“What you said to your mom earlier, about your hair and not having enough energy… I know you’re often sore. But…it’s more than that?”
“It is,” she said, keeping her eyes locked on their hands. “Fibromyalgia isn’t just a single symptom and everyone who has it experiences it differently. Most of the time it’s just the soreness. I’m sore all the time, twenty-four-seven—but it’s not debilitating unless I sit in one position too long or overextend myself. Sometimes it’s also fatigue. I’ll fall asleep watching TV at night or nod off at my desk mid-afternoon.”
She could stop there. But she didn’t want to. She wanted Noah to know, to understand.
“On the bad days it’s like someone’s tied weights to my arms and legs. They’re heavy and clumsy and they ache if I try to lift them. I never know what might trigger a bad day. Some things, like exercising too much or not getting enough sleep, are a given. But other things…”
“Like blow drying your hair?”
She nodded. “Sometimes it’s fine. Other days, holding my arms up like that for an extended period of time is enough to trigger a flare. And it’s just not worth it. I only have so much energy in any given day. I never want to waste what little I have on styling my hair.”
He lifted their clasped hands to his lips. It was such an intimate gesture—the kind of thing a boyfriend would do. But they were alone. There was no one there to see him acting the part. Was it just out of habit that he was treating her like she was precious to him?
“Your mom said something today…”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “What’s that?”
“She said Wolf offered you the Revolutionary War score years ago and you turned it down.”
His face went blank. “Yeah. Livi was still in school. She and mom needed me close by. And for some reason Wolf always insists on having his composer on set during filming. I couldn’t just leave my family to go traipsing around old battlefields.”
“That documentary won all kinds of awards. Do you regret turning it down?”
He shook his head, his eyes focused on their interlocked hands. “Not for a second.” He looked up at her and smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “It all worked out in the end. And now maybe I’ll get to score this film.”
“You will. I know it.”
The curtain to the bay whipped open. Noah dropped her hand and sat back in the chair, as though they’d been caught doing something much more scandalous than holding hands. A nurse—the friendly blonde one who wore purple socks with cat faces on them—appeared with a stack of paperwork.
“Good news,” she said, waving the papers. “Discharge papers.”
“You are an angel,” Callie said.
“Keep taking the Benadryl every four to six hours until you are completely symptom free,” the nurse said. “Do you have Benadryl?”
Noah dropped his head, hiding his laugh, though his shoulders shook.
“Yes, I think I’ve got more than enough,” Callie replied with a smile.
“Alright. Now if you feel any of your symptoms return, or you have any difficulty breathing, you should come right back in and see us again. But I hope you don’t have to.”
By the time they got back to The Barclay, it was after midnight. Callie and Noah had been texting with both her mother and Liv throughout their time in the ER, so she wasn’t surprised that they hadn’t waited up. It wasn’t until they closed the door to their hotel room that she realized how tired she was. The constant dull ache in her lower back was already growing to a singeing pain, sharp enough to make her suck in a breath when she moved the wrong way. Too many hours sitting in a hospital bed and she’d be paying for it for days.
She reached behind herself to unzip her dress, hissing as the pain tore through her.
Noah was there in an instant, his hand closing around her forearm and gently bringing it back to her side. “Let me,” he said as he dragged the zipper down, his fingertips brushing over her spine with each new inch of skin that was exposed.
The touch set all her nerve endings on alert, her skin tingling. His hand lingered, just barely touching the small of her back. Every ounce of her awareness was focused on that single point of contact, on the immense heat of his touch and how badly she wanted more of it.
She held the front of her dress to her chest so it wouldn’t fall down and glanced at him over her shoulder. “Thank you.”
He hummed an acknowledgment, a low sound that vibrated through her. Their eyes met over her shoulder and for a moment, she thought he might kiss her, their bodies drawing nearer to each other as though they were magnetized. His hazel eyes hooded and darkened to a deep, mossy green, and his jaw tightened in a way that made his already full lips seem so much fuller. He glanced at her mouth and she leaned a fraction of an inch closer.
Kiss me.
But then he blinked, his eyes cleared, and he dropped his hand, stepping back from her. He turned away, shoving his hand roughly through his hair.
“We should get some sleep,” he said. Like nothing had happened.
