Page 36 of Hold Me Until Morning

Tingles raced, and I squeezed my hands into fists. I needed to stop that train right then.

Kill the idea before it started.

I looked back at his messages, not knowing if I was more annoyed or aroused.

Block him.

Block him.

It was the obvious, logical choice.

But what did I do?

I tapped on his number and saved him in my contacts as CC.

Cody Cooper.

Cocky Cowboy.

I guessed they both worked.

EIGHT

CODY

Cody’s hand was sticky with sweat where it was gripped in his momma’s.

His heart made a loud thud against his ribs, pound, pound, pounding in time with the echo of his footsteps on the shiny white floor.

His momma paused outside a door, and her face was all soft the way it always got when she looked at him, making his heart that was thundering beat even harder. She reached down and touched his cheek.

“Now remember what I told you. He’s going to look a little different than you remember, but he’s still your daddy. You don’t have to be afraid.”

Except Cody didn’t think he’d ever felt more afraid than right then, but it was a different kind of scary than when the lights were off at night. He was scared because his momma was so sad, and she kept crying and crying, and he didn’t know how to make her stop, so it made him sad, too.

He hadn’t been allowed to come for a lot of days, and his momma was gone a lot, but she’d said this morning it was a special day and his daddy really wanted to see him.

He’d been excited until they walked through the doors of the building his momma called hospice, and it felt yucky inside. Like he was sneaking into a place he wasn’t supposed to be.

“I’m not afraid,” he told her, trying to puff out his chest. Maybe if he showed he was big and strong she might not be so sad anymore.

She gave him a shaky nod, then she squeezed his hand again before she swung open the door. They slowly walked inside the room.

It was quiet in there. Too still. And something about it felt dark even though the curtain was open on the window and the sun was shining in.

His belly felt sick and heavy, like on the day he had to stay home from school because he was throwing up, and he thought he might when he saw his daddy on the bed.

The bed was bent so his daddy was sitting up, and he had a bunch of pillows behind him.

His momma used to say his daddy was as big as an ox.

But he looked real skinny, and his skin was the wrong color.

Like the yellow-gray clay he and Ryder played with on the bank of the stream behind Cody’s house.

He’d heard his momma whispering to her friend Linda that his daddy’s liver was broken and didn’t work anymore and it made him super sick, but Cody didn’t really know what that meant.

“Hey.” His daddy’s voice was raspy, though his eyes and his smile were soft when he looked at Cody. “There’s my boy. Come see me.”

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