“I got the kids to bed,” she said with a wry smile.
I huffed a tiny breath of a laugh. “They had a big day.”
Her eyes trailed over me from head to toe, and I felt every inch of it.
But then she slipped her hand out of mine, and my stomach re-knotted itself.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, balling my hand to keep from reaching after her.
She let out a sad sound, almost like a laugh but definitely not one, and looked away. “It’ll keep,” she replied to the window. “Do you need anything else tonight?”
Yes.
Your hand in mine.
Your eyes on me.
“No,” I said instead, the sinking feeling that I’d wrecked her day making me feel sick again.
She nodded and looked at me briefly, then away again.
I hated it.
Instead of leaving like I expected she would, she asked, “Did you take your meds?”
I studied her profile even though it hurt to look at her while she was pointedly not looking back. “I will.”
Something in my battered gut told me I’d messed up, but my brain was too foggy to see it clearly.
Ithadbeen a long damn day. Which was what I would blame for my next question.
“A kiss goodnight?”
Her head jerked toward me, her eyes narrowed, but after only a few seconds of looking at me, they softened.
I half-heartedly groped beside me for an extra pillow I knew wasn’t there, wanting something to hug to myself. To cover my… everything.
I regretted the question on every level. I must’ve looked like hell. Settling on crossing my arms in front of me, I wasabout to apologize when Ireland’s warm hand landed on my forearm.
Then she was leaning toward me, and my gaze went haywire, moving from her blue eyes to her lips, her cheekbones, then back to her lips. When she was close enough that I could count her eyelashes, she brushed the corner of my mouth with hers.
A whisper of a touch.
“Get some rest,” she whispered in my ear before she pulled back, leaving only the ghost of her touch behind.
She pulled something out of her pocket, set it carefully on the bedside table, and then left without another word, keeping the door slightly ajar.
Knocking my head back against the headboard, I touched the corner of my lips.
If it weren’t for the pain and soreness in my body, I’d think it’d all been a hallucination.
Once the faint sounds of her getting ready for bed tapered away, sounds I had memorized after so many nights, I reached over to the nightstand to grab my water bottle and OTC pain meds, but then I saw what she’d left.
A new tube of lip balm, still in the wrapper.
Oh, Lordy.
I touched my lips again.
