His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia (17 page)

Willa was moaning, sweet as hell in his ear. Telling him how much she wanted this, too, with her response. Gasping his name.

But it wasn’t real. He’d learned to tell the difference over the last three weeks.

However, learning to tell the difference wasn’t nearly the same as not having a dream in the first place. And he once again found himself in this place with her, in some strange gym he’d never seen before. Unable to keep himself from touching her all over, or from fucking her like his life depended on it on top of some kind of royal blue table.

“Why can’t I stop wanting you?” he asked her, shaking his head. “You’re crazy. This is crazy.”

But he didn’t stop. Not until they were both coming, the orgasm blasting up his back with such force, he knew he’d be waking up to a sticky mess in the morning.”

“Why do I keep having this dream?” he asked her when he finally came down. “Why can’t I hate you the way you deserve after what you did? What you kept from me?”

But she wasn’t paying attention to him. Instead, her solemn brown eyes were glued on something over his shoulder.

He followed their direction, and tilted his head in confusion when he saw a sort of oval. Cutting into the reality of the room. And inside the oval, was…

“Mom?”

His mother, in the same peignoir nightgown she’d been wearing when his father found her dead in their clawed-foot tub.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a wince. “I promised myself I wouldn’t visit you like this. I knew it would hurt too much when you woke up, and I’ve already hurt you enough. Also, lately you often seem to be dreaming about...”

She glanced at the half-naked woman behind him, and then cleared her throat. “Things you perhaps wouldn’t want your mother to see...”

Embarrassed as hell now, Sawyer tucked himself in and zipped up his jumpsuit. “Okay, so then why did you choose now to visit, Mom?”

“Like I said, I normally wouldn’t have imposed on you like this, but I was at the river and Jim called across to tell me Trevor and Willa were in a bad way. Unfortunately that Thel girl has run off again, and I saw Marian visiting with the tall, handsome fellow under the willow tree a couple days ago, before going off into the woods on one of her spirit excursions. So who knows when she’ll be back?”

“Wait a minute, who’s Jim?” Sawyer asked.

“Why, Willa’s grandfather of course.”

He shook his head. “But he’s dead.”

“Exactly why you need to go over there. According to Jim they need medicine, and the best he could do under his limited circumstances was come call across the river to me.”

Feeling just as confused as he did the one time he tried to have a conversation with The Crazy Librarian, he admitted, “I’m not really understanding any of this.”

“You don’t have to understand, dear,” Kate answered. “Just please wake up and go over there. Trevor needs you. Now go!”

Sawyer woke with a start, the words still ringing in his ears.
Trevor needs you…

What the hell had that dream been all about? Admittedly, he’d been having some crazy ones lately, with the emergency custody hearing getting close—just three more days until Trevor would be remanded to live with him where he belonged. But fuck, that one had been strange.

He sat up on one arm, shaking his head. But the image of his mother begging him to go over to Willa’s place remained, no matter how many times he tried to clear it.

“IT’S GOING T-TO B-BE ALL RIGHT, Trevvie. Everything will b-be f-fine...”

That was a total lie. But somehow Willa managed to tell it with a straight face…and ignore the churning of her own stomach. She rubbed the little boy’s back as she watched him vomit water with a few food residuals into the toilet.

Everything was not fine. Trevor was sick as a dog, which normally wouldn’t be a problem. But she’d gone to bed early with a body ache that she’d mistaken for depression. Easy enough to understand that with the custody hearing she’d surely lose only three days away. But when she woken up just a few hours later, her stomach had been rolling with nausea, the intensity only matched by the blazing sun inside her head.

Realizing she was going to puke, she’d run to the bathroom, only to find her son already there. One thin arm holding the seat back as he gave the toilet his entire dinner.

His great-grandfather was bent down beside him, rubbing his back. “Yeah, that’s it, boy. Get it all out.”

The scene would have been touching, if not for the fact that she’d had to crowd into the small bathroom with them and throw up her own dinner into the sink.

That had been at least one hundred days ago, though. Maybe only a few hours—she could no longer tell. Time had become the thing that happened between bouts of throwing up.

But she put on a brave smile for Trevor when he looked up from the toilet.

That is until he said, “It hurts. My tummy, my head. I’m hurting all over, Mama.”

She had to get him some help. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but she had enough medical knowledge to know they were both at risk of severe dehydration if she didn’t get them to a doctor soon. But she barely had enough energy to sit up at this point, and she cursed herself for not bringing her phone into the bathroom with her when she was still capable of walking.

She’d thought she could wait the illness out—most stomach flus ran through her in less than forty-eight hours. But this one was holding strong for some reason, and it had completely debilitated her. She couldn’t imagine crawling to the bathroom door, much less all the way back to her bedroom to get a phone to call 9-1-1—if it was even still charged. It had been toward the end of its battery life when she’d gone to bed, and she hadn’t bothered to plug it in.

She needed to figure out how to get Trevor some help. But fever set fire to every idea that came into her head, melting it into an incomprehensible mess before she could even start to come up with a good plan.

The sound of thunder broke into her fevered thoughts. No, not thunder. But an engine, roaring so loud, the bathroom window shook in protest. Until the noise suddenly cut out.

A few seconds later, Sawyer appeared in the bathroom’s narrow doorway.

She would have thought him a hallucination if not for Trevor weakly cheering, “Daddy! You came to save us.”

And Pappy suddenly blinking into the bathroom to say, “Good, it worked. I asked Missus Kate across the river to send him over, but I didn’t know if she’d be able to get through to him…”

Yes, it really was Sawyer, in sweat pants and a leather jacket. But damn, if he didn’t look like Superman to her in the bathroom’s dim light.

“Hell, you really are sick,” he said.

“Sorry, Pappy,” Trevor said, when Sawyer charged right through him to get to Trevor.

“That’s okay,” Pappy answered. “I’m just glad he’s here with ya’ll now.” He shook his head. “Never thought I’d say that about one of them Greenlee folks.”

Sawyer planted his carbon prosthesis before bending down to run his hands over his son’s sandy brown curls. “Trevor, look at me, buddy.”

Trevor did as he said, smiling up at him with wan fondness. “I’m looking at you, Daddy. Now what?”

“N-now he t-takes you to a d-d-doctor,” Willa croaked. She swallowed dry air, grabbing on to her stutter with a Herculean effort in order to clearly say, “Please, get him some help. Tell them he’s been throwing up for days. He’s going to need liquids and something to suppress the nausea.”

“Got it,” he stood up with Trevor. “Where are your keys?”

She’d forgotten he’d come on that bike of his. “In my purse, near the front door. Take one of the big bowls from the kitchen with you, just in case he gets sick in the car.”

“All right...”

He disappeared with Trevor through the door. And she sagged with relief, laying her hot head against the toilet. Happy to finally be able to give into the weakness of her own sickness, now that she didn’t have to put up a brave front for Trevor.

She heard a car door slam shut outside, and waited for the sound of the engine starting.

But it never came. Instead, she heard the sound of Sawyer’s heavy motorcycle boots, and he once again appeared in the door.

“Alright,” he said, bending down. “Hold on.”

He bent again, this time bracing a hand against the toilet as he stood up with her.

“N-no,” she protested, limp as a doll against his side. “Just l-l-leave me. Tr-tr-trevor’s the important one.”

“I hate to tell you this, but you look ten times shittier than he does. Kid’s not even running a fever, but you’re burning up.”

She shook her head. “No, no, just take care of Trevor. Nothing else matters.”

“Let him help you, girl!” Pappy yelled at her, blinking out to the hallway.

“N-n-no, Pappy…he h-h-hates me now. I c-c-can’t…”

“Okay, it might be easier if we do it this way now.”

Her world tilted to the side as he swung her up into his arms, and the next thing she knew, she was looking up into his grizzled face.

“Lucky, I’ve been keeping up with all those balance exercises you gave me,” he said with a rueful smile.

Before she could protest again, he was through the bathroom door with her, and walking toward the front door with careful measured steps.

She tried to protest again. Knew he didn’t want any part of her anymore, and was only helping her out of duty. She didn’t want his pity. But her body was too weak to go along with her pride.

Trevor had summed it up right. It hurt all over. Hurt everywhere but inside Sawyer’s arms.

A few moments later, he deposited her next to Trevor in the back seat of the car.

“Hi, Mama,” Trevor said with a weak grin when Sawyer was done buckling her in.

“H-hey, Tr-trev,” she answered just as weakly.

Pappy appeared at the edge of the dirt driveway. He and Kate had been the ones responsible for getting Sawyer here. She didn’t know how they did it, but she now knew that was where he must have gotten off to when he disappeared from the bathroom.

“Thank you,” she mouthed through the window.

Pappy raised his arm and waved, still looking concerned. Man, she really must have looked as bad as Sawyer said.

“Bye, Pappy,” she heard Trevor say in his booster seat.

Then they were driving away, and before they were even halfway down the road, sleep claimed her, pulling her down into its black depths.

19

Willa woke up in a strange bed, her head resting on a stiff pillow. Her hand being held by another.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Sawyer?”

He was sitting in a nearby chair, texting with one hand, while he kept her hand enfolded in his other. But he put the phone down and turned in his seat as soon as she said his name.

“You’re awake,” he said, his voice husky and low.

“Is this a dream?”

He let out a sound, somewhere between a huff and a laugh. “If you’d known how many times I’ve had to ask myself that over the last few weeks. The secret’s in the leg...”

He bunched up his left sweat pants leg to reveal the carbon one underneath. “If I’ve got two whole legs it’s a dream. If not, then it’s real.”

“Okay, then I must be awake.” But she couldn’t stop smiling dreamily at him. So he really was real. Real and holding her hand in this hospital room—wait a minute. She jerked upwards.

“I’m in the hospital? Why am I in the hospital?”

She’d never in her life stayed in a hospital room. Not even when she had Trevor. He’d come out at home with no more warning than a sharp cramp, followed by her mother calmly walking into her room with a cup of tea and informing her, “He’s coming now, dear. Right this second. But don’t be too scared. I’m still a nurse.”

“Where’s Trevor?” she demanded now, sitting up in bed and looking all around.

That was how she found out she was now hooked up to an IV. The needle bit into her when she tried to sit up in bed. “Is he okay?”

“Whoa, relax, he’s fine. He wasn’t near as bad off as you were. They put him on a drip for a couple of hours, then discharged him with a prescription for Zofran and orders to keep him on a B.R.A.T diet for a couple of days. Grace came and picked him up a few hours ago, and now she’s taking care of him at home.”

“Oh,” Willa relaxed back against the pillows. “That’s good. Thank you for seeing to him. And I’ve got to thank Grace for picking him up.”

Willa broke off with a frown. “Wait, why are you here with me, instead of home with Trevor? And how are you here with me when you’re not family?”

He reached out with his other hand and stroked a couple of her braids behind her ear. “Well, I kind of had to tell them I was your husband in order to get back here.”

She shook her head, not understanding. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I was worried about you,” he answered. “For good reason. Turns out the reason that stomach bug took you down so bad was because you’re pregnant.”

Her mind blanked with horror. “What…no…I couldn’t be—”

But she totally could be, she realized. She thought back to that night and morning they’d shared a month ago. The sex they’d had without any kind of protection. And last but certainly not least, the period that had yet to come. Just a little late, she’d thought, but…oh no, she realized with a sinking feeling. She’d had that thought days ago. Before the stomach flu from hell completely took her out.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, lying back against the pillows and clapping a hand to her forehead. Well, that certainly explained why the dehydration had affected her so much worst than it had Trevor.

“You were passed out before I even got here. You didn’t even wake up when they stuck the needle in you for a drip, which is why they sent away for a blood test.” But the worry on his face faded into a gentle smile. “Looks like we’re having another kid.”

She gasped. Unable to believe the words coming out of her mouth, yet somehow knowing they had to be true. She’d been dragging for weeks now. She’d thought she’d just been depressed, but she now remembered feeling much the same way during her first trimester with Trevor. Unable to do much more beyond eight hours of work with a lunch-time nap in between.

Oh no
, she thought. But when she turned to look back at Sawyer she was surprised to find a look of unmitigated joy on his face. “Okay, I don’t understand. Why are you so happy? Especially considering what you think I did to you?”