Tymber Dalton - Pinch Me

The only comfort she had was that she was now used to them.

When she next opened her eyes, Rob sat next to her on the edge of the bed.

Fully dressed in his uniform.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry. I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye.”

“What time is it?”

“Twenty till six.”

She started to sit up then winced as pain took over.

“Stay there.” He left the bedroom, returning a few minutes later with a pain pill and water. “Take it.”

That tone again. Even half asleep and hurting like hell it cut through her soul to some secret place that made her want to curl up in his lap and beg him to stay.

He helped her sit up enough she could swallow the pill and some water before easing her back down onto her pillow. “Why does it hurt more now than it did in the hospital?” she asked.

“You’re not on IV meds anymore. And they were making you take meds on a regular basis in the hospital. Plus you were basically moving between bed and the bathroom and back again. You need to take it easy and not rush it.”

He leaned in and pressed a sweet, lingering kiss to her forehead. He smelled good, his laundry detergent and soap and deodorant filling a gaping void inside her. She reached up and hooked her fingers into his shirt until he leaned close again.

Eyes still closed, she deeply inhaled several times. The laundry room came to mind again, the one she’d pictured before. “I want to go to your house again,” she said.

“I had the locksmith change all the locks after…when he came to do your doors. I’ll leave a key and a note for Bill. He needs to call me so I can walk him through the alarm.”

She opened her eyes. In the dim light, his brown eyes looked dark, deep…

Sad.

“Thank you,” she said.

His brow furrowed. “For what, sweetheart?”

“For not giving up on me.”

He looked like he was on the verge of tears. He knelt next to the bed and gently cupped her hand in both of his and pressed his lips to it. “I love you. The only thing that can make me stop taking care of you is me dying, or you flat-out telling me you don’t want me anymore.”

With her free hand she caressed his cheek. Despite it hurting, she leaned in and kissed him on the lips, lingering, savoring it. “Thank you for being patient with me.”

“Forever, sweetheart. I promise.”

“I want you.”

His jaw worked, as if he had to swallow. “I want you, too. More than anything.”

“I don’t know how long…until…I can…”

He kissed her hand again. “It doesn’t matter. You’re in no condition to even think about that, anyway. And if it takes weeks or months or even years for you to get to that point, then that’s how long it takes.”

“Did we…on our first date?”

He actually laughed. “No. For starters, I’m not like that, and neither are you. Secondly…” He let out another laugh and shook his head. “If I had time, I’d tell you the story. Let’s say our first date was a true disaster. Fortunately, we kept trying until we got it right.”

After one more kiss, he stood and carefully freed his hands from hers. “Do you need Bill to show you how to work your phone?”

She felt her face heat. “Yeah. I think so.” She’d barely looked at it, overwhelmed. Frustrated that she knew she’d easily worked it before…

Before.

Everything before.

“I’ll put that in the note, too. I walked Doogie already.” The dog was curled up on the bed on her other side, in the space Rob had occupied. The Lab looked from him to her and back again.

“Love you,” he told her.

She let out a deep breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “I love you, too.” That much she knew. She’d take it on faith despite whatever rumbles tried to traipse through her mind.

Deep in her heart, she knew she loved him.

She closed her eyes and let the pain pill kick in.

* * *

Her stomach was growling when she pulled herself out of bed close to ten o’clock that morning. Bill was sitting in the living room and working on his laptop.

“There she is. How you feeling?”

She made her way over to the couch and eased herself down onto it before leaning over to rest her head against his shoulder.

“That bad, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah. Please don’t ask me to take another pain pill. I want to go to the shop today.”

“Your presence there is not requested. Steve and Carol said they’d both help load you back in the truck so I could haul you home.”

She didn’t want to cry. She’d done enough of that. She also didn’t want to stay cooped up at the condo. Frustration set in.

“When do I get to decide what I do with my life? Or is this who I was before, just letting everyone tell me what to do?” Despite the pain it caused her, she stood and headed for the kitchen. “I’m sick and tired of everyone else telling me what to do. And worse, I’ve got a psycho who wanted me dead keeping me in fear for a life I can’t even fucking remember!”

He followed her to the kitchen but she turned and pushed him out. “Go. Just…go sit down and leave me alone. I’ll make my own breakfast. I’m not helpless.”

She couldn’t exactly storm, but she plodded over to the fridge and yanked it open, ignoring the pain in her side as she did.

Then she…stood there, staring at what was eye level.

Bill, who hadn’t moved from the kitchen doorway, watched her without speaking.

She let the refrigerator door swing shut and rested her head against the cool surface as tears rolled down her cheeks. On the upper freezer door, there were several magnets. One from Yellowstone.

A magnet she’d bought on her trip out there after their parents died.

She remembered stopping in the visitor center by Old Faithful and buying it, one just like it for the fridge at the house, and several others for Shayla and…people she couldn’t even remember. Maybe Sully and Clarisse had one on their fridge, too.

But she knew the one on Rob’s fridge sat just a little lower than eye level, toward the right. The door handle, opposite of this one, was on the left, and it opened to the right. This one swung open to the left.

His fridge was stainless steel, and matched the stove and dishwasher. He’d taken her with him to pick them out when he bought them several months earlier.

“Laur?” Bill softly asked.

His voice shook her out of her thoughts and the remaining pieces swirled out of reach, once again, into the abyss.

“Take me to Rob’s,” she said.

“I can’t. The alarm company will be here any minute. We have to wait until they leave.”

She nodded as her eyes once again settled on the magnet. “I’m sorry.”

He took a step into the kitchen. “It’s okay,” he said, his voice still low and gentle. “No one blames you for feeling out of whack. I’m surprised you’re handling it as well as you are.”

She reached up and touched the surface of the magnet, tracing its embossed image. “You took the time off then, too.”

“Yeah.” He edged closer, so he could drape his arm around her shoulders.

“Do you still have the horses?”

“You remember that?”

“I remember something about riding.”

He smiled. “Yep. Those two big mooches are still hanging around.”

She looked up into his eyes. “Will this get any easier?”

“I wish I could tell you that.”

The alarm company was able to work fast and get everything installed in less than two hours. Her condo was much smaller and easier to equip than the house.

They went over everything with her, showed her how to program it, how to add additional users, and how to check trouble codes.

She stared at the keypad as she and Bill prepared to leave.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Do you need help with it?”

She slowly shook her head. “I never needed one of these before, did I?”

“Well, you’ve had one at the shop for years.”

“I mean here.” Rob had arranged for the system and apparently paid for it out of his own pocket. He’d also instructed them to install a panic button in the master bedroom, and included not one, but two key fobs that also had panic button switches on them.

“No, you didn’t. But this is different.”

She picked up her purse, which she really hadn’t looked through other than to study the contents of her wallet, and trailed a finger over the keypad. “I guess everything’s different now.”

* * *

Bill went first out of caution, leaving Laura and Doogie in the truck while he got the front door unlocked and disarmed the alarm.

He had to help her out, the ibuprofen she’d taken not helping to kill the pain so much as strangle it a little.

Kind of like me.

She suppressed a snort.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She looked around the yard. “Can we walk around?”

“Sure.” He kept his arm out for her and she didn’t argue with him. She held on for support, following him and Doogie as the dog sniffed every blade of grass and watered quite a few of them.

The back side of the property bordered a protected wetland area. With the exception of a two-foot swath outside the fence that Rob took care of with a weed trimmer, there was a ten-yard-wide section of overgrown grass and weeds leading to a thick area of pine trees mixed in with palms, palmettos, Brazilian peppers, melaleucas, and mangroves. The area was several hundred acres large. With the exception of the few homes on Rob’s street there was no public access to the wildlife area except by boat from the water.

She stared out at the woodlands area and listened to the sounds of birds, insects, and the wind.

“I’ve spent a lot of time here, huh?”

“That’s what Rob and you’ve both said.”

“It’s quiet here.”

“Peaceful. That’s one of the reasons you love it.”

She closed her eyes and tried to remember something tickling at her thoughts. When she had it, she turned and looked at the back side of the house, where a screened-in lanai opened onto a wooden deck.

“He bought it from a bank. It was a foreclosure,” she softly said. “I came to look at it with him. He built the lanai and deck.”

Bill nodded, but didn’t speak.

She stared, trying to pull images from the past, to merge and reconcile them with the present. “The yard was a mess. The kitchen had been gutted.” She looked up at the new roof, variegated tan shingles. “The barrel tile roof was cracked and leaking.”

Releasing Bill’s arm, she walked over to the deck and stepped onto it. “We got a lot of stuff, including the kitchen cabinets, from IKEA.”

She closed her eyes, teasing the last bit from her reluctant brain. “Seth was a contractor,” she whispered, not understanding why Bill shouldn’t hear that. “And Tony, Cris, Landry, Ross, Mac, they all came over and helped one weekend.”

She opened her eyes again and, without waiting for Bill, headed around to the front of the house.

The laundry room. She had to see it.

With her heart pounding and Bill and Doogie on her heels, she pushed through the front door and trusted her feet. They unerringly carried her past the kitchen to a closed door.

Her fingers trembled as she reached out and twisted the knob, a sob falling from her as she recognized the laundry room. And on a low shelf over the washer sat a yellow jug of laundry detergent.

Ignoring the pain, she hurried over to it and yanked it from the shelf. Twisting the top off she held it up to her nose and took a deep breath.

Laughter flowed through her tears as she stood there, hugging the bottle to her chest and taking long, deep breaths.

Bill stood in the doorway, watching her. “You all right?”

“It’s yellow,” she said, eyes closed, the happiest she’d felt since the nightmare started. “I remembered. It’s yellow. It’s the detergent I use.”

“Um, yeah. I think you have the same bottle at the condo.”

She shook her head and kept her eyes closed in case more memories wanted to return. “No, you don’t understand. I saw this laundry room. While I was still in the hospital. This room.” Eventually, she opened her eyes and screwed the cap back on before returning the jug to its shelf.

“This room was in my thoughts. Meaning other stuff is still there. In my brain. It’s just…locked up still.”

“Sweetie, I thought we already established you remembered some stuff.”