Chapter 126 After

Chapter 126 After
POV: ELI / BRIGAIL
Three months later.
His fingers stilled on the round, raised edge of skin just below her breast.
He made himself breathe through it. It's only a scar. She's here. She's fine.
She turned toward him and worked her fingers through his hair, slow and deliberate, the way she did when she knew he was in his head.
"I hate this," he said.
"I know. You've told me approximately a million times."
"Pam knows a surgeon."
"I want to keep it." She touched it herself, lightly. "It's my Purple Heart."
He looked at her in the dark. "It's the night I failed to protect you."
"It's the night you came through a door alone and unarmed because every second counted," she said. "Which one of us is right?"
He didn't answer. He ran his thumb along the edge of the scar instead, as gently as he knew how.
The first time they made love after the accident, he had been so careful with her that she told him to stop treating her like she was made of glass. He had taken mild offense to that. No one had ever questioned his performance. With a growl he had demonstrated exactly how un-glasslike she was, and she had been significantly less mouthy on the subject since.
Three months of slow. Three months of her in the house in Laughlin with its Scandinavian walls and its clean lines and its blank slate of a beginning. Three months of waking up and knowing where she was.
He had not taken a single morning for granted.
She rolled on top of him. Her hair fell forward and she pushed it back with one hand and looked at him with the expression that still, after everything, had the ability to knock the rational thought clean out of him.
"I made an appointment," she said. "With Pam's surgeon."
He went still.
"I know how much it bothers you," she said simply.
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he pulled her down and kissed her forehead and held her there.
"You didn't have to," he said.
"I know I didn't."
Two months and five days later.
First attempt.
Marco Alfonso had been complaining for forty-five minutes.
"This is an insult to my stars," he announced, leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed and the expression of a man who had been personally wronged. "You want me to make scrambled eggs. Eggs, Eli. Do you know what a Michelin star is? Because right now I don't think you do."
"Stick with the eggs," Eli said, his eyes on the index card in front of him. He was moving his lips slightly, running through the words.
"Let me do the scallops beurre blanc. Or the shrimp scampi. Even the shrimp scampi would be less humiliating than this."
"She's been off her appetite. Marco. Eggs."
"No wine pairs with eggs."
"She's not drinking anyway. She hasn't since the accident."
Marco made a sound of theatrical grief and went back to his station.
"You know you're sweating," Marco observed after a moment. "I can see it from here."
"I'm not sweating."
"There's a small river running from your collar to your"
"Marco."
"Fine. Fine. Let me be the guinea pig. Do a dry run on me." He leaned his elbows on the counter and batted his lashes. "Pretend I'm the lovely Brigail."
"I will punch you in the throat."
"Yes, yes. Go."
Eli looked at the index card. Put it down. Looked at Marco.
"When Marco met you," he began, "he told me I was out of my league. That I should run the other way because you were bound to put the hurt on me. I didn't believe him. I was arrogant enough to think I could make you heel." He paused. "I guess it's obvious I was wrong. You were the one who brought me to my knees. And if you'll have me, I promise the only assumption I'll ever make again is to never make assumptions."
Marco stared at him.
Then he straightened, spread his arms wide and said, "Take me now, you magnificent Ghost."
Eli hit him in the throat with the back of his hand.
She arrived twenty minutes late, cheeks flushed from the cold, talking before she cleared the door. "I now have a profound new respect for ass-kissing. Who knew it was so physically demanding?"
He helped her out of her coat.
"I liked you better when you were poor," he said.
She laughed. That throaty laugh that went straight to his chest and also, inconveniently, elsewhere. "Me too. Fewer people to smile at."
He kissed her briefly and returned to his chair. Marco appeared with the cloches, set them on the table, lifted the covers with a theatrical flourish.
The ring was at the bottom of her plate. As soon as she got through the eggs she would find it.
She picked up her fork.
The maitre d came out with the garlic rolls.
The smell hit the table and her fork stopped midair. Her face went from warm to ashen in approximately two seconds.
"Is that garlic bread?" She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. "I'm sorry, I have to"
She was out of her chair before she finished the sentence.
Eli looked at the plate. At the ring still buried under untouched eggs. At the garlic rolls steaming gently in the center of the table.
Marco appeared at his shoulder.
"Garlic," Marco said. "Since when?"
"A month, maybe. I forgot."
He heard her in the bathroom. He went and stood outside the door.
Behind him he heard Marco murmur something under his breath, in Italian, in the reflective tone of a man who had just worked something out.
Second attempt.
Grand Canyon. South rim. An hour before sunset. Roman had cordoned off a private section, which had been a logistical achievement.
She fell asleep on the blanket before the sky started changing color.
He lay beside her and watched her sleep. Her lashes against her cheek. Her hair across her arm. The particular stillness of her face when she was not in motion.
He had seen the sunset at Stonehenge. He had been to every canyon and coastline and mountain ridge worth visiting on four continents.
He watched her sleep through the whole thing.
He would ask her next time.
Third attempt.
Jerry's idea had been My Best Friend's Wedding, which he accepted because Jerry had been right about the garlic, so he was willing to concede some credibility.
He rented the theater. He ordered tacos without garlic. He had the ring in his jacket pocket and a plan for the exact moment Julia Roberts started her speech.
Six minutes in, she had taken off her coat.
He made an error in judgment.
"Ow!" She swatted his hand. "That hurts!"
He pulled back. "What? I barely"
"Is that why you brought me here?"
"No. I was just, they're just, they seem, you're just, they look"
She stood up. Arms crossed. Implacable.
"Are you calling me fat?"
She was out the door before he could locate a single functional word.
He sat alone in the dark theater with the movie still playing and the ring in his pocket and the very strong feeling that the universe was actively working against him.
Three days later. St. Mary's Hospital.
She had fainted at the Mandalay.
Alcide had caught her.
When Eli walked into the exam room and found Alcide's large arm around her shoulders he took a breath that lasted approximately four seconds. Then he thanked Alcide with exactly the warmth the situation required, which was none, and waited for him to leave.
"You didn't have to be rude," she said.
"I wasn't rude. I was efficient." He pulled his chair close. "You fainted."
"I got dizzy."
"You fainted."
"It wasn't"
"It was to me," he said. "How many times have I asked you to delegate? To take things slowly? What are you trying to prove?"
She leaned forward, and her eyes went from defiant to something more honest and more exhausted.
"I'm not trying to prove anything. I just want everything done so I can stop being Russell's granddaughter and start being your person. I want to go back to when it was just us." Her voice cracked slightly on the last word. "You and me."
He looked at her for a moment.
Then he walked out.
She was at the door when he returned with a wheelchair.
She stared at it.
"Get in," he said.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Not far. Get in."
She sat in it with the specific reluctant dignity she brought to everything she did under duress.
He wheeled her to the elevator. Third floor. A quiet corridor. Stopped in front of a set of double white doors.
He came around to face her.
"What you said. About starting your life with me. Did you mean it?"
"Why? Did it scare you?"
He crouched down to her level. "Then let me start by telling you how wonderful you are."
Her face softened.
"That would be a lie, though."
The softening stopped.
"You're not wonderful. You're an oddity. You're a hothead and you're stubborn and you're devious and you have no filter and you buy your sneakers in the teen's section."
She laughed, startled into it, and slapped his shoulder.
"I know," he said, taking her hand. "And I love your freakishly small feet and your calloused palms and your terrible singing voice."
"Hey."
"I love that you're not perfect. Because I'd have no chance with you if you were."
"Eli." She pressed her palm to his cheek. "You've always had a chance. I'd have married you for the money alone."
He laughed then. A real one.
"Shut up and ask me," she said.
"Full disclosure. There's no ring. I sold it."
Her eyes went wide.
"It wasn't you," he said simply. "You don't belong to anyone but yourself. I've had to learn that more than once." He rose to his full height and turned the chair to face the double doors.
"Look up," he said.
Adele Havens Cardiac Foundation.
She didn't say anything. She pressed her hand over her mouth and the tears came without permission.
He went down on one knee in front of her.
"You got under my skin and you never left. I am furiously and entirely in love with you. So if you feel the same, even a fraction of it, you will end my considerable misery and say yes." He paused. "Or just blink twice."
She laughed. And cried. And blinked twice.
He stood up and she grabbed the front of his jacket with both hands and pulled him down and kissed him right there in the hospital corridor under her grandmother's name, and he held her face and kissed her back and thought that for a man who had planned three proposals and executed zero of them, he had somehow managed to get it exactly right.
They walked back to the exam room to find Jerry, Pam, Marco, Jimmy, and Dr. Ludwig arranged in a small semicircle with the specific expressions of people who had been listening at the door and were attempting to look like they hadn't been.
Alcide was in the corner. Eli noted his presence without comment.
"Did she say yes?" Pam asked.
Eli straightened his jacket. "In what universe could she say no to this?"
Brigail hit him in the chest.
"Mrs. Cocky Jerk," he said.
Dr. Ludwig cleared her throat and pointed at the door. Everyone filed out. Jerry hugged Brigail and clapped Eli on the back and said, quietly, "good luck, man," which was an odd thing to say.
Marco grabbed Eli's face, kissed both cheeks, slipped a Cuban cigar into his breast pocket and said, "Good call on the heart foundation. You'll be needing a new one after you hear what's next."
He laughed his way out the door.
Then it was just the three of them.
Dr. Ludwig pushed her glasses up her nose.
"I think," she said, "you should both start thinking about child-proofing your hotels."
The room went very quiet.
Eli turned to Brigail.
Brigail turned to Eli.
The scar. The garlic. The sleeping in the car. The sore breasts. The fatigue. The nausea.
He reached for her hand.
She looked at him with an expression he had never seen from her before. Something between terrified and the specific brightness of someone standing at the edge of something enormous, looking out at all of it.
"Well," she said softly.
"Well," he said.
Dr. Ludwig pushed her glasses up one more time and smiled at the two of them with the satisfaction of someone who had been waiting to deliver that sentence for quite some time.
Outside the window, Las Vegas went on being Las Vegas. Loud and lit and completely indifferent to the fact that somewhere in St. Mary's Hospital on the third floor, Eli Michealson had just run out of words for the first time in his adult life.
He squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back.
That was enough.
Fin.