Ellery encountered her father at the hospital when she was done giving blood. They stood far apart in the hallway, watching each other warily, and she thought about the times she used to ride around on his shoulders, ten feet tall, or how she used to go out with him on delivery in his truck, the two of them cranking the radio and singing John Cougar Mellencamp at the top of their lungs, how sometimes love don’t feel like it should. Her memories, even the good ones, hurt too much now because they had not been good enough for him. He looked older, his hair streaked with gray, his belly hanging over his belt like a sack of sunflower seeds.
“Thank you for doing this,” he said at last, his voice full of emotion, his eyes wet. “Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to me.” He reached for her with both hands, only to fall back when Ellery stepped out of his reach.
“Actually, I do.” She’d died a little when Daniel was sick and she was found not to be a match for him. The results had only reinforced her hatred for her useless body, but Danny hadn’t held it against her. He’d patted her as she’d cried. It had been a long time after that before she could look him in the eyes again.
“Yeah, well, thank you,” her father said again.
“I’m not here for you. I’m here for her.”
He nodded vigorously, his palms raised. “I get that. You won’t be sorry. Ashley’s a great kid.”
“I want to meet her.”
Surprise colored his features, then uncertainty. “Uh, sure, when she’s better, yeah. Definitely.”
“No, I want to meet her now.” Her heart thundered in her chest. She hadn’t known until she said the words that they were true.
Her father looked up and down the corridor at the doctors and nurses, as if searching for a way out. “I don’t think we can. I mean, she’s not allowed visitors.”
“You can see her, right?”
“Yeah, her mom and me, but no one else. And we’ve got to be gowned up and everything. She’s got no immune system right now. Even the sniffles could kill her.”
“I’m perfectly healthy. I’ll wear whatever protection is necessary. I just want to meet her.”
Ellery had all the power in this conversation, and her father knew it. She could still back out. He scratched his head, stalling for time. “Tell you what. I’ll talk to the doctors. See what they say.”
“We can talk to them together,” she said, and her father spun on his heel in a circle.
“Aw, hell. Look, Abby—I mean Ellery. The thing is, we haven’t told her about you yet. Not the whole story. She only knows that we found a donor. I just don’t think she could handle the details right now, you know? She’s very sick.”
“Ah, I see. You haven’t explained to your new daughter how you ran off and left your old one.”
He flinched as if slapped. “Yeah,” he agreed with a short nod. “That.”
They stood in silence as Ellery summoned the last bit of pity she could find for him. “I won’t tell her,” she said finally. “Not until she’s better.” She didn’t want to dump all her hurt and confusion on some fifteen-year-old kid who was fighting for her life.
“Oh, thanks,” John said with obvious relief. “That’d be great. Thank you.”
They spoke with the doctors, who reluctantly agreed to let Ellery have a short visit with Ashley Hathaway. Ellery first had to put on a gown, a mask, gloves, and a hair protector. When she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, she saw only her eyes. They were the same gray-blue color she found on the bald, pale girl lying in room 302.
“Hi,” Ashley said softly when the automatic door slid open and Ellery entered. “You must be new here. I know because I’ve been here so long that I know everyone and you don’t look familiar.” Ashley was so thin that her veins showed through her skin, giving her a faintly blue tint.
Ellery introduced herself but hovered awkwardly near the door. “I’m not a doctor or a nurse,” she said. “I—I just wanted to meet you.”
“Yeah? Get a good look in now because I’m going home soon.” The girl couldn’t contain her grin, and it was contagious, taking up her whole face. Ellery smiled behind her mask.
“Good for you.”
“Well, not right away,” Ashley corrected. “The transplant has to take hold first. But they found a donor, a hundred-percent match!”
A hot flush went through Ellery, and she was glad now for the cover of her disguise. “That’s great,” she said stiffly. “I’m glad.” She had no idea what she’d expected to find here.
“If you’re not a doctor or a nurse, what are you?” Ashley asked.
“I’m a cop.” Finally, at last. Again. Back in Boston, they had voted to reinstate her position. In fact, the chief now wanted to send her to detective school as part of some program promoting female officers. Ellery was still deciding on that part, as she’d had enough of being singled out.
“A cop, wow. That’s pretty cool. You aren’t here to bust me, are you?” Ashley gave her a sly grin. “I swear my four-twenty prescription is medicinal.”
“No.” Ellery hesitated. “I had a brother named Daniel. He had the same kind of cancer you have. It was a long time ago.”
“Oh.” Ashley’s face turned serious, old beyond her years. She smoothed out the sheet by her hip. “He didn’t make it, huh.”
“No, we couldn’t find him a match.” Ellery’s throat tightened even now at the memory.
“I’m so sorry. You must miss him a lot. I always wished I could have a brother or a sister, but Mom and Dad have only me.” She struggled to sit up against the pillows, her bald head blending in with the white cotton. “What was he like, your brother?”
Ellery turned around and looked at the door. “I think I’m supposed to be going now.”
“No, stay.” Her voice was thin and pleading. “Tell me. What was he like?”
Ellery hadn’t talked much about Daniel in years. Her heart pounded at the thought of saying his name out loud, at letting him be real again, if only for a few minutes. She glanced at the door again, fighting the urge to flee. She remembered how useless she’d been to Daniel in his final days when he’d called out to her from the other bed, but she couldn’t make herself speak an answer, not with Coben’s marks fresh on her body: Come on, Abby. Talk to me. Anything! Ellery let out a slow breath, making her decision. She found a rolling chair and pulled it over next to the bed. “His name was Daniel,” she began, feeling her face break into a smile behind the medical mask. “He could draw these amazing pictures like you wouldn’t believe. It was like he could see into another world.”
Reed had found them another hotel suite, not quite as grand as the one in Las Vegas but just as comfortable and only a few blocks from the hospital. Ellery had her bedroom on one side and he had his on the other. He kept his polite distance, giving her all the space she desired, and she paced her bedroom suite alone. She felt restless, sparky somehow, like a live wire twisting on the ground. Soon she would have to go back to the hospital, where they would put her to sleep while they harvested part of her body. When she thought about the blackness or the coming pain for too long, her brain told her to run: Go. Go now.
She couldn’t run, not if she was to help Ashley, and the cold April rain outside meant she couldn’t even risk a jog. She went as far as she could, to Reed’s room. She knocked softly on his door, just in case he was napping, but he called out immediately, “Come in!”
She found him lying on top of the made-up bed, barefoot but fully dressed in jeans and a chestnut-colored sweater. He had his professor glasses on and some sort of book facedown on his chest. “I thought you might be resting,” she said.
“I’ve done enough of that,” he said as he set the book aside. “How are you? How was the hospital?”
“Fine. It went fine.” She didn’t really want to talk about it. Outside, rain slashed against the windows, the sky an angry gray, but Reed’s room had buttery light and a cozy comforter on the bed. She took the side opposite him, sitting cross-legged, and glanced at the book he’d been reading. Living and Loving After Sexual Assault. Her face flushed hard, but he saw her notice the title, so she couldn’t pretend otherwise. She looked down at her lap for a long time. “Is that about me?” she asked finally, feeling him watching her.
“No,” he said, his voice rich with affection. “There’s no manual for you. Believe me, I’ve looked.”
“That’s what scares you, isn’t it? I might not be fixable.” For her, it was the opposite: she’d accepted years ago that she couldn’t change, that parts of normal life would never be for her. Reed made her afraid to hope it could be otherwise.
“Maybe a little.”
She lay down next to him so she mirrored his body. “What does the book say? Am I crazy?”
“No,” he said firmly, and she looked at him with surprise. He reached up to stroke her cheek with his thumb. “You’re entirely normal for someone who’s been through what you have. It’s your circumstances that are crazy.” He smiled at her, his gaze tender.
She took his hand in hers to study it. He was warm and slightly hairy. Her skin tingled when she rubbed their fingertips together, and she didn’t want to stop. Reed let her hold his hand as he shifted to lie on his side facing her. She moved experimentally closer, testing the boundary, dipping into his personal space. She could feel him breathing.
“Tell me,” he said after a while.
“Tell you what?”
“Whatever it is you think I should know.”
She was quiet for a long time, weighing this. She watched their joined hands so she didn’t have to look him in the eyes. Coben had killed sixteen girls before he got to her, and she felt the weight of them in ways that were difficult to verbalize. People who heard the story expected her to be perpetually astonished at her good fortune—Don’t you feel lucky? What she felt was pressure. She was supposed to live her best life, to be everyone’s happy ending, and yet sometimes she couldn’t even tolerate being inside her own skin. “Before, when I went to bed with guys,” she said at last, “I would pretend it wasn’t happening. I would go somewhere in my head and think about other things so I could tolerate them touching me. I was glad when it was over.” She paused. “That’s why I didn’t do it very often.”
She checked with him to see how he was taking this, whether he would be confused or appalled, but he regarded her with his full attention, his gaze clear and calm. “That sounds … difficult,” he murmured at length.
“It wasn’t,” she said, pulling back with a trace of impatience. “It wasn’t anything. It was—a lack of feeling, a void. I assumed that’s just how it would always be.”
“Ah. But now?” He stretched a hand toward her body and she looked down at his fingers. She imagined them touching her in intimate places and her mouth went dry.
“You make me want to try to be different.”
“Funny. I say the same thing about you.”
“You have to understand,” she said, still looking at his hand. “I don’t know how long it would last. How much I could take before I had to close the door again.” She’d run enough miles over the years to know she could never outrun Coben.
“Ellery…” He touched the edge of her T-shirt with one finger, a tiny caress that made her swallow hard. “I hope you know you don’t have to do anything with me. You owe me nothing, certainly not this.”
“It’s not about you,” she said swiftly. She shut her mouth and screwed her eyes shut. “I mean, not this part of it. I just meant—If it feels like I’m being forced to be here, that’s not wrong.” She swallowed again and made herself look him in the eyes. “It’s just I’m the one doing the forcing.”
He frowned, concerned. “Then maybe we should wait.”
“I have waited. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t want to wait anymore.” She reached and took his hand again. She put his palm to her chest and pressed it down so he could feel her racing heart. She had told him the truth before, that she didn’t know what she liked in bed, but for the first time in her life, she wanted to find out.
“Far be it from me, then, to keep a lady waiting,” he said as he leaned down. She kept her eyes closed as the air between them grew warm and thick. He shifted his whole body slightly, until their lips were almost touching. She surged forward and closed the last bit of distance and then rejoiced at the contact.
Reed stroked her face while making love to her mouth, teasing her gently with his tongue in the same slow rhythm of his thumb against her cheek. She made an incoherent sound of pleasure and he backed off, just a bit. “You, um … I…”
“Yes,” she whispered as she traced his features in the gray light.
He rested his head on hers as she reached around to caress his neck, her fingers reveling in the soft little hairs there. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said, his voice low and inviting against her ear. “Anything I do to you, you can do to me. And you can call it off at any time.”
She grinned and nipped his chin. “Can I go first?”
“I insist on it.”
He lay back and let her take the lead, returning her heated kisses, helping her pull the shirttail from the waist of his jeans so that her hand could slide underneath to his bare skin. He felt hot and sleek, his stomach lean and toned. She let her fingers play over his ribs and up until she met the scars from where Amy had shot him and the resulting surgery. She pulled her mouth from his and regarded him with concern. “Is this okay? I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re not hurting me. It’s okay.” He put his hand on hers, his sweater and T-shirt trapped between them, and pressed gently until her palm covered his heart, the way she had done with his hand earlier. They watched each other as she tentatively explored his scars with her fingertips, mapping each ridge and smooth, warm valley. How close they’d come to almost missing this. Gradually, her wonderment gave way to a different sort of exploration. She rubbed the pad of her index finger over his nipple and felt it tighten under her touch. Reed sucked in a sharp breath as she dragged her nail lightly over him. Their eyes met and his had gone dark as night. “Oh,” he said, like he’d just had some brilliant insight into a case, “it’s going to be so good.”
When it was his hand under her shirt, she had to remind her body to relax, that she did want to feel his fingers on her stomach, on her breasts, and then, later, a sweet slide down into her jeans. It took effort to quiet her instincts and tolerate another person this close, but the payoff was a delicious ache that grew and grew to the point where she didn’t just want him inside her body; she needed him there. Only at the end, when her muscles drew taut and her breath came panting like a long-distance runner’s, did she escape to the bright white place in her head where nothing could reach her. She had spent her life refusing to shatter, no matter what the price or reward.
She curled, still shaking, on one edge of the mattress. Reed, deliciously naked, stretched his hand across the mattress toward her, not quite touching. “All right?”
“Yes. I—I liked that part.” She finally understood why people did stupid stuff for this.
A rich smile curved his mouth. “Which part? I may need to make notes.”
“The kissing part, and then everything after.” It turned out she did know what she liked in bed—him. She cuddled a little closer, suddenly cold.
He slipped an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “What a coincidence. That was my favorite part, too.”
“But I may need to collect more data,” she cautioned against his chest. “That was only one time.” Her hand began an exploratory journey down between them.
Reed hissed in his breath and his grip tightened around her. “I was wrong before,” he said. “You might just kill me yet.”
She grinned with delight because she was finally in on the joke. “Yeah,” she said before she kissed him. “But what a way to go.”