“I didn’t know it was.”
A hand knocks his hat off before he’s rubbing it over his buzzed head. “What’s wrong?”
“With me or you?”
“Don’t be cute. Answer my question.”
I don’t have the energy to argue. “I’m not feeling well.”
“And you didn’t think to call me? To callanyone? Something could have happened, and I didn’t fucking know! What if you?—”
“Had left?”
Silence. Rowe’s fingers go white around the top of his hat before he drops it out of view. The dirt flecked across his chaps and the lower half of his shirt tells me that he’s been busy this morning. It isn’t news to me, though now that I see it, I want to hear the details. Even just to busy my mind.
“I called your mom. She knew I wasn’t coming,” I add.
“Me.”
I lift a brow. “You what?”
“You callmenext time. Not my mom, not my father. And sure as fuck not one of the other men here. You. Call. Me.”
“Is that an order?” I ask, unable to help it.
His eyes flash, lightning filling the grey. “It is.”
“Okay.”
The confusion that follows my blunt acceptance works across his face. I simply pull up the blankets despite the sheen of sweat on my body and look away. He doesn’t come into my room. Not until I’ve heard him take off his boots and then the chaps that fall heavily to the floor.
Once he’s lowered himself at my bedside, I meet his gaze again. It’s a lot less rough now. “Are you sick?”
“You could say that.”
“Tell me what’s wrong, hellcat,” he prods softly.
My chest cracks under the weight of the unexpected concern. “I’m on my period.”
“Alright. What do you need?”
“I don’t need your pity care, Rowe. I just need to take the day.”
His fingers touch my face, then tuck my hair behind my ear and linger. “It’s not pity.”
I swallow thickly, refusing my body’s desire to pull him into bed. If he did, I wouldn’t let him back out. I want him here with me more than I’m prepared to admit out loud or even accept myself.
“Tell me what to do to help. I’m not going to tell anyone that even Tilly Whittman needs help on her period.”
“You have work. It’s harder for you to take the day off than it is for me.”
“Let me worry about that,” he says.
The bottle of pills on my bedside becomes the focus of his attention a beat later. I watch him while he reads the label, and when he looks at me again, it’s with more understanding than I thought I’d find. The name of the drugs isn’t the same as the one I took throughout my teenage and young adult years, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that they do pretty much the same thing.
He hasn’t forgotten as much about me as I thought he had.
“Tell me what you need,” he demands once again.
