Free Awake and Alive by Garrett Leigh Page A

“If Jed feels up to it.” He glanced up and met Jed’s eye over Max’s shoulder. “You seem to do better at home. Might be the best place for you if you feel up to the car ride.”
    Max couldn’t see what Jed did to make Dr. Howarth smile. Jed had a strange relationship with his doctor—an odd mix of combative resentment laced with fondness and mutual respect. Dr. Howarth respected Jed enough to make his own decisions, and in turn Jed trusted him enough to ask for help when he needed it. Max figured he could trust both of them enough to make the right call.
     
     
    D ESPITE J ED ’ S best efforts, they left the hospital the following evening. Dan drove them home, complete with Carla, who was setting up camp in the spare room until Dr. Howarth made an unofficial house call the following morning.
    The short journey wore Jed out. He crashed out in bed and stayed that way for the next two days. Max watched over him with the help of their extended family, both canine and human, but in truth, there seemed to be no need. When Jed was awake, he was cheerful and content, and in no more discomfort than one would expect after an open surgical procedure. Even the persistent, painful sickness he’d lived with for so long remained absent.
    It seemed too good to be true. Max felt like he was living a dream… a dream he was bound to wake up from at any minute. For days, he waited for the punch line, for the insurmountable obstacle to block their path, but it never came. Jed got better and better, and the biggest battle seemed to be making him rest — a battle Max knew he would likely lose.
    A few weeks after the surgery, Max passed through the cabin on his way to the shower and found the couch empty, the cushions and blankets neatly in place, and Desta gone from his sentry post under the coffee table. The rest of the cabin was deserted too, and it seemed that despite Max’s best efforts to keep him indoors, Jed had taken his chance and escaped.
    Max found him in the garden, shuffling around the vegetable patch with Desta at his heels. Even from a distance, Max could tell he was tidying up. He watched Jed brace his abdomen, stoop and right an upended pot, and Max itched to cross the yard and hassle him back to the couch. Damn him. Why couldn’t he rest?
    With a sigh, Max shoved his twitching hands into his pockets and started forward, forgetting in his haste that he’d left his T-shirt on the back of the couch. “Hey,” he called. “Last time I checked, this wasn’t the couch.”
    Jed grinned and sidestepped him to tie a wayward plant to a bamboo cane. “Nah, but the ceiling’s better out here, huh?”
    Max smiled. His worries about the surgery seemed a distant memory when Jed’s eyes lit up like the midsummer sun. “What are you doing out here?” Max gestured toward the neglected vegetable plot. He’d let it go while Jed had been sick. There hadn’t been enough hours in the day. “This place is a mess. It’s going to take all summer to put right.”
    “Just getting a head start. Are you putting zucchini there?”
    Max stared at Jed’s suspiciously soil-covered hands and noted a tray of planted seedlings. Bloody hell. How long has he been out here? He put his hands on Jed’s shoulders and turned him to the left, enjoying the way Jed’s strong body felt against him. “Over there.”
    Jed followed Max’s gaze. “What’s that freakish thing you call them?”
    “Courgettes.”
    Jed hummed, no doubt filing the word away in the crazy, linguistic part of his brain. Languages fascinated Jed, and when he wasn’t pushing his recovering body to its limits, he was most often found with his head in a book Max couldn’t read a word of.
    Max eased his arms around Jed’s waist and pressed his face into the crook of his neck, prepared to resort to underhanded tactics to get him inside. Jed tipped his head to the side in a languid, absent motion. He seemed distracted. “Something on your mind?”
    Jed shook his head.