Page 82 of Saved By the CEO

The doors shut between us.

I breathe out.

The whole ride down, I stare at my reflection in the elevator doors, wondering how the fuck we got here.

By the time I get outside, the evening air is cool enough to make me pull my coat tighter around myself. I walk fast. My bag bumps against my hip, and my shoes hit the pavement harder than necessary.

The apartment is quiet when I let myself in. Annie must still be at work.

Good.

I drop my keys into the bowl, toe off my shoes, and lean back against the closed door. Then I take out my phone. I have one missed call and one new message, both from Andrew.

We need to do the treatment soon

I put my phone facedown on the table and walk toward my bedroom, because I’m tired and scared and too aware of my own skin. Because the thought of another treatment makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with RHV. Because if I let Andrew touch me again, I don’t know what it’ll do to me.

I tell myself I’ll deal with it tomorrow. One night off schedule won’t kill me.

I stop in the doorway to my room as a faint shiver moves through me. I freeze, then shake my head.

Probably just a ghost or something.

Turnsout our apartment isn’t haunted at all. Weird, huh? And get this: when I wake up drenched in sweat at 3 a.m., it’s apparently not because Captain Howdy is trying to possess his little piglet. It’s actually just because I’m dying.

“Annie,” I try to yell, but it comes out as a hoarse whisper. I try again, banging on the wall. “Annie, wake up.”

I hear rustling from the bedroom next to mine. “Carly?” she says as she reaches my door. “Is everything al?—”

She stops in the doorway.

For a moment, she just stares at me. Then her whole face changes.

“Carly?” This time, her voice comes out thin and scared. She runs to the side of my bed and presses her hand to my forehead. I already know the verdict, but she says it anyway.

“You have a fever.”

“Yeah, no shit,” I say, trying to push myself up on my elbows. I fail.

That’s concerning.

“Don’t move.” Annie’s hand goes to my neck, then my cheek, then back to my forehead, like she can’t decide where the panic is supposed to go. “Jesus, you’re burning up.”

The tremor in her words scares me more than the fever does. Annie is an ER nurse. Annie has seen blood, broken bones, and people who put things in places where things do not belong. Annie does not scare easily.

But right now, she looks terrified.

She runs out of the room before I can say anything else. I hear her feet against the floor, then drawers opening, then her voice in the hallway, sharp and professional in a way I’ve never heard directed at me before.

“My roommate has RHV. High fever, fatigue, heavy sweating. She’s conscious, but she’s weak. We need an ambulance.”

I try to sit up again. “Annie.”

She appears in the doorway, her phone pressed to her ear, and points at me. “Do not get out of that bed.”

“I don’t need an ambulance.” My body chooses that moment to shiver so violently that my teeth click together. Sweat slides down my neck, under my shirt, between my shoulder blades. The room tilts a little, or maybe I do. It’s hard to tell. My skin feels too hot and too tight, like I’ve been wrapped in plastic and left under a lamp.

Annie comes back to the bed and grabs my hand with her free one.