No Strings Attached

Chapter Twenty Nine

Shannon couldn’t take her eyes off of Nate’s strong hands – lying there against the white sheets. Her mind was tripping over every touch – every single brush of his fingertips against her, every time he’d cupped her cheek, or stroked her hair behind her ears. She remembered when he’d brushed his finger lovingly over the photograph of Molly – how delicate and fragile that picture had looked at such a contrast to his big, work-roughened hands.

She remembered his hands around the pistol as he’d pointed it at Walters to protect her.

And she looked at it against the white sheets, still and cold, and couldn’t stop the torrent of tears that danced over it.

“You have to be okay,” she murmured quietly into the empty room, silent prayers on her mind that he could somehow hear her, “I need you. God, Nate, I love you. I’m sorry I’m only saying it now – I’m sorry that the first time I say it out loud in five years is here.”

The only response was the monitor – beating the rhythm of his heart in automated, motorised beeps.

And that fucking respirator – the coarse rustling horrible death breaths that were rattling and echoing around her.

“I hate this thing,” she muttered, taking his hand reluctantly – needing some contact with him – somehow, “It sounds like Darth Vader behind me, I hate it.” She chuckled quietly – tears still making slow tracks over her soft cheeks, “Nobody else would laugh with me at that, but you would.”

Shannon turned at a light knock sounded on the door, and the nurse popped her head around.

“Can I get you anything Mrs. Casey?” she asked, with a perky smile that seemed somehow inappropriate to the surroundings, and Shannon just shook her head quietly.

Mrs. Casey, she hadn’t corrected her.

“Remember when you asked me the first time?” she stroked her thumb over his full bottom lips, on the side that wasn’t linked up to that damned machine with the chest tube, “And you took the shoelace out of your Converse?”

Chuckling to herself, softly, she remembered those words as clear as if they’d just been spoken.

But I want the right to cherish you – I want the world to know you’re mine; my ring on your finger, my heart in your hands. That’s what I need.

His words were so poetic – and his eyes, they’d just devoured her. It was all so beautifully romantic – with a field full of flowers underneath them, and the bright, quiet sunshine – and then he’d stripped his lace off his trainers so that “she could see where she belonged”, looping the frayed length of material around her ring finger a few times before tying it into a huge, drooping bow against her slender hand. He must’ve walked around the rest of the day with one foot falling out of his shoes!

“I was looking at it all afternoon as though it was a rock the size of Gibraltar! I didn’t take it off until I went home, you know, I walked around all afternoon with your sweaty shoelace dangling from my finger! And when I took it off, I kept it! God!”