Page 46 of Distant Shores (Stapled Magnolias #2)

ADAIR

I woke with my mouth wide open and a throbbing pain in my head, ankle, and hip, with the worst dry mouth known to man.

Reaching blindly for my phone on the bedside table, I knocked something to the ground with a thud. Cringing, I found my phone plugged in beside my glasses. Just as I put them on, my bedroom door flew open, and my soul left my body.

“What happened?!” Delly yelled, charging inside. “Are you hurt?”

Heart in my throat, I grasped my chest.

“Oh God, Addy, are you having chest pains?” she asked, hurrying to my side.

“Did you just say chest pains?” Cole asked in alarm, joining the party.

They loomed over me, shooting off question after question, and I just stared at them.

This was a nightmare.

“Delly,” a quiet, clear voice called. “I think you just scared him. ”

Ireland .

I faintly registered her speaking in low tones with Cole and Delly, and my muscles relaxed one by one as I got my bearings.

Without looking my way, Ireland scooped up my water bottle that had fallen onto the ground and handed it to me.

I took it and drank greedily, small flashes of memories trickling in as I did.

Waking up from surgery. The sudden, intense nausea as the anesthesia wore off. Throwing up everything I’d ever eaten in my twenty-eight years on this planet at the surgery center.

What happened after that was even more of a blur—until her.

Her sweet lavender scent as she settled me onto the bed. Her grip on the bare skin of my thigh.

Just… her.

Ireland’s delicate hand reached toward me, taking my water bottle the second I’d drunk my fill and putting it back on the nightstand.

I tried to meet her eyes, but she kept her focus elsewhere, and my stomach sank.

Just like everything else right now, it didn’t feel right.

Delly and Ireland left the room without a word a few moments later, leaving me with Cole.

“All right, Mr. Jacks,” he said seriously as he held his arms out. “Let’s get you to the bathroom. Lady of the house’s orders.”

My face caught fire, and Cole smirked.

“Yep, your woman told me to get you up and to the bathroom and threatened me to do it safely. Not with words, but with her eyes. She’s kinda scary, man.”

I frowned. “Don’t talk about her eyes.”

Cole shimmied his shoulders and made an “Ooooh” sound appropriate for an elementary-aged child .

But to his credit, he was all business once he got me up, walking me to and from the bathroom safely. When we got back to my bed, Delly brought in a TV tray from Lord knew where and set it across my lap.

“Chicken-and-stars soup,” she said with a smile. “Just like Grams used to make for us.”

I smiled at her in thanks, my stomach grumbling. Cole tried to tuck a napkin into the collar of my T-shirt, and I batted him away with a scowl. Undeterred, he reached for my spoon next, but I beat him to it, yanking it up and pointing it at him.

“ No .”

“Addy’s getting grumpy,” Cole stage-whispered to Delly, but I’d just spotted the crackers on the plate under the bowl, so I ignored him in favor of crushing them on top of the soup.

“Cole,” Ireland called from the doorway. “Got a minute?”

My hands flexed, practically grinding the crackers into dust before I dropped them into the bowl.

Or that’s what I imagined I’d done. I couldn’t spare a glance for the crackers, my eyes fixed on the doorway. I only glimpsed Ireland’s profile before Cole met her there, and they walked away.

Yeah. This was a nightmare.

Delly cleared her throat, and I jumped again. At some point, she’d gotten onto the bed beside me. She was sitting cross-legged, her tired eyes watching me intently.

“What time is it?” I asked as I stirred the soup, unveiling the little star-shaped noodles as they got caught in the current of the steaming whirlpool.

“Around ten. You only slept for a few hours.”

“You talk to Pops?”

She shook her head. “No, but I talked to Jillie. She and Rachel had dinner with him and stayed with him until we got home.”

I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my face. I hated making them worry. This was supposed to be a super simple thing, but that damn anesthesia had not agreed with me.

“Why don’t you go to bed?” I asked, looking her over. “You look exhausted. I’m just gonna eat this, take some pain meds, and pass out until tomorrow.”

She looked like she was going to argue.

“Please, Delly,” I added, then started eating my soup as if to show her I meant what I said.

“Want me to sleep here? Like in the olden days?” she asked.

I smiled as I dipped my spoon into the bowl, feeling generally better the more I ate, though my ankle was getting steadily worse.

“That was when you were sick, Delly.”

She shrugged. “I know. But… you never got sick. Like, ever.” Her brows furrowed. “I never noticed how weird that was until now.”

I quickly ate more soup, not meeting Delly’s probing gaze. Of course, I never showed her when I was sick. Thankfully, she sighed and got off the bed without questioning it more.

“If you insist on only having Tylenol, I’ll just leave it on your bedside table for when you need it,” she said through a yawn as she walked toward the door. “But we picked up your prescriptions on the way back, too, and I think there’s a higher dose of ibuprofen in there.”

With one last, lingering look, Delly left me to it.

If I strained my ears hard enough, I could hear murmuring outside my doorway, and something about it had the soup sitting like a brick in my stomach .

I was too tired, too out of sorts to logic away the feelings that swarmed freely as I heard Cole and Ireland’s voices just out of range.

It made me think I’d never felt real jealousy before. Or at least, I’d never felt it like this. Visceral and irrational.

Eventually, the sounds outside my room quieted down.

Cole returned, and I tried not to question him, to glare at him, reminding myself that he was just being himself.

And he was good to his core.

He looked dead on his feet as he got me to the bathroom one more time, keeping me steady while I brushed my teeth.

After only a few inappropriate comments, he was gone, leaving me alone in my bed.

Just when I was about to give up hope that I’d see her again tonight, she was there.

The knot in my stomach relaxed, and my entire body did the same.

That was the Indigo effect.

She gave me her back as she pushed my bedroom door closed until only a crack was left.

I couldn’t wait another moment.

“Ireland,” I said softly. “Come here. Please.”

Slowly, she turned around, my bedside lamp casting a soft glow over her face, which was set in a careful mask.

I held out my hand, reaching toward her in invitation.

Her eyes fell from my face to my open palm, and she walked softly toward me, her posture straight and bare feet silent, as always.

After only a beat of hesitation, she slid her hand into mine.

Goosebumps erupted all over my aching body.

“I got the kids to bed,” she said with a wry smile .

I huffed a tiny breath of a laugh. “They had a big day.”

Her eyes trailed over me from head to toe, and I felt every inch of it.

But then she slipped her hand out of mine, and my stomach re-knotted itself.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, balling my hand to keep from reaching after her.

She let out a sad sound, almost like a laugh but definitely not one, and looked away. “It’ll keep,” she replied to the window. “Do you need anything else tonight?”

Yes.

Your hand in mine.

Your eyes on me.

“No,” I said instead, the sinking feeling that I’d wrecked her day making me feel sick again.

She nodded and looked at me briefly, then away again.

I hated it.

Instead of leaving like I expected she would, she asked, “Did you take your meds?”

I studied her profile even though it hurt to look at her while she was pointedly not looking back. “I will.”

Something in my battered gut told me I’d messed up, but my brain was too foggy to see it clearly.

It had been a long damn day. Which was what I would blame for my next question.

“A kiss goodnight?”

Her head jerked toward me, her eyes narrowed, but after only a few seconds of looking at me, they softened.

I half-heartedly groped beside me for an extra pillow I knew wasn’t there, wanting something to hug to myself. To cover my… everything.

I regretted the question on every level. I must’ve looked like hell. Settling on crossing my arms in front of me, I was about to apologize when Ireland’s warm hand landed on my forearm.

Then she was leaning toward me, and my gaze went haywire, moving from her blue eyes to her lips, her cheekbones, then back to her lips. When she was close enough that I could count her eyelashes, she brushed the corner of my mouth with hers.

A whisper of a touch.

“Get some rest,” she whispered in my ear before she pulled back, leaving only the ghost of her touch behind.

She pulled something out of her pocket, set it carefully on the bedside table, and then left without another word, keeping the door slightly ajar.

Knocking my head back against the headboard, I touched the corner of my lips.

If it weren’t for the pain and soreness in my body, I’d think it’d all been a hallucination.

Once the faint sounds of her getting ready for bed tapered away, sounds I had memorized after so many nights, I reached over to the nightstand to grab my water bottle and OTC pain meds, but then I saw what she’d left.

A new tube of lip balm, still in the wrapper.

Oh, Lordy.

I touched my lips again.

They were dry and cracked, weren’t they?

Squeezing my eyes shut again, I almost couldn’t hold back my groan.

I was so done with today.

I took the meds, then grabbed the lip balm, which I unwrapped and applied aggressively. Rubbing my lips together, I tasted the flavor and froze, turning the tube over and reading the side.

Rosemary Lavender .

I licked my lips again, branding the taste onto my memory.

It was so much better than the Dum Dum. Because it tasted like her.

That was the last coherent thought I had before I sank fully into the bed and left this very big, no-good day behind.