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His eyebrows lower. “What’s the matter, baby?” he asks hoarsely, immediately dropping his own brooding out of concern for me.
I make a silly sobbing sound at the naked worry on his face and at the endearment. “Nothing. Everything is good. I’m good.” I’m more than good. I’m washed with a thrilling kind of power I’ve never experienced before. “Come on and take a walk with me.”
“We can’t do anything else.”
“Fine. Nothing else. Just a walk.”
That placates him enough. When I tug at his arm again, this time he heaves himself to his feet. But he jerks and grunts as he straightens up, his face twisting in pain.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, reaching for him like he needs support.
He gives his head a quick shake. “Nothing. Just a catch in my back.” Despite his downplaying of it, he has visible difficulty standing up straight, and his breathing is slightly ragged.
“Well, no wonder if you’ve been sitting like this for a long time. Leaning over like that is terrible on your back. You need to stretch it out. Walking might help.”
He gives a low grumble in his throat, but this time it sounds like his put-on grumpiness rather than a genuine bad mood. He manages to stand straight, and we walk slowly out of the office, down the hall, and then outside.
After a while, I slide an arm around his waist. His back is hurting, and he needs support.
He doesn’t exactly lean on me, but he also doesn’t pull away.
I’ll take it.
***
THE NEXT DAY I WAKEup excited. Hopeful. Looking forward to seeing Arthur again today.
It feels like something has changed, and this is confirmed when he wanders into the breakfast room while I’m eating my bagel and scanning my phone. He gets a cup of coffee and sits down across from me at the table, murmuring good morning before he opens one of the three newspapers that are always stacked neatly on a side table.
He used to do this all the time, but lately he’s been drinking his coffee and reading the newspaper in his office. No doubt to avoid me.
“How’s your back?” I ask when I see him shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“Fine.” He gives me a little smile. “Thanks.”
I smile back, trying not to melt away at the barely restrained warmth of his expression. “It looks like it’s still bothering you.”
“It’ll be fine. I just need to stretch it out.”
I have no reason to doubt that is true, but I wish I could do something to fix it for him.
He needs someone to take care of him, and he’s never really had anyone.
He needs someone.
He needsme.
I should be shocked by my confidence, my absolute surety in this, but there’s no doubting the clear entitlement that’s settled in my heart sometime between last night and right now.
Arthur is mine to take care of. Somehow I’ve got to break through the last of his walls so he’ll let me.
I think about it during the day as I work, mentally playing out various ideas and discarding most of them as ineffective or too far out of character for me to manage.
When I wrap up my work at a little after five in the afternoon, I wander down the hall to his office. The door is open, which is a relief, but he’s not in the room when I peek inside.
Frowning, I keep walking, checking the dining room and the sitting room and the media room and coming up empty.
I end up in the kitchen, peering around and only seeing Stella, who is standing over a big pot on the stove. “Beef stew,” she says when she notices me. “It still needs at least another hour and a half.”
