by Noelle Adams
Maybe she would be rejected again, but she’d passed the point of caring. She only had two more months. She was going to do what she thought was right while she could.
So she walked barefoot through the hall of the apartment and stood in front of the door to the master bedroom. Her heart racing wildly, she tapped on it lightly.
“Yes?” Paul called out immediately. He obviously hadn’t been asleep.
She opened the door and stepped in. The lights were off, and the room was lit only by the flickering light of the television.
Paul had been stretched out on his bed, staring at the television screen. When he saw her, he sat up with a jerk. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She walked over to stand next to his bed. Swallowed hard. “I just…I didn’t want to be alone. Is it all right if I stay in here with you tonight?”
Paul stared at her. He wore what he always wore to bed—just a pair of soft pajama pants.
“Just to sleep,” she added, in case he’d misunderstood. She wasn't trying to jump him. She just wanted to share his bed.
She shook with anxiety and felt like this person couldn’t really be her. She couldn’t believe she’d just asked Paul Marino if she could sleep with him tonight.
“Of course,” he said, a little hoarsely. “Of course you can.”
With a thick exhale, Emily crawled into the king-sized bed beside him, feeling like she might collapse with relief. “Thank you,” she murmured, pulling the covers up over her and rolling onto her side to face him. She really wanted to snuggle up next to him, but she thought that might be pushing it, after what had happened between them earlier.
Paul rolled onto his side to face her too. He reached out to stroke a few strands of hair off her face. His touch wasn’t intense and hungry now. Just gentle. “Are you all right, Emily?”
She nodded and smiled at him. “I’m fine. I really am. I just felt kind of…lonely.” She didn’t say it, but she was pretty sure he’d been feeling lonely too. “Are you all right?”
“I am. I’m fine. It’s just been a really long day.” He smiled at her, almost poignantly, and then rolled over onto his back. He closed his eyes, as if he were relaxing at last.
Then he murmured one more thing, low words she barely heard, words that caused the tightness in her chest to release at last. “I’m glad you’re here.”
EIGHT
“You understand that we have no direct means of measuring the progress of the virus, since we don’t even know what it is,” Dr. Franklin said, looking at Emily gravely from across his large desk. “So all I can do is measure secondary effects and compare them to your previous tests.”
Paul felt tense and like his stomach was twisting, but he wasn’t exactly sure why. He and Emily were in Dr. Franklin’s office for an update on her prognosis, but it wasn’t likely anything said today could surprise them.
Emily shifted slightly in her chair. She was dressed more casually today than she’d been for most of the week, during which she’d been attending the trial hearings. Today, she wore a pair of well-worn jeans and a brown velvet jacket, and her hair was hanging down around her shoulders. Paul thought she looked beautiful but a little pale, and he knew she was as tense as he was about this visit.
She said, “Yes. I know that. Are things…progressing as you expected?”
Dr. Franklin leaned back in his chair and gave her a little smile. “It’s actually better than I originally expected. It’s definitely progressing, but not as quickly as I’d anticipated.”
Paul leaned forward. “So she has longer than you thought?”
“If it continues at the rate it has progressed for the last month, then, yes, I would guess she may have as long as three more months.” Dr. Franklin looked from Paul to Emily. “There are no guarantees, of course, but perhaps you have a little more time than I’d originally predicted.”
Paul turned his head and met Emily’s gaze. An extra month. An extra month she might be alive. It was a lot. It gave his investigators more time to find out whether the virus came from his father’s research facility. His heart accelerated with something like hope.
“That’s good,” Emily said, a little haltingly. She was looking at Paul, as if she were waiting for his reaction. “I guess.”
“Of course, it’s good.” He reached over and squeezed her arm. “It’s a month we hadn’t expected to have.”
She smiled at him, the expression growing slowly on her face and momentarily taking his breath away. “Yeah.”
Dr. Franklin cleared his throat, breaking into their shared gaze. “Now, would you still prefer not to pursue any courses of treatment for the virus?”
Emily shook her head. “I don’t want to spend my last days in the hospital, subjected to a bunch of experiments that won’t work.”
“We don’t want to pursue blind guesses—treatments that are basically shots in the dark,” Paul added, cutting his eyes from Emily to Dr. Franklin. “But if you come up with a treatment for which there is some evidence that it might be effective, we would want to try that.” He gave Emily a questioning look. “Wouldn’t we?”
Her brow lowered, and she looked a little confused. “Maybe. I guess so. But there isn’t any treatment like that, is there? No one’s had this virus before except my aunt.”
Paul looked back at Dr. Franklin, who shook his head. “All I have right now to offer you are blind guesses, the most obvious of which we already tried on Mrs. Marino’s aunt with no success. But I’m still doing research. It may be that this virus or something similar has been diagnosed before but hasn’t been written about in the literature.”
“You’ll keep looking?” Paul prompted, trying to convey through his level gaze how significant his expectations were for the doctor.
“Of course, Mr. Marino. Your wife’s case is my top priority. I can offer you only a very slim hope, but I suppose that is better than nothing.”
“It is.” Paul glanced back over at Emily, whom he discovered was looking at him strangely.
He didn’t understand the puzzled expression on her face. Maybe she thought he was being too presumptuous in this discussion with the doctor. Maybe she thought he should sit back and let her handle the questions. She’d told him this morning that he didn’t even need to come to the appointment with her.
But he was her husband, and there were things he wanted to know that she might not ask.
“Do you think there will be any way we can predict when or how often she’ll come down with the fevers?” he asked.
Dr. Franklin shook his head slowly. “You both should try to pay attention and keep track of symptoms, particularly from the day preceding her fevers. But, at least in her aunt’s case, there seemed to be no regular cycle or timeline. I have to admit to having no idea why the fevers come when they come.”
“But they’ll get worse?” Emily asked softly.
“I’m afraid so,” Dr. Franklin replied. “I’m afraid they will.”
Paul hated the thought of it. The two fevers he’d been through with her so far had been appalling enough. He couldn’t imagine how much she’d suffer with fevers that went up higher and lasted longer.
When he shifted his eyes over to Emily, he saw she still looked pale and was licking her lips a little nervously. Something twisted in his chest, in his stomach.
He couldn’t let Emily suffer that way. There had to be something he could do.
He would call his investigator when they got back to the apartment and get an update on their progress.
It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.
* * *
Paul’s phone rang as they were leaving the medical center. He glanced down at the caller ID, and when he saw who was calling, he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to pick it up.
Emily stopped too, her body stiffening and her eyes wide in expectation as he had the brief phone conversation.
“Already?” she asked when he hung up.
Paul nodded, his heart pounding n
ervously again, but this time for an entirely different reason. “The jury has a verdict.” The trial had wrapped up late yesterday, so the jury had only been deliberating for a couple of hours this morning.
Emily took his arm as they walked toward the waiting car. He wasn’t even sure if she was aware of the gesture or not, but he didn't try to pull away.
They didn’t say much on the drive over to the courthouse. Paul couldn’t focus on anything except managing his nerves and emotional turmoil. He hoped—he really hoped—that the verdict would give him some sort of closure so he could start to move on with his life.
He wasn’t sure if Emily was going through similar psychological gymnastics, or if she was just responsive to his mood, but she didn’t try to make idle conversation or get him to bare his soul. Which was good. He didn’t want to shut her out completely, but he just couldn’t talk to anyone right now.
They didn’t talk as they walked into the courthouse and went through the normal security routine. And they didn’t talk as they made their way into the courtroom and took their seats just behind the prosecution table.
Paul was so tense he was having trouble not conveying it in his stance and expression. He tried to talk himself down—telling himself that, no matter what happened with this verdict, he would still have options. His whole future wouldn’t be decided in this moment.
It was his father’s life. Not his.
But he was still having trouble breathing evenly, and it felt like his skin had broken out in a cold sweat.
Emily sat very close to him, much closer than she normally sat. Thinking she must be anxious too, he adjusted so that his arm rested on the back of the seat behind her, loosely draped around her shoulders.
She looked up at him and smiled, a little wobbly. She looked as pale as he felt, and she was having trouble sitting still.
The reading of the verdict was not a closed hearing, so the courtroom was getting crowded. Paul, however, was barely aware of the people filing in behind him, chatting or laughing as if the outcome here had no real relevance on their lives.
It didn’t, of course. The lives of very few people would change because of what the jury pronounced as their verdict.
But Paul’s might.
He noticed that Emily’s hands were twisting nervously in her lap. Since his right arm was around her shoulders, he reached over with his left hand to cover both of hers.
She gripped his hand immediately. The fingers of one of her hands twined through his, and the other curved around his from the outside.
She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking forward to where the judge would be sitting in a moment. Paul still felt awkward holding hands with her, with anyone. He would do it if she needed him to, but it still left him feeling decidedly out of his element. So he was relieved that she wasn’t looking at him or trying to talk to him now. It made it easier somehow.
He glanced at his watch. It shouldn’t be very long now.
Emily had started fidgeting with his wedding band as if she just couldn’t keep her hands still.
He wished he could make her feel better, but it was all he could do to remain composed himself.
Paul closed his eyes and practiced breathing.
He was about to hear whether or not his father was found guilty of crimes that would put him in prison for life.
And his wife was dying.
Just then, Vincent Marino walked into the courtroom with his defense team, and Hathaway and his assistant came in to sit at the opposite table.
His father didn’t meet Paul’s eyes. He hadn’t really looked at him once, hadn’t acknowledged his son even existed. Not even when Paul was sitting in the witness stand for hours. Not even when he'd had to admit the naked, devastating truth that he still wanted his father’s love.
The judge and the jury came into the courtroom, and everyone fell silent.
The world seemed to slow down into a surreal blur as the opening rituals were performed, the verdict was handed to the judge to read silently, and then the paper was handed back to be read out loud.
Still in the slow blur, Paul saw his father and the defense team stand up to hear the verdict.
His pulse raced, but he was barely aware of it. His heart seemed to have slowed down like the rest of the world. Emily was squeezing his hand so tightly he thought he might lose circulation in his fingers, but he couldn’t process that very much either. The thirty seconds might have lasted thirty minutes, and Paul could do nothing but sit in his seat like a statue and wait.
Then he heard, “Guilty,” and the world started moving again.
He released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He heard Emily exhale thickly too. Her body drooped as if she’d suddenly let go of all her tension. Paul just blinked slowly.
He sat in place, his arm still around Emily, his fingers still twined with hers. He heard himself breathing—and it was too loud, too deep. For a moment, his vision blurred over.
Emily adjusted in her seat, gently slipping her hand out of his grip. “This is what we wanted,” she murmured, very softly, so only he could hear, “Isn’t it?”
He gave a slight nod. It was what he’d wanted. It was a good outcome. The best outcome he could hope for out of none that were perfect.
It meant his father—a man who had never admitted defeat, who had never been cowed—would go to prison.
And Paul might never see him again.
She slid a hand up to his shoulder. Then to the back of his neck. “Are you okay?” she asked, almost just breathing the words. The judge was trying to silence the outburst of noise in the room by banging her gavel.
Paul nodded again, holding Emily’s anxious gaze. He tried to smile at her, if only to ease her concern.
She didn’t press the question, which was good since he wasn’t sure he was capable of talking coherently. They listened as the judge had his father remanded until the sentencing hearing and the trial was dismissed.
They stayed in place as Vincent Marino stood up to be escorted out of the room.
He turned around, and his eyes landed unerringly on where Emily and Paul were seated. His gaze was cool and almost amused as he made an elegant gesture with one hand—a strange, two-fingered salute.
That was aimed at Emily, who stiffened but met his gaze evenly.
Then, for the first time, Vincent’s gaze slid over to Paul.
The two men stared at each other for a long stretch of time, and Paul had no idea how to read his father’s expression.
Then Vincent inclined his head slightly, almost a nod. The gesture made Paul’s heart lurch up into his throat.
Vincent turned then and was led out of the room. He didn’t look back once.
Paul just sat in his seat, staring at his father’s retreating back.
The courtroom was starting to empty when Emily finally tugged on his arm. “We should go, Paul,” she said gently. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
That night, at about midnight, Paul lay in the dark in his bedroom, wondering if Emily was going to sleep with him tonight.
She’d knocked on his door every night since the night he’d testified on the stand and after he’d let his desire and need take control of his actions on the couch with Emily. He could still get hard just thinking about how good, how sweet, how responsive she’d felt in his arms.
But he tried not to think about it. He’d already rubbed one out in the shower earlier, which he’d learned was the only safe way to make it through a night with Emily in his bed. If he started thinking about their heated embrace on the couch, he’d have to get up and take another shower. Two nights ago, he’d had to do that, and he’d barely dried off from his second round under the spray when Emily had knocked softly on his door to come in.
Even if her presence left him physically frustrated and unsatisfied, he still waited for her every evening, not really able to relax and sleep without her.
He wasn’t sure she was going to join him tonight. An hour
ago, he’d heard her talking on the phone to Chris in the media room. Maybe she would need privacy afterwards. Maybe she wouldn’t want to sleep in his bed, since Chris was obviously not happy about their marriage. Maybe she would want the space to think about the guy she’d always had a crush on.
A guy who wasn’t Paul.
He tried not to brood about it. Told himself it was a good thing, since it would give him a safer emotional distance from Emily. He’d gone too far as it was.
There was no future with Emily that wasn’t going to rip him apart. Even if she miraculously didn’t die, he’d have to let her go so she could live the life she’d always wanted. If she pulled back from him now, it would probably hurt less than it would later.
Midnight came and went. Twelve-thirty came and went. Paul decided she wasn’t going to come to him tonight.
He rolled over a few times in the bed, trying to get comfortable. Trying not to think about his father. Trying not to feel completely alone.
Some things wouldn’t change. He’d lived his life alone—with only a few moments when he’d believed he had someone to share it with. A mother. A lover. A friend. None of them lasted.
He wanted Emily with him now, but she wasn’t really his, no matter how much it felt like she was.
It was almost one in the morning, and he wasn’t even close to going to sleep when he was surprised by a little tap on his door.
“Come in,” he called out, his heartbeat quickening.
Emily peeked in. “Are you asleep?”
“No. I’m still awake. Come on in.”
Since his eyes were already adjusted to the dark, he could see her fairly clearly as she shut the bedroom door and walked over to his bed. She wore a dark-colored tank top with pajama shorts of the same color. Her hair was tousled around her face, and she smiled at him as she crawled under the covers beside him. “I’m sorry it’s so late. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“I wasn’t asleep yet. Everything all right with Chris?”
“I guess so,” she said with a sigh, rolling onto her side so she was facing him. “As good as they can be. I just…”
