Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3) (6 page)

An eternity passed in that kiss, and then he pulled away. He was shaking all over.

“Cade?” It was all I could manage, but he understood the question.

“I’m fine. I’m just…I needed to kiss you. I needed that, more than you could ever know. More than I think I even understood.”

“Not as…much…as—” I had to pause and focus on forming the words, the letters, the sounds. “Me. Not as much as me.”
 

Cade pulled me against his chest and held me. He had stopped shaking, but I felt the emotion radiating from him.
 

“Talk. To me.” I was proud of how easily I’d gotten that out.

“About what?”

“You.”
 

He let go of me, stood up, crossed the room in an anxious stride. “What about me?”

“What’s…wrong.” That was supposed to be a question, but it hadn’t come out that way.

“Nothing. Everything.” He stopped at the window, stared out of it at the beautiful summer day beyond. “I just…everything is so…
hard
. I love you. I missed you so much. I didn’t know how to live, not without you. You were all I had, and you were gone.”

“I’m here. Now.”

“I know. I know.” He turned back to me. “And you’re getting better every day. You kissed me back! That’s a huge improvement.” I felt him pushing away the turmoil that had been boiling inside him, changing the subject.
 

I let him.

“Kiss me…again.”
 

He stood over me, staring down at me. Brushed my cheekbone with his thumb, brushed my hair away. His eyes were on me, and I saw the need in him. He needed me. I had to fight my way back to normality. For him.
 

He leaned down and kissed me, ever so gently. I felt my lips twitch and respond, forming against his. It only lasted a second, and then he was sitting down beside me and holding me against his chest. His heartbeat was a steady drum against my cheek. I was elated, jubilant. I’d kissed him back. Barely, but he’d felt it. He knew exactly how big a deal that was for me. And I knew what a huge thing it was for him. I wanted to hold on to him. Wrap my arms around him like I used to. I couldn’t, and that hurt. It was all about small, attainable goals. I knew that. But it didn’t make it any easier to get so excited about something as simple and everyday as kissing my husband.
 

When he finally let me go, I looked up into his eyes, and I saw the turmoil there once more, layered and hidden beneath the love and the pride. I didn’t understand it, what it meant, where it was coming from. It was more than watching me struggle every day. He was always proud of every little milestone I reached, praised my every tiny success. His smiles were genuine, his love real. But…there was something beneath it. Some pain and confusion whose source I couldn’t fathom. It was guilt. I knew it. Couldn’t avoid the truth of it. But over what, though? That’s what I couldn’t figure out. Was it guilt over the accident? Surely he knew it was just that, an accident? There was nothing he could have done any differently.
 

There was no way to know what he was feeling, and he wasn’t telling. And if it was guilt I saw and felt in him, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know where it was coming from just yet. I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

I forced the thoughts away as he went with me to therapy. I couldn’t afford any distractions while I was at therapy. It took all of my focus, all of my concentration, and every ounce of strength I had. He stood beside me, held my hand. Every time I felt discouraged or frustrated, I’d look at him and I’d know I could do it. I had to. For him. He needed me. Cade had always seemed so strong, so steady despite the hardships life had thrown at him. But now he seemed…almost fragile. As if one more blow, and he would crumple. I had to get better. I had to get my speech back, had to get my mobility back. I had to be able to comfort him, to love him the way he deserved. Right now, though, I needed
him
.
 

So I curled my fingers around the tennis ball, clutching it with all my strength, squeezing with every muscle in my arm, sweating and trembling from the exertion required to merely hold on to it. After maybe a minute, my fingers uncurled, and the ball rolled away across the table. I paused, panting, and then nodded to Darrel, my therapist, who put the ball back into my palm. I gripped it, focusing with everything I had.
 

Cade stayed with me for several hours, like he did every day. Around four-thirty, he left to go to work. He’d sometimes swing by after work, stinking like sweat and looking as rugged and handsome as ever. That evening, however, he didn’t come back after work. I sat in my bed, watching
So You Think You Can Dance
. My night shift nurse, Lucy, came by with my dinner, helped me eat. In late middle age, Lucy was a sweet woman with graying brown hair and a hint of a southern accent. As she was cleaning up, she bumped the table at my bedside, and the bottom drawer slid open. I glanced down at it and saw what looked like a shoebox.

“What’s…that?” I said, training my gaze on it.

Lucy followed my eyes and saw the box. “Oh, that? That’s your letters.”

I was puzzled. “Letters?”

She nodded. “From that wonderful boy of yours.”

He’d brought our old letters to the home? “Old?”

She seemed confused by the question. “Old? No, honey, those are all from since you’ve been here. While you were in your coma, he’d come by every single day and read you a letter. A new one, sometimes two. There’s almost two boxes full in there. He must’ve written you…oh, lord…hundreds of letters.”

My eyes watered. He’d never said anything. Never told me. “Every…day? Letters?” God
dammit.
I hated not being able to speak clearly. I sounded like a three-year-old just learning to talk.

She nodded, bent over and lifted one shoebox out, and then opened the upper drawer and pulled out a second one. She set them on the bed by my leg. She lifted the top off both boxes, and the tears streamed down my face in earnest. There were, as Lucy had said, hundreds of letters. He had written to me while I was in a coma. Every day. Every single day.
 

“Read them?” I asked.

Lucy sighed, pulled up a chair, and sat down. “Yeah, sweetie. He’d come in here, usually in the afternoon, sometimes in the evening. He’d sit here, where I am. He closed the door most times, and he’d read to you. Sometimes he’d talk, but after a while I think…I think all he could do was read the letters.”

“Read? To me.”

Lucy lifted a bundle of envelopes from the box. That bundle in turn was divided into four smaller bundles, each containing three, four, or five envelopes. A few had more. “The boy’s organized, I’ll give him that.” She slid the first envelope free—it hadn’t been sealed. My name was written on the front in Cade’s distinctive all-caps handwriting. “Looks like he has them done up by week, and then by month.”

I recognized the system. He’d shown me the boxes containing my letters to him from our years of being pen pals, and that was how he’d bound these as well.
 

Lucy pulled the folded paper from within the envelope. She scanned the first few lines, and then shook her head. “I don’t think I should read these to you, hon. They’re…very personal.” She thought for a few seconds, clearly trying to figure out a way that I could read them, given my inability to hold a tennis ball, much less a piece of paper. “How about I lay it on your lap so you can see it? When you’re ready for me to turn it over, just look at me.”

I frowned. “Patients?”

Lucy blinked, and then waved me off. “I’m caught up on my rounds for now. I can sit with you for a few minutes.” She smoothed the letter out on my lap and then sat back.
 

It was an odd angle, and my instinct was to just pick it up. My brain wanted me to be normal, but my body simply wouldn’t respond. I blew out a frustrated breath, and then focused on the words, despite the awkward angle.

Ever,

My love. It seems like it’s been forever since I wrote you like this. Since I sat down with pen and paper and expressed my thoughts to you. So much has changed since then.
 

Everything has changed. I don’t even know where to start. We met IRL (I didn’t know what that phrase meant, way back when you first used it, you know), and we fell in love and we got married. God, all that seems like a lifetime ago. I don’t know who that was, that Cade who was with you back then. I’m someone else now. This…hole in the world, man-shaped. Me-shaped. A vacancy.
 

I can’t pretend like you’re going to read this, like you’re going to write back. I’m sorry, but I just can’t. You’re in a coma, and you might never wake up, and I’m alone. You promised, Ever. You promised you’d never leave me. I know you didn’t want to, you didn’t mean to. But you still did, and I’m back to being numb and floating through life, through every day.

Except now I don’t even have you, just your letters to keep me tied to the earth.

I couldn’t read anymore. My head flopped back against the wall, thumping painfully. Tears slid down my cheeks, a flood of grief for my poor husband. I felt a small hand wipe across my cheek. Lucy, literally wiping my tears away.
 

“He loves you something fierce, Caden does.” Lucy wiped my other cheek. “I’ve worked in nursing homes for going on twenty-five years, Ever. I’ve seen a lot in those years. A lot of patients have come through these doors. They go, too. Nature of the business, and it never gets easier. But that boy of yours. God, he was so devoted to you. Your sister, too. She brought him every day until he could bring himself. You’re lucky, Ever. You have the love of a good man. Not everyone finds that. He stuck by you.”

Oh, I knew. I knew so well.
 

I turned my attention back to the letter.
 

It’s been six months. It’s summer, and it was the day before Christmas the last time I heard your voice. The last time I saw your smile and your eyes.
 

I have to make some decisions now. Finish school? Keep the condo? Do I pack your things away? Do I hang up the sweater you left draped over the kitchen chair? I haven’t yet. Do I put away your shoes that are by the door? Do I put all of your stuff in a box like you’ve died?
 

I can’t. I know I should. Seeing your stuff just like you left it on December 23
^rd
, it hurts. Every day I see it all there, just like you left it. But I can’t bear to act like you’re never coming back. I have to hope that you will. Because you will, right? You’ll wake up. You’ll come back to me. You love me, and you’re just…lost. Somewhere out there, trying to come back. Like Odysseus fighting to get back to Penelope.
 

I don’t know how to live without you, but I have to try. Don’t I? If you were to wake up and I’ve given up, just stopped living, you’d be so mad. You’d kick my ass. So I have to keep going. I have to pick myself up, and live. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I will. For you. For US.
 

I love you, forever and always.

Cade

Tear sluiced down my face faster than Lucy could wipe them away. I sniffed, and Lucy dabbed at my face with a Kleenex. She slid the letter back in the envelope, and took out another one.
 

Ever,

Some days it’s easier to write you like this than others. Some days, my thoughts just flow out like water, and I fill a page or two without trying. Other days, it’s hard to get a single paragraph. Today is one of those days. The hard to write days. I don’t know what to say. What to write. I don’t even know what I think. Except I miss you. So much. So, so much.

I couldn’t read anymore. I leaned my head back and tried to breathe through the tears. He’d suffered so much, my poor Caden.
 

“Enough. For now,” I said.
 

Lucy nodded and put the letters away. She patted me on the shoulder. “You’ll walk out of here on your own two feet, Ever. I know it. Won’t be long.”

I hoped so.
 

For my sake, but most of all, for Cade.

questions without answers

I had a new goal. Regain enough mobility and fine motor control to read the letters by myself. I wasn’t sure how long I’d have to stay here in the nursing home, but I knew I’d need to be able to do things on my own when I did finally go home. Caden shouldn’t have to babysit me, take care of me like I was an invalid. So, to that end, I worked harder than ever. Pushed myself harder and harder, longer and longer, until I was crying with pain and exhaustion. I mastered the tennis ball. I could hold it in my fist and not let go. The next goal was to isolate my fingers, touch the tennis ball with each finger. Just touch it. We take things for granted in life. Big things, like loved ones and kisses and the ability to hug. And little things, like being able to extend your index finger by itself.
 

Days passed. Turned to weeks.
 

Tests revealed, according to my team of doctors led by Dr. Overton, that my brain patterns were completely normal. It was kind of miraculous, they said. There was no lasting damage to my brain. I’d suffered a minor stroke apparently, which was common in cases like mine. Many brain injuries that resulted in a coma would see the patient left paralyzed on one side from the stroke. I’d come through mostly fine. The right side of my mouth drooped a tiny bit, but it was barely noticeable. My right hand was slightly weaker than my right, and it was a harder process to get my right hand to do what I wanted, but I would regain use of it in time, the doctors said. I was a very lucky woman, they said.
 

Caden continued to come see me every day, staying as long as he could. He’d kiss me hello and goodbye, but once again they were chaste, empty kisses. He was holding back. Holding out. As if he didn’t want me anymore. I had to remind myself that he’d been through hell, and I had to tell myself that things would go back to normal eventually. He loved me. He wanted me. He was just…confused. And lost. Maybe he didn’t want to push me.