“I’m staying, Quinn,” I murmur, gliding the device over her forehead and down her cheek. “Humor me.”
The thermometer beeps. I glance at it. 103.8.
My lungs tighten.
“That’s … high,” I say carefully, calmly, even though panic is pulsing through me.
She tries to shake her head, tries to push me away.
“I’m not going anywhere unless you make me,” I tell her in a soft voice, wiping hair out of her face. “You’re too sick to be alone.”
She makes a small miserable sound and sinks further into the cushions. “Don’t.”
I lean closer. “Don’t? You don’t want help?”
Her eyes flutter, her light lashes hard to see without mascara, especially with no lights on in the house. She’s shivering so hard, her teeth chatter. Her hand curls weakly into the front of my sweatshirt.
“Don’t,” she whispers again, voice breaking.
And then, barely audible?—
“Go.”
Don’t,she said.Go,she said.
She doesn’t want me here.
I lean back, looking at her. Jake was right. I thought I knew better, and now I’m the idiot who broke into her house to give her something she doesn’t even want. Disappointment and humiliation wash over me.
Why did I convince myself that I’m special? She doesn’t want her own boyfriend here, someone she has a shared history with, someone she’s known her entire life. She definitely doesn’t want me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, backing away from her gently on the couch. Getting up, even though it pains me likeI’mthe one with the flu. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. I’ll go, but please call me?—”
A sob rips from her body. “Don’t go!”
Emotion rushes through me faster than I can drop—carefully—beside her. I let her head fall back on my lap and brush the hair out of her face, my hands shaking now, my relief tangling with my nerves.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I assure her, her cry ofdon’t goechoing through my body. “Have you taken anything for pain?”
Her whimper sounds like a no.
I reach down to my pharmacy bag, shake out two pain pills, and crack open a coconut water. She’s barely able to put the pills in her mouth and tip the drink up on her own. And she crashes back onto my lap before I can even put the cap back on.
I run my hands through her hair on instinct, trying to block out memories of my dad doing the same thing to my mom countless times when she had an infection.
In the silence of her living room, without a live social media audience to smile for or a twin to banter with, my heart feels like lead. Usually, I’d be cracking a joke or looking for a way to make her crack a smile, because that’s what I do. I’m a human light bulb.
But here, with Scottie so vulnerable, the light is flickering, and I’m afraid if it goes out, I’ll be useless to her.
How did my dad do this without losing that warm glow he’s always had?
He could have gold-medaled in caretaking. If I blink, I can see him on the edge of her bed on a thousand different quiet nights, stroking her hair while she slept, checking her vitals, making sure any new infection didn’t settle into her lungs. His love for her was so pure, so selfless, so kind.
After all those years of seeing such patient affection, I don’t know what else to do when someone I care for this much is sick.
I also don’t know how my dad handled watching my mom fade away, because even watching Scottie in pain is more than I can take.
After a few minutes, she makes a soft “mmm” sound. Then she whispers through cracked lips. “That feels good.”
