“You brought me fruit?” I ask as I reach for it with one hand. When he holds the strawberry out of reach, I frown.
Then he holds it to my lips, and I understand.
“Youcannotbe real.” But I bite the fruit from his fingers, letting out a content sigh when the flavor and much-needed liquid explode on my tongue.
He holds another bite to my lips—mango this time—and I take that one, too. After the third bite of watermelon, I sink back into the water. But it isn’t until he reaches for a wet cloth that my confusion and insecurity come roaring back to the forefront.
“Nico…” My voice is small, and unsure. He knows what I’m going to say without me having to say it.
“Just let me take care of you,” he says softly, brushing the cloth over my shoulders. “Stop thinking so much.”
I swallow thickly, my eyes suddenly stinging. “I’m sorry we missed your plans last night,” is the only thing I can bring myself to whisper.
And Nico, the sweet, beautiful, perfect man he is, just smiles.
“I’m not.” When I frown up at him, he explains, “This whole time, I’ve been trying to come up with dates that a man wouldn’t pay for, that you’d finally believe weren’t forme, but because I wanted to dateyou. And you handed me the perfect one on a silver platter.”
I let out a laugh, relief and giddiness washing over me like a wave. “What, me vomiting all night long and forcing you to cancel your life to clean up after me?”
He brushes a kiss over the back of my hand. “Exactly,” he whispers with a smile.
My head falls back against the porcelain, my smile still firmly in place. “You’re a hard man to argue with, Nico Price.”
Something flashes in his eyes. Something I don’t recognize.
But then it softens into something more familiar, a playfulness I’ve come to love.
“I hate to tell a woman not to argue with me, but…in this case, I think it goes without saying.”
We spend the rest of the day lounging together.
We watch movies on the couch, cuddled under a blanket and sharing bites of the dinner Nico ordered: a nearby Mexican restaurant with arguably the best tacos I’ve ever had.
Slowly, my strength comes back, one bite at a time. I wouldn’t normally let myself eat something like this, but between my sickness and this bizarre situation, it feels easier to make food decisions without so much overthinking.
I’ll run the extra miles tomorrow.
Right now, I don’t want to think about anything but Nico. I want to exist in this space with him, just for a little while. I want to enjoy him without the outside world and its pressures. I want to enjoymyselfwith him.
“You know what I was thinking about?” I muse, taking Nico’s offered bite of chips and guacamole.
“What’s that?” he hums. But he’s looking at my lips as he says it.
“How didn’t you get sick? Isn’t the stomach bug highly contagious?”
He snorts as he scoops out a chip for himself. “Trust me, I had the same thought. I kept panicking that I’d catch it, and then you’d wake up out of your coma only to find meinone.”
I shiver at the thought. “That would’ve been awful. I would’ve felt so guilty.”
I don’t understand why Nico gets quiet until he asks without meeting my eyes, “Would you have stayed to take care of me?”
At first, my eyes widen.Of course, I would’ve stayed to take care of him.
And then I realize why he’s asking.
He doesn’t know how I feel about him.
The entire time we’ve known each other, he’s been killing himself trying to convince me that he likes me. That he’s not here because of the sex, or because I can stroke his ego. He’s here because helikesme. So much so, that he’s continued to pay for things no man should be paying for on a date.
