“I didn’t take you to the hospital, just like you asked, but fuck, Reese…”
Like I asked? What was he talking about?
The questions were piling up on top of all my anxiety, until they burst from my chest. “What happened? What did I—what?—”
Dakota slid his hand over my chest and rubbed in a slow circle. “Hey. Breathe. Slow down and breathe. If you freak out, I’m gonna start to freak out, and then we’ll just both be freaking out and I’m gonna have to call Val and it’ll be a whole ordeal. Just breathe, Reese. I’ll answer all your questions. Okay?”
I focused on the soothing circles he kept rubbing into my chest and exhaled shakily. “Okay.”
“All right. Ask your questions. One at a time.”
“Why are you on the bed with me?”
His response came without a single moment of hesitation. “So I could feel your heartbeat.”
I stilled, staring down at the hand on my sternum, and tried swallowing past the thickness in my throat.
“What happened?” I whispered. Was I sick?
“You’re sick. You’ve got the flu, had a really bad fever last night. I think it’s gone now, though.” He raised his hand and pressed the back of it to my forehead. “Yeah, you’re nowhere near as warm as you were last night. You don’t remember?”
A fever?
“No. Not really. I remember….” A blurry Dakota. The fear in his voice. But I couldn’t remember what he said or what I was doing or where I was. “The last thing I remember is going to the bathroom to…to…”
I couldn’t remember anything past that point. Had he seen? Was I wearing pants in the bathroom? Fuck.
“No…”
No. That couldn’t be why—that wasn’t why?—
Had he seen the—seen my?—
I swallowed, my throat too thick now. “Dakota…did you see?”
His body stilled against mine, hand resting frozen on my chest, and I knew before he even said anything.
There was a long pause, a silence that held the answer to my question, but still he asked, “See what?”
“Did you see?”
“Did I see…what?”
“Did you see my legs? Did you see the—the—my—m-m-my legs?” I was shaking, and I clutched the blanket to try and hide it but my entire body was trembling and there was no hiding that.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I saw.”
I choked on a sob, then turned and buried my face in the pillow. The utter humiliation was like a noose around my neck, pulling tighter and tighter, and I couldn’t breathe anymore. A hopeless defeat spilled into every crevice of my soul, the heaviest disgust with myself, with everything I’d done, following in its wake and settling in my chest.
A hand was on my back, rubbing down, down, up, up, but I was barely processing anything other than the despair that was consuming me. It was accompanied by a numb resignation that I welcomed greedily, needing anything to drown out the horrible cacophony of emotions that were trying to churn me into dust.
I wanted to run out of the room, wanted him to leave so I could be alone, wanted him to hold me so tight I couldn’t breathe.
“Hey. I know you’re scared, but?—”
I lifted my face from the pillow, my voice wet and wobbly as I said, “Scared?” I couldn’t even see him through my tears, and I tried to scoff, but it came out as a cough. I wanted to pretend that every emotion rattling through me right now wasn’t tied to fear in some way. “I’m not scared!”
He stroked a firm hand down my back. “It’s okay, Reese, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
