Page 62 of Love on Her Terms

“He always says not to worry.” She sounded so dejected, and he wanted to strangle both of them. Dennis for not talking to his wife. Brook for being hard to talk to. His brother-in-law hadn’t complained about the weight of Brook’s worry, but she was Levi’s sister. He didn’t need Dennis to complain for him to know.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t worry,” Levi said, stepping into worry and hypocrisy at the same time.

“Can you talk to him?”

The tree blurred as his eyes lost their focus. This conversation was blurring the entire world. “I don’t know what you think he’ll tell me that he’s not telling you.”

“Please,” she begged.

“All right,” he said, knowing already how that night at the bar would end up. “When do you move?”

“His job starts in a month.”

“I’ll talk to him the next time we’re at O’Reilly’s.” Hopefully Dennis wouldn’t get more drunk than usual. God, he wasn’t looking forward to this.

“You’re the best brother ever.”

“I’m your only brother.”

“Still...” Brook was apparently trying to lighten her voice, to make everything sound better, but all that did was make the attempted compliment sound more fake.

“Maybe you should let go a little. Trust Dennis to take care of himself.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice snapping right back into negative territory. “I know you’re going to be at Mina’s, taking care of her while she has the flu.”

“Brook, that’s different. You know it.”

“Do you trust her to take care of herself?”

“She’s an adult. She takes her meds. She got her flu shot. What more do you expect her to do?” The realization that his sister had pulled him back into talking about her fears about Mina punched him in the gut, and he spit the bad taste of it all out of his mouth. “You know what? You’re mad at Dennis, not at me and not at Mina. Go talk to your husband. Call me back when you’ve worked out the moving problem.”

“You could be a little nicer.”

“It’s hard to be nice when you’re questioning my girlfriend.”

“But...”

“There is nothing more we can say to each other right now. And I’ve got to get to work. You’ll probably figure out when I’ve talked to Dennis, but I’ll text you anyway. Goodbye.”

Levi hung up and slammed the phone into his pocket, irritated with Brook and irritated with himself for letting her get on his nerves.

* * *

LEVI OPENED MINA’S front door and slipped in quietly, careful not to wake her if she was sleeping on the couch. She was an easy patient. Or maybe, Levi considered, it was that he wanted to be around her, even when she was sneezing, piling snotty tissues on the bedside table and complaining about her aches. While she was sick, he had been spending nights sleeping on her couch, helping her down the stairs in the morning before going to work. In the evening, he came back to her house and fixed her dinner, then went back to sleep on the couch. He took her to her doctor’s appointments.

On Wednesday morning, when she felt well enough to shower, she insisted on doing that on her own, despite Levi’s request to help. When Levi got home from work on Wednesday evening, Mina was sitting up on the couch, alert and animated through her sniffles. As he went into the kitchen, she shuffled along behind him, a blanket wrapped around her like a giant cocoon that dragged along the floor.

“Can I help?” she asked as he set the groceries on the counter.

“No. Hang tight and I’ll get you a chair.”

He didn’t have to be facing her to hear her slight grunt and know she was dissatisfied. “I’ve been sitting all day.”

“You’re sick.” He set the dining chair on the hard kitchen floor with more force than he’d intended. He’d had to break into her house with Echo and then carry her down the stairs. The limp weight of her in his arms wasn’t anything he was likely to forget soon. “You shouldn’t even be up yet.”

She still looked pale, except around her nose and the red of her eyes. A shower this morning had helped remove some of the ashen look of fever sweat on her skin, but she was still in worn pajama pants and a ratty, heather-gray T-shirt with a Crime and Punishment book cover on the front. None of the easy, comfortable clothing he’d seen her in before had been so ragged.

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