Oh, fuck.
I’m sure he will.
SEVEN
LEO
I still don’tlike North. Idon’t. It doesn’t matter that he’s hot. It doesn’t matter that he was nice. That’s his job, damn it. He’s trained to take care of people, and I had the audacity to go and seize all over him. Literally.
After feeding him inedible food, apparently.
The evidence of that is all over my kitchen, and it’s humiliating to see because I thought I’d been in full control of myself, but the mess says otherwise. There are small piles of powdered Parmesan on the floor and the counters, spilled spaghetti noodles on the stove, and it looks like I tipped over the pot of water and just left it there.
It also doesn’t help that half my box of sea salt is missing, which probably means it was in the pasta water.
Oh god, what did I feed him?
I’m on my hands and knees, wiping up the mess, when I hear footsteps, and then North clears his throat. “Yeah, I wasn’t joking about you getting into bed.”
I glance over my shoulder at the totally wrong time because it’s the moment North lifts his fucking shirt to wipe his browwith it, and I catch his goddamn, tattooed washboard abs, which are littered with faint, pale pink scars.
I look away before he can notice. “I can’t just leave this sitting here.”
“True. But luckily for you, there’s a fireman who lives directly behind you, who happens to be in your house right now?—”
“Uninvited!” I remind him.
He goes on like I haven’t spoken. “—willing to help. And trust me, I know how to clean a kitchen.”
I’m way too embarrassed to let him touch any of this. “You can go now. I’m fine.”
“Okay. Let me just give your brother a call. I’m sure it won’t be a big deal for him to come over here and…”
I groan, half-annoyed, half-panicked. Easton is the kind of self-sacrificing fuck who would get himself written up to help me clean a kitchen if he thought I was in distress.
Which, for the record, I am not in distress. Just horrifically embarrassed.
“Fine, whatever.” I throw the paper towel toward the trash and miss, because of course I do, then groan as I attempt to climb to my feet. I fail at that, too, because my hip is on fire from all the walking I did without my cane, and I will definitely be paying for that the rest of the week.
North lifts me like I weigh absolutely nothing, and that makes me feel even worse.
“I think you should probably shower,” he murmurs as he steadies me on my feet.
My face goes white-hot. “I smell that bad?”
Christ, I didn’t mean to ask that, but after seizures, words tend to tumble out of my mouth unchecked. It’s why I laughed on the walk home. It’s why I was so…easy with him.
Something was definitely scrambled up there, because he should not make me feel this safe.
And even now, I want to lean into his space, and I haven’t felt this way in years.
North sighs loudly, drawing me out of my thought spiral. “You don’t smell. I just know I always feel better when I have one after a rough day. Or moment. Whatever. You know what I mean.”
I want to pretend I don’t, but the truth is, I have a very fancy shower with a stone bench so I won’t fall and crack my head open, and seizing always makes me sweat buckets.
It’ll be nice to change out of these clothes, which do reek of salty pasta water, and wash all those embarrassing moments off me. “Fine. A shower it is. You can let yourself out when you’re done being all up in my business,” I tell him, then lean my upper arm against the wall as I make my way out of the kitchen.
I can only just make out the sound of him running the faucet, and I do everything I can not to think about the fact that I’m seriously going to owe him when all of this is over and done with. It’s hard to process complicated thoughts though, so I let it go, knowing how shitty I’ll feel tomorrow when my brain is fully back online.
