214 Wills novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Smoke Detector

They let her go home on Friday afternoon with a walker, a bag of pills, and orders to stay off the leg.

Beth had changed our locks on Tuesday night. She handed me the new keys at the door and kissed Callie on the forehead.

"Ten minutes," she said. "Then I'm checking you both for pulses."

She left, and the apartment was suddenly very quiet.

I got Callie to the bedroom on my arm and sat her on the edge of our bed.

She looked around at the room.

"It looks different," she said.

"Everything is where you left it."

"I know." She touched the quilt. "I mean I look different in it."

I knelt in front of her and began to ease the hospital sock down over the cast.

I had to work the stocking carefully around her swollen calf.

My fingers brushed the back of her knee.

She breathed in.

I stopped.

The skin behind her knee was warm and soft, and I had never touched it that slowly before, in daylight, with nothing else to do.

"Miles," she said, very low.

"Does it hurt?"

"No."

I looked up.

Her pupils were wide.

I felt it in my own body at once, hot and plain, and I turned my face toward the ceiling because I did not trust it.

She had seen.

She reached out and put two fingers under my chin, and she turned me back.

"You're not looking," she said.

"You have two broken ribs," I said.

"I have two ribs. I have two hands. And I have a very good imagination," she said.

I laughed, and it cracked halfway through.

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