Page 77 of One and Only

All I knew was that he did his best to ease out of bed, creeping across the room as silently as possible.

It took Beckett less than five minutes from first realization to getting the hell out of Dodge, and I had no clue what that meant.

And listen, I was no chickenshit, okay? But I didn’t exactly feel like chasing him out into the kitchen to ask if he liked the idea of his thumb on my nipples.

I did.

I wanted that thumb right back where I’d found it upon waking.

I wanted both thumbs, actually.

Maybe his tongue. And some teeth.

With the room free of his confusing presence, I rolled to my back and speared a hand through my hair.

Olive hadn’t climbed into bed with us for the last handful of nights.

With no one to wake us, no one to interrupt our sleep patterns, maybe it was inevitable that this would happen.

I pinched my eyes shut, rolling back onto my side.

That muttered curse of his, low and rough and ragged, echoed in my brain as I tried to dissect what it meant.

It stayed on repeat, just that one murmured word, as I fell back into a fitful sleep for another hour or so.

When I woke, it was to the sound of the kitchen door slamming shut. With a glance at the bedside clock, I knew it was Beckett leaving to take Olive to school.

I stretched and yawned, tugging my hair into a ponytail as I shuffled out to the kitchen to find the coffee—hot and strong and waiting for me as usual.

I glared at the steaming liquid as I poured it into a generous-sized mug. Not that it was the coffee’s fault.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really.

But the problem lay in just how unclear all this was. What I wanted to do was call Adaline and dissect this with her. Ask for her advice.

Obviously not an option, given she thought this was very, very real.

And when I thought about calling Cameron to ask him, I almost snorted coffee up my nose at the look of abject horror that would cross his face.

“That might be worth it actually,” I said to the empty house.

I tried to push it from my head, showering and getting ready for a day of computer work and phone meetings with a few of our clients. The intern and I hopped on the phone so I could give her a list of things to follow up on, and after two quick calls from Cameron about Detroit Lake, I spent an hour updating some of the budget projections for upcoming builds. By the time I got to lunch, I heated some leftovers and called my mom, setting the phone on the counter with the speaker on so I could eat.

“How was Dad’s appointment with the palliative care doctor this morning?”

She hummed. “Fine. We’re adjusting some of his meds, see if they can help with the breathing issue we noticed this week.”

During my visit a few days earlier, I’d noticed the slightly labored quality to his breathing.

That was the hardest part of all this. We didn’t know exactly how the next few months would go. How the cancer might spread and how fast it would move.

Everything about it felt precarious. Each good day still held a slightly unsteady quality, like it could all come crashing down without warning.

“I’ll come out this weekend,” I said. “Maybe Saturday?”

“Bring Beckett and that sweet little girl if they can make it too,” she said. “I’d love to spend some more time with them. Your dad would too.”

I pinched my eyes shut. “I’ll ask him when he gets home from the facilities later.”

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