Page 23 of Before the Bond
“Depends.”
“Here’s another question, then,” he said. Jake gently let the plant’s leaves stretch back out of the wooden stick. “Would you rather get hurt or avoid it, even if it meant missing out?”
I knew the question a little too well.
“I would hate missing out on being your nurse,” I said.
Jake laughed. “No fair.”
Every evening, after Jake was settled and the household had quieted to its nighttime register, I went to the common room with the fireplace.
I worked at the chair across the coffee table — Jake’s charts, my nursing notes, the slow paperwork of trying to manage a condition I still only half understood. Caleb was always on the opposite chair.
He was always there first, too. I almost never saw him arrive.
The first few times, I convinced myself it was a coincidence. But I eventually ran out of reasons to believe we weren’t both there because we wanted to be.
As always, talking was sparse, but never awkward. Sometimes I’d look up and find him watching the fire. Once, I found him looking at me, but he looked away before I could call him out on it.
We covered the basics, at most. Jake’s progress. Whether the pain management was working. Whether I needed anything from the estate. Small, practical questions, asked and answered without ceremony.
And then we’d settle back into the quiet.
I thought about it later — how the simplest version of proximity became the part I noticed the most. Just two people in a room, fire going. I wondered if he felt the same way I did, or if it was just me.
I considered that things were always going to stay this way. But something changed tonight.
As I was going over my notes, Caleb lowered his book.
“You settling in?”
I liked to think he wasn’t talking about the estate.
“More than I expected to,” I said. “I’ll miss it when I leave.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Good.”
My cheeks burned once again. I didn’t know what it was, but just the way he said things did something to me.
I shifted in my seat. The fire’s crackle sounded the tiniest bit louder.
I considered leaving it at that, but I decided not to.
“What about you?” I asked. “Do you want me here?”
Caleb’s eyes lowered. I could see his fingers playing with the tassels of the blanket draped over his chair.
“Jake’s doing well,” he said.
I smiled and rolled my eyes. “That doesn’t answer the question and you know it.”
He met my gaze again. His pale green eyes turned a mixed hazel in the firelight.
“I think…” he said. “My opinion doesn’t really matter.”
Caleb looked away and picked up his book again.
My smile left as quickly as it came. I shifted again in my chair, but this time to turn away.
