Page 9 of Fragile Love (Fragile 3)
“I already talked to him.” She turned and smiled sadly, wiping underneath her eyes with the back of her hand. “Everything’s okay now. It got scary there for a minute, but he’s going to be okay.”
“What happened?” Cayden stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders.
“Ouch! Too hard.” She sniffed. “After his procedure, they were bringing him back here and he suddenly gasped awake. His body was so shocked that he went into cardiac arrest.”
“Oh, man.” Cayden looked at Andrew, who appeared to be sleeping peacefully. Thinking about him in cardiac arrest within the last couple of hours was impossible. “They got him stabilized?”
“Yeah, quickly so they said, thank goodness. Oh, Cayden, that feels so good. Right there. Do you feel that knot?”
“I definitely feel it.” The bulge in her muscle was big enough that it felt like someone had embedded a little pebble under her skin. “I know a stretch to help.”
“Are you being sexual with me?”
“Shh, Andrew will hear you.”
“Actually, he might. He’s awake now. I mean, not now. But he’s not unconscious anymore.”
Cayden shuddered at the thought of Andrew hearing their banter.
“He’s really deeply asleep, so you have nothing to worry about. He has a lot of recuperating to do.”
“You know exactly what I’m thinking.”
She reached her hand up to her shoulder and put it on top of Cayden’s. “Thank you. Hey, what about this stretch? My back is killing me.”
Cayden circled around to the front of her and took her arm, bending it up very slowly. “Do you feel the pull?”
“Yeah,” she winced. “All the way down my side, too.”
“Good. Hold it for a few more seconds.” He looked straight at her closed eyes, at the way her lips surrounded her mouth, at the shape of her teeth as she made the painful face. “All right, you look like you’re being tortured.”
“I might as well be,” she retorted, lowering her arm. “That’s my stretching face. It always hurts.”
“That shouldn’t hurt so bad. Seems to me like we need to do a lot more stretching.” He winked.
“I can think of some stretching we can work on.”
“We’ll go over some exercises when we get back to the hotel.” Smirking, he stood up and patted the top of her head. “Now, how about I go get you that mocha?”
Lillian beamed. “Sorry about the panic early. I just...” She glanced at Andrew. “I don’t want to lose him, too.”
“It’s okay. No need to apologize.” He felt like he should be saying sorry to her, for the unfair thoughts he’d been thinking about the poor guy lying in the bed. “I’m just glad Andrew’s okay.”
THE BED WAS TOO COMFORTABLE. When she lay down, the mattress felt like it reached up with squishy arms that hugged her body. The blanket was the puffiest she had ever come across, and did nothing to help motivate her to get up in the morning.
As she sprawled there, taking up eighty percent of the bed and forcing Cayden to the edge, she sighed out loud.
Cayden grunted. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice muffled. His face was squashed against the one pillow he was given compared to Lillian’s three.
“I don’t want to get up.”
“What time is it?”
She twisted her head as far as it would go and, out of the corner of her eye, saw the red numbers on the little clock. “Eight-thirty.”
“How much sleep did we get?”
“About seven hours, I think.” She smiled to herself. They had left the hospital around ten last night, after Andrew’s parents basically forced them out—rather, forced Lillian out. They had commanded her to leave and get a good night’s sleep. Since Andrew wasn’t unconscious anymore, they had insisted on staying through the whole night to be there when he woke up.
