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I only turned the light on once I had the door quietly closed.
When my eyes finally adjusted, I did my business and went to the sink to wash my hands, only to be stopped by the multiple pill bottles that lined the edge of the sink.
I scanned each bottle, studying the labels, and felt my heart start to pound again.
That day that he was hurt was the scariest day of my life, and that wasn’t because I’d been shot myself. It was because my worst nightmare had come true, and Wade had been shot in the line of duty.
He was alive now, but there was never a promise or guarantee when it came to a police officer’s life. There was always the possibility that he’d strap that Kevlar vest on himself, and have a paramedic slice it off of him as they worked tirelessly over his battered body.
I shivered and pushed the bottles farther to the side, making sure not to get them wet as I washed my hands and face, followed shortly by brushing my teeth with the toothbrush I hadn’t been aware of getting out on my own last night.
Fresh and clean once again, I turned off the light and walked back out into the main room of the pool house.
With the eerie blue glow coming in through the glass windows of the room, I could make out Wade’s sleeping form in the bed.
He’d changed positions while I’d been gone. Now he was on his back, his good leg cocked up and leaning to the side. His arms were up over his chest, fingers crossed, and he was snoring softly once again, only this time his mouth was wide open.
I felt a smile reach my face, and I contemplated getting back into bed with him.
But something he’d said last night as we were walking inside—about how he hadn’t been sleeping all that well since he’d been shot—forced me not to.
I wanted him to get all the sleep he could get.
Not only was it better to help him in general, but it would help him heal faster—or so I’d heard.
Tiptoeing to the door, I opened it and disappeared outside, closing it just as quietly behind me.
I was unsurprised to see Porter sitting outside drinking a cup of coffee. He was sitting in a lawn chair with the morning newspaper in his hands, reading by the light that the kitchen LED lights cast through the glass.
He looked up from his paper when he heard me approach, and grinned.
“Thought for sure you’d sleep until noon since you only went to bed about four hours ago,” he murmured as I walked up and took the seat beside him.
I snorted. “It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m always up by four-thirty. I guess I have an internal alarm. I have to be to the daycare by six, and if I don’t get up early, then I won’t have time to get any housework done. Sometimes I catch a bug and workout, but those times are few and far between. Mostly I sit there like you’re doing, read the newspaper and drink coffee until I feel human enough to do something.”
He grunted. “Sounds about right. Go get you some coffee. Read the funnies.”
He slapped the ‘funnies’ down in front of me and I stood back up to do his bidding, happy to feel that my hand was doing much better today than it had yesterday. I barely had a throb when I put pressure against it now—though my hand had been numb since I’d woken up.
Coffee in hand, I retook my seat and started scanning over the comics.
We sat like that in companionable silence for what felt like forever but ended up being more like thirty minutes.
As he finished with a section of his paper, he’d lay it down in a stack next to my elbow, and I’d pick it up once I was finished with the one he’d previously handed me.
It continued like that until he finally set the last section down and waited for me to finish.
Since it wasn’t my town, I skimmed a few of the articles, but ultimately put it down a whole lot faster than I would have if we were home. I did stop to scan the “ask the editor” section, smiling when I saw a letter about how there needed to be more news articles and fewer articles about unimportant “shit” that nobody cared about.
“Why does that letter sound like something one of your boys would write?” I teased.
One of his “boys” referenced the men in his motorcycle club, The Dixie Wardens.
My eyes lifted to find Porter staring at me, studying my face.
“Probably because it was,” he laughed. “Dixie’s tired of reading about fake news. He wants the cold hard facts, and the paper is trying to cater—like it should—to both political parties.”
