“Family caretaker,” he answered, handing over folded copies of the paperwork from his wallet. It was a term Kaden had come up with, thinking it would cause them the least amount of grief and raise the fewest eyebrows over the next several months.

Apparently, it was more than good enough for the administrator. She made copies and returned them to him without further questions. By the time he returned to Leah’s side the doctor was almost finished suturing her. She’d gouged a deep, four-inch-long gash along the meaty part of her inner arm. With a shot of pain meds to calm her, Seth asked her for more details.

“It happened so fast. I was stepping down, and I lost my balance. I was holding the pitcher in my right hand, by the handle. When it broke I still had the chunk of handle in my hand, and I think that’s what got me. Glass was bouncing all over the place.”

That made sense. “I’ll call Kaden in a few minutes. You relax. That’s an order.”

She closed her eyes and nodded.

They wanted to keep an eye on her for a little while. While her blood pressure had stabilized, it had been on the low side when he brought her in. He agreed with that and stepped outside to make the call he didn’t want to make. By this time it was after six. He knew Kaden would be out of his meetings.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Seth closed his eyes. “Do not freak out on me.”

“What?”

“I’m serious, dude. Do not freak out on me.”

“You’re freaking me out now, goddamn it! Is Leah okay?”

“She’s fine. There was an accident. It was just an accident.”

“Oh my God! What happened?”

Seth related the incident. Kaden sounded shaky. “I’ll try to get a flight home tonight.”

“No, she’s okay. Seriously. She’s fine. Once they release her I’ll get her home and put her to bed. They’ve given her pain meds. I’ve got a fucking mess to clean up in the kitchen.”

Kaden hesitated. “Are you sure it was an accident?”

“Yeah. I know it sounds coincidental, but if you’d seen the way she was freaking out—”

Kaden breathed a deep sigh of relief Seth heard on his end. “Okay. If she was upset then it probably was an accident. If it’s not an accident, if she does something on purpose, she tries to hide it and blow it off. At least, she used to.”

“No, dude, I’ll swear it was an accident. I’d asked her to mix a pitcher of sangria.”

“Aw, it was the red pitcher she broke?”

He expected a lot of comments but not that. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“She always uses that one to make your sangria. She likes the way the orange slices look inside it. It’s one of her favorites. Damn, I’ll have to see if I can find her another one.”

Seth sat on the curb, his own stress catching up with him. “She panicked when I told her I had to take her collar off.”

“Poor thing. As soon as you can, I want to talk to her. Tell her I’m not mad at her.”

“Let me get back in there and check on her.”

She was dozing but opened her eyes when he took her hand. “Did you talk to Master?” she whispered.

He nodded. “He’s not upset. He told me to tell you he’s not mad.” She closed her eyes again, and a tear rolled down her cheek, scaring Seth. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was an accident, Leah. Accidents happen.”

“But now He’s worried. He shouldn’t be stressed in His condition.”

Danger!

“Love”—Seth made sure to use a low, firm voice—“calm down. He’s not stressed. He was worried until I told him the whole story. He knows it was an accident.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, he’s not happy you got hurt, but he’s not stressed like that. He’s okay. Shit happens.”

She nodded.

She was released a half hour later. Once they were in the car, Seth dialed Kaden and handed Leah his phone.

He watched as she closed her eyes and talked with Kade. Her left arm was bandaged, and she needed to get it checked in a couple of days. He had two prescriptions to fill for her, an antibiotic and pain meds. He pulled into a pharmacy and left Leah in the car, still talking to Kaden on the phone while he was inside waiting for the medicine.

Back home. He’d finally stopped feeling weird calling it home. It was home. It felt like home. Maybe he wasn’t at the point where he could think about it as his in terms of owning it, but he certainly felt comfortable there, like he was part of the family.

He carried her inside and laid her on the couch. “I’ll make you some dinner after I get the kitchen cleaned up,” he said.

She started to protest. He cut her off. “No. You get taken care of tonight.”

“But that’s my job!”

He whipped out his cell phone and called Kaden, then put him on the phone with her while he went to clean up the glass and heat her some leftovers. By the time he returned with her food, Kaden had apparently mollified her.

She handed Seth the phone. “Master wants to talk with You, Sir.”

“Thanks, love.” He took it to his bedroom and shut the door. “Don’t fucking tell me to give her a session tonight. I won’t do it. I don’t care what you say.”

He laughed. “No, I wasn’t going to tell you that. Pain meds zonk her out. She hates taking them. She’ll be sound asleep in an hour, I bet. Probably sleep until noon tomorrow.”

Relief! “Thank God.”

“You did good.”

“Promise me this gets easier.”

“Just follow your heart. We’ll talk more tomorrow after I get home.”

Seth returned to the kitchen, nuked himself a plate of food, and sat next to Leah on the couch. She’d picked at her food but hadn’t made much headway.

“You’d better eat.”

“I’m so sleepy.”

“I know, babe. It’s the meds they gave you.”

He finished his dinner and made her lay down with her head in his lap while they watched TV. Before long, she’d developed an unfocused stare he knew was due to the pain meds taking hold in her system.

“What are we going to do without him?” she whispered.

Oh, fuck. He did not want to have this talk with her right now.

“We’ll be okay. It’ll take some time, but we’ll be okay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

She was quiet for a while. He’d hoped she’d fallen asleep. Then she spoke again. “I’m going to miss him so much.” Large tears rolled down her face.

“Me too, babe.” He felt his own tears close to the surface and tried to push them away.

“How long do we have?”

“Babe, we don’t need to talk about this.”

“How long?” Her voice sounded soft but firm. Her quiet tears unnerved him. Maybe being zonked out on pain meds was helping her safely process things.

“I don’t know. Every day is a gift. He’s still strong. He’s got a lot of life in him. I can’t give you a time frame.”

“You went with him to the oncologist.”

Shit. She hadn’t acted like she knew about Kaden’s appointment. “The doctors don’t know.”

She turned her head and looked him in the eye. “I know he made you promise not to tell me. That’s something he’d do. But I need to know, Seth. I need an idea.”

He shrugged. “They don’t know. At least several months if there’s no drastic decline.”

“After Christmas?”

He nodded. “Hopefully. At this rate, most likely well after Christmas.”

She nodded and wiped her face with her good hand. “Okay. That’s good enough for me for now.” She fell silent again for a few minutes. “Thank you for taking pictures. I appreciate that.”

“I didn’t know you were paying attention.”

She smiled. “I see more than you think I do.” Her smile faded. “I keep trying not to think about it. That it’s probably his last Christmas. But it’s hard not to.”

“I know.”

“He wants you to go to the club alone with me before we get crazy with the holiday stuff.”

That was news to Seth. He fought a brief moment of panic. “What?”

“You’re ready.”

“Like hell I am.”

“He didn’t tell me exactly why, but I know.” She took a deep breath, more tears flowing. “He wants it to happen so he can help us work on it more if we need him. Before he starts to get really sick. He said it was because of the parties and lights and stuff, but he’s not fooling me. I know he’s trying to take it easy on me.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No. It doesn’t hurt so much to think about it tonight because I’m in a lot of pain already.”

Ahh. That explained it. “The drugs help, too, I’m sure.”

She weakly smiled. “A little.”

“Listen, I catch you trying to doctor shop to get scripts, I’ll freaking tie you up and not let you come for a month.”

Her eyes widened, then she laughed, long and hard.

Well, he’d finally managed to make her laugh for the day.

She was still crying, but at least she smiled. “Thank you, Seth.”

She finally fell asleep. Once she was softly snoring in his lap, he carried her to his bedroom and gently tucked her into his bed. He cleaned up their dinner dishes and turned out all the lights. Turning on his TV, he set the sleep timer, then curled around her and gently kissed her forehead.

“I promise, I’ll take care of you. We’ll get through it, babe.”

It took him a long time to finally get to sleep, the memory of her tears fresh in his mind.

* * *

She was still sound asleep at seven the next morning. He carefully extricated himself from her arms. In sleep she had rolled over and cuddled tightly against him, practically clinging to his side. He started coffee and checked his cell phone, no calls from Kade. He knew Kade’s flight was at eleven and his friend would already be awake.

“She still asleep?” Kaden asked.

“Yep. Dead to the world.”

“Good. The irony is, perhaps it’s for the best she did this.”

“I told you, it was a freaking accident.”

“I know. I believe it was, too. I’m not saying I’m happy she got hurt. In the grand scheme of things, it’ll probably help her.”

Seth didn’t know if he wanted to fess up about their conversation. That could wait until Kade returned. “How do I convince her to just sit and chill out today and let me take care of her?”

“Sit and talk. Play your guitar for her. Tell her what would make you happy for today is to spoil her rotten.”

Well, that was the truth. She already took damn good care of him. It didn’t matter that both Kade and Leah thought they owed Seth for doing this. Seth felt he owed them.

He scrambled himself some eggs and frequently walked down the hall to look in on Leah. Still zonked. He suspected it probably wasn’t just the meds but the accumulated stress and grief taking its toll. It was good she could rest.

Now with Kaden’s trip out of the way, he would spend most of his time at the house. Still some work to clear up, he’d explained, but what he had left, he could mostly do from home.

A little before eleven Seth grabbed his laptop and started back to the bedroom to sit with Leah when the house phone rang.

“Shit.” He raced for it, hoping it wouldn’t wake Leah.

“Kaden?” the woman asked.

Aw, fuck. He knew that voice. Kaden’s younger sister.

“No, Denise, it’s Seth.” He wished he’d let it go to voicemail.

The frost in her voice would have comfortably air-conditioned the entire house, even with every last freaking window open. “What are you doing answering their phone?”

Denise had never liked Seth, even as kids. The feeling was mutual. Kaden hadn’t broken the news to his family yet about him dying, hadn’t told them about Seth living there either. He wanted to wait until after the holidays, if possible.

“Kaden’s out of town. He’s coming back tonight.” The less said, the better.

“I tried his cell and he didn’t answer. Leah’s not answering hers, either.”

“She’s asleep.” He realized as soon as the words left his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say.

“What do you mean she’s asleep? How would you know?”

He might as well have waved a red flag in front of a bull. “She had a small accident yesterday, cut her arm, just a few stitches, no big deal. The pain meds knocked her out.”

“Well, I’ll come over and stay with her until he gets home. You said he’s coming home tonight. You can go do whatever you do.” First the suspicion, now the condescension.

Fan-fucking-tastic. “No, Denise, that’s not necessary. It’s under control.”

“You can’t stay with her.”