Make Me Forever by Beth Kery

though. I had secretarial experience, but nothing in comparison to what I do now. He remade me . . . somehow put me back together again, and even added some major parts. He’s good at that. I’m not the only one he’s saved. But Regina . . . I think she was just so far gone, even when he’d found her.” Harper put her arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders when she shook again.
    After a moment, Elizabeth sniffed and glanced over at her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was just so scary, seeing her like that. It brought back so much. It made me think of what it was like, to be so vulnerable.”
    “I can imagine,” Harper empathized, squeezing the other woman’s shoulders more tightly. So many thoughts spun in her head.
    If Jacob and Regina had never been involved sexually or romantically, why had he led her to believe that they had? Why would he feel the need to hide amazing acts of kindness and charity?
    “He’d never sleep with any of us.”
    She thought of Jacob’s sexual preferences, how exciting and challenging she’d found them. It made sense, though, that he didn’t want to expose vulnerable women to his bent for bondage, for fear of traumatizing them.
    “Harper?”
    She started in surprise at the sound of his familiar, deep voice. She turned and saw Jacob standing in the aisle. His face looked weighted with grief. Her heart squeezed unpleasantly in her chest.
    “Jacob?” Harper mouthed, dread settling on her.
    “How’s Regina?” Elizabeth asked hopefully, but Harper already knew the answer. She’d read it in Jacob’s eyes as he’d fixed her with his stare.
    “She’s gone,” he said.
    Harper hugged Elizabeth tighter to her side when she heard the other woman’s miserable moan. She continued to hold Jacob’s stare, though. In that moment, when death hovered around them, she clung onto their invisible bond like she would a life raft in choppy water. Still hugging Elizabeth to her, she reached for Jacob’s hand. He grabbed it, and she inhaled shakily in relief. Somehow, she sensed he was accepting her support and taking strength from their bond. For that, she was profoundly grateful.
    * * *
    After Jacob had seen to some necessary arrangements in regard to Regina’s funeral, Jim came to get them at North Lake Hospital. Upon Jacob’s request, the driver dropped all three of them off at Elizabeth’s. His assistant had taken the news of Regina’s overdose and death hard.
    Elizabeth lived in a cozy little ranch home on a cul-de-sac in Tahoe Shores. Harper cleared the last remnants of the herbal tea she’d made earlier to help calm Elizabeth. It soothed Harper, to do something domestic and ordinary in the midst of a crisis. It helped, to have something mundane to focus on while grief and sadness seemed to cloak Elizabeth’s neat home.
    Jacob walked out of the hallway into the living room. She looked up and their stares held. Her heart began to throb in her ears. He looked strained and tired. Yet he was freshly amazing to her. She questioned numbly when that feeling of miraculous wonder at his existence would fade.
    Or if it ever would.
    “Is she resting?” Harper asked him softly.
    He nodded. “She’ll be okay, I think, after some rest. I didn’t realize she felt so close to Regina.”
    “I think she felt like they were two of a kind,” Harper said slowly, setting the mug and sugar bowl on the tray. “She told me in the waiting room that she and Regina had something in common.” She noticed his slight puzzled expression and met his stare squarely. “Elizabeth told me you’d saved both her and Regina.”
    The ensuing silence seemed to press on her ears. Her heart. Jacob looked so solemn to her as he regarded her unblinkingly.
    “Is that what you were doing with me?” She asked a question that had been hovering in the back of her mind ever since she’d spoken to Elizabeth in the waiting room. “
Saving
me?”
    “No,” he said emphatically, taking a step toward her, but