Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(84)

It seemed to Lilli she’d been awake for some time, because none of the sounds she heard seemed unfamiliar. She knew she was in the hospital. She knew she was connected to machines—she could feel the faint pinch of tape on her wrist and the stiff intrusion of an IV stent, and the pull of adhesive on her chest from a heart monitor. She could hear the unique sounds of a hospital at work, beeps in her room, conversations outside. Definitely a hospital. But she wasn’t sure why.

Before she’d opened her eyes, she knew that Isaac was holding her hand, his hard, rough palms warm and gentle on her skin. Isaac. Her love. He was here; he was with her. She tried to understand what that meant. There was something she should know, something she needed to know, something important. But it eluded her.

The room came slowly into focus. The light in the room was bright and hurt her eyes, but before she could close them again, Isaac’s hands closed around hers. “Lilli? Ah, Sport. Are you with me? Are you here?” She heard the clang of desperation in his voice, and she tried to answer him, but she couldn’t make sound pass through her throat. She tried to nod, but her neck shouted in protest. Instead, she fought to really open her eyes and see, and she curled her fingers around his.

“Oh, f*ck. Lilli, thank God. Oh, Jesus, baby!” He rose up closer and kissed her forehead. He smiled down at her; then, as if that first kiss hadn’t satisfied his need, he kissed her cheeks, her nose, her chin, her lips, and, again, her forehead. By the time he was done and looking down at her again, she could see clearly. He looked awful, his bright eyes sunken in shadow. She lifted the hand he wasn’t holding and was surprised to find it in a cast.

As consciousness settled in more completely, so did pain. She realized that she hurt everywhere. She tried to think what had happened. Car wreck? What did she last remember? Isaac stroked her face and then picked up something near her shoulder.

A voice came through a speaker somewhere in the room, asking, “What do you need?”

Isaac answered, “She’s awake!”

The voice responded, “Somebody’ll be right there.”

He lifted her hand to his lips. “You’re gonna be okay, Sport. You’re gonna be okay.” She had no reason to disbelieve him. She closed her eyes.

oOo

Lilli woke with Isaac almost lying on her, his hands pressing down on her shoulders, his chest heavy on hers. “Wake up, baby. It’s okay. Shh. Don’t hurt yourself.”

The dream receded quickly, becoming broken pieces of image as she understood where she was. She squirmed under Isaac’s weight, feeling irritated at his words, which sounded condescending to her ears. She felt helpless and weak enough without Isaac treating her like a child.

“I’m fine.” She shrugged again, and he released her and sat back in the chair at the side of her bed.

“The dreams are bad—worse—now, Sport.”

She shrugged again. He was right—they were a lot worse. Still death dreams, but now they were shaded with memory, and death had a face: Hobson. But they didn’t stay long after she woke. She’d learn to deal with them the way she’d learned to deal with everything.

By her second day conscious, Lilli had remembered what brought her there. Hobson. She’d let him best her. Again. She’d let him hurt her. She’d failed.

She knew he was dead, and that Isaac had killed him. So the goal of the mission had been achieved. But she had failed nonetheless. Hobson had still managed to take everything he could from her. He’d wanted to take more, but he’d been unable. She remembered every second, until the one in which Isaac pulled her into his arms. After that, four days of blankness.

Hobson had done a lot of damage. But Lilli was recovering. After three days awake—a week since she’d gotten hurt—she was feeling her strength return. She was able to be awake for longer stretches of time and no longer felt lightheaded even as she lay in bed. She wasn’t yet able to stand for more than a few seconds before the world went grey, but she knew it would come. Her ankle was still gimpy, anyway.

She had a nasty wound on her neck, which was the root cause of her weakness. The sundry cuts and bruises making motley of the rest of her body were fading, even if the memory of them would not. Her left hand was in a cast, and that would probably be the thing that caused the most lasting nuisance. All of it, though, would heal. She was expected to make a full recovery.

She wasn’t sure how to get her head on straight, though. Fate had taken her family. Hobson had taken everything else, even her strength. She didn’t know what was left.

oOo

“Where are you, Sport?” They were sitting outside in the crappy little “courtyard.” Lilli was in a wheelchair, which was more a precaution to make sure she didn’t get lightheaded and keel over than a necessity, but it still made her feel like an invalid. Isaac had his hand on her knee, and he’d given it a squeeze as he’d asked.

She came back to the moment and smiled at him. “Nowhere. Just spacing.”

“That brain doesn’t slow down enough for you to space. There’s something goin’ on, Lilli. I can see it.

Been like this since you woke up. Talk to me.” He pulled the wheelchair so it turned on its axis and she faced him. “Talk to me.”

He was staring intently into her eyes, like he was trying to see what it was she was holding back. Since she’d woken up, he had a new way of looking at her. It was . . . naked, somehow, like he was holding nothing back, like he was offering her everything. It scared her, because she didn’t have anything to give him in return. She felt empty.