she had. In so many ways. But there was one more thing that she prayed she would soon have enough of. Rodrigo.
Any bets she never would?
It was good to face her weakness. Without self-deception, she’d be careful to plan her actions and control her responses, accept and expect no more than the medical supervision she was here for during her stay. Until it came to an end.
As it inevitably would.
Rodrigo stood outside Cybele’s quarters, all his senses converged on every sound, every movement transmitted from within.
He’d tried to walk away. He couldn’t. He’d leaned on her door, feeling her through it, tried to contain the urge to walk back in, remain close, see and hear and feel for himself that she was alive and aware.
The days during which she’d lain inert had gouged a fault line in his psyche. The past days since she’d come back, he hadn’t been able to contemplate putting more than a few minutes’ distance between them. It had been all he could do not to camp out in her room as he had during her coma. He had constantly curbed himself so he wouldn’t suffocate her with worry, counted down every second of the three hours he’d imposed on himself between visits.
After he’d controlled the urge, he’d summoned Consuelo, had dragged himself away. Then he’d heard Consuelo’s shout.
He hadn’t barged into the room only because he’d frozen with horror for the seconds it took him to realize Consuelo had exclaimed Stop, and Consuelo’s gregarious tones and Cybele’s gentler, melodic ones had carried through the door, explaining the whole situation.
Now he heard Cybele’s raised voice as she chattered with Consuelo from the bathroom. In a few minutes, Consuelo would make sure Cybele was tucked in bed and would walk out. He had to be gone before that. Just not yet.
He knew he was being obsessive, ridiculous, but he couldn’t help it. The scare was too fresh, the trauma too deep.
He hadn’t been there for Mel, and he’d died.
He had to be there for Cybele.
But to be there for her, he had to get ahold of himself. And to do that, he had to put today behind him.
It had felt like spiraling down through hell. Taking her to that airfield, realizing too late what he’d done, seeing his foster parents after months of barely speaking to them, only to give them the proof of his biggest failure. Mel’s body.
The one thing mitigating this disaster was Cybele’s memory loss. It was merciful. For her. For him, too. He didn’t know if he could have handled her grief, too, had she remembered Mel.
But—was it better to have reprieve now, than to have it all come back with a vengeance later? Wouldn’t it have been better if her grief coincided with his? Would he be able to bear it, to be of any help if she fell apart when he’d begun healing?
But then he had to factor in the changes in her.
The woman who’d woken up from the coma was not the Cybele Wilkinson he’d known the past year. Or the one Mel had said had become so volatile, she’d accused him of wanting her around only as the convenient help rolled into one with a medical supervisor—and who’d demanded a baby as proof that he valued her as his wife.
Rodrigo had at first found that impossible to believe. She’d never struck him as insecure or clingy. Just the opposite. But then her actions had proved Mel right.
So which persona was really her? The stable, guileless woman she’d been the past five days? The irritable introvert she’d been before Mel’s accident? Or the neurotic wreck who’d made untenable emotional demands of him when he’d been wrecked himself?
And if this new persona was a by-product of the accident, of her injuries, once she healed, once she regained all her memories, would she revert? Would the woman who was bantering so naturally with Consuelo, who’d consoled him and wrestled verbally with him and made him forget everything but her, disappear?
He forced himself away from the door. Consuelo was asking what Cybele would like for breakfast. In a moment she’d walk out.
He strode away, speculations swarming inside his head.
He was staring at the haggard stranger in mourning clothes in his bathroom mirror when he realized something.
It made no difference. Whatever the answers were, no matter what she was, or what would happen from now on, it didn’t matter.
She was in his life now. To stay.
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