“You really have to ask?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

“I’m fantastic. You may not believe it, but I get as frustrated as you do when we can’t have this time alone together.”

He tucked her head in under his chin and wrapped his leg around her hips. “Sleep right here with me. Just like this.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Chapter 21

Over the next several days, Slim and Erin took turns with her mother, making sure someone was always at the hospital. They grabbed meals and sleep when they could, between short visits with her dad, who was a little better every day.

Eventually, they moved him from ICU to a regular room, which was a big milestone. Erin and her mom worked the phones, looking for a rehab facility close to home where he could complete his recovery after he was released from the hospital.

Hearing that the rehab could take weeks, Erin made the decision to stay in Pennsylvania to support her parents until her dad was finally home.

“I have to go back to the island today,” Slim said over breakfast in her mother’s kitchen on the morning of New Year’s Eve. “My close friend is getting married,” he said of Adam McCarthy. “I need to be there.”

“I understand,” Erin said, though she was bereft at the thought of even a day without him after all the time they’d spent together.

“I wish you could come with me.”

“So do I.”

“That’s progress on all fronts. One, that you want to be with me, and two, that you’d have to fly with me to get there.”

“I definitely want to be with you. The flying? Still not high on my to-do list, but getting the first time out of the way was huge. I… I’ve been thinking I might see about an appointment with Dr. McCarthy when I get back to the island to work on my long list of issues.”

“Your list isn’t that long.”

“It’s longer than you think. Have you noticed that I need everything just so, that I’m constantly arranging and rearranging? Or that I have to touch things with my left hand or something awful will happen to someone I love? My OCD is about having control over things—or the perception of control, anyway.”

He reached for her hand and linked their fingers. “People don’t get to our age without baggage, Erin. We’ve all got stuff. Yours doesn’t make you any less attractive to me, in case you were wondering.”

“That’s nice to hear,” she said, smiling at him. How would she live without that gorgeous face to look at all day every day? “What am I supposed to do for fun without you around?”

“Call me? FaceTime? Text?”

She made a pout face. “Hard to go back to that after the last eleven days.”