I thought about asking him for help, but if he’d wanted to, he would have already. Just like he’d done last time. Was he testing me? I wasn’t going to ask. He was already doing so much.
I could do it.
It took too long to crawl toward the sink, then even longer to actually manage to stand up. My legs shook as I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath. It took a long time to cup water under the running tap and bring it to my mouth. I didn’t drink enough, I knew it wasn’t enough, but when my legs shook too bad to keep me up, I pretty much slid back down onto the floor and spread out on it.
“Eat the nutrition bar,” a bossy voice said from somewhere close by.
I closed my eyes instead.
* * *
I was shaking so hard my teeth rattled.
I had to be morphing into a literal pile of shit. I was turning into the poo emoji on my phone.
I slept but didn’t. I rested, but I stayed awake too, so uncomfortable—that word was the understatement of the century. I would have sold my soul to feel better.
But it was during one of those times that I opened my eyes when I felt myself being moved. Being lifted just a bit. My head drooped for a second before…
Prying an eyelid open even more, I found a leg stretched out in front of me. I was still on my side. Rolling onto my back and ignoring the ache in all my bones, I found The Defender’s face looking down at me. All smooth, unreal skin. All that perfect bone structure. Those beautifully shaped and colored eyes. All that wrapped into one being.
And he was letting me use his leg as a pillow? Why did that suddenly seem like the nicest thing in the whole world? And why did it make me want to cry?
I sniffled, and that unbelievable face tipped down, his gaze moving over me.
I think my heart broke a little bit. “Why are you so beautiful?” I whispered.
He didn’t even sound sarcastic as he answered, “Superior genetics. Go back to sleep.”
I tried to laugh, but it just hurt.
He made a tight, tight, tight noise in his throat as those dark purple eyes moved over me again, the corners of his mouth going flat. “Your fever is worse,” he said. “Get better.”
“I can’t…” Why was I so out of breath? “Just get better.”
“Wrong. Make it happen.”
Even snorting hurt.
“Stop it.”
I sniffled some more.
“Get better,” he insisted in that familiar, rich voice.
I groaned some more and rolled onto my side again, still on his leg. On his thigh.
“Gracie….”
I closed my eyes.
My feverwasgetting worse—or was already there. I could feel how hard my body was fighting. How even my spine hurt. My throat felt like I’d swallowed a couple hundred rocks with no water.
I burned up while I slept.
I remembered reading about how some people had vivid, crazy dreams when they had a fever. I didn’t dream of shit. I slept and I slept, fitful and restless, remembering every turn and roll, and forcing my brain back to sleep because my head couldn’t handle how bad it hurt and needed the escape.
And in one of those rare times that I did wake up, my back on fire, I found myself in a seated position.
