Beau had scooped me up off the floor. I didn’t realize what was happening until we were halfway between the bathroom and the bedroom. It wasn’t an entirely short distance either since the size of the bathroom was as large as the trailer I was raised in.
Beau was carrying me. Like a bride over the threshold. Like I weighed nothing. And I didn’t. Even with what felt like thirty pounds of sweat that was attached to my skin.
“I think we can stop that farce now,” Beau grumbled, carefully setting me on the bed before fluffing pillows and fussing with the blanket.
“What farce?” I asked, taking the water he offered me on instinct.
“The one where you tell yourself that I don’t like you. The same thing I tell myself,” he replied quietly, brushing damp hair from my forehead.
I blinked rapidly to try to force details into sharp perspective. I couldn’t. My head had its own heartbeat. He was nothing but a large, fuzzy, attractive shape.
But his presence pulsed almost as violently as my headache.
“You’ve been telling yourself you hate me?” I asked, vowels melting together, voice slow and almost slurred.
My body was aching for rest, for the sweet welcome of unconsciousness. But I fought it.
“I’ve been telling myself that you don’t matter to me,” Beau corrected quietly.
I forced my eyes open, but Beau was just a blur. I felt the soft brush of a callused finger against my cheek. Or maybe I imagined that.
“Why?” I managed to ask, wondering if I was lapsing into a dream.
“Because otherwise, I’d have to face the truth.” Beau’s voice came from far away.
I fought against the pull of sleep, desperate to hear more from Beau. “What’s the truth?” I managed.
“That you…”
The rest of his response was swallowed by a dream.
Or maybe it had all been a dream.
When I woke, I was no longer burning with fever. My head still throbbed, my mouth full of cotton wool. I felt lousy, but not entirely terrible.
And I was wrapped in something warm, hard, lying on the hotel’s incredibly comfortable mattress.
I didn’t remember falling asleep.
But I did remember the muted rumble of his voice, recalled my body tensing in anticipation of hearing him tell me something. But whatever that something was had been buried by pills, a plugged head, and throwing up in front of Beau in the bathroom. Had he … carried me to the bed?
I hoped that I’d managed to brush my teeth but was unable to recall.
My throat ached with the need for hydration, and my bladder alerted me to my baser needs, but I didn’t move. I figured this was the only time in my life when I would be lying in bed,pressed up to Beau Shaw, his arm possessively thrown over my body.
I wanted to revel in it, just a little.
He was still wearing all of his clothes, on top of the covers while I was tangled up in them. I was still wearing the sweats I’d changed into last night. Nothing was untoward or remotely sexual about the situation. There had beenvomitinvolved last night. I was covered in sweat and illness, meaning it had been impossible for anything sexual to occur.
But it had been intimate. The boundaries of our relationship had been decimated. When exactly did that happen? It hadn’t started last night, when he barged into the room. Was it when he rubbed my feet or held my hair back as I vomited?
Yes, that was when it became most devastatingly clear that the lines between us had been destroyed, that our relationship was nowhere near being strictly professional. Maybe it had never been.
“How are you feeling?”
Beau’s rumbly voice vibrated over my sensitive skin, his arm slowly moving from where it was draped across my body. He didn’t scurry away from me, didn’t turn cold or cruel. He simply stretched behind me, body still warm against mine for a handful of seconds.
He was acting as if this were normal. Or at least something he didn’t instantly regret upon waking.
