Chasing Impossible (Pushing the Limits #5)(43)

My throat locks up and the emotion overwhelms me to the point that tears fill my eyes. “It’s me.”

Her head moves as she looks about her room. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“Yes.” A terrible dream. One that included drug deals, getting shot, making friends and losing friends, falling for someone and letting them go.

“Is your father home?” Grams’s mind, when it decides to function at a reasonable level, resides where she is most comfortable, with me at eight and Dad still taking care of both of us.

Grams hated what Dad did for a living. Every night when Grams tucked me into bed, she told me I would grow up to be better than him. Guess I’m a disappointment.

“No, Dad’s not home yet.” Not ever. The judge seemed pretty serious about that life sentence. “I think he needs to work late tonight.”

“He’s a complicated man,” she says like she believes she has strength, but Grams has none. She lost the ability to stand on her own months ago and can only sit up for so long before shaking. “I hoped when he brought you home that he’d make some changes in his life.”

I remember Grams before her skin was thin and wrinkles covered so much of her face. Her skin is translucent now and her eyes don’t look quite right in her head. The past five years have been brutal, for both of us. I sit on the edge of the bed and tuck her hair behind her ear. “Do you remember when we used to dress up and play tea?”

My best dress, she’d curl my hair, we both wore white gloves.

Grams grants me the same smile she gave to me every morning I woke and every night as I went to bed. “Want to invite your father to tea again? He looks nice when he dresses up.”

The memory of my father bringing home a tux and a “fancy” meal for me and Grams for my seventh birthday is a hug and a knife to the chest. “He told me to take care of you.”

Grams’s eyes flutter as she places her hand over mine. “It’s what he said to me when he brought you home. I’m glad he found you.”

“I’m glad he did, too.”

She closes her eyes, and this time as she sleeps, Grams doesn’t drag in shallow breaths, but deep air through her nose. Eventually, enough time passes that her eyes flicker beneath her closed lids. That moment was a gift. A rare gift. The time period may be off, but she remembered me.

Grams is the only person left who knows me, the real me, and when she forgets, I wonder if the only good things about me will die along with her already fading memories.

Logan

I enter through the back door then lock it behind me, thinking of how Abby was barricading herself in when she walked in earlier. Abby, since I met her, has always been larger than life, that unattainable creature that only exists in myths that pretends to be flesh and blood like the rest of us.

But if seeing her in a hospital bed didn’t convince me, then watching her when she returned home proved Abby’s fragile. Possibly more fragile than anyone else. It’s not the ones that know how to ask for help that can shatter, it’s people like Abby who are made of glass and carry the world on their shoulders that are going to break.

Nate lifts his head from a novel and nods as I stride up the stairs. Her grandmother’s door is closed and a light shines from beneath Abby’s at the end of the hallway.

Isaiah and I had a long talk this afternoon and neither of us is happy. What’s going to happen next depends on Abby’s answers to conversations she’s not going to want to have. I lightly knock on the door and at her answer of “Come in,” I open the door.

First thing I notice is pink wallpaper and the next thing I notice—bare skin.

Blood flow in my body redirects south and I can’t stop staring at the curve of her naked back. Abby’s dark hair is wet, making it longer and black. She eases a tank over her head, then pulls it down until that delicious skin is covered.

She glances over her shoulder at me and that devilish grin that sucks me in is on her lips. I clear my throat, because...yeah...that shut down most of my brain processes. “Trying to seduce me?”

“Not really, but it was fun. If you’re going to be insistent on being annoying, then you can help me out.” She walks over to her bed, picks up a bandage, and waves it in the air. “I’ve got a nice entry wound I can’t reach.”

Abby hops up onto the high bed, sits in the middle with her back toward me, sweeps her hair over her shoulder, then tugs at her tank top to reveal the bandage. I set the bag of food on the dresser and head over to join her. Don’t miss that I’m about to get into a bed with Abby.

I take the bandage from her and begin the process of peeling the old one off. “You’re doing this to scare me off, but it won’t work.”

“Just need help, Logan. I’m not nearly as manipulative as you think.”

Bet she’s more. “You have a trained nurse downstairs who could do this better. You’re trying to prove being around you is dangerous.”

“It is,” she says simply.

I focus on trying not to hurt her when removing the bandage, but the fastest and most human way is a quick rip. Abby sucks in a breath as she straightens and my fingers lightly massage her skin. The wound is smaller than I would have expected. Raw, light red, and the skin surrounding it is bruised.

Memories of the first few months of diabetes shots and how sore I was causes me to lean forward and kiss her soft skin an inch above where she hurts. Abby’s breathing hitches again, but this time, it’s not from pain.