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She pursed her lips.
“You know I’m right,” he added.
“This is exactly why I never wanted to be married,” she muttered.
Noah straightened and pulled the ring from his finger. He held up the band between them. “You really think this is what’s keeping me here? I’d be here, with or without it. The quicker you get that through your head, the better.”
She folded her arms across her chest, careful not to pull on the IV line in her hand. They stared each other down for a long moment.
Finally, her face fell, and she dropped her arms. She closed her eyes. “I just...” she whispered.
“What?” he urged.
“I don’t want you—or anyone—to disrupt their life for me.”
“Why? Why is it so terrible to have people that care about you? Who would put your needs before their own? Most people would count it as a blessing.”
“Most people haven’t watched their parents lose their house and go into debt to pay their medical bills.” Her eyes filled with hurt. “And I’m not even their real daughter.”
It was unusual for him, but Noah spoke on behalf of her parents. “In their eyes, you are.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She brushed a hand across the white blanket covering her legs. “If I’d known when I was young and had time to process it before, maybe I’d see it differently. But I found out I was adopted when I wastwenty-eight, Noah. And only because during the transplant workup I found out I had a completely different blood type. Do you have any idea what that felt like?”
“No.” He only knew how much it had hurt to be a bystander to her emotional turmoil.
“How could they have kept something like that from me?”
He wished he had the answers for her. “I don’t know.”
“Isn’t it my right to know where I came from?”
He thought so, but what did he know?
“Not only did they lie to me my entire life, but I ended up with a genetic condition that came from someone else, and they took the financial hit for it. I’ll never be able to repay them, or give them back the world-traveling life they wanted. I’ll carry that forever and I don’t want to add more to it.”
Nothing he said would be the right thing, so he kept silent. After her parents came clean and the initial shock wore off, Mia had responded in anger, and essentially cut herself off from them. Things had improved only marginally since.
After a few moments, Mia picked up the remote attached to her bed and turned on the television mounted in the corner of the room. Noah turned his eyes to the screen, but couldn’t have said what he was watching.
When the doctor came in, he confirmed what Mia suspected. Several values from her labs were out of range, and they wanted to admit her until they normalized. They moved her to a room on the sixth floor, and once they were alone, they argued about Noah staying. He finally gave up and left, letting her win this round.
He figured if she had enough energy to get that worked up, she was probably okay. Once he was home and settled on the couch, several popping sounds from the street caught his attention, followed by echoing booms from farther away. He’d completely forgotten it was the Fourth of July. He stood and peeled back the curtains—ones Mia had hung after declaring his house needed a more “homey” feel—and spotted the bright fireworks in the sky.
He wished he and Mia were there, sitting on a blanket, his arms around her while they watched in wonder. In reality, he stood alone in his dark house, hoping she was watching the same breathtaking show from the window of her hospital room.
Mia was discharged two days later. Noah took the day off on Monday when she came home.
She made homemade lasagna for dinner even though he told her not to. She was probably trying to make a point, but it was entirely possible she’d just missed cooking. He kept an eye on her while she moved around the kitchen—a hardship he was willing to endure—making sure she seemed steady and the color remained in her cheeks.
Damn if it wasn’t delicious. He didn’t know how he’d ever go back to frozen dinners and sandwiches when this was all over.
On Tuesday evening she had plans at a local bookstore coffee shop with her new friends from the summer school course. He suggested she reschedule for the following week, but she gave him a look and said she was fine.
“Mind if I tag along?” he asked.
She arched a brow. “Why?”
Because he still had the image of her usually smiling face devoid of color and contorted in pain burned in his brain. He wasn’t quite ready to let her out of his sight yet.
