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but first she needed
to dispose of the gun. She stepped in Logan’s room and slipped it
in the nightstand. Then she walked down the hall, found an open
door, and peeked inside. Mathew was trying to get to his own
bathroom. He wasn’t getting very far when she knocked on the
door.
    “Go away, Melissa. I told you that I don’t
want or need you in here.” He mumbled something about privacy and
looked up when Lizzy cleared her throat. “You.”
    “Yes, me. Can I help, or do you need me to
go out?”
    He looked at the bathroom, then at her.
    “I can just help you inside, and you can do
the rest. I’d hate for you to fall and hurt yourself.”
    “Okay, but don’t stand outside the bathroom
door. I can’t…I won’t be able to do anything if you’re standing
there.”
    She nodded and tried to hide her smile.
    “That doctor said I should only move when I
need to. How’s a man supposed to get to the bathroom without it
being a need?”
    She didn’t answer, afraid she’d embarrass
him. As soon as she got him to the counter, trying really hard not
to simply pick him up and put him there, she went to the other side
of the room and looked out the window. It was getting dark, so she
turned to the bed and started to make it up. She’d pulled off the
dirty sheets when he opened the door.
    “If you tell me where the linens are, I’ll
set this up for you,” Lizzy said. He looked pale, but unless he
asked, she wasn’t going to offer to help him again. “You can sit in
a chair for a few minutes, can’t you? I won’t be but about five
minutes.”
    He nodded and asked her to help him please.
Which she did and said, “The linen closet for this room is in the
bathroom. My favorite sheets are on the bottom. Can you get
those?”
    It took her ten minutes to make his bed. And
then another twenty minutes to help him get on a clean pair of
pajamas after a quick sponge bath and brushing his teeth three
times. He lay in the bed nearly as white as the pillows when he
smiled at her. “I’ve wanted to do that for a week,” Mathew said.
“Melissa said I’d catch my death. I wanted to tell her that I’d
been there already, but I didn’t need to smell like it.” Lizzy
laughed and pulled the sheet up to his chest. “I could use a pain
pill now, if you don’t mind. They’re in the bathroom.”
    Actually, there’d been something else that
Melissa had tried to steal tonight. Lucky for poor Mathew Lizzy’d
found them in her things before Melissa left. Lizzy went into the
bathroom and got him a cup of water and put his pills on the
counter after taking one out.
    She sat down when he asked her to. “I don’t
know where my dad is, do you?” Mathew said. “He was supposed to
come home and we’d talk. I wanted to tell him about Melissa and her
not helping me. He said he’d try to be home by seven, but then he
called and said he was running late.”
    “He’s in bed.” He flushed, and she smiled at
him. “I’m not sleeping with your dad, Mathew. I just helped him to
bed. He’d been…he’s been working really hard lately, as you said,
and was too tired to drive home.”
    Mathew nodded, and his eyes started to drift
closed. He opened them when she stood up. He looked panicky, so she
sat back down.
    “Don’t leave us. I heard you tell Melissa to
bring back our stuff, but what if she comes back with some of her
big friends? I’m still too hurt to help Dad protect you.” She
nodded and told him she’d stay until his dad got up. “Thank you. I
don’t think I know your name.”
    “It’s Lizzy. Lizzy MacManus.”
    He smiled and nodded. She waited until he
fell asleep, then waited another twenty minutes before she left
him. Leaving the door open again, knowing that she’d hear him if he
woke, she went back to Logan’s room.
    It was well after midnight and she was
exhausted. Putting him into a much deeper sleep, she took off her
pants, but left on her shirt and crawled into his big bed. Christ,
it was heavenly. She was