me to take you?” Jack asked once we were back in the car.
The needle part hadn’t been fun either; it had hurt like hell, which you could easily tell from my ashen face and the hand I kept pressing on my arm. Since my brain had been kind of exposed with the tear, preventing infection was important. That’d been what they kept telling me, so I knew there was no way to get out of it—not that I had tried to get out of it or anything. I’d never.
“Rose?”
This time, we weren’t sitting so close.
I looked at him. “Home. I want to go home. I’ll text Sally and Owen. I don’t feel like I’d be any help there, and I don’t want to bring the energy down.”
“Okay,” he said simply and then told Raymond where to take us.
Back in the building, Jack said hello to Steve and asked him how he was doing. I couldn’t help it—I cracked my first post-MRI smile. To think I’d been the one to tell him what his own doorman’s name was.
“How is the kid doing?” I asked, wrapping my arm around Jack’s and standing in front of Steve.
“She’s good, back at the new school.”
“No more problems I hope.”
“So far it’s been okay.”
“That’s good.”
Steve’s daughter, Bella, was this beautiful and smart fifteen-year-old who had been bullied at her old school and ended up changing schools midyear.
“Please tell her I’m looking forward to seeing her again.”
“She’ll love hearing that. She adores you.”
Even though I had heard about her situation from the heartbroken Steve and obviously already knew some about her, we’d only met twice when she had come to visit her father for a few hours. We’d bonded over our love of baking and rain, of all things, because it had been pouring in New York both days. We’d come up with over twenty-five reasons why we loved rain and rainy days when I had wandered down from Jack’s apartment because I’d been bored out of my mind just sitting, sitting, sitting.
Jack had found me on the floor with Bella and had taken me back upstairs because it was ‘cold’ and I wasn’t healthy enough to sit my ass on cold floors. That had been original, especially hearing the word ass coming from his mouth.
“And I adore her. She is a smart cookie. If it’s okay with you, I’d love it if she could come to my coffee shop. Maybe we could bake together if she feels up to it? Then I’d bring her back here, of course.”
“You don’t have to do that. I know how busy you are.”
“Of course I don’t have to do it. I want to. We’ll bake and spend a few hours together. It’ll be fun.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hawthorne. She’ll love that.”
Back in the elevator, Jack was the first to break our silence. “Does he call you Mrs. Hawthorne every time you talk or is it just my presence that changes things?”
I gave him a sheepish grin and he just shook his head. “I like the sound of it, though.”
“The sound of what?”
“Mrs. Hawthorne. I like it when you say it too.”
The doors opened to his floor before he could respond, and we walked into the apartment.
All I wanted to do was go upstairs, take a shower so I could feel like a normal human being again, and take a long, long nap. So, that’s what I decided to go ahead and do. I took off my shoes next to the door and headed straight for the stairs.
“I’ll jump in the shower and just try to get myself back together.” I turned around and started walking backward, my eyes on Jack. “Would you like to join me?”
“Rose.”
One word, my name, which had gained a new meaning lately. It meant no.
“I meant for cleaning purposes only, but suit yourself, buddy. Do you have work to do? You came to the hospital with me and now you’re here so I’m guessing you need to catch up with things because of me.”
“I’ll be in my office.”
“Okay. I’ll come bug you as soon as I’m done.” Waving at him, I finally turned back around and trotted up the stairs.
“Rose?”
I looked down at Jack, my husband who was in fact not my husband, who had held my ankle during the entire MRI scan and then wrapped me in his arms while whispering that I was okay, that we were okay again and again in the privacy of a little hospital room. I didn’t think he understood how