Chapter 19: Nobody Left to Ask

Caleb's POV

The surgeon said Donna's new kidney had started working before he finished closing her up.

He also said she had cursed at him twice coming out of the anesthesia, and that he took it as a good sign.

At noon the recovery nurse sent us out of the hall.

"She'll sleep until six," she said. "You two have been standing for thirty hours. Go lie down somewhere."

In the lobby, the lawyer had left an envelope with my name on it.

Inside was a hotel key card and a sheet of hospital notepaper, and on the paper, in a shaky right hand, Gus had written: Sleep.

The hotel stood across the street.

It was Gus's, and had been since before Marguerite was born, which made me laugh in the elevator for the first time in two days.

The room was cream and gold, with a bed bigger than the studio.

Stevie sat on the edge of it with her shoes still on.

"I keep waiting for someone to tell me it's not true," she said. "That she's alive, and it's working."

"It's true."

"Caleb."

"Yeah."

She turned and looked at me properly, and her eyes were red and clear.

"I want to ask you things, and keep asking, for years."

I sat down beside her.

"Start now," I said. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Are you okay?"

Nobody had asked me that in three years.

"No," I said, and my voice broke on it. "I'm not."

"Good," she said, and put her hand on my face. "That's an answer. I'll take every one of them."

I kissed her.

It was slow, because we were too tired for anything else, and she was crying a little against my mouth.

"We said not until it's done," she said.

"It's nearly done."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Broke Up With My Poor Boyfriend to Date a Rich Heir from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.