I SPENT THE first three days at Moses and Georgia’s house holed up in my room. Georgia brought me food that I didn’t want to eat, and I slept as much as I could. But on the fourth day, I was restless, irritatingly restored, and I couldn’t hide in the room over Mo’s studio forever. Even though I wanted to. They’d put Henry in the single bed in the baby’s room—Kathleen still slept in a cradle in her parents’ room—and Millie took the guest room on the main floor. It was a big house, a nice house, and I loved the people in it, but I had purposely avoided them.
Moses had stomped in that morning with the painting he’d done of David and Goliath and set it down on an easel facing my bed. Then he plunked down a huge bible, just tossed it in front of me, and opened it to a section that he had highlighted in red pencil.
“David kills giants. Giants don’t kill David,” he barked, slapping the book. “Read it.” He stomped back out again.
I picked up the book, liking the heft in my hand, the silkiness of the pages. It had gold lettering engraved on the cover—Kathleen Wright—Moses’s great-grandmother, the grandmother his daughter was named for. From the looks of it, her bible had been a trusted friend. It surprised me that Moses read it, but he obviously had, at least long enough to find the passage of scripture he wanted me to read. I turned back to the opened page and read the highlighted sections.
And it came to pass, when Goliath arose, and came, and drew nigh to meet David that David hastened, and ran toward the army to meet Goliath. And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote Goliath in his forehead that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. So David prevailed over Goliath with a sling and with a stone, and smote Goliath, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David. Therefore David ran, and stood upon Goliath, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and cut off his head therewith.
Moses had underlined the part where David ran to meet Goliath. Eager little beaver, that David. The biblical David apparently enjoyed fighting too. I sighed and shut the book. I wasn’t terribly inspired. I knew what Moses wanted, but deep down, I wasn’t convinced, and I wished he would hear me out. Moses was all about seeing, but he could stand to listen every once in a while.
I could hear Georgia and Henry outside my bedroom window. The room overlooked the round corral, and Georgia was walking Sackett in slow circles, Henry perched happily on his back, chatting away like talking was his favorite thing and not something he struggled with at all. Georgia was damn good at what she did, and I marveled at the little miracle that Henry was here, enjoying the benefits of my friendship with Georgia and Moses. If nothing else, that was something I could hold onto. I hadn’t messed everything up. It wasn’t all bad.
It was just mostly bad. Including the way I smelled. I desperately needed a shower. In addition to the bed, Moses had a huge sink and a toilet tucked away above his work space, but no shower. I would have to brave the rest of the house for that, and it couldn’t be put off any longer.
When I slipped into the house through the garage entrance, I stopped to listen. I could hear someone upstairs—Moses, by the sound of the footfalls—but nobody seemed to be downstairs. The big guest bathroom on the main floor was connected to the room Millie had slept in, but the bed was neatly made and Millie was nowhere to be seen. I released my breath and ducked into the bathroom, locking the door and making use of the shower.
But Millie was waiting for me when I came out. She sat primly on the bed, her hands folded in her lap, just waiting.
“You smell good, David,” she said with a smile, and I felt a pang at the memory those words invoked. She stuck out her hand toward me, like she’d done the night we met, as if waiting for me to shake it.
“Hi. I’m Amelie. And I’m blind.”
I couldn’t deny her. I stepped forward and took her hand in mine and said my line.
“Hi. I’m David. And I’m not.” I didn’t release her, and she didn’t pull it away. I ran my thumb over the silkiness of her skin, my eyes riveted to our joined hands. God, I loved her so much! I wanted to shut the door, lock it, and push her back onto the bed and just let it all go. Just for a while. I wanted that so badly.
“Now that we’ve introduced ourselves again, maybe you’ll talk to me,” she suggested gently.
“I don’t want to talk, Millie,” I whispered.
She tilted her head sideways, catching the heat in my voice. The ode. The freaking ode that was still thrumming between us, the song on constant repeat.
She stood up slowly, and she was so close that her body brushed mine. I felt her breath at my throat, a little flutter of the melody that I couldn’t get out of my head, out of my heart. I brought one hand to her face and tipped her chin up, until her lips were directly beneath mine. And then I kissed her. So lightly. So gently. Trying desperately not to turn the song into a symphony, the ode into a cymbal-crashing orchestral arrangement.
She responded, but she didn’t increase the tempo. Our lips met, merged, and retreated only to meet again and repeat the motion. When I urged her lips apart and tasted the wet sweetness of her mouth, it was all I could do not to moan in defeat. And then we were tumbling back onto the bed, her hips in my hands, my shirt clutched in her fists, and the kiss roared to an inevitable, if sudden, crescendo.
And that’s when she pushed me away.
“David. Stop,” she whispered, her mouth seeking me even as she asked me to quit. I pressed my forehead to hers to rein myself in and bit back a curse when my still-tender flesh protested the contact. She took my cheeks in her hands, and ran her fingers over my face, as if trying to read my expression.
“We don’t have to talk. But you can’t kiss me and then leave again. You can’t do that to me, David.” There was steel in her voice, though it was wrapped in velvet, and I knew she meant it.
“I may not be able to control whether I leave or not,” I said, rolling away from her and staring up at the ceiling.
“That’s not what I mean, big guy. And you know it.” She sat up and folded her legs beneath her. She kept a hand on my arm the way she always did when we were close, the contact important to her. Yeah. I knew what she meant. I’d taken myself away. Removed myself. And she was asking me if I was going to do it again.
“People don’t survive what I’ve got. They just don’t,” I whispered.
She immediately shook her head. Resisting. Her resistance made me harsh.
“It might seem romantic, Millie. Taking care of me. But it isn’t romantic. It’ll be ugly and painful. And I won’t be the man you’re in love with. I’ll be the man trying not to die and dying anyway,” I pressed. She stiffened and her hand tightened on my shirt. Good. She was listening.
“I’ll feel like shit, I’ll probably be mean as hell, and you’ll wonder what you’re doing. I’ll lose my bumps. You’re all about the bumps, remember? I’ve already lost my hair. I’ll lose my ability to be strong for you. And for Henry. And when you’ve lost all that, when you’ve been through hell, I’ll die anyway! I’ll die anyway, Millie, and you won’t have anything left. No David, no Tag. You won’t have my song. You’ll just have a belly full of sorrow,” I argued, impassioned. But she was ready for me.
“Some people are worth suffering for. I’m strong. I’ve been training for this, you know. Instead of feeling bad that I’ve had my trials, be grateful that I’m strong. I’ve got this. I’ve got you. Don’t take that away from me, David.”
“I don’t want our last days together to be with me in a vegetative state. I don’t want you to feed me and hold my hand! I don’t want to forget your name. I don’t want you to watch me suffer!”
“Ah, but I won’t. Perks of being a blind girl,” she shot back, and there was anger in her voice. “I won’t have to see you suffer at all, will I?”
I swore and stood, shaking her off. I didn’t want to argue with her. I headed for the door. I now understood Millie’s need to walk everywhere she went. Walking beat being trapped. And I was trapped.
“When are you going to start believing that you are worthy to be loved?” Her voice rang out behind me, clear and controlled, but there was a barely restrained fury that made her words wobble.
I paused and faced her once more. She was trying to follow me, and I had no doubt that if I walked out of the house, she would grab her stick, and I would be forced to play a game of Marco Polo down the streets of Levan so she wouldn’t lose me. I needed her to let me go and she obviously wasn’t going to do that.
“Millie—”
“No!” she cried. “You don’t think you are worthy of love if you aren’t Tag, if you aren’t the ‘sexy man!’” Millie did air quotes and mocked me, mocked the conversation we’d had when she’d played my chords. “You don’t think you are worthy of love if you are sick. You don’t think you are worthy of love if you can’t be the strong one all the damn time! If you can’t take care of me twenty-four seven, you must not be worthy of love.”
“That’s not it!” I protested, shaking my head, denying everything.
“That is it, dammit!” she cried, stamping her foot. She stepped toward the decorative vanity where she’d carefully placed her things and, with a rare show of temper, pushed everything to the floor. Toiletries, a blow dryer, a pile of folded laundry—all of it tumbled off the edges, and Millie kept pushing, just like she was pushing me.
“Millie, cut it out, dammit! You’re going to hurt yourself, baby!”
“NO!” she shouted. “This is not about me! If I want to throw a few things, I will. I’m not an invalid. I’m not a princess. I’m a grown woman. And I can throw a fit if I feel like it!” She threw her hand out in my direction, pointing her finger at me and wagging it fiercely. “And I don’t expect you to clean it up when I’m done!”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing as I watched her come unglued. At me.
“Do you know when I lost my sight I felt guilty for a long time? I felt guilty for the pain I put my parents through. Then my dad left. And my guilt grew tenfold. I felt guilty when my mom had to change her whole life to accommodate my blindness. Henry was just a little kid, and he had his own set of issues. And I made everything worse! I made everything fall apart. That’s what I told myself for a long, long time.”
I knew exactly how that felt. Guilt. I’d been consumed with it when Molly disappeared. Eaten alive by it. And I was racked with it now. But Millie wasn’t waiting for me to contribute to the conversation. She was shaking with anger, and I stayed silent.
“I don’t know when things started to change. Maybe it was gymnastics. Maybe it was music and dancing. Maybe it was when my mother got sick, and someone started to depend on me for once. And I handled it, David. I handled it! I was strong. And I was worthy of love. I had been worthy all along! I just didn’t see it.” Millie thumped her chest emphatically and repeated. “I am worthy to be loved. Blind eyes and all.”
The lump in my throat was so wide and hard that I groaned a little, trying to breathe around it. Millie’s sightless eyes were filled with tears that spilled over and slid down her cheeks. She brushed at them impatiently.
“Even still. I would never have asked you to love me, David. I asked for a kiss because I wanted it so badly. But I would never have asked you to love me. My pride would not allow it. My self-respect would not stand for it. But you gave it. You offered it. You fell in love with me anyway! And I am worthy of that love,” she repeated, her voice rising again.
“Yeah. I did. And you are,” My heart was in my throat and I walked toward her. She heard me coming and stepped away, her arm extended stiffly, palm toward me, warding me off.
“No. Not yet,” she told me firmly, though she was no longer yelling. “I understand guilt, David, I do. But love can’t be one-sided. One person can’t always give and the other person can’t always take. If you truly love me, you have to trust me.”
I couldn’t think of someone I trusted more, not even Moses.
“I do trust you, Millie.”
“No. You don’t. You don’t trust me. And you don’t think you are worthy of love.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t move. So I listened.
“You don’t think you are worthy of my love if you can’t be strong all the time,” she repeated firmly. “And you don’t think that I’m strong enough to be there for you when you aren’t. You don’t trust me.”
“This has nothing to do with my faith in you. I know who you are, Millie.” I stumbled over my response, trying to express myself, trying to say what I meant and mean what I said. “I know you would see me through. You say give miracles a chance, but I feel like I already got mine. You’re my miracle! The fact that you and I came together, that we met, that I found the love of my life. That’s a miracle, Millie! I’m so grateful for that. So many people don’t get that. We did. It’s a miracle I was awake enough not to miss it. And it’s a miracle you loved me back.”
Her face crumpled and she reached for me. At last she reached for me. Entreating me. I went to her immediately, but she pressed both hands against my chest, framing my heart, keeping me from pulling her into me. Then she ran her hands down my arms and found my hands. She cradled one of my hands in both of hers and brought my palm to her lips. She kissed it softly, sweetly, pressing her lips to the center as if she could ease my pain and her own by kissing it all away. Then she moved my palm from her lips and let me cup her cheek. She leaned into it briefly, holding it there, as if she drew strength from me, despite what she’d said. Then she slid my hand down her neck, past the fine bones at her collar, and pressed my palm against her breast, covering her completely.
“Most people think the most intimate thing in the world is sex,” she said softly.
I shuddered at the sense of belonging I felt, touching her like that, where no one else touched her, but I didn’t curl my fingers against her, didn’t caress the crest of her breast with my thumb or reach up and cradle her other breast in the hand that still hung at my side. I just waited, feeling the pounding of her heart against the tips of my fingers, and she rewarded me by continuing.
“I thought when I made love with you, when I let you see all of me and when you let me know all of you, every private inch, when we made that promise with our bodies and our lips, I thought that would be the most intimate thing we would ever do.”
“Millie?” I whispered. I didn’t know where she was going with this, but there was sorrow in her words, and finality, like she’d reached a conclusion about me, about us.
“But it wasn’t. Sex is not the most intimate thing two lovers can do. Even when the sex is beautiful. Even when it’s perfect.” Millie drew a deep breath as if she remembered how perfect it had truly been. “The most intimate thing we can do is to allow the people we love most to see us at our worst. At our lowest. At our weakest. True intimacy happens when nothing is perfect. And I don’t think you’re ready to be intimate with me, David.”
She stopped talking, letting her words ring in the air, and my hand curled against her breast, kneading her and needing her, and not knowing how to give her what she wanted. Her breath caught and her head fell into my chest as if the pleasure warred with the pain.
“I don’t know how,” I confessed, and I pulled my hand away so I wouldn’t hurt her in my frustration.
She grabbed my hand and brought it back, this time pressing it to her heart.
“I’m telling you how. You hold onto me. You trust me. You use me. You lean on me. You rely on me. You let me shelter you. You let me love you. All of you. Cancer. Fear. Sickness. Health. Better. Worse. All of you. And you’ll have all of me.”
“I don’t know if I can beat it, Millie.” I choked on the words and suddenly I was crying. My first instinct was to be grateful she couldn’t see me, and then I felt her hands on my cheeks, feeling the tears, and I braced myself. But I didn’t pull away. She stood on tiptoe and pulled my face to hers, pressing her trembling lips to mine, comforting, quieting, and acknowledging my fear. And it wasn’t just fear, it was my deepest fear. If I fought, I didn’t know if I could win. In fact, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t. I tasted Millie’s tears, and I knew she tasted mine. And then she spoke against my lips.
“You don’t have to beat it, David. You don’t have to beat it. You just have to let us fight with you.”
I wrapped my arms around her and held on for a moment, unable to speak. When I found my voice I still didn’t let her go.
“No tap outs,” I whispered.
“No guilt,” Millie said gently.
“Amelie means work.” I don’t know why that came to my mind, but it did. As she held me up, I thought of her strength.
“That’s right.” She smiled tremulously. “So are you going to work for me or not?”