Copyright 2018 by Colleen Hoover

Oh, my God. I cover my mouth with unsteady fingers. No, no, no!
I read an article about this once. A woman was injured in a car wreck and
was in a coma. She lived in a nursing facility and her husband came to visit her
every day. The staff became suspicious that he was having sex with her despite

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her being in a coma, so they set up hidden cameras. The man was arrested for
rape because his wife was unable to give consent.
Much like Verity.
I should do something. But what?
“It’s noisy, I know.”
I gasp and spin around, coming face to face with Jeremy.
“I can turn it off if it bothers you,” he says.
“You scared me.” My voice is full of breath. I blow out a sigh of relief,
knowing that whatever I’m hearing is not at all what I thought it was. Jeremy
looks over my shoulder, up at where the noise is coming from.
“It’s her hospital bed. It’s on a timer every two hours to lift different parts of
her mattress. Takes weight off her pressure points.”
I can feel the embarrassment creeping up my neck. I pray to God he doesn’t
know what I thought that noise was. I cover my chest with my hand to hide the
redness I know is there. I’m fair skinned, and anytime I get nervous or worked
up or embarrassed, my skin tells on me, erupting in angry red splotches. I wish I
could sink into the lush, rich-people carpet and disappear.
I clear my throat. “They make beds like that?” I could have used one when
my mother was on hospice. It was hell trying to move her on my own.
“Yeah, but they’re obscenely expensive. Several thousand for a brand new
one, and insurance wouldn’t even cover it.”
I choke on that price.
“I’m heating up leftovers,” he says. “You hungry?”
“I was just on my way to the kitchen, actually.”
Jeremy walks backward. “It’s pizza.”
“Perfect.” I hate pizza.
The microwave timer goes off right when Jeremy reaches it. He pulls out a
plate of pizza and hands it to me, then makes himself another plate. “How’s it
going in there?”
“Good,” I say. I grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and take a seat at the
table. “You were right, though. There’s a lot. It’s gonna take me a couple of
days.”
He leans against the counter as he waits for his pizza to finish. “Do you work
better at night?”
“Yeah. I stay up pretty late and then sleep in most mornings. I hope that’s
not an issue.”
“Not at all. I’m actually a night owl, too. Verity’s nurse leaves in the
evenings and comes back at seven in the morning, so I stay up until midnight
and give Verity her nighttime medications. Nurse takes over when she gets

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here.” He grabs his plate from the microwave and sits across from me at the
table.
I can’t even make eye contact with him. All I can think of when I look at him
is the part of Verity’s manuscript I read where she mentioned his hand was
between her legs at the Steak ’n Shake. God, I shouldn’t have read that. Now I’ll
be blushing every time I look in his direction. He has really nice hands, too,
which doesn’t help the situation.
I need to change the direction of my thoughts.
Like now.
“Did she ever talk with you about the series she was writing? Like what she
had planned for the characters? The ending?”
“If she did, I can’t remember,” he says, looking down at his plate. He
absentmindedly moves around a slice of pizza. “Before her car wreck, it had
been a while since she’d written anything. Or even talked about writing.”
“How long ago was her wreck?” I already know the answer, but I don’t want
him to know I Googled his family’s history.
“Not long after Harper died. She was in a medically induced coma for a
while, then went into an intense rehabilitation center for several weeks. She’s
only been home for a few weeks now.” He takes another bite. I feel bad for
talking about it, but he doesn’t seem put off by the conversation.
“Before my mother died, I was her only caregiver. I don’t have any siblings,
so I know it isn’t easy.”
“It isn’t easy,” he says in agreement. “I’m sorry about your mother, by the
way. I’m not sure I said that when you told me about it in the coffee shop
bathroom.”
I smile at him, but say nothing else about it. I don’t want him to ask about
her. I want the focus to remain on him and Verity.
My mind keeps going back to the manuscript, because even though I know
very little about the man sitting across from me, I almost feel as though I know
him. At the very least, I know him the way Verity described him.
I’m curious to know what kind of marriage they had, and why she ended the
first chapter with the sentence she chose. “Until he discovered the one thing that