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“Damn it, angel, how can I not?” For the first time, he looked almost angry. “How the hell do you think it makes me feel to know that when I’m gone, you’ll be left… You’ll be left?—”

“I’ll be left better because I loved you. Better because I got to be your wife. Better because I had the chance to truly connect with someone else on this level, when I used to wonder if I ever would. Jude, you have to believe me. I don’t have any regrets. I wouldn’t change a single thing. Yes, I’ll mourn when you’re gone, but I wouldn’t do anything differently even if I could. I wouldn’t have missed out on this marriage for anything. Not foranything.” She wasn’t sobbing, but tears were streaming down her cheeks as she finished.

He was shaking again, closing his eyes and turning his face away.

There were a couple of tear streaks on his face when he met her eyes again. “I wouldn’t have missed out on it either.”

She sniffed and wiped her face and went to the bathroom to pee and wash up. She felt better when she came back out to the bedroom.

Jude wasn’t asleep yet. He was watching her as she returned to the bed.

“How’s your head?”

“It still hurts but not as bad as before.”

“Okay. Good.” She picked up something from the nightstand near her phone before she climbed back under the covers.

He turned on his side to face her.

She reached over until she’d found his left hand.

She slid his wedding ring back on his finger.

“I’m sorry I took it off,” he murmured thickly.

She kissed the ring on his finger. “Don’t do it again.”

“I just want the best for you, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

“Well, this is the best for me. Being married to you is the best for me.”

She was still holding his left hand, and he pulled both their hands over toward his face. He pressed his lips against his wedding ring the way she had. “Me too.”

14

Two days later,Jude still had the headache.

It wouldn’t go away.

He’d never had a headache last so long before.

The intensity came and went depending on how recently he’d taken the medication, but it never fully went away and eventually it always grew to full-blown again. Eve had been able to get him back home from the hotel later that same afternoon, but he spent the next two days in bed.

It was frightening. Deeply upsetting. Maybe he’d never take another breath on this earth without pain. Maybe this would be the headache that killed him.

When the pain was bad, he was too out of it to think clearly about anything, but when it lessened, he could do nothing but brood about what the change must mean.

Eve loved him. She loved him, and he couldn’t even revel in that fact, enjoy it for the short time he had left. He was stuck in this bed with a brain that was determined to destroy him. And all he wanted to do was love his wife.

He’d lost track of what day of the week it was, but he was pretty sure it was afternoon when his headache faded again—enough for his mind to clear.

The first thought that occurred to him was that he really needed to go to the bathroom.

Urgently.

With great effort, he managed to sit up. The room spun around him, so he breathed deeply for a moment.

His eyes landed on Eve, slumped in the upholstered chair she’d moved closer to the bed.