Page 36 of Don't Go
I tilted my face into his palm.
I didn't decide to. My body had decided.Sabrina, Sabrina, Sabrina, no —
His pupils went wide. He started to lean in.
My brain was screaming. It had pulled the laminated list out of the drawer and was reading it aloud —He hasn't called you in a week. You are standing on your own stoop with a pharmacy bag full of your daughter's heart medication, you have a kid who needs you whole, and you have a heart you can't afford to spend on a man whom you met just a week ago — Sabrina, don't, don't, don't —
A car horn blasted on the street behind us.
We both jolted.
His hand stayed on my face for one beat after the jolt — his thumb still at the corner of my mouth, his palm still warm — andthen he pulled it back slow, like something heavy he was setting down with care.
I stepped down off the bottom step I had drifted onto.
The pharmacy bag was still between us. I reached for it. He released it. The transfer was awkward — fingers brushing fingers, the paper crinkling, neither of us looking at the other, and both of us looking at the bag.
We were both breathing too fast.
"I should go upstairs,” I whispered.
"Ok,” he said with a nod.
I turned toward the door of my building. "Cross."
"Yeah."
The paper crumpled in my hand. "If you don't leave in the next ten seconds, I'm going to do something we will both regret."
He laughed — short, surprised, and real. He stepped back from the curb. He turned.
Took two steps and then looked over his shoulder at me.
"For the record." He gave me the pharmacy smile — corners of his eyes moving, shoulders dropping a quarter inch, the polished edges going soft — and my pulse went stupid. "I wouldn't have regretted it."
7.Beau
Mom was in the chair beside the bed when I came in.
She hadn't left the chair since dad's condition was discovered, not for any meaningful length of time. A nurse had brought her a cardigan from her own car. Cade had brought her a phone charger. I'd brought her a thermos of the coffee she actually liked because the cafeteria coffee was — in her exact words — an insult to a long marriage. The chair was hers now.
Dad was awake.
He turned his head toward the door when I came in, and the turn took a beat longer than was natural. He smiled at me. The smile took another beat. The skin at his temples and his cheekbones had gone hollow. His face had skewed subtly out of place. The blue cotton hospital gown was loose at the shoulders.
"Beau." His voice was thinner. He stretched his right hand out across the blanket toward me. The hand didn't come up clean. The fingers fumbled at the blanket and then made it up.
I crossed to the bed, took the hand, and held it. "Hey, Dad."
Mom let go of his other hand, pulled my face down, and kissed my temple. Her cardigan smelled like the floor cleaner and the wax in the air.
"My dear."
"Hi, Mom."
I stayed over the bed with my father's hand in both of mine. "How are you doing, Dad?"
His hand under mine pressed once. He took a breath and searched for the next word — his mouth open on it.
