My Daughter Is Dying, and My Husband Is Saving His Lover's Son novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: After the Ballroom

He went down on one knee on the concrete with me.

His arm was around my back, and my hand was fisted in his lapel.

"I've got you," he said. "Breathe out first. Then in."

I breathed out.

It came out as a laugh.

Then it came out as something that wasn't a laugh at all, and I couldn't stop it.

He didn't tell me to.

He just stayed down there on the dirty garage floor in his good suit and held on.

A car went by on the ramp above us, slow, its headlights sweeping over the pillars.

"I'm fine," I said into his shirt.

"I know."

"My legs just quit."

"They do that. After." He pushed my hair off my wet face with two fingers. "I've watched grown men do it after a firefight. You did better. You made it to the garage."

"Is that a medical opinion?"

"It's a professional one."

He got me up slowly.

He kept one arm around my waist all the way to the car.

He held out his hand for my keys, and I gave them to him without arguing.

My phone buzzed on the drive south.

It was my mother.

"She's asleep," she said. "She told the man at the gas station it was her port. Twice. He gave her a free slushie."

"Thank you, Mom."

"She's staying here tonight. Don't argue. You sound like a wrung-out dishrag."

"I wasn't going to argue."

"Good." Then, more quietly: "I watched it on the news already. You were something."

Parsons Avenue was empty.

The pink letters on my shop window glowed under the streetlight.

Matt parked and turned off the engine, and neither of us got out.

The car ticked as it cooled.

"I'll walk you up," he said.

"Okay."

He walked me up the three concrete steps.

At the door I turned around, and we were level again, the way we'd been the night of the kiss.

Nobody was in the window this time.

Nobody was going to yell anything.

"Clara's at my mother's," I said.

"I heard."

"All night."

He looked at me for a long moment, in the light from the street.

Then he put his hand on the door frame above my head, the way he had before, and didn't come any closer.

"Heidi," he said. "You've had the worst night and the best night of your life in the same three hours. If you want me to go home, I'll go home. I'll come back tomorrow with crackers."

"I don't want crackers."

"What do you want?"

I'd spent four months saying exactly what I wanted to doctors, judges, lawyers and the evening news.

This one was the easiest.

"I want you to come upstairs," I said. "And stay. All night. I want you."

His eyes searched mine.

"Say that one more time," he said. "So I'm sure it's not the garage talking."

I took his tie in my fist.

"I want you, Matt. Upstairs. Now."

He kissed me there on the step, hard, his hand coming down off the door frame into my hair.

I got the door open behind me without looking.

We went up the narrow stairs in the dark, and I missed one, and he caught me again, and I laughed into his mouth.

"That's twice tonight," he said.

"Stop counting."

"I'm a nurse. I chart everything."

At the top of the stairs, the apartment was dark and smelled like sugar from the shop below.

Clara's crowns were drying on the kitchen table in a pink row.

I pulled him past them by his tie.

I pulled him into the bedroom by his tie.

He let me.

Then his hands came up and he was the one walking me backward, his mouth on mine, until the back of my knees hit the bed.

"Careful," he said against my mouth.

"You be careful."

I got his jacket off his shoulders.

It dropped to the floor.

I started on his shirt buttons.

He stood still and let me work.

"You've done this before," he said.

"I've watched you fold a thousand paper cranes. I can handle buttons."

He caught my wrist as I reached his belt.

"Say what you want," he said.

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