No—she wouldn’t contact Ren, not yet. But she took a chance and texted someone who knew her. The irony of that, when she was supposedly surrounded by family, burned.

  She texted Raven.

  Are you around?

  Yes. Hi! How is your trip?

  Dani grimaced. How much should she say? How much could she really explain in words, let alone in the limited avenue of a text message? Hard. Family stuff.

  I’m sorry Anything I can do?

  Have time for game? I could do with a good challenge.

  LOL Odd therapy, but I get it. I’ve got a little bit of time.

  Dani didn’t want to disconnect so soon. Wait, before we get to that. How are you doing?

  I’m mostly okay.

  Mostly?

  Raven replied, Trying to sort some things out. About…This sounds crazy, what I want.

  Oh I don’t think it’s crazy. Me too.

  Yeah?

  Dani typed quickly, Yeah. Is this about your girlfriend?

  I don’t think that word applies.

  How come?

  That’s the question. I’m not sure what that means

  If you can’t decide, maybe it’s a no. Dani sighed. Easier to give advice than take it.

  I’m not used to not knowing.

  Ha. You’re lucky

  Hey—you okay?

  Not so much—but glad you’re here.

  Me too, Raven answered. You still up for a challenge?

  Dani laughed. You know it.

  The game did take her mind off things for an intense twenty minutes, and when they’d finished—her win this time—she texted, Thanks. I needed that.

  I hope things go well with your family.

  Thanks. And hey…maybe you should just talk it out with your friend.

  I want to know what to say first.

  LOL you could probably start with hello.

  Raven signed off with a thumbs-up, and Dani stretched out on the bed, her phone cradled against her chest, and closed her eyes. There wouldn’t be any more sleep today. She was due to go to the hospital with the rest of her family as soon as the ICU hours began.

  Her phone vibrated, and she raised it up to check the screen.

  Ren.

  She sat up, the phone gripped in both hands, as if that could somehow bring Ren closer.

  Zoey told me you were away. Wanted to say hi Hope everything is okay.

  Dani sucked in a breath and quickly texted, Hi. My father had a stroke. Things are iffy.

  Oh So sorry!

  Thanks sorry I left in a rush

  No—that’s…wait

  Dani stared at the screen.

  ER paging. Text me sometime?

  Dani expelled a relieved breath. Sometime meant one more time, at least. For sure

  Then Ren was gone. The brief contact left Dani aching for more. For so many things.

  Chapter Nineteen

  West Mt. Airy, several days later

  Dani dozed in the back seat of the Uber, only vaguely aware of time passing in the unnatural coolness of the air-conditioned interior. She hadn’t slept much on the plane, or much of any time at all while she’d been home, and despite being used to working long hours on not much sleep, she’d finally surrendered once the trip was over. She drifted on the edge of total slumber.

  “The pink one in the middle of the block, lady?” the Uber driver asked, a pleasant guy who had mercifully not talked to her on the forty-five-minute ride from the airport.

  “Yeah, but that’s salmon not pink,” she muttered.

  “Like the fish?”

  Rubbing her face, she said, “Yeah. Like the fish.”

  “You’re home then.” He sounded happy as he pulled to a stop, and Dani guessed she was too.

  Home. Yeah, this was home, the place where she belonged. Where she knew who she was and so did the people who mattered. Wearily, she pushed open the door and glanced up at the house she shared with her friends. She froze, half out of the big black SUV. She knew she wasn’t asleep, so she couldn’t be dreaming, but she still had trouble grasping the reality.

  Ren slowly rose from where she’d been sitting on the top step and smiled.

  Dani came instantly awake, as if she’d just answered a stat page in the middle of the night. Her brain kicked in and her body followed. She swung around to the rear of the vehicle and grabbed her duffel before the driver’d even gotten it out of the trunk.

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot,” she said and was halfway up the sidewalk before he’d closed the trunk. Ren was real, and she was waiting. Dani stopped at the bottom of the steps and stared up at her, drinking her in, imprinting every detail. Ren looked fantastic. Cream-colored shorts that came to midthigh, bare legs ending in strappy sandals, and a tank top that reminded Dani of mint ice cream. The color, not the taste. Her dark hair was a little windblown and sexy as hell.

  “You’re here,” Dani said. A brilliant understatement but the best she could manage when her throat was so dry and mostly blocked by her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest.

  Ren smiled. “You’re here too. I hope you don’t mind me showing up unannounc—”

  “Are you kidding?” Dani bounded up the stairs and tossed her duffel onto the porch. She barely resisted throwing her arms around Ren and pulling her close. It just felt so damn good to see her, she ached to touch her, but she couldn’t breach the few inches of distance between them uninvited. Even when every superheated atom in her body vibrated on the brink of explosion.

  “Zoey told me when you were coming home.” Ren looked down for a second and then met Dani’s eyes. “I really wanted to see you.”

  “Ren,” Dani murmured. “I’m so fucking glad you’re here.”

  Ren hurried on, “I know you’re probably tired, so I won’t stay, but—”

  “Are you kidding?” Dani grabbed her hand at last, to hell with caution. “No way are you going anywhere.”

  Ren’s hand closed around hers. “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m more than sure. You’re exactly the person—the only person—I want to see right now.”

  “How are you?” Ren said softly.

  “Oh man,” Dani said with a sigh. “Long story. Let’s sit down. No, wait. I need a beer for this. God, I hope there’s a beer. I know you don’t want one, but—”

  “No, I’ll try one. I have to get used to the grown-up drinks.”

  Dani grinned and almost kissed her then. “That’s what I like. An adventurous woman.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s me.” All the same, Ren flushed as if she liked the idea.

  “Wait right here.” Dani pointed to a spot on the top step. “Right here. Promise. I’ll only be a minute.”

  Ren nodded. “I won’t go anywhere.”

  Dani grabbed her duffel and hurried to the door, glancing back once over her shoulder just to be sure. Ren was watching her, a look on her face that mirrored everything Dani was feeling. Happy, anxious, excited. Yeah, she needed to hurry.

  “Zoey?” she called as she charged down the hall toward the kitchen. No answer. Seven o’clock at night, Zoey might be at the hospital, or with Dec. But right now, the house was empty. She grabbed two beers, thanking all the powers that be that half a six-pack of Heineken sat on the top shelf. Beers in hand, she sprinted back to the porch. Half fearing Ren would be gone.

  She wasn’t.

  Sitting on the top step, Ren leaned back on her arms with her legs stretched out in front of her. She was gorgeous, and Dani was having a little trouble concentrating. “Um, I forgot a glass for you.”

  Ren swiveled to see her. Her gaze moved slowly from the cans in Dani’s hands up her body to her face. “I can drink out of the can. It’s just like soda.”

  “Uh-huh, yup. Just like.” Dani handed her a can and sat beside her, their thighs not quite touching, and sipped her beer. “I’m really glad you’re here. Did I say that yet?”

  “You did. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing—”

  “It was. Just the right thing.”

  “I just couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “I thought about you—all the time.”

  “Me too.” Ren tried the beer, wrinkled her nose a little, and took another sip. “I think I can get used to it when I stop expecting it to taste like anything I recognize.”

  “Give it time.”

  “So how are you,” Ren said, watching Dani with that look in her eyes that made Dani feel as if Ren was seeing something deep inside her. Her instinct was to say fine, but she wasn’t. She wanted to talk, and she needed to talk, and she wanted Ren to be the one to hear her. Right now she only wanted Ren.

  “My father’s still in the intensive care unit,” Dani said, “but out of immediate danger. He had a middle cerebral bleed, left side, and he’s got some major deficits.” She didn’t have to explain the details to Ren, who would know how debilitating something like that was, and how long the recovery, if the recovery ever happened. She blew out a breath. “The family is in shock. He’s never been sick. My mother’s still in denial, I think. The neurologists speculate this may be partly due to a fall he took six months ago when he was running. He tripped and hit his head on the curb. No one thought much of it at the time. Such a stupid thing.”

  Ren took her hand. “I’m sorry. That has to be even harder when it’s so unexpected.” She hesitated. “How did things go with your family?”

  Dani shook her head. “The same—and completely different, at least for me. I guess that sounds pretty strange, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” Ren said simply.

  Grateful for that unspoken encouragement, Dani took a deep breath. “I told you how my family, my mother especially, has always been after me to come to my senses and give up medicine for pure science.”

  “I remember.” Ren slid her fingers through Dani’s.

  Dani rested their joined hands on her thigh, and Ren moved a little closer until their shoulders touched. The contact strengthened her as much as it soothed her. “I’ve never realized how much it made me feel like an outsider, knowing that my whole family disapproved of what I was doing and secretly thought I’d let them down somehow. I hate that it took something like my father practically dying, and almost certainly having his entire life altered forever, for them to see some value in what I do.”

  “You interpreted for them at the hospital,” Ren said.

  Dani nodded. “After I got past needing my mother’s approval or permission, I corralled my father’s doctors, and we had a family conference. I went over everything with them, looked at the scans, talked to them about potential treatment, rehab, all of that. My whole family was there.”

  “Your helping them to understand your father’s situation must have been such a relief for them.” She squeezed Dani’s hand. “And a comfort.”

  Dani swallowed around the tightness in her throat. “It was, I think. I guess that’s how people in my family deal with fear. They can’t conquer it until they understand what’s happening.”

  Ren’s gaze met hers, warm and tender. “You too.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Did it help, knowing that your family finally understood what you do? Seeing how good you are at it.”

  Dani laughed. “I don’t know if they got that out of it, but I could see something in my mother’s eyes for the first time. Maybe not exactly pride, but appreciation.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “So am I,” Dani said. “But you know what I’m really glad about?”

  “What?”

  “I’m okay now with them not getting it. They’re never going to completely accept my choices, but there’s nothing I can do to change that. But I know I’m doing the only thing I can do. This is what I want.” Dani tipped her head to Ren’s and sighed. “This right here.”

  She didn’t even try to pretend she was talking about surgery anymore.

  “Dani,” Ren said gently, “you need to go to bed and get some sleep. And you need to get another day off.”

  Dani shook her head. “I don’t think that will work, not on a Friday before a holiday weekend. Besides, I’m okay.” She grinned. “Seeing you made me forget all about being tired.”

  “Really,” Ren said, her tone playful. “I definitely should’ve waited to come over, then.”

  “Oh no. No way.”

  “I should go, though, because you really do—”

  “I’ll tell you what. You fill me in on everything I’ve missed, and then maybe I’ll consider it. Otherwise, I’ll have to call Zoey, and then I’ll never get to bed.”

  Ren studied her, her eyes narrowing. “Only if you agree to go right to bed after.”

  Dani rose and tugged Ren toward the door. “I need a minute to shower, and then we can talk. And I promise when we’re done, I’ll go to bed.”

  “Okay,” Ren said as Dani held the door for her. “But just a little while.”

  “Deal. Come upstairs.”

  Before Ren could argue, Dani led her upstairs to her room and pushed the door open. Thankfully, she’d left it semi-neat, and the bed was mostly made. “You can sit anywhere—I’ll be right back.”

  She was in and out of the shower in under sixty, toweled off, and pulled on a cutoff sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of baggy workout shorts in another minute. She hurried back to the bedroom and stopped in the doorway, watching as Ren studied her gaming console, the fingers of one hand lightly skimming over the joystick and keyboard in the kind of unconscious movements that only a gamer would make.

  Ren heard her and looked over her shoulder. “This is a really nice setup.”

  “You play?” Dani asked softly.

  “When I can, you know how it is. A little bit here or there. Not as much as I used to.” Ren shrugged. “How about you?”

  “Every now and then, whenever I can fit in a quick game,” Dani said. “Helps to get away from it all for a while.”

  “For sure.”

  For sure.

  Zoey’s voice echoed in her mind. What were you and Ren texting about?

  Her and Ren. Only it hadn’t been Ren she’d been texting. It had been Raven. Raven, who was always around at the same strange, odd hours she was—dead of night, early morning, bits and pieces in the middle of the day. Raven, the gamer who lived somewhere close. Raven, who’d blown off work for a dinner with someone new. Raven, who had just met a woman, unexpectedly, a woman who might be her girlfriend—only Raven wasn’t sure how she felt about her. Raven—who she’d been talking to about, hell, everything. What the hell had she told her?

  “You know what you were saying, about not being sure what you wanted,” Dani said softly.

  Ren’s brows furrowed. “When?”

  “The other morning—when we texted.”

  “I didn’t say that, Dani,” Ren said carefully.

  “No, but Raven did.”

  Ren went completely still.

  Chapter Twenty

  Dani couldn’t read anything from Ren’s expression. For a few seconds she wondered if she was wrong. She’d made a few leaps in deduction, but everything fit so perfectly, like puzzle pieces that you could never seem to find, and then, after picking up one piece, a dozen fell into place. Looking back, she could see how their paths had crossed and recrossed for months, but each encounter had been defined by her misunderstanding of the reality. Funny, now that she knew, she had no trouble believing Ren and Raven were one and the same.

  “How long have you known?” Ren said, her expression still a cipher.

  “About a minute. Does that matter?”

  “Oh, I think so,” Ren said, an undertone of suspicion making Dani’s spine stiffen. “From the minute we met, I’ve told you every single thing I’ve felt about what was happening. I revealed every single uncertainty and…other things, only I didn’t know I was telling the person I was having those feelings about.”

  “That street runs both ways,” Dani said reasonably, but she understood Ren’s reaction. People—she—said things to friends she might not say to someone else, especially when those things were about that person. But they couldn’t undo what they’d said, either of them. “And besides, you told Axe.”

  Ren waved a hand. “I don’t think it’s the time for semantics.”

  “Neither do I,” Dani said, surprising herself at the temper in her tone. She hadn’t realized she was angry, and she wasn’t entirely certain why she was. “You haven’t actually told me very much at all. But you told someone else, a stranger.”

  Ren leaned back against Dani’s gaming table, one hand resting on the surface, a few inches from her main console. “That’s not exactly the case, is it? Raven and Axe are not strangers.”

  “They’re not real,” Dani said, even as she inwardly protested that was not true.

  “Of course they’re real,” Ren said with maddening calmness. “We’re real, and they’re part of us.”

  “You trusted her more than me.”

  Ren smiled, and the light returned to her eyes. “Dani, I trusted Axe because she is you. I might not have known that, but I know Axe is funny and kind and a good listener. And she looks at both sides of an issue. She’s fair. And…she likes me. She never once found anything I said or thought strange.”

  “You feel that way about me?” Dani asked softly.

  “Of course. I haven’t told Axe anything that I haven’t told you.”

  Dani let out a long breath. “I can’t believe I’m jealous of…myself.”

  Ren laughed and looked pleased. “You’re jealous?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24