He knows she’s been good for me too, both at work, and at home, and with all of my paranoia.
Until today.
He knows she’s nothing I expected, and everything I want.
I usually bounce from challenge to challenge, but I’ve never felt like THIS before, she whispered to me one night not long after Thanksgiving. I might leave the Fireballs one day, but I will NEVER leave you. You’re my heart, Tripp Wilson, and my heart needs you.
My heart’s quivering when we step off the elevator.
She needs me.
All of her. And I should’ve been here three days ago.
She doesn’t answer the knock at the door, so I call her security team in to open it for us.
“She doesn’t want visitors, Mr. Wilson, but I’m sure she’ll make an exception for you,” her head of security reports while he lets us in. “It’s just a cold. She’s getting better.”
I ignore him and push into her apartment. It’s so dark in here, and it smells like death.
Like disinfectant weighed down by the weight of the inevitable, and my gut recoils in a way I haven’t felt in almost two years. I clamp a hand over my mouth and force myself to walk past the entryway to the small living room, where Lila’s huddled in a pile of blankets, eyes closed while a large television plays The Princess Bride over a gas fireplace.
A strangled cry slips out of my lips, because fuck.
Is she dead?
She snort-snuffles and jerks awake. “Hello?”
My heart cramps. Completely closes in on itself, because she sounds like a frog trying to talk through a stream, and when she sucks in a breath and erupts in a coughing fit, I’m back in a hospital room, watching Jessie deteriorate before my eyes.
Engulfed in hopelessness.
In fear.
In denial.
In knowing that a microscopic organism was going to take my wife away from me, and there was nothing I could fucking do about it.
This is different, I tell myself.
I suck in a deep breath, realize I’m infecting myself, picture Emma’s little body in that hospital bed too, fighting to live, and I can’t.
I can’t do this again.
I can’t.
“Tripp?”
She hunches over coughing again, that deep, raspy cough that sounds like it’s fighting its way out of a mud hole. “I told—you—stay away,” she rasps between coughs.
“So you can fucking die here all by yourself?”
I don’t recognize my own voice, and I don’t know who’s gripping my shoulder, but I know I can’t stay here.
I can’t get attached.
Fuck. I’m already attached, but I have to get unattached.
Now.
I can’t fall apart again. Not when James and Emma are settled. When I’m settled. When I finally feel almost whole again.
Almost.
And that’s as good as it’s ever going to get, because every time I let my guard down and fall in love, fucking germs ruin it all.
“Hold on, Tripp,” Levi says.
Levi.
I’m exposing my brother to the germs too.
I’m signing his death warrant with my own. And even knowing I’m being a melodramatic, hypochondriac shit, I can’t stop myself.
“Out,” I order him. “Out.”
My vision’s blurry as I shove him back out of the apartment. I should go back in.
Make sure Lila’s okay.
Get her to a doctor.
Fix her.
Save her.
But I can’t.
I can’t make myself go back in there. James and Emma need me too damn much.
I can’t get sick too. I need to disinfect. I need antibiotics. I need to quit hyperventilating.
“Call 9-1-1 if you fucking have to, but get her to a fucking doctor again,” I snarl at the guard.
And then I head for the stairs.
Must.
Get.
Clean.
“Tripp,” Levi calls after me. I don’t know what floor I’m on. The fifteenth? The sixtieth?
Do I care?
“Tripp, don’t do this.” Levi’s pounding after me. “People get sick, and they get better. Lila’s going to be okay.”
“But I’m fucking not.”
And what kind of partner am I to anyone if I can’t handle a cold?
The worst kind, that’s what kind.
Jessie used to joke about man-colds. She’d tell me I was high maintenance and make me homemade chicken noodle soup and tuck me into bed and make sure I talked to my mom twice a day.
But she’d still take care of me.
And I can’t do the same for anyone other than my kids. I can hardly be there for them without losing my freaking mind, because if it’s not Jessie, it’s Emma.
Her little body racked with that cough. Hooked up to IVs. Sitting there in that intensive care unit with her, waiting for the fever to go down, making bargains with the universe that both my girls could be saved.
I can’t do it again.
I can’t.
If I have to choose between raising my kids alone and spending the rest of my days reliving the darkest memories of my life every time someone so much as coughs, then I’m not the partner anyone needs.
I’d rather be alone.
I don’t know how many flights I’ve gone when I realize Levi’s not behind me anymore.
But when I get to the ground level, I don’t wait for him. I hail a cab.
And I take the chickenshit way out, and I leave.
I can’t do this. I was a fool to think I could.
31
Lila
“He did what?” Parker gasps four hours after Tripp charged in and out of my apartment like an avenging angel who suddenly realized he didn’t want the job after all.
I don’t answer her, because even though my throat isn’t on fire anymore, and even though I’ve read this moment a million times in my favorite books, I can’t talk for the lump just behind my tonsils.
Turns out, doctors really can prescribe good stuff for colds—or bronchitis and pneumonia, whatever—and Levi’s right.
I should’ve gone again when my symptoms got worse.
But I didn’t, because I was sure I could just power my way through it like everything else, and the first doctor told me it was just a normal cold.
And now I’ve triggered Tripp’s worst nightmares.
My eyes sting, and I reach for a tissue to wipe my snuffly nose.
It’s one thing for me to try to take care of him. To protect him. To do what’s best for both of us.
And it’s quite another for him to understand that.
“Oh, Lila,” Parker sighs.
She’s in a face mask, because I refuse to infect her on a normal day, much less today, when I have this suspicion she and Knox are trying to get pregnant, and I’m making her rub her hands down with antibacterial gel every five minutes, even after she pointed out that her immune system is much tougher than mine since she’s gotten more than three full nights’ worth of sleep in the last month, whereas I’ve worn myself down so badly that I should’ve seen this coming, because I did the same thing six years ago when I was investing in a company that had created stickers that turned bright yellow when an avocado was perfectly ripe.
Levi slaps a clean water bottle onto the table next to me. “Drink it.”