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Jenny got the aura while they were still within sight of the zoo entrance behind them—a dead spot in her vision, a hole into which the thing she tried to focus on fell. It meant she had forty-five minutes before the pain set in.

And here she was, at the Tulsa Zoo on a sunny, late-August afternoon, with two four-year-olds and one anxiety-inducing ex-boyfriend.

More than ex-boyfriend. Ex-old man. She brushed her hand over the left side of her chest, where her only tattoo was, near her shoulder.

She’d gotten her first migraine when she was fourteen, a few days before her first period. She’d thought for sure she was dying and had run to her father for help. He’d taken her to the emergency room, and they’d done a bunch of painful tests and decided it was ‘just’ migraine. They’d given her a morphine shot for the pain, and they’d sent her home when it wore off.

Her father had been angry that he’d ‘wasted’ most of his day off over nothing but a headache.

Since then, she got them once a month or so. Doctors said it was hormonal, but it didn’t seem as connected to her period as that first one had suggested. Then again, while she was pregnant, she’d had them two or three times a month, which would indicate that wacky hormones brought them on.

Still, Jenny herself thought it was stress that triggered them. So she shouldn’t have been surprised at this aura—and she wasn’t, not really. Scared and angry about it, but not surprised. After fifteen years, she’d gotten about as used to headaches so bad she wanted to kill herself as it was possible to get. With Kelsey to care for and a life to manage, she’d even coped well enough to live around most of them—driving, working, parenting, all while half blind and three-quarters crazy with pain.

The aura would last about five minutes, and then she’d be okay until the pain. After that, it could be a couple of hours, or it could be days. Considering that she was stuck at the zoo and unable even to get away from the sun, this one would likely be a long one.

She could cancel. Turn around right here and now and go back home before the pain came. Carlena was on vacation and her father’s fill-in nurse wouldn’t watch Kelsey, but Mrs. Turner would keep her for the afternoon. She’d gotten migraines, too, as a young woman, and she understood.

But it was Kelsey’s birthday, and she was happy and excited, swinging arms with Maisie, chattering up at Maverick, telling him all about the giraffes as they walked in their chain deeper into the park. She couldn’t cancel this day.

Okay, then. Suck it up, buttercup. She and her migraine were just going to have to coexist today.

Jenny glued her smile on. Head down, shoulder to the day.

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~oOo~

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“You okay?” Maverick brushed his hand down her bare arm.

“Yeah. Fine.”

No, she wasn’t. The pain had just arrived, like an air drop of anvils behind her right eye. They’d gotten through the giraffes and the bears, they’d stopped at a cart for Bomb Pops, and now Kelsey and Maisie were playing in the little playground. Jenny found a shaded bench and sat down.

Maverick sat next to her. Without asking, he took her sunglasses off and squinted at her. “Migraine. Right?”

She snatched her glasses from his fingers and shoved them back into place. “I’m fine.”

“Babe, I know what you look like when one hits. We need to go.”

Jenny wished he’d stop calling her babe. Every time he said it, she felt it like a touch, like a caress. Everything about him was so confusing.

Actually, it wasn’t. Nothing about Maverick was confusing. Everything he wanted was laid out for her to see: he wanted to pick up the life he’d destroyed. He wanted her to move into the house he’d bought, to bring her daughter there and be the family that they’d meant to be.

As if that were possible.

What was confusing was how she felt about it all. She still loved him—she thought she loved him as much as she ever had. She still craved his touch and felt safe in his arms. Maybe even more now, after four years alone. She hadn’t told him to stop calling her babe because it felt so good to hear it. No one had loved her since Maverick. Maybe no one had loved her but Maverick. She’d been more than alone these last four years; she’d been lonely. She had Kelsey, and that would always be the most important relationship in her life, but it was different from having a partner.

She wanted what he wanted, as much as he wanted it, but, unlike him, she understood that it was impossible. She wasn’t the person she’d been, and he was. He was, so obviously, the same domineering man. Before, she hadn’t understood how controlling he’d been and how much she’d deferred to him. Now, after his willful disregard of her had turned everything to rubble, she’d changed. She couldn’t live like that, always deferring her will to his. No matter how much she loved him, or how much she wanted the life they’d planned.

And her head hurt far too much to deal with these confusing, frustrating thoughts.

“Go if you want. It’s Kelsey’s birthday, and I’m not ruining it.” She turned from him and smiled at the playing girls.

“You sure? You can gut it out?”

At Maverick’s question, Jenny remembered that, before Kelsey, she’d always been incapacitated by her migraines. She’d taken to her bed with every one. That was the Jenny he remembered: weak.

“You think I’ve had a choice for the last four years? Who was going to take care of her if I didn’t ‘gut it out’?”

She hadn’t shifted her attention from the girls as she’d spoken, but she felt him flinch at her side. Good. He needed to remember that he hadn’t been the only one living a fucked-up life since he’d gone away.

As if he heard her thought, he muttered, “I know I fucked us up, Jenny. I know I let you down. That’s not news to me. But I wasn’t away on vacation. You understand that, right? Prison almost killed me. The shit that happened to me was fucked up, but it was knowing you weren’t waiting that made it hell.”

The hammer came down on the anvil in her brain, again and again. Her heart pounded with the stress of this day, this talk. She felt ill and knew she’d be puking here at the zoo fairly soon. She hoped she’d at least make it to the restroom to do it.

The little train tooted its horn, and Kelsey stood up to look for it. “Mommy! Can we ride the train?”

Jenny took a slow, deep breath and got her game face back on. “Sure, pixie!”

As she moved to stand, Maverick grabbed her arm. “You call her pixie. And you keep count.”

She nodded; she’d seen his shock earlier when Kelsey had said ‘That’s two.’ Until she’d seen his reaction, she hadn’t thought about its impact on him—and she’d been surprised to discover that it hurt him. She’d started calling Kelsey pixie because she’d been calling her pixie for months before her birth. She’d started keeping count with her because it was a happy memory at a time when she’d needed one. And because she wanted Kelsey always to know that she heard those words every day.

“I’m part of that, Jen. Those were our things. I’ve been in your life all this time.”

Her head hurt too much for this. “I can’t do this now. I can’t.”

Concern softened his expression, and his hand eased around her arm and became a caress. “Sorry. Okay. Let’s get you through the zoo in one piece, then.”

When she stood, the change in position made the pain surge to a new high point, and she reeled like it had literally hit her. Maverick’s arm came around her waist and steadied her. She leaned on him.

“I’m okay.”

“I know. And I’m right here.”

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~oOo~

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Three hours at the zoo. Long, painful hours. Half an hour in a loud, crowded food court. Two trips to ladies’ rooms, where she bent over public toilets and hurled, then leaned against the stall wall, crying silently and trying to pull herself together.

Puking made the pain worse. Crying made the pain worse. The greatest torment of migraine wasn’t the excruciating pain but all the things it made you do that made the pain worse.

But she got through it and, with Maverick’s help, managed to keep the girls from knowing. Kelsey had the birthday trip she’d wanted. They even did the gift shop, where they got big clear balloons with little balloon animals inside, and Maverick bought them each a new toy. Maisie got an articulated wooden snake, and Kelsey got a big stuffed giraffe.

At her car, Maverick helped her get the girls into their car seats. She watched him fasten Kelsey in and was surprised to see that he knew what he was doing.

When she opened the driver’s door, he caught it and stepped in her way. “I know you can do it. I’ve seen how you can deal with the pain. But I see that you’re hurting. Let me take you home. Let me drive, Jen.”

She’d decided to ask him to join them for cake and presents. Having him here today had helped a lot, and the thought of driving made her want to cry again—driving with a migraine was a special level of hell. But if he drove her car, how would he get back to his? How long would he stay? How would it all play out?

Her screaming head wouldn’t entertain these questions. But she did manage to ask, “What about your car?”

“I need to run over right now to get something out of it, but I’ll just leave it here and get it when I can.”

“They tow after hours.”

He smiled. “I know. Delaney’s has the contract. So that’s not a problem. So I’ll drive, then?”

Her brain wouldn’t think. She wanted to be home in a dark room with a cool washcloth over her eyes.

“Jen, please.”

She wanted somebody to take care of her.

“Okay, yeah. Thank you.”

He bent his head and kissed her, right in front of Kelsey, and she’d been thinking and moving too slowly to see it coming. It was just a gentle kiss, barely more than a peck, but Jenny felt it all around and through her. When he stepped back to lead her around to the passenger side, she saw their daughter watching, her eyes wide. Blue eyes, just like her father’s.

Her head hurt too much to hold all this confusion.

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~oOo~

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She made it through the squeaking balloons in the back seat on the drive home. She made it through ice cream cake and even sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ with her hands clenched behind her back. She made it through Kelsey’s squeals of delight at her gifts: a Dentist Barbie from Maisie, some books and a Barbie Dream House from Jenny, some clothes ‘from Granddaddy,’ and a big art kit from Maverick, with pastels, colored pencils, watercolors on a palette, sketchpads, an apron, and a little easel.

There was a lot of delighted squealing. Kelsey was so happy that, every now and then, Jenny almost forgot that she was enduring the worst migraine she’d had in years.

Maverick took the girls back to Kelsey’s room to help her set up the Dream House while Jenny cleaned up the kitchen. She’d bagged up the gift trash and had her hands in soapy dish water before it occurred to her that she’d let him go back without a second thought.

He was loose in her house, and her father was sleeping in his room. His fill-in nurse sat in the living room, watching television. An innocent bystander.

The man who’d gone to prison for beating her father nearly to death was in the same house with him, and the import of that had missed her completely.

She hovered over the sink as a new spike of pain went through her eye, and her stomach revolted. It settled down without rejecting the half a bite of cake she’d had. Shutting off the tap, she turned, slowly, keeping her bearings, and went to make sure no violence was brewing.

Maverick came into the kitchen before she’d crossed the room.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. I have them in charge of taking all the plastic parts off the forms and sorting them out. We’ll see how that goes. I want to ask you to do me a favor.”

“What?”

“I want you to go to bed. I’ll get you a cool washcloth. You look like hell, Jen. You need to close your eyes and rest.”

She shook her head. “I’ll get through it. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again.”

He came up to her and closed her arms in his hands, gently. “What are you afraid of? I’m not going to run off with her. I’ll build her house and let her play with Maisie, and when you’re feeling better, I’ll go. I’m not going to hurt her, Jen. Or you. Ever.”

“My dad...”

A shadow moved through his eyes. “I’ll keep my distance. I’m not going to hurt an invalid, either.”

An invalid he’d made. Jenny remembered her father’s agitation when she’d spoken to Kelsey about Maverick. He knew more than he could say. He had a child’s mind, but clearly, there were things he remembered and understood, even if his understanding had been compromised. He remembered enough to be angry. Or afraid—for her father, those two emotions had always been so similar that they might as well have been the same.

“Mav, I can’t.” As she said it, nausea overwhelmed her, and she spun toward the sink. Vertigo nearly brought her to her knees as she puked into the empty side.

He was right behind her, holding her ponytail, rubbing her back. “Now you’re being stubborn and stupid. Jesus Christ, Jen. Let me help. Please.”

He was making the stress worse, which was making the headache worse, but at this point, his leaving wouldn’t make anything better. Kelsey would be sad, and she’d be guilty, and it was all more than she could take.

“Okay,” she gasped and ran the tap to rinse her mouth and wash her sick down the disposal. “Okay.”

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~oOo~

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She pulled her heavy drapes so that the room was as dark as she could get it, and she turned the box fan on right in front of the air conditioning vent so that the room would be as cool as she could get it. She stripped down to her panties and took a knit camisole from a drawer. Ideally, she’d be naked—even the touch of fabric was too much sensation when she was in pain like this—but she couldn’t risk Maverick coming in and seeing her.

Which he did, knocking but opening the door without waiting, as she pulled the camisole down over her chest. He stopped and stood there, holding out a washcloth.

Hurting too much to make a fuss about it, she slid into bed. He came and got down on his knees at her side. “Do you take anything for them now?”

“Nothing works. I took some Excedrin. Sometimes that takes the point off, but I think it’s too late to do anything with this one but survive it.”

“Okay. Close your eyes.”

She did, and he laid the washcloth—cool and damp but not too wet, just as she needed it to be—over her forehead and eyes. She sighed. Though it didn’t help the pain, there was comfort in it.

Before his lips touched her, she felt him coming, in the shift of the mattress and the nearing heat of his body, in the caress of his breath. He kissed her lightly at the corner of her mouth and lingered there.

“I’m here if you need me. I’ll take good care of our girl.”

He got up and left, closing the door so carefully that Jenny had to lift the washcloth and check to know he’d done it. He still knew exactly what she needed during an attack. He still knew how to take care of her. She knew he would take care of Kelsey. She even trusted him to stay away from her father.

For the first time in four years, she could collapse under the weight of a migraine, could give in and rest while Kelsey was home, and know that everything would be okay.

If Maverick had asked her right then to move in with him, to forgive him and pretend that they’d been living the life they’d wanted for the past four years, she very likely would have said yes.

What he did better than anything else was take care. Until that last day, when she’d needed him, he’d been there. He wasn’t much for proclamations of feeling; they’d started keeping count because he’d hardly ever said ‘I love you,’ and she’d told him she needed to hear it at least once every day. But when he was needed, he was always right there.

She’d understood that she loved him—and that he loved her—the first time she’d had a migraine with him. It had been a particularly bad one, the kind that made her lose her mind. Though he never got headaches of any sort, he hadn’t minimized her pain; he hadn’t called it ‘only a headache.’ He’d accepted the pain as real. He’d asked her what she needed, and he’d done it.

That was how he showed his love: by taking loving care. By being there, and by wanting to be.

It was also how he’d betrayed it: by leaving her on her own.

But right now, that seemed insignificant. Right now, feeling cared for in her need, she could only be glad he was with her, could only remember how it felt to be loved.