The clock hanging on the wall caught his eye. It was just before six; the sun had barely come up. Where could she be?
Rifle whined. Callie had shut her dog in the mudroom. Levi didn’t know why she’d done that. She generally let him wander throughout the house.
Maybe she was afraid the dog would disturb him....
“What’s going on, boy? Where’s your pretty mistress?” he asked as he let Rifle out.
The dog looked up at him as if he had the same question.
Levi supposed Callie could be out with her camera, taking pictures. He was sure the anthill that had intrigued her so much before the fire had been destroyed. But if she was happy with an anthill, there were a lot of other bits of nature she could photograph. Maybe she’d found a caterpillar, a butterfly, a particular flower or another spider.
He was about to go outside and see when he spotted a note on the fridge. It looked as if it had been written with a shaky hand—he guessed she’d been in a hurry—but he could read the message.
“Had to run out. Will probably be late.”
Levi scratched his head. What started before six?
For the first time in a long while, he wished he had a cell phone. He wanted to call the photography studio. He could only guess that Tina was behind and Callie had gone in to help her get ready for the day.
He wished he’d been able to see Callie before she left. Last night had ended far too soon. He felt as if he’d let her down.
* * *
Baxter had taken Callie to the hospital that was part of the transplant clinic. He sat beside her bed, looking overwrought and reading a magazine he’d grabbed from the waiting room, which was pretty much how he’d passed the entire morning. She’d thrown up into a bowl the whole time they’d been on the road. Seeing her, hearing her, had upset him so badly he’d driven with tears streaming down his cheeks.
Now he just seemed irritable. And tired. His thick, curly hair was smashed down on one side, since her call had dragged him out of bed in the middle of the night and scared him enough that he threw on his clothes without taking time for anything else.
She didn’t think she’d ever seen him when he wasn’t well-groomed.
Of course, he’d never seen her like this, either.
“You can leave, you know. If you have to go to work,” she said, biting her bottom lip as she studied him.
He closed the magazine. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She smoothed her bedding with one hand. “Why? I can handle this on my own. I’ve done it before.” Sort of. She’d been to the clinic for many, many tests, but she’d never been admitted via the emergency room. The fact that she’d had to do it today wasn’t a good sign.
“The point is...you don’t need to handle it on your own,” he said. “You have people who love you!”
True. But there was someone new in her life, and she was positive she’d lose him the instant he found out about her disease. She was going to lose him soon enough as it was. Why couldn’t she put off the Big Revelation just a little longer? That wasn’t asking too much, was it? If she had to die, she was at least going to do everything possible to enjoy the intense interest, desire and euphoria Levi created—without letting the reality of her situation affect him.
“I’m aware of that,” she said.
“Then why won’t you let them support you?”
She couldn’t tell him why. It would only lead to an argument. He’d say that any man who’d walk out on her while she was going through something like this wasn’t worth her time in the first place. But that wasn’t a fair assessment. He’d be speaking as someone who’d grown up with her, not someone who’d just entered her life. Levi had no reason to involve himself in the sadness of watching her die. She wouldn’t blame him if he took off as soon as he heard. There were so many other women out there he could choose from. And he’d feel whole enough to love again soon. He was beginning to heal, to get beyond what he’d suffered in Afghanistan. She could sense it.
“I have my reasons.”
“Yeah, well, they aren’t valid reasons.” Baxter jiggled his knee while they waited for her doctor to return with the results of her latest tests. Certain enzymes helped the liver perform its many functions. But when a liver became damaged, these enzymes leaked into the blood and could be picked up on a blood test, giving an indication of just how damaged her liver was. Her doctor had already started her on beta-blockers to control the bleeding from her esophagus.
“I slept with him last night,” she announced.
At this, Baxter dropped his magazine. “You did?”
She gave him a shy smile.
“What was it like?”
She groped for the best way to explain it to him. “Like...like you’d feel if you were with Noah.”
“That good, huh?”
“It was exactly what I wanted.” She would’ve clarified that it wasn’t because the sex itself was so great. There’d just been that one brief interlude and then he’d slept so deeply he hadn’t awakened for more as he’d planned. Technically, she’d had greater physical pleasure with Kyle. But that didn’t matter. Bad sex with Levi was better than good sex with anyone else. She just couldn’t say so, not without revealing information she was too protective of Levi to share.
Baxter sighed and rubbed his face. “Of all the times to fall in love, Callie.”
Remembering the intoxication she felt in Levi’s arms, she leaned her head back on the bed. “Falling in love now beats never falling in love at all.”
Some people had to take what they could get....
* * *
Where was she?
Levi had washed and dried his clothes, fixed the shower curtain rod again, made up the bed and filled Rifle’s food and water bowls. He’d also answered the door to Godfrey, who’d removed his stitches. Then he’d weeded and watered the garden and stabilized the empty chicken coop that was listing to one side. He would’ve started tearing down the barn after that, but the insurance adjuster hadn’t yet been by to take a look. So he spent the rest of his afternoon repairing a broken fence at the back of the property. He kept thinking Callie would pull up any minute, but when he finished working after six, she still wasn’t home.
Sticky with sweat after so much physical exertion, he paused and squinted toward the road. Today he’d gazed in that direction many times but saw no sign of a car turning in. A car with Callie inside it...