To the point where if he hadn’t been looking for them, he wouldn’t have noticed them.
Matthias stepped back and stared down at his body. Same height. Same weight. But the aches were gone, and so were the numbness and the random sharp shooters that had been racking his bones with such consistency that he noticed them now only in their absence.
He lifted up his pant leg. Scars lingered in the skin of his calf, but like the ones on his face, they were nothing as they had been. And a deep knee bend that should have left him gasping for breath didn’t faze him.
He looked at the man on the floor. “What the fuck have you done to me?”
Adrian grunted as he sat up, and then struggled to haul his way off the tile. When he finally straightened, a wince buried his eyes in low brows. “Nothing.”
“Then what the
The other guy turned away. “I’m going to check on Jim.”
Matthias reached out and snagged the man’s arm, a spike of fear hitting home. “What did you do to me?”
Except he knew. Even before Adrian looked over that thick shoulder, he
He had been healed. By some miracle, Adrian, the roommate, whoever the hell he was, had done what two years of doctors, surgeries, drugs, and rehab had not.
His body was whole…once again.
Because Adrian had taken on all the damage.
Staring into the man’s now milky eye, Matthias didn’t dwell on the metaphysical stuff, the holy shits, the amens, or even the thank-you’s.
All he could think of was, How the hell was he going to explain this to Mels?
Chapter Forty-one
“Hi, Mom, how are you?”
As the reply came over the connection, Mels put another French fry in her mouth. “I’m still at work, yeah. But I wanted to call to let you know I’m okay.”
Man, those simple words had connotations above and beyond the hour of the day and the reference to “work.”
Closing her eyes, she forced her voice to be level. “Oh, you know how the
For once, instead of feeling weighed down by the mundane, everyday conversation, she embraced it. Normal was good. Normal was safe. Normal was totally far from cold water and an invisible hold and the specter of death.
She was alive. So was her mother.
This was…really good.
And it was interesting how much the response mattered. As well as the follow-up she asked—about how Ruth, their next-door neighbor, had played. And also the laugh about the trump that hadn’t gone well. She truly listened, actually cared, and that gave her a sense of how much she had been going through the motions lately.
Guess the shock of that chilly water had further woken her up.
Opening her lids, she focused on Jim Heron, lying so still under the covers.
What had really happened down at that boathouse?
“Mels? You there?”
She gripped her phone a little tighter, even though she was in no danger of dropping the thing. “Yeah, Mom, I am.”
How would tonight have been if things had ended differently?
A wave of fear burrowed into her bones, replacing her marrow with Freon, and a sudden shivering made her feet tap under her seat, and her fingers drum on the desk next to her nearly empty plate of food.
She looked to the bathroom and wondered what Matthias was doing in there. For a little bit, there had been some kind of dull noise, like the shower was running, but now there was just silence.
“Mels? You’re awful quiet—are you okay?”
I almost died tonight….
Okay, apparently the composure she’d been sporting since she pulled herself out of the Hudson River had been on account of shock: A crying jag was suddenly threatening.
Except she wasn’t going to fall to pieces on the phone with her mother. “I’m really sorry—I’m just…glad to hear your voice.”
“That’s sweet of you.”
Other things were said, more nice and normal things, and then Mels heard herself explain that she wouldn’t be home until late.
“But I’m just downtown at the Marriott—I have my phone on and it’s never far.”
“I’m really glad you called.”
Mels looked up into the mirror that was over the desk. Tears were rolling down her face. “I love you, Mom.”
There was a stretch of silence. And then the three words came back at her, in a surprised tone that sped up the waterworks on her end.
Two times in one day. When had that happened last?
As her mother hung up, it was a miracle Mels could find the end button on her cell. Next move was to take the napkin out of her lap, drape it across both palms, and lean down into the soft cloth, pressing it to her face.
The sobs racked her, throwing her shoulders out of whack, making the chair squeak. There was no stopping the explosion, no thought, not even any images.
And the emotional snap was not just about the river or Matthias; it went further than the present, stretching all the way back to her father’s death.
She cried because she missed him and because he’d died young. She cried for her mother and herself.
She cried because she’d almost died today…and because Matthias’s leaving was like knowing that the man she loved was dying sometime very soon—
The warm weight of a hand on her shoulder brought her head up. In the mirror, she saw that Jim Heron was behind her—
“You’re glowing,” she said with a frown. “You’re—”
Wings.
The man had wings over both his shoulders, beautiful gossamer wings that rose up into the air, making him appear to be just like an—
Wrenching around, Mels looked up to confront the man, but he wasn’t anywhere near her. He remained in the bed under the covers, a still, silent mountain.
Turning back, she saw only herself in the glass.
At that moment, the bathroom door opened.
Matthias stepped out slowly, one hand gripping the doorjamb to steady himself.
The instant she saw him, she knew something was different. “Matthias?”
He came to her with careful, cautious steps, as if he’d been on a boat and his legs still thought he was on the open seas.
Then the door to the hallway opened and shut, Jim’s colleague leaving the room.
“Matthias?”
When he got in front of her, he lowered himself to his knees. As his eyes lifted to hers, she gasped….
Over on the bed, Jim picked that moment to get his act together. Anger, more than time, cleared his mind and gave him the strength to motivate. His body was still polluted as shit, but he was done lying around, waiting to feel normal again.
