Page 2 of Revival

“Thanks.” Our fingers brush as he pulls the cup from my grip. Despite the layer of glove separating us, my skin prickles beneath his touch. He quenches his thirst while I wait by idly, then lowers the cup to his chest. “What’re you doing here?”

I level him with a look. “What do you think?”

He presses his head against his pillow. “Heard about the accident. That doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“If you heard I was in a terrible accident, you wouldn’t come home?”

Spencer scowls. “That’s different.”

I crack a weak grin for the first time since I stepped foot in this room. “How so?”

He blinks heavily, repeatedly, as if he’s fighting the medication threatening to pull him under.

“You’re you.”

I tuck my lower lip between my teeth to keep my jaw from falling open. “That’s not much of an explanation, Spence.”

This time, he lets his eyes close, almost as if he’s in pain. “Never thought I’d hear you say my name like that again.”

At the shiver threatening to encompass me, I tense.

You’re engaged to another man,I scold myself.

I’m lost for something to say, but Spencer isn’t.

“Do anything for you.” Whether it’s the medication talking or his heart, I’ll never know. I shouldn’t want to know. But then he flips over his hand and grabs mine, the strength startling for someone who appears so weak, and I find myself wanting to know everything he has to say.

“Spencer,” I whisper, staring down at our twisted fingers.

His thumb skates across my knuckles in a slow caress, stopping abruptly as he reaches the bump beneath my fourth one.

He huffs, the sound rife with bitterness. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“You wouldn’t know him.”

“Any kids?”

It strikes me then that he never heard about my son. “One. Oliver, but we call him Ollie. He’s seventeen.”

“Wow. A young man.” Spencer swallows hard. “I bet he’s decent and kind.”

“He is.” My response is choked.

“He would be with a mother like you.”

“Quite the assumption when you haven’t seen me since we were eighteen.”

The side of his lips tilt but drop as if he doesn’t have the strength to fake the smile. “And even then, you were one of the most nurturing people I knew, second to Nancy.”

Comparing me to my adoptive mom is a high compliment. That woman is a saint in the eyes of me and my five brothers. She and her husband picked us up off the streets one by one, each of us coming from rough childhoods down to straight abuse. Being lucky enough to become a Powell was a dream come true.

My biological mother died from terminal cancer when I was three. Since I never knew my father, I was sent to live with my mother’s sister. What ensued was a chaotic upbringing where I was invisible. Too many kids fighting over limited resources. Threadbare, too small, hand-me-down clothes. Sneaking into the kitchen at night to eat ketchup packets, because I didn’t get dinner. My aunt tried her hardest, but even with working two jobs, there wasn’t enough to go around.

By the time I was sixteen, I needed out.

There was no dramatic moment—just a quiet folding of my clothes into a trash bag and fifty bucks to hop a bus out of town.

I don’t like to think about what would have happened if I didn’t run into Nancy Powell.

---