Her room is scrupulously clean and organized. Flowers and get well cards. A teddy bear perched in a chair holding an I Love You balloon. She might be living in a hospital room, but that apparently, is no reason for slobbishness. I shouldn’t be here but I don’t like knowing she’s here alone. I want to be there for her any way I can. It’s after visiting hours, but no one seemed to notice me as I came through the halls. She opens her eyes. Blinks at me, startled and then smiles cautiously. Stretching stiff, aching muscles she props herself up. Her skin seems like paper.

She’s in a loose, long-sleeved T-shirt that used to have the logo of Aimee’s middle school printed across the front. You can still see bits of it if you squint. The rest is faded and comfortably worn. Her hair is plaited into a haphazard braid down her back. There’s a shaved patch by her ear and that guilty stabbing feeling returns. I lift one hand in greeting. She wipes sleep from her eyes. I lick my lips, adjust my crotch. Just the sight of Aub does things to me that no other woman has done.

“What time is it?” she asks and looks around the room.

“Late.”

“What are you doing here?” Her voice is low and sleep heavy.

I hesitate because I don’t have an answer for her. By all sane reasoning I shouldn’t be here in the middle of the night. “I don’t know.”

She stares at me a beat. “Okay,” she says, kicking the blankets off her legs.

I swallow thickly and sit at the end of her bed.  I lift her feet up onto my lap. She tilts her head at me. “I couldn’t sleep knowing you were back and alone here.”

She yawns. “That’s sweet, but I’m okay. Unless, you know something I don’t,” she says going from humor to dread with whiplash speed.

I shake my head at her. “Aubry.”

“What do you smuggle?” she asks.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Her eyes narrow. “Don’t lie to me, Mike.” All I can do is lie. My whole life feels like a lie right now.

“I’m not.”  She eyes me. With a huff, she crosses her arms over her chest.

“I remember things, Mike. Things that everyone’s telling me didn’t happen, but they felt so real.”

“I know.” I massage her shin and calves.

“You and me…” her voice cracks. “You were all that got me through. None of this makes sense to me now. It feels like I’ve gone backwards in time. From being … intimate with someone, and having and proclaiming, feelings for them, to all of a sudden having none of that. To be told it never happened? I know things. I felt things. We did things, said things, and only I remember it. Only I felt it? I don’t know what’s real. Which things were true and which I fabricated.” She yawns again and lets her head sink into her pillow.

God, I wish I could say something to her to make this go away. “If I’m honest, Aub, I’d give anything to remember what you do.” She moves her feet from my lap and pats the bed by her hip.

“Can you lay with me?” She looks so frail. The bed actually looks big around her.

I want nothing more, but it feels wrong. Like I’m taking advantage, but I prop myself up near the head of the bed and let her rest her head on my chest, one arm slung over me.

“Just for a few minutes,” I whisper.  Staring up at the ceiling, I realize this moment is perfect. The hospital doesn’t matter. The shaved patch of hair on Aubry’s head doesn’t matter. The feeling that matters is the pressure of her body against mine. How natural her arm feels slung over me. How calm my breath is and how hard my heart races being like this with her. The scent of fresh peeled oranges, of Aubry.

I want to confess, to tell her what I promised myself I’d tell her. But I can’t do it. It would only confuse things. I don’t want to cause damage unnecessarily. And there is more to protect than just Aubry. An ongoing investigation. The motherfucking Russians. My reputation and life. I have to figure out how to deliver swift justice for Aubry that Salve and the law cannot. Business be damned. I don’t need the motherfucking money and if they think for a second that my loyalty lies in their payments, they’ll be surprised at the outcome.