“You say you’re ready,” August replies, pushing the fall of dark hair away from her face. “Then you’re complaining that you can’t go to the conferences you want. Or run up to the LA office and do this or do that. We have time. We’re young. There’s no rush. Do everything you want to do.”

“I want to have a baby,” she says, stretching up on her toes to reach his cheek nearly a foot above her. “And do all of those things, too.”

She looks over at me and her smile dims a little.

“A really smart woman once said I should be unafraid to want it all,” she says, smiling and searching my face for a clue to what is up with Banner and me. I’m sure August will fill her in since, apparently, they tell each other everything.

He’s so whipped.

I remember Banner saying that at the Denver conference. That she wanted to be the best in her field and have the husband and four kids. She wants it all, and God help anyone who tries to tell her she can’t have it.

Shit. Four kids? Even one like Sarai would drive me out of my mind.

Why is she so Catholic?

What if Banner has those four kids with someone else? What if she ends up with Zo? With some other guy? A better guy?

I leave the room abruptly, suddenly feeling ill surrounded by couples who have the next fifty years all figured out. I haven’t seen the woman I want in six weeks, and she’s sleeping under the same roof with a guy who is madly in love with her. So in love he forgave her for fucking me. And dammit all if I wouldn’t do the same because Banners don’t just grow on trees. They burned the mold when they made her. I know. In ten years, I haven’t found anyone even close, and now that I have a second chance, it feels like I’m losing her again. This Stella won’t cut it. I need a real drink because if I think August is whipped, feeling this way, what am I?

35

Banner

Jared feathers kisses down my back, licking between the fine-boned links of my vertebrae. Barely there touches that tease my skin and whisper over my nerve endings. When he reaches the satin edge of my panties, he tugs them down with his teeth and presses his open mouth over the curves of my ass, suctioning the generous flesh into his mouth and moaning as he marks me. I match him moan for moan as my knees are wrenched apart and cool air hits me where I’m hot and wet between my legs.

I’m on all fours, my face buried in a pillow catching the guttural noises tumbling out of me. A heavy hand caresses my back, long fingers winding into the hair at the base of my neck. He spreads my cheeks, exposing me. I’m unprepared for the wet heat of his mouth at my puckered entrance. It feels too good for me to allow self-consciousness to interfere. Oh, no. I press back into the soft lips and greedy tongue lapping at me. He holds me in place when I squirm and takes his fill.

Pleasure curls around my spine, tightening and lengthening like a coil until the onslaught of sensations make me spring. It hits me like the morning surf, lifting me so high that I crest and soar and meet the sun. Then I crash, panting for air as the water washes over me, sure that I’m drowning.

“God, Banner.”

Jared’s voice. It pours over me like hot oil, singeing my skin, leaving me slick.

“Banner.”

“Oh mi Dios sí,” I mumble.

Oh my God, yes.

“Banner.”

Something’s off in his voice. It’s the wrong kind of desperate. The worst kind of urgent. I claw my way through layers of consciousness until I break the surface of my sleep, groggy and disoriented with a pillow between my legs. I really hope I wasn’t humping a pillow. That would be a new low.

“Banner.”

It’s faint, so faint, but Zo’s voice drifts down the hall. The tone is distinct, but I can’t place it, for once can’t figure out what he needs and have never heard this in his voice. I throw off the covers and the last of my dream and rush down the hall in bare feet and the clothes I fell asleep in.

When I reach Zo’s room, I leave my heart at the door, but my body rushes forward, and I think for just a moment I’ve lost my mind. He’s on the floor, motionless.

I’m still asleep. I’m still asleep. I’m still asleep.

I repeat it in my head, like that will make this a horrible dream, but it’s too real. The deathly pallor of his face. The pulse at his neck so faint it’s crafted from butterfly wings. His breath so shallow it’s barely there.

“Zo,” I yell and shake him. “Wake up.”

Unresponsive.

He’s fainted before, extremely low blood pressure is a complication of this disease, but never like this.

“Zo, please wake up.” Hearing the fright in my voice shatters my calm, and I’m screaming and shaking and trembling from head to toe. Hot tears, liquid sorrow scalds my cheeks and pools at my neck.

“Levántate,” I beg. “Por favor. Despierta.”

Get up! Please, wake up.

I look all around the room as if someone will suddenly appear to help me, but the room is empty. On his bedside table, I catch sight of the rosary my mother sent. The one that healed Aunt Valentina. And beside the rosary is Zo’s cell phone.

I race to the bed and grab the phone, dialing on auto pilot.

“Nine-one-one,” the operator answers.

“Ayuda!” I beg for help, my mind scrambled with panic and relief. “Por favor ayúdame.”

“Ma’am, no habla español,” the operators replies, her tone flat and calm. “Is there someone who speaks English?”

“I . . . I do. I’m sorry. I do. My friend. He’s unconscious.”

I try to answer all of her questions as calmly, as accurately as I can. Within minutes, the welcome wail of the siren approaches. Zo actually stirs the littlest bit, long eyelashes fluttering against his raw-boned cheeks.

“Banner?” His voice is more a breath than a whisper. He blindly extends his hand even though he doesn’t see me, can’t know I’m there.

But he does know I’m there, and that I always will be.

“Banner, I’m fine.” Zo’s face clearly shows his exasperation. “You’re hovering.”

“I’m not hovering,” I say, standing by the bed . . . hovering. “I just . . .”

I look around for something to do and settle on fluffing the pillows propped behind his back and head. What is even the point of fluffing these? I have no idea, but it gives me an excuse to stay in the room with him.

It’s been three days since I found him unresponsive here in his bedroom. Between the attack on his kidneys and the constant diarrhea, he can easily become dehydrated. Beyond normal dehydration. He blacks out because his blood pressure drops so low. If not caught in time, it could kill him. I think my heart is still at the threshold of this bedroom where I left it when I ran to him. I fluctuate between paralyzing fear and numbness.

All the what ifs torture me. What if I hadn’t heard him? What if we hadn’t gotten him to the hospital in time? What if it happens again? The nurse was able to double her time here the last few days, but I still slept in here on top of the covers beside him, so afraid I wouldn’t hear him calling me.

“At least try to drink a little more of the smoothie.” I turn to grab the cup from the bedside table and catch him staring at my ass. “Really, Zo?”

The stern note I try to inject in my voice barely disguises the laughter. It feels like such a typical guy thing to do, and our life has been anything but typical the last two months.

“You’re beautiful, Banner,” Zo says, running his eyes over me in yoga pants and a tank top. “A man can look, yes?”

“Sure. Whatever.” I roll my eyes and proffer the smoothie. “Drink some. You need to hydrate and haven’t been eating enough.”

“I would eat if I could. Believe me, and my taste buds are shot. Even the things I usually like taste like shit.”

He sips some of the smoothie I hold for him. As I’m pulling it back, he surprises me by the move he makes and the strength behind it. With a finger tucked in the waistband of my pants, he pulls me toward him, throwing me off balance. I fall on the bed and he leans in to kiss me. Not a gentle kiss. A who-needs-to-breathe kind of kiss. It tastes of vanilla and pineapple. Most of all it tastes like Zo. For a moment I want to just lie back and let it happen, only because it feels familiar. It feels like our old life, the life we had before this disease razed our world, laid everything to waste. And before I broke his heart and betrayed his trust. But that time has passed, and this time isn’t simple. It’s hard, and even though this would be easy, I won’t lie to him anymore.

“Zo,” I mumble into the kiss, gently pushing his frail chest. “No. We can’t.”

He flops back on his pillow, wearing a frown, his jaw sharp with displeasure.

“Have you kept your end of our bargain?” he demands.

“What?” I stand by the bed, dumbfounded that he would even ask me that. “What do you mean?”

“I mean are you fucking your other boyfriend?”

This happens from time to time, a side effect of the drugs. Wild mood swings. I don’t know if it’s the drugs or if he’s just been holding that question back, waiting for the perfect chance to throw the infidelity in my face.

“Nothing to say, Bannini?” he asks, his voice stronger than I’ve heard it in weeks, reinforced with sarcasm.

“Yes, I have something to say. I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t have sex. I don’t have an office. I don’t have a life right now, Zo.”

I swing my arm around his bedroom in an angry arc.

“I have this. I have you, my best friend who hates me.”

He grabs my hand, refusing to let go when I tug.

“I could never hate you,” he says, his tone suddenly quiet and already repentant. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I shouldn’t have said that. You’ve given up everything for me. I know this.”

I let loose a frustrated breath. We may both be a little stir crazy. Other than his appointments and treatments, we don’t go out much. With Zo’s immunity so compromised, there aren’t many allowed in. His diarrhea has been crippling, and the only way he can leave the house is wearing a diaper, an indignity he can suffer only so many times. He’s sick as fuck. I’m exhausted, and we’re both stumbling through the flames of a Hell we can’t see the end of.