would think she’d cued up a scary movie so they could snuggle? He could not think that.
“So zombie movies, eh? What’s with that?”
Good. Here was her chance to explain. “My whole family is into them. I grew up watching them. I’m not even sure where it started. Probably with my grandma. She always had this joking theory that zombies were actually just exhausted med students or residents.”
He chuckled. “Remember when you compared my dad getting sucked into Karl’s crowd to zombification?”
“Yeah. I have zombies on the brain a lot.”
“Huh.” He sounded thoughtful.
As the opening credits ran, she said, “She’s not going to treat the cancer.” She wasn’t even sure why she was bringing this up. It wasn’t like Jake could do anything about it. Jake would probably never even see her grandmother again. The thought caused a hitch in her breathing.
He glanced over but did not touch her—though she wasn’t sure why she was even making note of the absence of a touch. Again, this wasn’t a situation in which he should be touching her.
They looked at each other in silence for a moment, and he said softly, “I’m sorry, Nora.”
She sighed and transferred her attention to the ceiling. “I mean, I get it. The prognosis is extremely poor. She’s eighty-seven. Treatment would just be about extending her life, not about curing the cancer.”
“How long does she have?”
“They’re saying three to four months, but no one ever really knows.”
She felt his attention, strong enough to pull her gaze from the ceiling. He was looking at her funny. Like he was mad at her? No, though his brow was furrowed. It seemed more like he suddenly didn’t know her, which clearly wasn’t right, either.
He recovered himself in an instant, though, making her wonder if she’d imagined that weird face.
“No one ever really knows,” he echoed, and she realized that, crap, though she’d meant her comment in the sense that doctors could give an educated guess as to prognosis but a guess was all it ultimately was, it had made him think of Jude.
She opened her mouth to apologize for the insensitivity of the statement, but he grinned and hitched his head toward the door. “A herd of rabid zombie mermaids could come through that door right now, and that’s it—we’re toast.”
She smiled. “Any regrets?”
He smiled, too. “Not really. You?”
“Well, if I got killed by rabid zombie mermaids right now, I would probably end up regretting that I didn’t get to spend more time with my grandma before she died.”
“You can do something about that.”
“Yeah, I’ve been lying here thinking I might start going back to the city on weekends. It’s a long drive, but…I could even take the odd Friday or Monday off and go for a longer weekend. I mean, shouldn’t that be one of the perks of being your own boss?”
“You should do that. I’m not…” His voice cracked, and he looked at the ceiling and cleared his throat. “I’m not trying to make light of anything, but in a way, to know that you only have a limited amount of time left with someone is a gift.” He turned back to her with a wry smile. “A shitty gift, mind you.”
“Yeah.” She had to clear her throat, too. “You’re right.”
“Oh, shit.”
Jake wasn’t sure what was actually waking him up, some kind of alarm—there was definitely an alarm going off—or Nora letting loose a string of curses.
“Shit, shit, shit. It’s six in the morning. We fell asleep.” She bolted out of bed, moved to the small dressing table, and started smoothing down her hair, which was sticking up in a way he struggled not to find adorable. He was sorry that he’d missed waking up with her, that she’d gotten out of bed so quickly. Despite the abrupt awakening, he was feeling pleasantly lazy. Content. Which was funny because nothing had happened between them except they’d watched a fairly epic zombie attack on a helicopter—who knew?
They hadn’t even been touching, initially. They’d just lain there side by side watching as people’s limbs got torn off and so on. He’d started to doze off at one point, and when he startled awake, he’d announced his intention to leave, even though leaving the ridiculous pink zombie cocoon to go home in the cold and dark was the last thing he wanted to do. But she’d rolled over, put a hand on his chest, and said, “Stay till the end?”
And then she hadn’t taken her hand off his chest. She’d watched the