Allie smiled at Gillian’s friend. “Hi, Marsha. I would so appreciate it if you did just that.”
The older woman huffed a laugh and approached Mike’s bed as Allie slowly moved herself out of the way. Once off the bed, Allie stood to Mike’s side, holding his hand while Marsha checked him out. Mike answered her questions and squinted in pain when she shined the light in his eyes, although he said it was better than the last time. She checked his blood pressure and charted all of the information before heading toward the door. Looking over her shoulder she said, “I’ll be your nurse all night Mr. Lawson, so if you need an extra pillow or two for that crowded bed of yours, you let me know.”
Marsha winked, Allie laughed, and Mike said, “I think I have all I need right here, ma’am.”
When she left the room, Allie slipped back onto his bed. But instead of climbing on top of him, she cuddled into his side, resting her head on his chest. Once he comfortably had his arms wrapped around her, she said, “I hope you know that I plan to stay here ‘til they release you.”
She felt his chest rumble against her ear as he said, “I was expecting it, baby.”
The two of them rested there in comfortable silence as Allie slowly drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
MIKE was dying to get out of there. Hanging out in hospitals was not his idea of a good time, and after thirty-six hours there, he was over it. He just really needed to go home. His need to be with Allie, in his own space—in their space—was riding him hard. It was almost like in his head, since they weren’t in familiar surroundings, her being there wasn’t real yet. So getting her back to the spaces he normally associated with her was a necessity. Once he got her home, in his bed, on his couch, in his space, it would feel real for him.
Standing at the window of his room, he was staring at the busy street below when a knock sounded at his door. He looked to the direction of the already opening door and laughed as he said, “Come in, I guess.”
When Nurse Marsha strolled in with a wheelchair, she said, “Ain’t nothing in here I haven’t seen before, sweetie. Besides, I know you’re itching to leave so there would be no reason you didn’t dress promptly after signing those papers.”
Amused, he nodded. “Good point. Are you my chauffeur for the afternoon?” He gestured to the wheelchair.
“Well, aren’t you a charmer. But with the group of friends you’ve had in here, I doubt you need my services, young man,” she said, picking up his bag of personal belongings and hanging them on the back of the chair. “Besides, we both know that Ms. Allie will be here to collect you any minute. In fact, I’m surprised she even left at all.”
Mike laughed as he thought of the pouty face she made when he told her to go home, freshen up, and get a change of clothes. She didn’t want to leave, and that made him feel better about it. The days they were apart may have been less than a week, but they were rough days. He closed his eyes, recalling her dismissing him the other night, and it brought that tightness in his chest back.
Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and smiled as he answered her, “I was surprised, too.”
Moving toward the wheelchair, he gave it a look of disgust. “I’ve heard all the lines, honey. Just do us both a favor, sit in the chair and enjoy the ride.”
He raised his hands in surrender and sat. When he was settled in the chair, his door opened once again, and he was graced with the sound of bickering from Allie and Jason.
“You could’ve waited downstairs, you know,” Allie hissed at Jason as they entered the room.
“Now why would I do something like that? There could be a hot nurse up here or something,” Jason replied with a laugh. Mike watched Allie reach up and flick him in the forehead, halting his laughter.
“Hey! Did you really just flick me?” he asked as he rubbed his forehead.
“You’re lucky I didn’t pinch you,” she huffed at him before turning in Mike’s direction. Realization that their antics had an audience, she blushed. “Oh, hi Marsha. How’s our patient?”
Walking toward them, she leaned in and gave Mike a kiss. “Hi there.”
Marsha answered, “He’s your patient now that the discharge papers are all signed. You should wheel him out of here before he tries to make a run for it.”
Mike looked up at the nurse standing behind him as Allie slipped her hand into his. “I’m not that bad, besides, only you medical personnel don’t mind being here. You’re used to it.”
He thought he heard a huff as she grumbled something about wimpy men when she pushed him into the hallway, but he didn’t care, he was ready to go. Jason moved to push the wheelchair, but from the sound of it, Allie flicked him again. “I don’t think so gigantor, now push the call button for the elevator.”
“Jesus, half-pint, knock it off. You’re gonna leave bruises,” Jason complained as he walked past them to hit the button. Laughing still hurt his head a little so he tried to refrain from doing it, but the two of them were like bickering siblings. Once inside the elevator, Jason stood on the opposite side from Allie, giving her a dirty look.
“Jason, not that I don’t appreciate you coming to help spring me, but what are you doing here?” Mike asked.
Jason dropped his stare to Mike. “Oh, Allie had a flat so Logan was fixing it for her. He didn’t want her driving on the donut-sized spare so he took the rim to get a new tire put on. She was getting antsy to get here so I offered to drive.” He finished with a shrug. Even though Logan was her brother, and there was nothing wrong with her calling him for help, he was a little disappointed that he wasn’t there for her.
Her hand was on his shoulder as they rode down, and he placed his hand over it and looked up. “Sorry I wasn’t there to help you with that.”
She gave him a smirk and said, “I’ll forgive you, babe. Just so long as you don’t go trying to play the whole head injury card too often. It’ll only work for so long.” She kissed him as the door chimed their arrival on the bottom floor.
The ride home was quick and easy. Allie made him sit in the back of Jason’s car, which was fine with him since she crawled in next to him. It seemed she needed to touch him as much as he did her, and he liked it. Once inside his place, Allie asked, “Did you want to be down here on the couch or up in your bed?”
He reached out to her and pulled her against him, prompting her to wrap her arms around him. Standing in his living room, he held her tightly as he buried his face in her hair. Breathing her in, he said, “I don’t care where I am, so long as you’re there, too.”
Her head rested on his chest and her hands rubbed up and down his back as she snorted. “Damn, I still can’t believe that not even a head injury impairs your ability to say the best shit. Very impressive, Lawson.”
Escorting her to the couch, he pulled her down with him so that she was sitting on his lap. It was his favorite place for her to sit. Draping her arm around his shoulders, she settled in against him. When he had her full attention he said, “It’s true. I want to be wherever you are. Is that going to be a problem for you? Because I have to tell you, Allie, this past week was not a good one for me. I didn’t like it at all.”
Mike watched as her eyes took on a sad look. “No, it’s not going to be a problem, Mike. I’m sorry for how I acted. If it helps, I was miserable too.”
Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t like the thought of you being miserable.” He swept her hair off the one side of her face. “I missed you so much, but I still don’t understand what happened. I told you I loved you, we had a fantastic night together, and then you spent all of it in my arms. What could have possibly happened before I woke up that had you reacting like that?”
Ducking her head into the crook of his neck and shoulder, she held him tighter. After a moment, she mumbled into the confined space, “I had a dream.”
A dream? “What kind of dream, Allie?”
Allie sighed as she lifted her face from his neck and quickly moved her hair out of her way. The look on her face was a mixtu
re of embarrassment and determination. “I had this dream, and in it, I was sitting on a blanket, playing with a little girl … she was obviously my daughter.” She paused, but he didn’t say anything, only held her. “Well, while I’m sitting with her, she gets up and runs to a man, it was obvious that he was her father … and it was you, Mike.”
Without knowing why that scared her, he had to tamper down the pride surging through his system at the thought of them having a child together. A daughter. His pride took a blow when he realized that maybe this freaked her out because she didn’t want him to be the father of her children. “Can I ask you why that would make you react the way you did? Do you think it would be bad to have a child with me?”
Turning into him, she quickly sought to comfort him, touching his face and shaking her head. “No, absolutely not. I don’t think it would be bad to have a child with you. It’s just … well, I’ve had that dream before. Everything about it was same as usual. Me, the little girl, the blanket we sat on—all of it—except for you. It didn’t used to be you in that dream.”
“Oh, I see.” She didn’t have to say it for him to know that Marc used to have the starring role as the father in her dream. It made sense, but clearly that was not how things played out. Things happened, for both of them, plans changed to accommodate that, and he accepted that. It wasn’t a surprise to him that Allie had trouble coming to the same realization. He still wasn’t sure why she panicked over it. After all, it was a fictional child at this point; it wasn’t as if he was trying to be a father to a child who already existed. It was a child who had yet to be conceived, but if it were, it would be Mike’s, not Marc’s.
Allie interrupted his thoughts when she said, “I talked to Gillian about it.”
Happy to hear she had opened up to her friend, he asked, “Really, what did you tell her?”
“That I felt bad about the dream because it was like I just tossed Marc out and put you in his place. I felt terrible guilt, like it was okay to dispose of a dream that he deserved to be in, like that was all that he had left. But it wasn’t just about replacing him with you, it was about making both of you seem so interchangeable. I thought I didn’t deserve what I saw in that dream, my dream, because I could so randomly pick a new person. It was like my subconscious had moved on, assigning the new role … and my heart freaked out about it.” With another big sigh, she continued, “Gillian said she thinks that what I’d always seen in my dream was my future, the way I envisioned things for myself. Since Marc was my future, he was in it.”
The weight of fear that Mike had been holding on to over where this was going suddenly dropped from his shoulders. She said was. It was stupid of him to get excited about it, since her late husband was not someone that could physically come in and steal her away from him. But his memory could and apparently had. But she’d said Marc was her future. Mike knew it, everyone knew it, but Allie hadn’t completely come to terms with it before. Her uttering was finally moved Marc McNally into the past.
“And now?” he asked hesitantly, wanting her to say what he hoped for, but fearing that she wouldn’t at the same time.
“Now …” She pressed a kiss to his lips. “You’re my future.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ALLIE couldn’t believe what she was seeing as she stood among the sea of pink. What a sight. There was pink everywhere, and as a girl, she loved it. As a person who had recently been more involved in the support of breast cancer research, it was inspiring.
Mike’s family participated in the Race for a Cure event held in San Diego at the beginning of every November. Allie knew about it, but she had never been to one. It made her sad to think that she had never been a part of something so … amazing. It gave her chills. There were people in wheelchairs decked out in their pink gear, newborn babies in running strollers decorated with pink ribbons, and a boy walked by sporting a pink mohawk. There were groups of people wearing tutus, some had on pink afro wigs. You named it and someone had it in pink.
But the most inspiring things she saw were the signs that people were wearing. Some said I walk in celebration of …, and some said I walk in memory of ... It broke her heart to see the people who lost someone they loved, but then she was lifted back up when she caught sight of another person celebrating a survivor. Thinking about how Mike and Zane felt around all of them, she wondered how another’s loved one was lucky enough to survive when others’ weren’t. It was truly a combination of inspiration and heartbreak.
She was absorbing everything she could when Zane and Mike joined her in the crowd. It had been three weeks since Mike had been hurt, and the walk was going to be his first time partaking in any vigorous activity. She was glad that his accident didn’t get in the way of participating since he did it every year. Although, he would be walking, not running.
Zane handed her a number to pin to her shirt. She was in the twenty-two thousand range, and she was amazed to think there was at least that many people registered before her.
“Wow. That’s a high number. There are so many people here, I can’t take it all in,” she said to them as she began to fasten her number on, making sure not to cover the words on her shirt. Gillian had bought them matching ones that read: I love all boobs. She loved it. Zane had a Save the Ta-tas! one, and Mike’s said, Boobs are Awesome.
Once she had her number secure, she looked up to see Zane offering her another piece of paper. Taking it, she looked at it as he asked, “Will you wear one of these, too? For my mom.”
Tears filled her eyes as she read, I walk in memory of Zane’s mom, Elizabeth Lawson. She cleared her throat and pulled Zane into a hug, saddened for about the hundredth time already that day. Giving him a kiss on the cheek, she said, “I’d be honored to wear this for you. For her.”
When she pulled away, she quickly swiped at her tears, but then started laughing when Mike smacked the back of Zane’s head. “Way to go, Zane. You made her cry.”
“All I did was ask her to wear a piece of paper. How was I supposed to know that would happen?”
She laughed again as she leaned into Mike’s side and waited for the rest of their friends to find them.
MIKE usually ran in this event, mainly because he could. But this year, since he had friends there with his family, he decided to walk it. Together, the crowd of people he was coming to call family, walked through the streets of uptown San Diego, through Balboa Park, and even onto the closed section of freeway that ran along the perimeter of the San Diego Zoo. It was scenic route at best, even if you couldn’t get past all the costumes and signs that people carried. It was a community of people with a common goal; he’d venture to guess it would be difficult to find a person in that crowd who wasn’t humbled by it.
He walked hand in hand with Allie as she chatted with his sister, his mother, Gillian and Jake. Even Jason and Logan were there along with all the kids in their crew; he couldn’t help but think what a difference a year made. He had met Allie just about a year ago and had aimlessly pursued her for more than half of that time.
Sure, she had slipped through his hands a few times, but now, as he felt her hand securely in his, he felt humbled for another reason. Here they were, walking in memory of his late wife, together. Women like Allie just weren’t very common, and he thanked his lucky stars for finding her.
A tug on his hand brought him out of his silent reflection. Looking down at Allie, she asked, “You doing okay, babe? You got kind of quiet. Your head isn’t hurting you, is it?”
He threw his arm around her and pulled her into his side. She was the perfect height so it didn’t make walking a challenge. Leaning over, he kissed the top of her head. “My head doesn’t hurt at all, but thank you for worrying about me.”
She squeezed his waist in response as they continued walking in the crowd. “Thanks for walking with all of us this year. I know you’re a runner. Are you itching to take off around the block? ‘Cause you shouldn’t, you know, what with the whole brain injury thing.”
; He laughed. “Are you trying to justify me walking instead of running by bringing up my traumatic head wound? Because I still would’ve picked walking with all of you.”
She pinched his side. “That was very sweet, but don’t make me cry again.”
He pulled away from her fingers. “Ouch.” Laughing, he asked, “What was that for?”
“Don’t be dramatic, it was a pinch. Come on, you can take a bat to the head, but you whine about little fingers pinching you. Man-cards get revoked for that,” she said smugly.
Jason took that moment to enter the conversation. “Half-pint’s pinches are lethal. They leave a mark and everything.”
“That’s right, babe. You should listen to gigantor over there. Making me cry equals lethal pinch.”
Jason leaned in and said, “But you should know that her weak spot is a squeeze above either knee. She crumples like a house of cards.”
“Hey! You’re not supposed to share insider information like that. You just wait, Jason, when you bring a woman around me, I will make sure to return the favor,” Allie said with a smug nod.
Mike watched as Jason gave her threat some consideration. “Well, if I bring her around you, she must be worth keeping so that would mean she’d already know my weaknesses.”
Mike huffed a laugh and extended his fist for a bump. “Nice, man. There’s really not much she can say to that.”
“Ouch!” Mike said as Allie landed another pinch to his side. “That’s for taking his side.”
They all laughed and continued their walk. Mike knew, without a doubt, that this was the first time he had felt so … happy, while participating in this event. It was a welcome change.
ALLIE heard Mike turn off the shower as she pulled back the blankets and climbed on the bed. A few moments later, he walked out with a towel slung low on his hips as he used another to rid his hair of excess moisture. It took him a few moments before he noticed she was naked and waiting for him, but she knew the moment that he did.
Love Resisted (The Real Love Series) Page 25
