Bonus Kisses - Freya Barker Page 0,2

cardiac events that went unnoticed but weakened the muscle. Her heart is failing and other than medication to keep her as stable as possible; there is nothing they can do.

I glance over at Sarah, who hasn’t left her daughter’s bedside since she and Ed got here. She looks exhausted.

“Why don’t you join Ed and go lie down for a bit?” I suggest, but quickly clamp my mouth shut when I take in the fierce look she shoots me.

“Mom,” Nicky pleads, her voice weak as she turns to her mother. “Get some rest, please.”

Sarah’s eyes fill with tears; not the first ones she’s spilled since receiving the devastating news. “But I…”

“You’re ready to collapse, Mom. Where would we be if that happened? Rafe will call if anything happens,” she assures her mother.

“I promise,” I add.

Sarah glances at me, and turns back to Nicky, before bending down to kiss her daughter’s cheek. She turns and walks to the door, her shoulders slumped under the weight resting on them.

The moment the door falls shut behind her, Nicky grabs my hand.

“We need to talk.”

I stroke my thumb over the back of her hand, feeling more connected to her than I have in a long time. “The kids,” I offer gently.

Spencer and Sofie are back in Eminence being looked after by Nicky’s friend, Kathleen. They’d only seen their mother briefly once, five days ago. Kathleen brought them to the hospital, but at five and eight years old, seeing their mother hooked up to tubes in a strange place had scared them. We decided we wouldn’t put them through that again and instead had called them every night before bed.

“Yes,” she whispers. “I want to go home, Rafe.”

I automatically shake my head. “Sweetheart, you’re better off here should anything happen.”

“Like what? Dying? That will happen soon enough, whether I’m here or not.”

I pull my hand free and run it through my hair. “Jesus.”

“I want to be with my kids, in my house. I don’t want to die here, hooked up to machines in a hospital bed, with strangers coming in every five minutes to check if I’m still breathing.”

“But the kids…” I start, unable to finish.

“What is worse, Rafe? That you come home sometime in the next days or weeks, announcing their mother is gone, or having them able to ask questions, share fears, prepare them gently with the kind of love only parents can give? I don’t want their last memory of me to be lying in a strange hospital bed, in an alien and scary place.”

Fuck.

My own eyes well up when I hear the tears in hers.

“Please,” she begs, and I drop my head on the bed beside her. Her fingers ruffle lightly through my hair. “I don’t have much time to make good memories. For me or for them. Please give me a chance to do that.”

“I’m sorry,” I blurt out, my voice muffled by the bedding.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“You deserved better than me.”

“You’re rewriting history, Rafe. It was me who stepped out on you.”

She had. She confessed as much almost a year ago, but since then I’ve had a lot of time to think about cause and effect.

The truth is we never should’ve been more than friends. I’m the one who pushed for marriage when she got pregnant, so in love with the fantasy of settling down in a small town with a wife and two point one kids, I never took real feelings—mine or anyone else’s—into account. Had I done that, my life would’ve looked much different. Instead ‘fake it until you make it’ had been my mantra, and I can’t complain too much; my beautiful children are the reward.

Granting Nicky her last wish is the absolute least I can do.

“Okay, I’ll bring you home.” I lift my head and find her tired eyes. “I’ll need to make a few phone calls, see if I can get home care organized.”

“S’okay,” she mumbles, her eyes already drifting shut. “Is taken care of…”

Before I can ask what she means she’s asleep, something she’s been doing a lot of. I let her rest and step out into the hallway, looking for her nurse. I find her at the desk down the hallway.

“Excuse me, Brenda?”

“Is everything okay?” she immediately asks, her eyes darting to Nicky’s room.

“She’s sleeping.” Not quite sure how to approach this, I use the straightforward approach. “My wife wants to go home. I need to know what kinds of arrangements I should make for her comfort there.”

She doesn’t