“It’s good you came in. Left untreated, strep can become serious, but a course of antibiotics will knock it out.”
“And it’s contagious?” She remembered having strep before, but she was foggy about when. And it wasn’t like she could call her own mother to ask.
“Highly,” Dr. Conrad said. “But it’s no longer contagious twenty-four hours after starting antibiotics.”
Meredith swallowed, checking the feel of her throat. “Would I know if I had it?”
Dr. Conrad smiled. “How are you feeling?”
Meredith considered the question. “Fine. Tired.”
Dr. Conrad gave her a mock serious frown. “You’re the mother of a sick twenty-month old, and you’re tired. That’s unusual,” she teased, but she put down Oscar’s test results and approached Meredith with outstretched hands. “May I?”
She nodded. The doctor checked the lymph nodes in her throat before going for her pen light. “Open up and say ahhh.”
Meredith did.
“No redness. No lymph swelling. If you still feel okay in a day or two, you should be in the clear.”
Meredith bit her lip. “I’m worried because I work for someone who is very sick, and I wouldn’t want to expose him to an infection.” She thought a moment and then added, “And Oscar threw up on me last night, so if it’s highly contagious…”
Dr. Conrad made a sympathetic face and nodded. “Well, you could always wear gloves and a protective mask around your boss until the coast is clear.”
Oh, Gray would just love that.
“Thanks,” she said instead.
“No problem,” Dr. Conrad said, then she stroked a gentle hand over Oscar’s head. “Feel better, kid. Let your mom get some rest.”
Carrying Oscar, Meredith left the office at a loss for what to do. Gray wouldn’t expect her before two o’clock, and she hadn’t yet told him about Oscar, hoping against hope that the doctor would discover an earache or something that she couldn’t spread to Gray.
At her car, she buckled Oscar in his car seat, started the engine, cranked up her worthless heater, and called him.
“Hey, sweetness.”
She warmed at his greeting.
“How are you feeling?”
Gray hesitated, and she didn’t miss it. “I’m okay.”
A jolt of fear shot from the top of her head down her spine. “You’d tell me if something changed, right?”
He didn’t answer.
“Gray? You’re scaring me.”
“It’s okay, Meredith,” his voice came out soft over the phone. “It’s just my eyes are acting funny. It’s happened before. Nothing new. Just a bother.”
Meredith held her breath. “Are you sure?”
This time, he didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, it just makes editing difficult. I was hoping you’d help me with that when you got here.”
“Oh, Gray—” Her breath left her in a rush. Turning him down when he needed her sucked. “—I hate to say this, but Oscar’s sick. I won’t be able to come today.”
“He is?” Gray asked, concern clear in his voice. “Well, just bring him with you, and we’ll look after him together.”
Oh my God.
Oscar’s own father had refused to help her clean up after she’d asked him twice. Now, here was Gray, who’d met Oscar only once, offering to help take care of him even while he was sick.
“You are… amazing,” she blurted, hoping to keep the emotion out of her voice. “I wish I could do that, but I can’t.”
“Why not? You don’t think he’d be comfortable here?” Again, his words stunned her.
“No, it’s not that,” she said, finally mastering her voice. “We just left the doctor’s. He has strep, and it’s pretty contagious. I can’t let him get you sick.”
“Strep throat? I haven’t had that since I was a kid,” Gray dismissed. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Well, I won’t,” she said firmly. “A fever and an infection could be risky for you right now. Besides, you’re two weeks away from surgery. You need to be as strong as possible.”
Gray was silent for a moment, and Meredith knew there was no argument against her concerns. And then he spoke.
“I get that,” he said. “But I need to see you.”
His voice was low, and the raw ache he tried to hide in his words tore her open.
“Gray,” she whispered, clutching the phone closer to her ear, wanting to lean into the sound. “I feel the same—”
“You make this bearable. Just you.”
The thought of going back to the McCormicks’ with Oscar felt like climbing down into the hold of a boat. Tiny. Windowless. Unsteady. Taking her baby instead to Gray’s felt sunlit and buoyant.
But taking him to Gray’s was not an option. Not today. Because…
Because she loved him.
This undeniable realization struck her as she sat in the front seat of her dinky little car with her sick baby strapped into his car seat. She could not picture a less romantic setting to recognize that she loved Gray Blakewood, but that did not matter at all. She loved him with everything she had. She loved him deep. She loved him before herself. She’d love him after she died. Meredith understood all this in the span of an instant, and she understood, too, that if she lost him, she’d be broken beyond repair.
So when she spoke, the words came easily. “I can’t see you until I know it’s safe. I won’t do anything that hurts you,” she swore. “But I have an idea.”
At home after picking up Oscar’s prescription, Meredith made him a snack that he barely touched. Then she carried him to bed and only managed to get through one storybook before he crashed.
Jamie was nowhere to be found, so Meredith grabbed her MacBook, her jacket, and her phone, and went to Leona’s sewing room. The woman was bent over her sewing machine working on what looked like the violet bodice of a bridesmaid’s dress. With a mouthful of straight pins, she didn’t stop sewing when Meredith entered.
“Leona, I gave Oscar his medicine, and he’s napping. Could you let me know if he wakes up? I’ll just be outside.”
“Mmm,” Leona muttered, still without looking up and not bothering to remove the pins to speak to her.
Assuming this meant yes, and knowing she wouldn’t be far anyway, Meredith headed outside to her car again. She climbed into the passenger seat and pushed it back as far as it would go before angling the rearview mirror to run her fingers through her hair. Not great — she looked like someone who’d been awake since four in the morning — but it would have to do. With her laptop balanced across her knees, Meredith chose Gray’s contact on her phone and tapped the FaceTime icon.
“Oh my God, you’re FaceTiming me.” Gray answered, a confused frown taking up the screen on her phone. His greeting and her nerves made her laugh. “And now you’re laughing…”
“I’m sorry.” She tamed her fit of giggles. “So this is my idea.”
His brow arched doubtfully. “Meredith, sweetheart, this is a terrible idea.” But even he couldn’t say it without laughing, which only set her off again.
“No, no, it’s a great idea,” she argued, raising the phone and trying to find an angle that didn’t make her face look haggard and sleep deprived. “I just wish I didn’t look so awful.”
“You’re beautiful. Hold still so I can look at you.”
Meredith’s blush was immediate. Her giggles dried up along with her mouth. By the look of it, Gray was climbing the stairs to his study, and even though his eyes smiled for her, she could see he was squinting.
“Can you see me?” she asked, worried for him.
“Yes.” And then almost inaudibly. “Thank God.”
“Are you okay?”
The lines in his forehead smoothed as he looked into the camera. “Better now.”
She watched him sit behind his desk.
“How’s Oscar?”
“He’s asleep. Thank you for asking,” she said, meaning it. “Last night was rough, but he’ll be bet
ter soon.”
Gray frowned again. “What happened last night?”
Did he really want to know this? “Well,” she hedged. “He woke up sick with a fever, and let’s just say we both had to take a shower before we could get back to bed.”
“Oh, Meredith,” he said, voice dipping in sympathy, “that doesn’t sound fun.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Did you go to class today?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
Through the camera, he appeared to study her. “And you just took him to the doctor’s office? You must be exhausted.”
Meredith sat up straighter in her passenger seat. “I’m okay,” she said, trying to smile past her fatigue. He needed her help. This wasn’t supposed to be about her.
“You put yourself last,” he muttered, his eyes narrowing. “It’s time someone put you first.”
The words meant more to her than he could know, but she didn’t want him worrying about her. “Gray, really, I’m fi—”
“Are you in your car?” he asked, pulling the phone closer to him and frowning into the screen.
“It’s the only place where I have any privacy.”
He watched her a moment longer. “You know how you want me to tell you if I’m not okay?”
Even through a glass screen, the penetrating look in his eyes made her breath shallow.
“Yeah?”
“I want the same. You have to tell me if you’re not okay.”
Meredith held back a sigh. Gray didn’t need to know about Jamie’s infantile behavior the night before or the fact that he hadn’t even offered to take Oscar to the doctor that morning. In fact, ever since Meredith could drive after childbirth, she’d taken their son to all of his doctor visits solo.
“I’m just tired, Gray.” And because it was true and because it echoed the words he said to her, she added, “Nothing new.”
At this, his look sharpened. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
She exhaled a gust of breath. How did he do that? How did he see past her words and into her head? Into her heart? “Nothing’s wrong,” she countered. “Besides, you have enough on your plate without trying to peek at what’s on mine.”
“Meredith.” His voice pitched lower, a sound both hard yet gentle. “Are we together?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, his question making her heart race.
“I threw a lot at you yesterday. Before that, you made it clear that the timing wasn’t right for you.” His voice lowered, growing more solemn. “So, I mean… is what we have just about me getting better? Or are we together, come what may?”
The love that wanted to make itself known almost took control of her voice.
“We are together, Gray.” Meredith swallowed a lump in her throat and tried to explain. “Finding out about your illness didn’t change what I feel. But it did change my mind about timing. Now is what matters. We’re together now, and I want us to be together later.”
She could tell by the way his eyes softened that the words made him happy, but he looked determined all the same.
“Then I get to peek at what’s on your plate.”
Meredith nodded in concession. “Okay, you have me there.”
He eyed her through the phone, growing a little impatient. “So then are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
She sighed. “It’s my living situation.” She didn’t want to make more of it than it was, but if they were truly a couple, neither one of them should hold back. “It’s time to move out, and that becomes more apparent every day.”
“Does it?” Gray asked, eyeing her with a grin.
“Yes, but don’t let it go to your head,” she teased, smiling back. “Yes, I’ll feel a lot better about seeing you if I’m living on my own, but there’s much more to it than that.”
“Like what?”
Meredith’s eyes searched the car’s ceiling as she chose her words carefully. “To be honest, Jamie and I live with this barely contained hostility between us. I think he does things just to make me miserable… and he’s really good at it.” She shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not innocent in this. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t let him get under my skin.”
Or under my clothes, she thought with a flush of shame. She pushed that thought aside and adjusted the angle of her phone.
“So,” Gray began, his voice going soft. “What are you going to do?”
“Brooke and I are looking for a place together.” It was the first time she’d shared the news with anyone, and saying it aloud made her feel a little giddy.
His eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Meredith nodded. “It’s gonna happen soon.”
“I guess I don’t have to tell you I’m glad to hear that,” he said, grinning. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
She considered the thought a moment. “If you’re well enough when we move to help with furniture and unpacking, sure.”
“I very much hope I am well enough.”
The words hung between them with so much weight and consequence that their eyes locked.
“So do I,” she said softly.
They stared at each other through their tiny cameras, and Meredith took a cleansing breath.
“I’m supposed to be helping you.”
The corners of Gray’s mouth tipped up. “Yes, how do you propose to do that?”
Meredith steadied her phone on the dashboard and angled it toward her. Then she lifted her laptop. “I have my computer here. Do you trust me?” she asked.
“With my life.”
This time she couldn’t help her smile. “Okay, then. Dropbox me the chapters you want to edit. I’ll read them aloud, and you can tell me what needs to be changed.”
On screen, Gray’s eyebrows climbed. “That’ll take hours.”
Meredith shrugged. “This is me showing up for work, Blakewood. You have chapters to be edited, and I’m your assistant. As long as Oscar’s asleep, we can do this.”
“Then let’s do this,” he said, grinning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THAT DAY — AND as much as she could at night — Meredith worked online with Gray. When she still wouldn’t go to his house on Wednesday afternoon, Gray accused her of being overly cautious, but Meredith had to be certain she wasn’t coming down with strep before she saw him.
So they worked.
By Wednesday evening, they’d gone through more than half of his manuscript, and Meredith was simply in awe. She’d get so lost reading the story aloud that Gray would sometimes have to say her name twice to pull her out of it. But when he did, the subtle changes — cutting a word here, adding a layer of description there, or changing the rhythm of a sentence — made the work stronger every time, and Meredith couldn’t help but admire his talent.
She marveled, too, at the darkness of his imagination. In one scene, Alex Booth found himself in a hand-to-hand battle for his life, and the details left her squirming. The snap of ligaments. The soft yielding of his opponent’s eyeball. The hinging of a windpipe, and the flow of urine as life drained out of the attacker’s body.
It left her shivering.
“Have you had enough for today?” Gray asked through her headphones.
Leona and Big Jim had gone to bed, and she’d tucked Oscar in and changed into her pajamas hours before. Jamie was out with friends — or so she guessed — so Meredith had claimed the rocker on the far side of the living room. With the hum of the dishwasher going, and her hushed reading of Gray’s novel into the mic of her headphones, Meredith figured she had enough privacy to leave the cold isolation of her car.
“Maybe,” she said, wincing into the camera of her phone. She’d used a stack of books on the end table to adjust it so they could see each other as she read, and she had to admit that Gray looked proud.
“It’s supposed to be disturbing,” he said, again reading her mind.
Meredith gave a shudder. “Well, you’ve succeeded. But if they ever make this into a mo
vie, I’m covering my eyes and plugging my ears for this whole scene.”
This set Gray laughing. “I’ll tell you when it’s safe to look.”
At the hint of this possible future, Meredith grinned. “Do you think your books will ever be made into films?”
Gray’s look of pride grew humbler. “Negotiations are in progress,” he said, shrugging, as though the prospect of a movie deal meant next to nothing.
She felt her eyebrows climb. “Are you serious?! Shit, Gray, that’s amazing!”
“I’m not holding my breath,” he said, but the light in his eyes told her that the thought excited him, even if he didn’t want to admit it.
“Still. The fact that it’s even a possibility is just… wow.”
He cocked a brow at her. “Promise you won’t say anything about that. Not yet, anyway.”
Meredith slapped her palm against her chest. “I’d never!”
He chuckled again, his eyes softening. “I knew you wouldn’t. You’re too grounded to do something like that.”
“Grounded?” Meredith wrinkled her nose. “Is that a good thing? It sounds kind of boring.”
On screen, he held her gaze. “Grounded is a very good thing. It’s one of the many things about you I really, really like.” His voice softened now, too, as he echoed his confession from days before.
Meredith felt herself melt a little into the rocker.
“But not too grounded, of course,” he added, eyeing her appreciatively. “If Shadow Quarter does become a movie — and as cheap as it is to make a movie in New Orleans, I’m guessing it will be — I have a feeling you’ll look absolutely stunning on my arm at the premier.”
Her eyes bugged. She couldn’t help it. “What?” Her voice squeaked on the word, and, at the sound, Gray’s smile grew double. Triple.
“Yes, you in a fabulous designer dress on the red carpet,” he said, his voice going a little husky. “I definitely need to stick around to see that.”
“Wha— You—” A flare of anger threatened to choke her. She hated it when he made little jokes about not surviving the surgery. “You damn well better.”
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