Page 3 of Just One Night Together
Maybe that was why he was confessing.
“You’re still not telling me,” Mrs. Perez said, humor in her tone. Haley smiled at the sound. Too often, she heard the pain in the voices of patients like this one.
The son didn’t respond for a moment. He lifted the sheet and began to work on his mother’s legs. He caressed from the ankle upward, his hands in a V, circling slowly across the flesh. His mom sighed.
Haley bit her lip. The sight of those large tanned hands on the older woman’s slender and pale leg, the tenderness in his touch, the comfort he was giving, was enough to make her tears rise. Kindness was a little too rare in the world, in Haley’s view.
“It’s hard to know where to start,” he murmured finally.
“At the beginning,” his mother suggested, and he chuckled.
“You wanted grandchildren,” he said. “I think that was the beginning.”
“A child is the beginning,” she whispered. “We think it’s the culmination of love, the result, but the conception is really the beginning.”
The son didn’t answer. That his ring finger was bare told Haley that he might be single. Or divorced and single again. Either way, the direction of the conversation and his silence suggested that he was alone and that he didn’t have kids.
She knew she should leave.
She knew she had no right to listen.
But she told herself that she was observing his technique and learning.
He was good. The monitors showed the therapeutic effect of his touch. Mrs. Perez was almost asleep and at ease. Her pulse had slowed even more, and her charts showed that she asked for fewer painkillers on Saturdays. It was amazing.
“You kept asking me about women, about marriage, about babies,” the son continued, a tinge of exasperation in his tone. He eased the sheet aside and worked on her thighs, his movements slow and reverent. “And then one day, you asked if I was gay.” He leaned a little more into the massage as he worked higher. “And I said yes.”
“I remember,” his mom said mildly.
“But I was lying,” he admitted, bending to drop a kiss on her shoulder. It was a tender gesture, one that made Haley’s tear threaten to break free. The love between mother and son was almost palpable. The heart monitor beeped steadily as his hands bracketed the back of his mother’s waist. “Breathe now, Mom. Breathe in when my hands are here, then out when I move them. In and out. In and out. Slowly. Push out the pain with each breath.”
Mrs. Perez did as she was told, and Haley found herself breathing the same rhythm. It would have been meditative, if she hadn’t been so fascinated by the patient’s son.
“I was lying because I didn’t want you to be disappointed anymore,” he continued in that velvety voice. “I didn’t want you to be waiting for something I wasn’t sure was ever going to happen.” He was silent for a long moment. “I wasn’t sure the right woman really was out there, and so I lied.”
“I know,” his mother said softly.
“You knew?” His hands froze for a moment, then he resumed his massage.
His mother laughed softly. “I knew, Damon. I always knew.”
Damon. His name was Damon.
His mom’s voice turned sleepy. “You always make it feel better,” she murmured as he worked down her arms to her fingertips. “What would I do without you?”
“You don’t have to do without me, Mom.”
“But you’ll have to do without me.”
He was startled, Haley saw. Not surprised, so he knew the truth, but he thought his mom didn’t. Haley could have told him that patients always understand their situation more clearly than their doctors and family realized. “Don’t think about it, Mom. Just relax.”
“But I do think about it. I think about you.”
“Mom!” Damon shoved a hand through his hair, and Haley caught a glimpse of his profile as he glanced at the monitors. Natasha’s pulse was increasing again, her agitation undoing all that he’d accomplished.
“I don’t want you to be alone.”
“So, stay,” he said, his tone reasonable.
