Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3) (7 page)

Or maybe there was something else, something dark and horrible. Some secret that was eating away at him like a cancer. Day by day, I saw him withering and shrinking, even as I got stronger and stronger.
 

With every day that passed, I regained more and more ability to do things for myself. I could almost pull the letter from the envelope now. I could almost dress myself, as long as I was sitting down. Darrel had begun working with me on standing up, but I was still months away from being able to walk.
 

In the meantime, Dr. Overton had told Caden and I that I would be able to go home soon. My speech patterns were still off, but I could make myself understood now. Weeks of work had seen a huge amount of progress, but any pride or sense of accomplishment I might have felt was eclipsed by my worry for Cade. He seemed like a shadow of himself, a ghost of the man I’d known, and was unresponsive to my attempts to draw him out on the subject. He would say that my coma had been really hard on him, but that he was glad I was up and he was fine.
 

He wasn’t fine.
 

I read his letters. Two or three at a time, then I’d take a break, and read more. The grief, sorrow, and despair were agonizing to read. The desperation he felt was palpable in each letter, worse in each one. The closer the dates of the letters got to the day I woke up, the more difficult they were to read.
 

When I read things like this, I would weep for hours:
 

I never understood how much I loved you. I didn’t. You know how we talked about our love, how it was this thing that was EVERYTHING to us? It was everything to me, Ever, every last goddamned motherfucking thing, and it’s gone. You’re gone. And I needed it even more than I knew then, when I had you.
 

Will you know me if you wake up? Will you love me?

I was spiraling emotionally. Reading the letters made me cry, and watching Cade suffer made it only worse. I wasn’t sure if he knew I knew about the letters.
 

Finally, one afternoon, I broached the subject. We were on the bed together, my head on his chest. It was a familiar, comforting embrace, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I knew we had zero privacy in the nursing home, but I still wanted to feel as if he wanted me. I wanted him to try to touch me, to kiss me, to act as if he was drowning without my kisses, like he once had.
 
Yet, always, he only ever held me platonically.

“Cade?” I asked.

“Hmmm?” His voice was a rumble against my head.

“I’ve been reading your letters.” I still had to think about what I said, and work to make my speech sound normal. “I found them in the side table.”

“Yeah?” He was trying to sound casual.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” It felt like a lie, asking him that. I knew he wasn’t. I could see it. No one could write what he’d written and be okay.

“Those letters were the only way I knew how to deal with how I felt.”

“And now?”

“Now you’re awake. And getting better.”

“If there was something wrong, something bad, would you tell me?”

He hesitated. “You need to focus on getting better. That’s all that matters.”
 

Slowly, and with great effort, I pulled away from him, turned, met his eyes. His amber gaze was raw and conflicted. “Don’t ever lie to me, Cade.” I kept my eyes on him. “I’d rather know the truth, the hard, painful truth, than live with a lie.”

“Ever—” He closed his eyes, squeezed them tight, and drew in a harsh breath.

“Do you love me?”

His eyes flew open, and for once his gaze blazed. “Yes! Of course I do. How could you ask me that?”

“Sometimes I just…I feel like you’re not…telling me everything. Maybe not lying, but…hiding. Something.” I reached out, touched his knee. “And…I need you. Like things were. I want our life back. I want
us
back. I want…I
need
…love. Our love. The way it was.”

He sighed, and took my hand in his. I could see him thinking, making an effort. “Ever, babe. I know I’m—I know I’ve been…off lately, but…I’m trying.”

“Trying what?”

He shifted as if the question made him uncomfortable. “Honest to god, I don’t even know. I just don’t know. I’m a mess, Ev. You’re awake, you’re getting better. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
 

That sounded to me like an evasion. Maybe even a flat-out lie. Why would Cade lie to me?

I sighed, realizing I wasn’t going to get anything else out of him. I felt lost dealing with this new and different Cade. It was like…like I didn’t know him. Like I’d woken up and the Cade who visited me, hugged me, kissed me…that was a Cade I’d never met, a Cade who had taken the place of the one I’d known before the accident.

I felt the tear fall, and I didn’t bother wiping it away. I didn’t bother stopping the rest, either.

“Ev? What’s wrong?”

How could he ask me that? “What’s—what’s wrong? God, Cade.
Everything
. You’re not…I don’t know you. You’re not the same. I’m trying, Cade. I’m working as hard as I can to…to get better for you. To be the woman you knew. I’m sorry I’m not there yet, but I will be. I’ll be there for you. I’m
here
. And I need you, but you’re not…I feel like I can’t reach you.”

He choked and slid off the bed, crossed the room and pulled the door open, paused, turned to look at me. “I’m sorry, Ever. I’m—just…I’m sorry.” And then he was gone.

~ ~ ~ ~
 

I’d read all the letters. I’d stayed up all night, reading. Hoping for a clue as to what had happened to my Cade. The letters didn’t provide any direct answers, but they hinted, in a very oblique sort of way, that
something
had happened to him, and now the Cade who used to be was gone. Ruined somehow. Wrecked. Maybe it had just been too much. Losing his mom, then his dad, then me, then his grandparents. It was too much for anyone to endure, yet it had happened to him, and how could he not lose himself? How could he not show the effects of such suffering?

It only reaffirmed how much I needed to get him home and be his wife, his best friend. His family. Support him. No matter how lost I felt myself, I had to be there for him. He
needed
me. I felt cold without him. Alone.
 

I missed Eden. I’d borrowed Cade’s phone and called her.
The voice mailbox of the person you are trying to reach is full. Please try again later.
Where was she? What was she doing? Why had she left?

So many questions, and no answers.

The last line of the last letter Cade had written haunted me:
 

No matter what, I love you. I’ll never stop loving you. I don’t know if you’ll love me when you wake up. If you’ll be able to. But even if you don’t, I’ll love you. Forever, and after forever. Even if I don’t deserve your love.

Why wouldn’t he deserve my love? I didn’t get it. Couldn’t hope to understand. I loved him. Completely. I needed him. I trusted him. I
wanted
him. I wanted him to kiss me like he meant it. I wanted him to kiss me, and for his kisses to grow impatient, to become demanding. And yet, when he did kiss me, his lips barely touched mine, and then he moved away. A chaste, impossible brush of his lips, and then it was over. No heat, no passion.

What had I done to lose his desire? Was I no longer beautiful to him? Had the coma changed me in some way? I’d seen myself in the mirror. I looked pretty much the same. Thinner, yes. My boobs had shrunk with the rest of me, but as I got healthier that would change. My hips were slimmer, but that, too, would change. My eyes were the same shade of green. My skin was paler than usual, sure, but I could tan a little, if he wanted me to. My hair had been shaved for surgery, I’d been told, but it had grown back. It was brushing my shoulders already, and would get longer. It had dead ends that needed trimming, maybe, and it hadn’t been getting the kind of regular brushing I usually gave it, so it wasn’t quite as shiny or lustrous as usual, but that, too, would change with time.
 

Why didn’t he want me?
 

Why didn’t he think he deserved my love? I could only guess. Notions flitted through my head, but I forcefully dismissed them all before they could take hold. I couldn’t bear to doubt him. I couldn’t bear to doubt our love, because it was the only thing holding me together.
 

But my marriage to Caden seemed to be crumbling before my eyes.

~ ~ ~ ~

After a year and a half in a coma, and two months of recovery and therapy in the nursing home, I was finally going home. Cade had brought me a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and a pair of sandals. I’d dressed myself, sitting on the hospital bed. I was going through the motions, but part of me didn’t really believe that I was going home. I felt like I’d always been in the hospital. In terms of time elapsed, to me, I’d only been here for two months. But in reality, it had been almost two years. I’d lost
two years
of my life.
 

That was almost irrelevant, though. It felt like I’d lost Cade, and I
had
lost Eden. I didn’t even know why. Why would Eden abandon me when I needed her the most? Now, in all my life, I needed her more than ever, and she’d vanished into thin air. Caden was wasting away, seemed to be literally dying before my eyes, and my connection to him, which had once seemed unbreakable and inviolable, was severed, fading, crumbling along with the man I’d known and loved.
 

Suddenly I was sobbing. Sitting on my hospital bed for the last time, I found myself bawling uncontrollably, shuddering and gasping and choking, unable to breathe or to slow the tears.
 

“Ev?” The door opened and Cade came in, sitting on the bed beside me.

I couldn’t answer. I could only turn into him and bury my face against his chest and wish he was who I needed him to be. His arm went around me, holding me.
 

“What’s wrong, babe?” His voice was soft, hesitant.

“Everything, Cade. Me. My life. Us. You. It’s all…wrong. You’re…different. Something happened while I was in a coma, and you’re not the same anymore. It feels like…like you don’t love me anymore. Not the way you did. You barely even kiss me. I know I’ve changed from being in the coma, but…I didn’t think that would matter to you. I thought you’d—you’d want me. But you don’t. And I don’t know how to get that back. How to get—you. You back.” The more upset I got, the harder it was to make sense, to get the words out in the right order. I’d worked my ass off to be able to speak normally, to use my hands normally. I was working my ass off to be able to walk normally. But sometimes, it was just too hard. “I’m sorry, Cade. I’m sorry.”

“Jesus, Ev. There’s nothing for you to be sorry for.”

“Then what’s
wrong
with you? I know you’ve been through hell. I know you’ve lost…everyone. But I’m here. I’m back. And I love you. I
need
you. Even when you’re physically here with me, it feels like you’re…a million miles away. I don’t know what I did, or what happened. And I don’t care. I just need you now, more than ever.”

Cade had gone still as stone, and just as cold. “Ever…while you were in the coma, I—”

I put my hand over his mouth. “Don’t. Just stop. I can’t handle anything else. I don’t care. Maybe I should. Maybe I will someday. But right now, I just need
you
. I need you to love me. I need you to tell me it’s going to be okay. Lie to me if you have to, and tell me everything will be okay. I’m lost, Cade. And you’re the only north I have.”

Cade shook, shuddered. “Ever, god.
Fuck
. I’ve failed you. I’m falling apart, right when you need me most.”

“So be there for me.” I clung to his neck. I put my lips to the warm hollow behind his ear. “Pull it together, Cade. For me. Please.”

“I’ll try. I do love you. I never stopped loving you. I just…got lost. For a while.” He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as much as me. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be what you need me to be. I promise I will.”

I didn’t let him go. I whispered in his ear, “I need to know…that you’re still my husband. Not just my best friend, my supporter. Not just a caretaker. I need to know you’re the man I married. I need to know…that you want me. I can’t live without that.”

He inhaled deeply, his chest swelling against me. He let out the breath and cupped my cheek with his big, rough hand. His eyes were liquid amber, damp with tears I didn’t understand, tears he fought away. I watched him strengthen as he gazed at me. Watched the guilt and turmoil subside. Buried, perhaps, but gone for now.
 

And in that moment, I didn’t care where those emotions went. I was being selfish, I knew that. But I needed him. I couldn’t find myself in this new normal without him, and I’d take lies and denial if necessary. Someday I’d face the truth, whatever that might be. But I wasn’t strong enough mentally, emotionally, or physically to take anything painful, or to endure any more suffering. Neither was Cade. For now, we had to cling to each other, bound together by time and by the ropes of agony, by the lies we were telling ourselves and each other.

He was hiding something from me. I knew that. I wasn’t fool enough to be able to ignore that. I was fool enough, however, to pretend it didn’t matter. To pretend I didn’t care.
 

His thumb brushed my cheekbone, the edge of my eyebrow. My temple. Down, touched my lips. He blinked, a long, slow shuttering of his eyelids, almost as if in slow motion. The war in his eyes faded further yet, buried deeper. I watched this happen, watched him summon reserves of strength I don’t think he knew he had.
 

And then…he kissed me.

Truly, deeply, kissed me. His mouth was warm and wet, and he tasted like coffee, and his lips on mine were hesitant at first, then demanding, strong and devouring. My fingers curled around the back of his neck, clutching at him, and I kissed him back with all of me, drawing his breath into my lungs, sucking at his tongue with my mouth and tasting him, and we breathed together, held each other and kissed as we’d never kissed.