Page 37 of One Night Flame

LUCY

I was pretty sure I’d died sometime during the night and had been reincarnated as a damp sponge full of germs.

I lay draped over the couch like roadkill, cocooned in the only clean blanket I could find, wearing yoga pants I’d slept in and a T-shirt that had a suspicious stain I didn’t have the energy to investigate. My hair was a rat’s nest of tangles. My whole body felt wrung out, as if my soul had been evacuated from my body as it tried to purge this demon of a stomach bug during all those hours on the bathroom floor.

Liam, mercifully, seemed to be bouncing back. He was curled up on the floor with a blanket and a tablet, quietly watching something animated and probably educational-ish. He’d been a total wreck two days ago, but now he was on the mend—of course—which meant I’d inherited the final boss level of the virus.

The house looked like someone had shaken it like a snow globe. Dishes piled high in the sink. Toys scattered across the floor in a trail of plastic carnage. Laundry baskets overflowing. Somewhere in the chaos, there might have been crackers ground into the carpet, but I’d stopped caring around 6 a.m. I’dmanaged to keep some water down finally, and I was wondering if I dared try something that qualified as actual food or if that would just start the whole cycle all over again.

I reached for my phone, squinting through one crusted eye, and opened the delivery app. Maybe—just maybe—there was a restaurant in Huckleberry Creek that could get soup to my door.

The app spun its little loading circle. Then informed me there were no available drivers in my area. Of course there weren’t. I lived in the land of porch swings and pot lucks, not seamless food delivery.

I dropped my head back against the pillow and closed my eyes. Soup was a pipe dream. I wondered if there was any kind of frozen dinner hiding in the back of the freezer, and if I could manage to keep it down if there was. The idea of hauling myself to the kitchen to even look felt like a pipe dream, too.

The doorbell rang, and for a split second, I considered rolling to the floor and playing dead. I wasn’t expecting anyone. And I definitely wasn’t prepared to be seen by actual humans. But what if it was important? The school? Grandma? A neighbor with a casserole and questionable judgment?

Liam didn’t even look up from the tablet as I shoved the blanket off with a groan and peeled myself from the couch. Every joint protested as I shuffled to the door like some rejected extra from a zombie film.

I pulled open the door to find Cord standing on my porch.

He blinked at me. Then blinked again. His gaze swept over me—wild hair, death-warmed-over face, clothes that hadn’t seen a washing machine in a questionable amount of time, hair that now felt like it had… something caught in the tangles. His mouth parted like he was trying to find the right response to… this. Whatever this was.

He, of course, looked like a recruitment ad for the HuckleberryCreek Fire Department—clean jeans, snug T-shirt, wind-flushed skin and that maddening jawline my fingers still itched to trace. Like a man who didn’t know the meaning of sick days. Or bad angles.

I could feel every inch of my humiliation. “Wow,” I croaked. “This is not how I imagined seeing you again.”

Cord stepped forward like he might catch me if I collapsed, his gaze sweeping over me with quick efficiency and quiet alarm. “What’s wrong?”

I tried to stand a little straighter, but the effort nearly tipped me sideways. “Sick,” I croaked. “Some virus that’s been going around. Liam had it first. I just… got the extended edition.”

“Have you seen a doctor?” he asked, voice low and steady.

“It’s just a virus,” I said. “No fever anymore. Just need time. And soup. And maybe a small miracle.” Like a hazmat team to deal with the crime scene that was my house.

I tried to smile. It came out more like a grimace, and I hated that he was seeing me like this—fuzzy-brained and puffy-eyed, not the woman he’d taken dancing just last weekend.

But if he noticed the contrast, he didn’t say anything. Just kept looking at me like he gave a damn. Which somehow made me feel even worse.

My stomach did a mortifying combination of lurch and twist. For a moment, I was terrified the vomiting was going to start again. Not that there was anything at all left in my system. Digging deep, I used the last vestiges of stubborn control to push the nausea back down. I wasn’t going to compound my mortification by puking on his shoes.

Cord didn’t move from the doorway. His arms were crossed now, not in a standoffish way, but like he was grounding himself from barreling inside and fixing everything.

No, that was probably another one of those pipe dreams.

Still, his eyes swept over the living room—pillows in disarray,the garbage can by the couch in case I didn’t make it down the hall to the bathroom, a sippy cup abandoned beside a bowl with dried-up soup remains. Liam’s blanket fort had collapsed halfway, draping the side of the coffee table like a sad surrender flag.

His frown deepened. “Who’s helping you?”

I blinked, caught off guard. “No one. Grandma’s out of town for a few days.”

His brows lifted slightly. “So… it’s just you?”

I shrugged. “We’re fine.”

It sounded thin even to me. Cord didn’t say anything for a second, just looked at me. Not the stare of a man trying to judge, but one absorbing the full picture—my hair, the bags under my eyes, the limp way I was clutching the edge of the door.

“What do you need?”

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