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Eve’s face twisted, and she took a shaky breath. “Do you want to move to my bed? We haven’t been able to change these sheets for a few days, so that would give us a chance to do that.”

“Okay. That sounds good.” He didn’t really care. A bed was a bed, and he didn’t want to be in one at all.

Eve walked beside him as they went through the connecting door into her room. She pulled down the covers and helped him sit on the edge of the mattress.

His head was getting worse again. He closed his eyes and breathed, trying to will away the pain.

“Why don’t you lie down?” Eve suggested softly.

“I will. Just a minute.” He looked down at himself, took in the loose pajama pants and his bare chest and bare feet. If he felt better, he could do something about his appearance so Eve might like the way he looked.

“Do you want to put on clean pants while you’re sitting up?”

He nodded, although he didn’t really care. Eve clearly wanted to do something for him, and he was pretty sure he’d been wearing these pants for more than two days.

She went back into his room and returned with a pair of soft, loose pajama pants in a charcoal gray. He lifted his hips so she could pull down his pants and then lifted them again so she could pull the new pants up.

He felt more exhausted than ever when she let go of the waistband and sat down next to him.

He reached over to take her hand.

She squeezed his. “Your headache will go away soon.”

“Maybe.”

“It will.”

He cleared his throat, wishing he wasn’t so weak, wishing his eyes weren’t burning like this. “I hope so.” Needing to change the subject before he broke down completely, he asked, “How are Nancy and my dad doing?”

“They’re okay. They’ve been helping a lot. But I told Nancy she had to go home today to rest and see her husband. She’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Okay. Good. And my dad?”

“He sat with you while I got some sleep this morning, so I told him he needed to rest this afternoon. He might be working, but I can’t stop him from doing that.”

“He works to feel more in control of things. He might need it right now.”

“Yeah. I thought that too.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, holding hands.

When the pain in his head started to blur his vision, Jude groaned and had to lie down. Eve helped settle him, pulling the covers up over him and stroking his face gently.

He let out a long breath and closed his eyes, vaguely conscious of Eve moving, climbing onto the bed on the other side of him and sitting where she could rub his head.

It didn’t take the headache away, but he liked it anyway.

He must have dozed off after a while because the next time he was conscious, his head was pounding worse, and he was terrified—terrified—that he was going to die before he finished his book.

He’d never written that final scene.

“I need… get downstairs,” he mumbled, trying to clear his mind so he could make a plan for solving this crisis.

Eve had lain down beside him, but she sat up at that. His eyes were still closed, but he could feel her moving. “What? What do you mean?”

“Need… downstairs. Library.”

“Why do you need to get to the library?”

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