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He held her close through the night. Though a couple times her shoulder started to ache or she had an itch, she ignored those things, not wanting to do anything to cause him to let her go. As she lay there, the need to hold him even more tightly than he was holding her had her keeping her arms wrapped around his back, her face against his chest.
She was typically overly paranoid about things, so she told herself to ignore a niggling uneasiness, even as she kept rousing to listen to him breathe, to wonder at how deeply he was sleeping. She thought of the things they'd said and done at dinner, Marcus's serious tone and the look in his green eyes. When they'd parted that night, he'd hugged her and offered words that both reassured and unsettled her.
"We're here for whatever you need, Julie. Always."
She'd turned to Thomas for his hug and found him watching Des with that same curious look. Her Master was currently paying their check because he'd refused Marcus's offer to pay for all. "Okay," she told Thomas. "I know that look. I get first dibs on any paintings you do of him. And a big family discount."
"No, it's not that." Thomas's brow creased. "He's just really familiar to me."
"Maybe you saw him in one of the clubs you and Marcus visited while you were traveling. He does several rigger conferences each year."
"Yeah. Maybe. Hey, on that note, let me get a shot of the two of you on my phone before we part ways. You know Daralyn and Les are going to want to see the guy you're dating."
When Des returned, he was amenable to a picture, standing beside her in his easy, friendly way as she laid a familiar hand on his chest and smiled for the camera.
As she drifted off into sleep now, she dreamed of Thomas's picture. There was a fading on the edges of Des's side. She tried to get Thomas to sharpen it, to take it again, but he said it was too late. It was fading, and she had to figure out a way to keep Des in the picture...
She woke from the disturbing dream. It was daylight and, since she didn't have to be at the theater until later in the morning, it was okay for her to sleep in. It still felt strange and overindulgent after the round-the-clock schedule she'd been keeping these past few weeks between the theater's demands and Des.
She was alone. She cleaned up in the bathroom, using the contents of the toiletry bag she'd brought to wash her face, brush her hair and teeth. Donning a knee length purple knit skirt and a pale green cotton baby-tee, she accented them with silver hoops and a silver and jade stone choker before she went in search of her Dom. She left her hair down, brushed out thick and shining, because he liked it that way, though she pocketed the barrette she'd need when the humidity kicked in.
Through the window, she saw him outside, bagging up leaves in Betty's yard. She was glad to see him awake and looking restored, but as she started to open the door, she saw Betty was with him. From their body language, it was clear she was about to interrupt a heated conversation. She hesitated, torn between defusing it with an untimely interruption, and letting them work it out. When
she decided on the latter, she couldn't shame herself into closing the door and not eavesdropping. That dream was still too close to the surface of her consciousness.
"I don't want to talk about it," Des said stubbornly.
"So you've said. You've been a broken record for the past two weeks. Des, you can't ignore this."
"I'm not ignoring it."
"Yes, you are. Your numbers are not good. You've held out on intense insulin management longer than most with the type of insulin resistance you have, but your kidneys are starting to show the strain. You're going to be facing dialysis soon and you know it. Not years from now; in a matter of months."
His jaw set as Julie's breath caught. Betty stepped closer, and her expression softened, but not enough to dilute the steel in her eyes, her determination to get through to him.
"I know you've started taking fewer jobs and working less days of the week, which is good for your body, but you can't ignore the signs. You don't want to wait until you're in full renal failure. You can do dialysis at home, you know that. A few times a week, at night. You just hook yourself up at bedtime."
"You think you're telling me something I don't already know? That I haven't studied this shit a million times? Once I start dialysis, that's it. Dr. Greeley said it might work for me a few years. And then it won't."
"Which is why you should do what I've suggested a million times. Sign up to get a kidney."
"I'm not a good candidate. They've told you that before."
"Your earlier health problems made you a bad candidate, but you've beaten those problems and manage your diabetes better than any patient I've ever had. If we were determined, we could get the donor list people to consider giving you one. You are extremely disciplined. You would take very good care of a donor organ. A kidney is one of the easier organs to obtain, relatively speaking."
"For most people. They've never stopped saying what they said at the beginning. My body isn't typical. It's likely to reject anything less than a close genetic match, and I have no family. Even if I had, it would give me what? Maybe another decade before it fails."
"Ten years is a lot better than six months if you do nothing," she snapped. "Why are you so fucking stubborn about this?"
"Because my whole life has been about this."
"Don't give me that adolescent self-wallowing crap," she retorted. "You went out and made yourself an incredible life."
"By calling my own shots."
"Des, I'm not your prison warden. You're still calling your own shots. This is all your own choice. Get on a list, start dialysis. Some people do dialysis for fifteen years or more. A kidney can give you a decade. So a potential of twenty-five years, and who knows what other developments will happen during that time. Fight for yourself. Fight for your life."
"I do that. I've done that." He threw down the rake and rounded on her. "And it's not enough. It's never fucking enough. There's always going to be something else."
