Page 40 of Fern's Date with Destiny
“You want us to stay?”Rose asked softly, her hand on Fern’s shoulder.
Fern shook her head.“No.I’m good.”
“Have fun.”Tansy kissed her cheek.“Text us later.And don’t let him skip lunch.Cowboys are the worst.”
“I won’t.”
Fern waved them off then turned toward the café entrance just in time to see Cody step through the door.His eyes landed on her and softened instantly.
“Hey,” he murmured.
“Hey yourself.”She leaned in for a hug, and he clung to her briefly, the hold tight and needy.
“You ready?”she asked softly when they pulled apart.
He swallowed, that flicker of vulnerability she’d come to recognize crossing his face.“I don’t know.”
She cupped his jaw, brushing her thumb over the faint stubble on his cheek.“That’s okay.I am.”
For a moment, he looked as if he was memorizing her face before nodding.“All right.Let’s go.”
The waiting rooms were just as dull and sterile as she’d imagined.Grey chairs, a looping slideshow of nature programs on one overhead screen, news on another.
Fern ignored both and held Cody’s hand until he was called for his MRI and the clinical neurological exam.She kissed his cheek when he looked as if he might bolt and offered her best encouraging smile.
When he came out, hours later, pale and exhausted but standing, she rose and wrapped her arms around him without a word.His breath shuddered against her hair, but he didn’t pull away.
When he finally spoke, his voice was rough when he said, “Thanks for being here.”
She tipped her head back.“Always.”
“Even when it’s ugly?”
“Especially then.”
He kissed her.Just a brush of lips, but it steadied them both.She tucked her arm through his and leaned against him as they walked into the bright afternoon.
They didn’t know yet what came next.But they were going to find out.
Together.
Cody hadn’t realizedhow much he’d been counting on answers, real answers, until he walked out of Dr.Sydney Jeremiah’s office in Heart Falls in mid-March with nothing to show but another requisition form.
More tests.More waiting.
He kept the paper folded in his back pocket all afternoon.Didn’t even look at it until he was alone, sitting in his truck in the Red Boot parking lot with the engine ticking as it cooled.He laid the slip on his thigh and read every word twice, as if memorizing the medical code numbers would somehow feel like progress instead of spinning in place.
It didn’t.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, feeling the scruff because today he hadn’t managed to shave, and let his head fall back against the seat.Outside, the early spring wind picked at the eaves and sent a loose scrap of feed bag skittering across the gravel.In the last light of the day, it looked almost alive.
He didn’t want to bring the heaviness home to Fern.She deserved better than his half-exhausted silences.But he’d promised to try, so he did.
It was hard, but he told her the truth.
“It was inconclusive,” he said that night when she stopped by with a bag of takeout and the determination to make him eat something.“More tests coming.I don’t know when it’ll end.”
Fern sat beside him on the couch and took his hand.“Then we wait,” she said simply, squeezing until he felt the tremor in his knuckles ease a fraction.“Together.”
