Chapter 13: The Check

Abram's POV

Mal slept on my couch for six hours and did not move once.

I know because I did not sleep at all.

I sat in the armchair across from her with a cold mug of tea.

Biscuit lay on her stomach, and her fist was wrapped in the edge of my blanket.

Her mouth was open a little.

Nobody at the clinic had ever seen her like that.

In five years I had seen her at her worst hour and her best, and never with her guard down.

I wanted to cross the room and put my hand flat on her back.

I stayed in the chair.

I had kissed her against a truck eight hours earlier, and she had kissed me first.

That was all I knew for certain.

She might wake up and decide it was the worst night of her life.

She might say sorry, and then I would have to hear it.

At six I went to the kitchen and made coffee, because it was something to do with my hands.

I poured her a mug and left it on the table by her hand, the way I had left one on her station for five years.

It was the only help she would take, a thing she could pretend had not been given.

I knew exactly what that meant, and I had done nothing real about it until last night.

Last night, while she sat in the hospital waiting room, I had called the cardiologist's office from the garage.

I paid nothing and promised nothing.

I only asked them to confirm that her father's surgery was still set for the 14th.

It was, and the nurse told me the mother had asked twice that Mal not be told anything.

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