“Now, where were we?”the incredibly bossy woman that was starting to drive him crazy asked with a satisfied sigh.
“You were driving me fucking crazy,” Devyn pointed out as he closed his eyes and waited for the throbbing headache that started a few minutes ago to go away.
“I’m really good at that,” Andi mumbled absently in that distracted tone that he was quickly becoming familiar with. It was the one that let him know that she was about to get lost in whatever she was doing.
Slowly exhaling, Devyn counted the number of times that Andi shifted on the bed next to him to get comfortable, knowing that when she reached six that she would begin to softly hum to herself as she worked. The first time that he’d heard her humming, he’d squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the pain to explode in his head, only to have the soft, hypnotic sound slowly lull him to sleep. There was just something about her that made him forget about all the bullshit that he needed to do and just…breathe.
It was an addictive feeling, one that he was afraid that he was going to have a problem letting go of when this was over. He-
“What exactly am I looking for here?” came the question that had him opening his eyes to find Andi watching him.
“Anything that stands out,” Devyn said, watching Andi nod as she shifted her attention back to her iPad.
“There’s nothing so far,” she said, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as he pressed his hand against the heating pad and shifted to get more comfortable, biting back a wince when the move caused stabbing pain to shoot through his ribs.
For a moment, he lay there staring up at the ceiling and found himself thinking about everything that she did for him over the last few days and…
“Why are you doing this, Andi?” Devyn asked as he turned his head to watch her.
“Doing what?” Andi asked, throwing him a questioning look before she returned her attention back to her iPad and swiped to the next page.
“Taking care of me,” he asked, trying to remember the last time that anyone took care of him the way that she had.
As much as his mother loved him, and she’d always made damn sure that he knew how much he meant to her, she never would have been able to do what Andi had done for him. She never would have had the time to do anything more than to make sure that he wasn’t dying before she had to go back to work. She needed to work every shift that she could get her hands on, which meant that he had to make sure that she had no reason to worry about him.
They were a team.
Always had been, and if she hadn’t become sick when he was sixteen…
God, he missed her.
“Are you okay?” Andi asked softly, looking worried as she reached over and gently ran her fingers through his hair, careful of his stitches as he found himself wondering if his mother would have smiled more if his father had stuck around and made sure that they were taken care of.
He wondered if she would have been like Andi.