and although he’d washed his hands with the special soap at the garage, he had grease on his clothes.
He offered her an apologetic smile. “I’m dirty.”
“I can see that,” she said with a chuckle, but then her eyes locked with his and he knew she didn’t want to wait a second longer.
Fortunately, neither did he.
“It seemed like you were gone forever,” he told her and, taking her hand, led her into the bedroom.
* * *
They showered together, only this time they both peeled off their clothes before getting in. Callie laughed as Levi hurried to scrub up. He managed to get mostly clean before she gave him somewhere else to put his hands. She didn’t care if he’d gotten every last smudge. She figured a girl who didn’t have very long to live was justified in her impatience. What did a little grease matter in the face of that?
“Anxious, huh?” he teased with a laugh. But he quit laughing when she arched a challenging eyebrow and lathered up their stomachs. As soon as he felt her against him, he sucked in a breath and said, “Okay, you win.”
After that, everything moved fast. They were out of the shower and kissing up against the wall, the vanity, the door, before they reached the bed.
There, she tried to pull him down on top of her, but he resisted. “I owe you something first,” he told her. Then he smiled as he nudged her legs apart and lowered his head.
* * *
Callie was determined to live in the moment. She refused to think about anything else—the stint in the hospital that had come before or everything that would likely come after. For now, she felt completely content and fulfilled and didn’t want the slightest detail to change.
“What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?” Levi murmured.
They’d been in bed since he got home nearly three hours ago. They hadn’t even bothered to get up and eat. At one point, she’d finally gone to the kitchen to remove their dinner from the oven, but by then it was too late. They could still smell the charred remains of the roast she’d been cooking, despite having opened all the windows.
But even the loss of her great meal did nothing to tarnish her happiness.
“Callie?”
He’d asked her a question. Pulling herself out of her thoughts, she briefly pressed her lips to his chest.
“The Thorn Birds.”
“The
what?
”
“It’s a novel, a sort of epic historical. My mother gave me a copy when I was in high school. It’s one of her all-time favorites.”
He lifted her chin so he could look into her face. “What made you think of it?”
She admired the thick fringe of lashes that framed his eyes. “There was something in that book about a mythical bird that spends its whole life searching for thorn trees. When it finds the perfect thorn, it impales itself.”
“Why would it do that?”
“I don’t remember, but it’s while dying that it sings its most beautiful song.”
He covered a yawn. “Sounds depressing.”
“In a way, but sometimes pain and loss are worth a moment like that, don’t you think?”
He shifted so he could nuzzle her neck. “Let’s just say I’m not tempted to read it.”
She smiled at his response.
“Why did you think of suicidal birds right now, anyway?” he asked.
Closing her eyes, she tried to commit every detail of how he felt to memory. She was going to need those positive associations later, to sustain her through the hard times. “I really liked the book.”
He leaned over her. “I have bad news.”
Instinctively, she stiffened. Was this where he said he was about to move on? That he’d be leaving in the morning?
She knew it was coming....
“Whoa, relax,” he said, obviously noticing her reaction. “I shouldn’t have put it like that. I was just going to say that now we’ve let our dinner burn, I’m hungry.”
She chuckled. “I’m not surprised.”
“What about you? Any interest in food?”
“Not too much. I have some peanut butter and jelly, though. I can make sandwiches.”
She started to get up, but he pulled her back. “You’re not trying to lose weight, are you?”
This time she was more careful about hiding her reaction. “Not really. Why?”
“You look thinner than the pictures I’ve seen of you. And most of your clothes are fitting pretty loosely.”
She shrugged as if it was nothing to be concerned about. “I had a few pounds to lose.”
“So you’re okay?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes...sometimes you seem so tired.”
She caught her breath. “We’ve missed a lot of sleep in the past couple of weeks.”
“This is different. It’s more like...weariness. When I see it in your face, I get the feeling that...I don’t know...that something might be wrong. Like that time I saw you leaning on the kitchen table right after I got here.”
Callie knew if she was ever going to tell Levi about her liver, now was the time. But then it would ruin her moment, which she’d sworn to preserve. She was still clinging to the dream that he’d drive off and never have to find out.
“I’m fine.” She pecked his lips. “Let’s get those sandwiches going.”
* * *
“What are you doing?”
Callie forced a smile as Levi came into the room. After dinner, he’d gone into the bathroom while she’d gone to the linen closet. “Just making up your bed.”
He came closer. “That’s what I thought.”
“It’s okay if you sleep here, isn’t it?”
“The question is why would you want me to?”
Because she didn’t dare let him sleep with her. Thanks to the sandwich she’d eaten, she wasn’t feeling well again. She didn’t want to risk being sick in front of him. She’d be embarrassed after all the lies she’d told. But, more than that, she already cared too much about him, didn’t want him to suffer the same loss her parents and friends would. That meant she had to be careful to maintain some distance. “I thought...since you’re only here for a short time we probably shouldn’t risk getting
too
close.”
His eyebrows slid up. “Sharing a bed is too close, but having sex isn’t?”
She didn’t know what to say to that. “We just...need to keep our...relationship in perspective,” she said, trying again.
He propped his hands on his hips, which made him look sexy and displeased at the same time, since he was wearing no shirt and his hair was standing up on one side. “What exactly does that mean?”
“It means I don’t want to hurt you in the end.”
“You’re shutting me out now so you won’t hurt me later?”
“Who knows how this will go? Life is uncertain, right? I’m also protecting myself. I don’t want my heart broken when you drive off.” It was too late for that, but at least she’d reconciled herself to reality. He didn’t know what her reality was.
“So that’s it. We’re back to goodbye again.”
She could no longer meet his eyes. “Not for a few days, I hope.”
“Why do you always have to talk about the end? And how I can back out if I want? Or get with another woman? Why can’t we just...be where we’re at and go from here?”
“Because I think we should prepare for the inevitable, don’t you?”
He came over and took the blanket she’d been putting on the sofa away from her. “Is that why you haven’t pushed me to tell you my name? Because you see our relationship as being so brief, so temporary?”
“I asked you what your real name was.”
“Once. Immediately after you learned that the name I’d given you wasn’t correct.”
“You didn’t want to tell me. I’m guessing you still don’t.”
“True, but something’s wrong if you don’t
want
to know.”
“I respect your privacy.”
“So...now that we’re done making love, you’ve had enough of me?”
“We have to separate sometime! We’d both be better off keeping that in mind!”
“Why?”
He was so endearingly disappointed, the compulsion to kiss him became almost overpowering. It didn’t matter that they’d already made love. She wanted to be with him again. And he seemed to feel the same.
Dropping his gaze to her mouth, he put a finger under her chin as if he’d bring his lips to hers, and she automatically swayed toward him. “See that?” he murmured.
She remained mute as she stared up at him.
“This—” he motioned to the bedding “—is bullshit. I’m not sleeping on the couch.”
“Excuse me?”
He ran his lips lightly over hers. “Tell me you don’t
want
me in your bed.”
She couldn’t think of anything except getting a real kiss. “It’s not that, it’s...it’s that I think we should be careful.”
“To hell with careful!” he growled. “Love and war don’t work that way.”
“How do they work?”
“It’s all or nothing,” he said, and carried her into the bedroom, where he took off her clothes again.
* * *
Somehow Callie didn’t get sick that night. Having Levi beside her might’ve helped. His steady breathing was soothing, and she loved the springiness of the hair on his legs as they brushed against hers almost as much as she liked to touch the smooth skin covering the muscles of his arms and chest. At one point, when she allowed herself to snuggle closer, he rolled toward her to scoop her into the curve of his body.
“You okay?” he murmured.
When she pretended to be too groggy to answer, so he wouldn’t feel he had to wake up, he fell back asleep, and she smiled as she turned to study his face in the moonlight. That rawboned look he’d had when he first appeared on her doorstep, when he’d reminded her of an alley cat, was already changing. She liked that he seemed so much healthier but admired all the things that hadn’t changed just as much—the high arch to his nose, the golden stubble on his cheeks and chin, the small scar on his lip, which he’d probably gotten in some fight. She wanted to get her camera, to capture him on film to help her preserve these memories, but she doubted he’d appreciate being photographed in the middle of the night.
Around four, she finally drifted off, convinced that she’d gotten what she’d asked for. The universe had granted what she’d most wanted to experience before she died—to know what it felt like to be deeply in love. Given that, she felt greedy asking for anything else so she simply braced herself for the worst. She knew the happiness they’d found together couldn’t last but, God, was it good while it did.
Nothing terrible happened in the next three days. The week continued to pass in the same idyllic fashion as that perfect night. She and Levi got up early and laughed and talked while they gardened, and occasionally had a water fight. After that, they showered together, sometimes they made love if they had time, and Levi went to work at the Gas-N-Go. While he was gone, she cleaned, visited her parents, met with the insurance adjuster about the barn and ran errands, which included a trip to the mall to get him some clothes and a trip to the grocery store. But she was always home and had dinner waiting for him when he got off. Then they slept in each other’s arms, making love whenever the desire struck either one of them.
Maybe it was because she was so careful to take her medicine at the correct intervals and to watch what she ate, but she didn’t get sick in all of that time. She was feeling so good she was almost convinced that she’d taken a turn for the better, that her liver was somehow regenerating like the livers of healthy people. Medical miracles happened occasionally, didn’t they?
She wanted to believe she might be one of those lucky few, was
determined
to believe. But she feared she’d been leading them both down a path destined to end in misery when, on Friday, Levi came home early with a gift for her.
“What’s this?” she asked as he thrust a plush blue box into her hand.
The grin he gave her made her heart skip a beat. “Open it and find out.”
“I hope...” She cleared her throat. “I hope you didn’t spend a lot.”
“I’m only making two hundred dollars a pop, so—” he laughed “—you don’t have much to worry about.”
But when she opened the box she could tell he must’ve spent at least one day’s labor on it. Any necklace from Hammond and Son Fine Jewelers, a store located not far from her studio, wasn’t cheap. This one had a gold hummingbird pendant with a small diamond for the eye.
“It reminds me of those birds you told me about in that book,” he explained.
“I remember.” He was referring to the thorn birds, the ones who sang their most beautiful song as they died.... Fortunately, he had no idea there was any kind of parallel. He just associated that story with the first full night they’d spent together and her interest in a strange bird.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
The lump in her throat made it difficult to speak. “I do.”
He tilted his head to look into her face. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
She took the necklace out of the box and turned, both so he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes and so he could help her put it on. “It’s the best gift I’ve ever been given,” she said. But with that little gold bird, reality had come crashing through. She’d assumed it would take him a long time to fall in love, to get past the loss of the woman he’d been with before. She’d lulled herself into believing that so nothing could ruin these precious days.
But after he fastened the clasp on her new necklace, he slid his arms around her waist and kissed her neck as she leaned back into him, making her wonder if she’d underestimated his ability to heal.
“They had other stuff, really nice stuff,” he told her. “One day I’ll take you there and you can pick out something more expensive.”
One day?
That didn’t sound as if he planned on driving off in the near future.
23
“W
hat’s this called again?” Baxter grimaced as he donned his glasses. He looked good in them. He was so classically handsome he looked good in anything. But usually his vanity dictated he try to get by without them.