Perfect Husband Act: Now My Wife's Sorry novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Nobody Sleeps

Ethan's POV

"Ethan Kramer," Audrey said, in the dark. "Ethan. Wake up."

I woke with her bandaged hands pressed against my face.

She was sitting up in bed with the lamp on, and she was crying without making any noise.

"I'm here," I said.

"Look at your arm."

I looked.

The pattern of the sheet showed through my forearm.

I tried to sit, and the cold ran up from my fingers to my shoulder.

"Don't let go of me," I said.

"I can't hold on, my hands..."

"Then I'll hold you."

I wrapped my fingers around her wrist, above the gauze.

The cold stopped.

My arm came back, slowly, until it was brown and warm and real.

Audrey breathed out.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. So that's how it works."

"That's how it works."

"I touch you, and you stay."

"For now."

Susie arrived at four in the morning with three coffees, a duffel bag, and our mother-in-law in her good wool coat.

"New rule," Susie said, and set the coffees on the nightstand. "Nobody sleeps, and nobody lets go. We take shifts. Somebody has a hand on Ethan from now until the music starts."

"I don't need a babysitter," I said.

"You're a hostage, Ethan. A very nice one."

Audrey's mother sat on the edge of the bed in her coat and took my hand in both of hers.

"I raised two girls through the flu," she said. "I can hold a man's hand for sixteen hours."

By seven she was telling me about her husband's gallbladder.

At nine Susie made pancakes with her free hand, and Audrey fed me a bite, and I felt something in my chest so tender that I looked away.

At ten, Audrey's mother's phone rang from the other room.

It was the florist.

She patted my hand twice and said, "One minute, honey," and let go.

I thought about reaching for her.

I did not do it fast enough.

I watched her walk down the hall, and I felt the cold come back.

Audrey was in the bathroom.

Susie was in the garage, and so for a moment I sat alone on the edge of the bed, and the room began to go gray at the edges.

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