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I wanted to break all of it.

So, I did.

Bright light. The sound of murmuring voices. I blinked, wincing, something soft beneath my head and something sharp stinging the back of my hand. A weight on the other, fingers held tight.

“Hey,” Johnny said softly from beside the bed. “You’re awake.”

“What?” I struggled to get up, the smell of hospital rushing in all around me. Choking.

The sting on my hand was an IV, and Johnny shushed me. I quieted at once, sinking back onto the pillows. I was still wearing what I’d had on at the dinner party, so at least I hadn’t been here long enough for them to strip me down and put a hospital gown on me. My throat was dry, and before I could ask, Johnny had a plastic cup of water for me, with a straw.

I sipped. “What happened? Where are my parents and everyone else?”

“Your mom and dad are probably in the waiting room. The others went home. Jen wanted to stay, but I convinced her boyfriend to take her home. I’ll call her, tell her you’re okay.”

“Shit,” I muttered. “Am I? I went dark, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, babe, you did.”

“How long this time?”

“It’s been about three hours. Your mom didn’t wait as long as I did the last time.” Johnny laughed, shaking his head. “You were only out for ten minutes before she had the ambulance on its way.”

“Oh, God.” I groaned and covered my eyes with the hand attached to the IV, which was a mistake because it pulled hard on the port and hurt. “Shit.”

“You just went blank,” Johnny said.

I looked at him through my fingers. “Just? That’s not comforting. Unless you mean it’s better than falling down, frothing at the mouth and pissing myself. Then, yeah, I guess it’s better.”

Tears clogged my voice, and Johnny stood to kiss me softly, even though I tried to turn my face. He kissed me, anyway, and smoothed my hair from my forehead. He kissed my mouth, then my cheek, and squeezed my hand.

“They’re going to run some tests on you. And you probably have to stay overnight.”

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

“Emm,” he said warningly.

“I’m not staying. You know there’s nothing they can do, Johnny. You know it.” There was no reason he should, really, since we’d barely ever discussed my problem in detail, but he nodded reluctantly. “But there goes my license. There goes…shit, everything!”

“Not everything,” Johnny said quietly. “Not me.”

I cried then. He sat and held my hand and handed me tissues. It didn’t last long—I didn’t have many tears left for situations like this. When it had passed, he kissed me again. I realized something.

“They let you in here with me? Not my mom or dad?”

“She said, your mom said, I should sit with you.”

I blinked tear-swollen eyes. “Get out of here. Are you kidding me?”

“Nope.” Johnny grinned.

“She must really like you,” I whispered, and wept again.

It went on a little longer this time, and again he handed me tissues when the ones I was using grew sodden and fell apart. He gave me water, too, holding the cup for me, though I was anything but an invalid. And then he went to the bathroom and got me a damp cloth to wash my face.

They did, indeed, do tests that went on pretty late into the night. Drew lots of blood. Ordered a CAT scan, which couldn’t be done until the tech came in and which I refused, though the attending physician did his best to bully me into it. I had a lot of years of practice dealing with doctors and hospitals, and I wasn’t being a pain for the sake of being a jerk. I knew the tests would show nothing. They’d prescribe me some meds, maybe. Keep me longer. Bill my insurance for thousands of dollars, much of which I’d have to pay back since I’d been fortunate enough not to have yet met my deductible.

“I want to go home,” I told the doctor firmly. “Look at my records. This has happened before. It’ll probably happen again.”

I hated admitting that.

“And I have someone who can stay with me,” I added, indicating Johnny, who nodded. “I’m not driving. I’ll sign myself out against medical advice, if that’s what you want.”

The doctor, who looked tired and possibly not much older than me, rubbed at his eyes and the scruff of his beard. He sighed heavily. “Fine. Fine. I’ll get the discharge order ready.”

He pointed a finger at me. “But if you die, I’m going to kill you.”

I didn’t think I’d be able to laugh, but I did. “Fair enough.”

My parents met us in the lobby, my dad looking tired and my mom white-faced. I braced myself for the rush of scolding, her insistence she come home with me, or worse, go home with them. Instead, my mom only hugged me close. She let me go, and looked at Johnny.

“You take care of her,” my mother said.

“Yes, ma’am. I will.” Johnny put his arm around my shoulders.

But this wasn’t enough for me. I couldn’t, in fact, believe it. I followed my mom to their car, which was parked next to Johnny’s. My dad was already in the driver’s seat, and Johnny got into his car to warm it up, leaving us alone.

“Mom,” I said.

“Emmaline,” my mother said. “That man… Your Johnny…”

“I can’t believe you’re letting me go home with him,” I told her.

She hugged me hard. Tight. I hugged her, too.

“I have to,” she said into my ear, then took my face into her hands and held it still so she could search my gaze with her own.

“What?”

She shook her head and looked over her shoulder at Johnny in his car. She shook her head again, brow furrowed, then looked at me. She choked off a sob, shaking her head, trying to get control. Watching her force away the tears made it hard for me to resist my own, but I managed. My mom squeezed my face, then let me go.

“He’s a good man. And even though I’m worried sick about you, I’m sure you’d rather have him there than me. So…I’m letting him take you. But you call me tomorrow, first thing!” She shook her finger, then clung to me in another hug. “Oh, my precious girl, it is killing me, but…”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said quietly into her ear as we squeezed each other. “Thank you.”

“You call me,” she said, letting me go. “Tomorrow!”

“I will.”

She nodded and hugged me again, but didn’t linger. She got into the car next to my dad and shut the door. I could see them both talking, but not hear what they said. Johnny opened his car door, got out, walked around to the passenger side to open it for me.

“So chivalrous,” I said when he’d settled back in the driver’s seat.

He looked at me. “You sure you don’t want to stay?”

I shook my head. “They’re not going to do anything, and I feel fine. I just want to go home to my own bed. Get at least a couple hours of sleep. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We can sleep in.”

Johnny leaned across the seat to kiss me. He stroked my hair. Then, in silence, we drove home. I looked out the window at icy streets, snowbanks. My breath fogged the glass. I fisted my hands in my lap, thinking of the fugue, of Johnny-then and Johnny-now. Wondering how all of this was going to work out. Hating the fact I had to depend on him, and hoping it wasn’t going to ruin everything that had just begun.

Chapter 22

A
t home, Johnny stayed with me while I showered. He didn’t say it was because he was worried I’d go dark in the shower and drown or something, but I knew that was why, and though we shared the water and the sponge, I didn’t even try to turn this into something erotic. When we dried off and I put on an entirely unsexy flannel nightgown, he tucked me into bed and got in beside me.

I turned on my side, away from him, staring into the darkness without being tired. Johnny’s breathing deepened. I felt the weight of him shift as he went boneless into sleep. And I blinked and blinked, the pattern of light coming through the window shifting. The temperature, too. The sheets underneath me.

When he rolled against my back, his hand going flat to my belly, I wanted to turn and face him. I wanted to know if this was Johnny-now or Johnny-then. If I was dreaming, or had gone dark, or if I was just so tired the bed had felt like it was shifting underneath me. But I didn’t turn to see him. I didn’t speak. And Johnny, whichever one he was, pressed up real against me. Whether it was the truth or a lie concocted by my brain, he was real.

I went back to work on Monday. Johnny dropped me off and tilted his face for a kiss in the parking lot. I gave it to him, but didn’t linger the way I had just a week before. I didn’t mean to be grouchy, I didn’t want to resist him, but depending on him this way was already wearing me thin in places that hadn’t been very thick to begin with.

I did my job with expertise and not enthusiasm. When he picked me up at the end of the day, I got in the car hoping no coworkers would see me. Of course I’d had to report what happened to Human Resources, not because I wanted anyone to know, but because if something happened on the job I had to let someone know what to do. I put on my seat belt without looking at him, and I stared out the window all the way home.

He took me to my house and came in with me, though when I hung up my coat he didn’t take off his. “Emm.”

I looked at him. “Yeah?”

“Do you want me to go? I can go home.”

“No. You can stay.”

Johnny gave me a look. “I thought maybe we’d have dinner out tonight. You want to go out to eat? I’ll take you anywhere you want.”

Normally, I’d have leaped at the offer, but I just shook my head. “I feel like staying in. Vegging out. Get caught up on TV or something.”

Johnny put his hands in his pockets. “You want me to go, you should just say so.”

“You can stay,” I repeated.

“Do you
want
me to stay?” he asked, and I wanted to laugh at everyone who’d ever written or said that Johnny Dellasandro was a dim bulb. Just then he was very bright, so bright I couldn’t look at him.

“You can if you want to,” I told him, unable to make myself say more than that because I didn’t want to be a liar, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, either.

“Nah. I’ll go home. Get caught up on my own stuff,” Johnny said.

He kissed me before he left. At least there was that. He held me close and hugged me until I hugged him back, though it took me a few seconds to bend. He kissed my temple and squeezed me. Then he left.

I watched him go.

I wasn’t angry at Johnny, and just then I was pretty furious with myself. I had what I wanted, finally, and I was pushing it away. But I couldn’t help it. Johnny wasn’t everything I wanted. I wanted a brain that worked, damn it. One that didn’t flip-flop me all around and make me no better than a child.

I did, indeed, veg and watch TV. Well, I flipped through the channels, unable to find any one program that could keep my attention. I texted Jen, who replied that she was hanging with Jared, and did I want to come over and hang with them?

I did not.

I went to bed alone and angry, nobody to blame but myself.

Johnny didn’t flee screaming from my bitchery, which is what I’d have done in his place. He was infinitely patient with me. Driving me to work, picking me up, sitting beside me silent on the couch while we watched stupid movies or sleeping next to me without seeming to mind that I turned to face away from him every night with barely a kiss.

I didn’t want to become this sexless, irritable bag of woe. I hated it, in fact, yet I couldn’t seem to break myself out of it. Hanging with Jen didn’t help. She was thoroughly head over heels for Jared, who seemed equally as enamored, and of course I was happy for her, but it made it impossible to talk about what was going on with me when our duo had become a quartet Saturday mornings at the Mocha.

Carlos had a clue. He cornered me one morning as I ducked in, leaving Johnny waiting for me in the car, to grab us both a couple of coffees. “Trouble in paradise, huh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your face is sour. What, you got him, now you don’t want him?”

I stopped, clutching two paper cups that were so hot they were going to burn me through my gloves. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Carlos snorted. “You don’t look happy, that’s all.”

“It has nothing to do with Johnny,” I told him.

“Yeah? Well, if I were you, I’d make sure he knew it.” Carlos cast a significant glance toward the car idling at the curb. “I mean, a dude like that, he doesn’t really need to put up with any shit, you know?”

I knew it. And as I slid into the car and handed Johnny his cup, I also leaned across to kiss him. He looked at me, surprised.

“What’s that for?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve been a bitch.”

He laughed and kissed me. “Yeah. So? I figure you’re a little entitled. Besides, I knew it wouldn’t last.”

Being forgiven, especially for something you know is your fault, is an easy spirit-lifter. “Oh, really? You know that?”

“I knew it,” he said, and pulled into traffic.

“How? What if I’d turned out to be a supermegatwat forever?”

He shook his head, smiling as he cast me a quick glance before putting his eyes back on the road. “Nah. I told you. I knew it would get better.”

I turned in my seat to face him, the seat belt digging into me a little. “How?”