Exposed to You (One Night of Passion 2)

He stood by the side of her bed, looking down at her. They’d left on the light just above her head. The fierce beating against his eardrums seemed to wane and almost stop. She lay fast asleep, her face very pale, an IV inserted into her arm. He realized he was holding his breath, waiting to see her chest rise and fall. He couldn’t see the subtle movement in the loose-fitting hospital gown, and so, desperate, he moved closer to her and placed his hand over the top swell of her left breast.

He felt her warmth and the precious beat of her heart next to his palm. His pulse began to throb again at his throat.

There was a white bandage at the side of her neck. Was that from the biopsy? Had there been some complication with the procedure? Is that why she’d had to stay overnight and required an IV?

He looked around anxiously for a medical chart, but recalled they were kept behind the nursing station. Joy’s hospital room seemed barren. Only a plastic glass and pitcher of water, some Chapstick, a napkin and a book lay on the bedside table. In some of the other patient rooms he’d sneaked into, he’d seen flowers around the beds, cards from family members, he realized, a pain going through him.

He picked up the book and saw it was a worn copy of Razor Pass. He set it down and almost turned away before he halted. He picked up the napkin that had been partially covered by the book. His face looked back at him. Once again, he marveled at how Joy had managed to capture so perfectly in his gaze what he felt as he looked at her in that classroom—the essence of what he was only beginning to comprehend.

He set the sketch on the table.

He walked over to the far side of Joy’s bed and carefully lowered the metal rail, wincing at the squeaky metallic sound the hinges made. Hadn’t this thing ever been lowered? She stirred almost imperceptibly at the noise.

“Joy?” he said quietly, sitting on the edge of her bed.

She didn’t budge, but he thought he saw her eyelids flicker.

“You didn’t want anyone here, but I’m here anyway,” he said gruffly.

He touched her cheek, and then came down in the bed next to her. He curled on his side, trying to make his large body as innocuous as possible on the narrow bed. With his arm just above her waist and his hand opened along the side of her rib cage, he could feel her slow, even breathing more easily. Through the sanitized, slightly chemical odor that clung in hospitals, he inhaled her floral scent.

Her facial muscles tightened. She moved her mouth, speaking with no sound. Her head jerked slightly, and she tilted her chin in his direction. Her lips were dry. He reached across her, mindful not to disturb the IV tube, and grabbed the Chapstick. He rubbed some of the emollient onto his fingertip and carefully outlined her lips with it. Again, her mouth moved.

“Shh,” he soothed, slicking the emollient along her lower lip.

“Everett,” she said with what appeared to be great effort.

A muscle leapt in his cheek at the sound of her saying his name in a rough, hoarse whisper.

“I’m here. Go back to sleep,” he murmured, although he wasn’t sure she’d ever really awakened. Her facial muscles slackened, and once again her breathing grew even.

He recalled how she’d kissed his thigh and said his name before she’d come so sweetly back into his arms. Was that really just last night? he wondered, amazed. That memory of her saying his name while she dreamt had been what he’d clung to after he’d gotten the letter where she’d said everything was over. Joy might be convinced it was best for her to be alone during the waking hours, but her sleeping self thought differently.

He just lay there, alert and unmoving, looking his fill of her face.

* * *

When her mom had first been hospitali

zed, Joy had been twelve. When she sat next to her mother’s bed, gazing at her while she slept, she was small enough that she did so through the metal guardrails. They had reminded her of the bars of a prison cell.

Suddenly, someone stepped forward and lowered the rail, the metal hinges squawking. She could see her mother clearly now, sleeping peacefully. She glanced up to thank her uncle Seth, but instead saw Everett standing there, wearing his ragged plaid cap, his jaw no longer clean shaven, but darkened with whiskers.

He smiled at her—that flash of pure brilliance. Her heart began to beat erratically. Why did her eyelids feel so heavy? She wanted to see him, more than anything.

But she was seeing him. Wasn’t she?

“I know how much you cherish your privacy,” he said, suddenly sober.

“I know,” she said. Her throat was so sore, it was laborious to talk. “You said so—on that talk show.”

“You saw that? You knew I was talking about you?”

To nod took all of her effort, and she still wasn’t quite sure she’d managed it.

“It was the only real part of the interview,” he said confidentially as he sat on the edge of her bed—for suddenly it was she who was lying there, not her mother. Everett’s body was a welcome weight on the mattress. She wanted desperately to tell him how glad she was he was there, but it felt like her larynx had been tied in a painful knot. Her mouth felt so dry.

She drifted.