Page 51 of Found in Wild Sage

And I nod. It’ll be easier to deal with the bins and suitcases Grant and Finn brought over before Charlie’s up to help me. Hopefully, a nap will help him feel better.

Hours later, Charlie’s finally back down to sleep after a rocky evening. We ended up taking him to the clinic so Declan could test him for the usual suspects, and nothing popped. It’s an unidentified virus that has my little guy miserable, and I hate it.

But I’m not nearly as bedraggled as I would be without Declan. He’s held Charlie as much as Charlie would allow, and when he wasn’t doing the hands-on comforting, he brought us both water, snacks for me, and anything else he could think of paired with medicine by the clock.

Charlie’s illness has been enough to distract me from the fact that I’m now about to go to bed in Declan’s room. It’s wrong for me to take this space from him, this beautiful room I’m certain he enjoys based on the way there are at least a few photos and personal touches around. I’ve run through ways to convince him to let me take the couch, but he helped load all of my things into his room earlier and my meager protests were met with silent, flinty stares.

The man communicates so much with those bright eyes and the hard line of his jaw. And his soft lips. And his warm hands.

Okay so maybe, in the dreamlike series of events that have taken place today, I’ve gotten a little thirsty for my husband. That’ll happen when you know you’re never going to get to take a drink, I suppose.

I am so tired, I’m almost dizzy with exhaustion. It’s why I’m making no more of an effort to protest this set up. I brush my teeth and change into jammies and am just about to slip into the beautiful bed I’ve been low-key fantasizing about since I saw it more than a week ago when there’s a quiet knock on the door.

My pulse jumps as I answer it, opening the solid wood to find Declan standing there with a glass of water.

“Wanted to make sure you have everything you need.” His eyes stay firmly planted on mine.

“Everything’s great. Except for the part where I’m sleeping in your bed.” Without you. I don’t say that last part because as tired as I am, I haven’t lost all sense of reality.

“I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

See? With the not even acknowledging there’s another option where he takes the bed?

“Thank you. I hope you’ll do okay on the couch. Seems like it’s not quite big enough for you.” My gaze is a hungry little beggar, and it drifts down over his thin T-shirt and soft knit sweats. It’s by far the most undone I’ve ever seen him.

Seeing this composed, purposeful man in such a casual state… it’s the dinner here times ten. Instead of jeans, it’s sweats. Instead of relaxed hair, it’s downright mussed, and that’s to say nothing of his glasses.

He’s a damn fantasy, and it’s messing me up.

“I’ll be fine.” He hands me the water.

I take it, then wonder if there’s more to say. I want to keep talking to him, but the pull of sleep is strong.

He grips the door frame with his right hand, the firm bulge of his bicep drawing my eye. Good grief, he doesn’t even realize he’s posing in a doorway and my exhausted mind is too easily imagining sliding my hands up under his shirt and taking a personalized tour of the lean, delicious muscles currently draped in that soft T.

His throat works when he swallows, then dips his chin. He shifts his weight like he’s going to leave but then hesitates. His eyes hook into mine the way they do sometimes and he says, “I missed you this week.”

My heart squeezes and my breath catches. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Yet again, he comes at me with tenderness, and it’s nearly clogging my throat with that pressing ache of longing. “I missed you, too.”

We stay like that, connected and breathing together, before he breaks the link and gently pats the doorframe. “Night.”

I whisper the same, and then he’s gone.

I fall asleep with his face in my mind, his voice in my memory, his kiss in my dreams.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Declan

Sleep evades me. I’m not surprised.

I’ve found little respite in sleep since my first conversation with Evie, let alone the last week of fretting. There is a sense of peace, or maybe completion, to put it dramatically, that floats around the edges of my bleary-eyed consciousness. It is directly related to the baby sleeping upstairs, to the bibs in a neat stack next to his highchair in the kitchen, and Evie’s rain jacket hung on the hook by the front door.

To the woman sleeping in my bed.

I may have spent a little too long thinking about that—about her in my room, in my bed. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t even symbolic. It’s simply the most logical place for her.

But damn if it doesn’t hit me right in the gut. Somehow, it makes sleeping on the couch feel all the more wrong, and not because it’s slightly too short for me, or because my back aches this morning.