Page 21 of Fragile Touch (Fragile 1)
She tried not to frown. “My yard is fine, it’s just not pristine like yours.”
“You let it grow however it wants,” he muttered under his breath.
Ignoring him, she protested, “And I don’t live alone. I have my cats.”
“Do you ever feel crazy talking to your cats so much, like they’re people?”
Lillian stared at him blankly. “No.”
“None of that addresses the issue of you drinking alone and being severely hungover at random times of the week.”
“What are you talking about?” Her defensiveness turned to pure confusion. “This is the first time I’ve touched alcohol to my lips in forever.”
Cayden put his hands on his hips. He towered over her bed and she suddenly felt very small. “I see you get in your car to leave in the morning, or take the trash out, or work on your flowers. On random weekdays you stumble around like you can’t find your feet, or you walk like an old woman.” He raised his hands in surrender. “You can pull a ‘we don’t even know each other’ or whatever, but I’m getting worried about you.”
Oh, shit. He’s been seeing my flare-ups and when I’m not on my pain meds. “I’m not drinking alone!” Lillian blurted out, hitting her fist on the mattress. “I’m sick!”
His face was swept clean of the frustration twisting his brows. “With what?”
She felt her heart thud. “I don’t want to talk about it. But I promise you, those aren’t hangovers. You don’t need to worry. I’m fine.” Desperate to get away from the stress of this discussion, she hugged her knees and looked down at the blanket. Cayden sat down beside her on the bed, and she couldn’t manage to ask him to move.
“What are you not telling me, Lil?” The tenderness in his voice broke something inside her and tears suddenly filled her eyes.
“I don’t even know you,” she whispered, unable to think of anything else.
“Bullshit,” he said, and moved his hand to her shoulder. “We know each other at least a little. And if seeing you hungover isn’t breaking the ice, I don’t know what is.”
She couldn’t find any words in her throat.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
That’s what I am, she thought. Her head started to hurt. Afraid of being sick, of being alone, of falling in love. Tears spilled onto her cheeks and she wished she could shrink. She saw Cayden’s big chest and wanted so badly to be held tight against it to feel safe. With a cough-sob, she threw herself at him and buried her face in his chest. He hugged her close like they had known each other for years. Like they had done this many times before.
Indeed they had, but only in their minds.
He didn’t move until she stopped trembling. When she did, he loosened his grip and pulled back to look at her.
She was embarrassed at losing control like that. She wasn’t thinking about how humiliating this would feel when she just wanted to be held, but it was hitting her hard now. Barely managing to meet his eyes, she muttered, “I’m sorry.”
“It felt like you needed that.”
She nodded so slightly she barely felt it.
Without saying anything, Cayden stood and took her glass out of the room.
I’ve done it now, she thought, and pulled the sheet over her head, curling up into a fetal position on her side. That was so lame, Lillian. So lame.
His footsteps came back; she heard ice clinking against the glass and the tiny lamp in the corner switch on. The sheet slowly came off her head and piled at her waist. He didn’t sit down or touch her, but stood there calmly.
Please, let me disappear for a while. I can’t handle what just happened right now. Not hungover.
“Let me know in the morning how you’re feeling, okay?” He walked out, turning the overhead light out on his way.
THE HANGOVER WAS AS bad as she expected it to be. A long time had passed since her last one, but she remembered as clear as day how it felt and how to handle it. However, she was older now, and the dealing with it part wasn’t as easy as she remembered it being before.
Most of the day, she rotated between the bed, living room—drapes covering all the windows, of course, but it still wasn’t dark enough—and a few times the bathroom for a soak in the tub to rinse off the sweat. Her hangovers before had never made her have such
intense hot flashes. Then again, she hadn’t been sick back then like she was now.
