Page 45 of What A Croc
Sleep claimed me for a few hours more, before I finally woke up and stayed awake for more than a few minutes at a time. The sun was low in the sky, and when I reached for my phone, after taking stock that my stomach had settled down, I saw it was almost five in the afternoon.
Squinting at my phone, I saw several text messages and a few missed calls. The calls were from Jackson, but he hadn’t left any voicemails, so I scrolled through my texts. One was from Becks, a few from Wyatt. and the rest were from Jackson, who was worried and wanted me to call him as soon as I felt up to it.
He’d been worried about me yesterday, having heard from one of the daycare workers I was ill when he dropped Aiden off. He’d wanted to come over, but I had told him it wasn’t necessary. I was used to being on my own whenI was ill, and I really didn’t want him seeing me looking like death warmed over. And I certainly didn’t need him figuratively holding my hair back for me.
It was such a strange feeling having people worry about me when I was ill, but it also gave me a warm feeling inside my chest. Bringing the phone up to my ear after hitting Jackson’s contact information, I listened to it ring. While my stomach felt better, I was achy, exhausted, and still a little brain fogged. I didn’t think I had the mental bandwidth or coordination to text at the moment, even though I really didn’t feel like talking.
“Robert,” Jackson’s deep, smooth voice answered on the third ring, his voice sounding anxious and relieved all at the same time. “I was starting to worry, especially when I didn’t hear from you. Wyatt said Becks had checked on you before he left for his shift and you were sleeping, but it took everything I had to not come over there and check on you myself.”
“I’m okay.” Licking my dry lips, my throat hurt, and I reached a shaky hand out for the glass of water Wyatt had left this morning. Taking a small sip, the tepid water relieved some of the dryness in my mouth. “I’m alive. I just woke up.”
“What do you need? What can I bring you?” he asked hurriedly, and I could hear rustling papers and the creaking of his chair as he moved. “I’m leaving now. Soup? Gatorade? Medicine?”
A smile tugged at my lips. “You don’t need to come over. I don’t want you to catch what I have. Aiden has been lucky, and this bug has missed him so far, so let’s try to keep it that way. I’m okay, I don’t need anything, I promise.”
“Soup from the diner it is,” he replied, not listening to a word I said. I could hear the echo of his footsteps through the phone, and his quiet murmur to someone that he was leaving for the day. “Chicken noodle cures everything.”
Rolling my eyes, I sighed. Stubborn alpha. “You’re coming over, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
“Nothing I can say to stop this?”
“Nope.”
Blowing out a breath, I heaved myself up and sat sideways on my bed. Dizziness swarmed my head, and I clung to the side of the bed. Maybe some soup was needed. I hadn’t kept anything in my stomach for a whole day. “Fine but just leave it on the porch. I’m gross. And germs. And do not bring Aiden in here because germs. I mean it.”
“I can do that,” he assured me, a bit too easily.
Hearing something in his voice, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You’re not going to leave it on the porch, are you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why are you being so stubborn?” The dizziness abated, I stood on unsteady legs, and made myself walk slowly to my ensuite, holding onto the wall with one hand theentire time. My limbs felt weighed down with concrete, and I was exhausted. It felt like I could sleep a week and still be tired.
“Because I…” Catching himself before he said whatever he was going to say, he finished with, “because I’m your alpha and I need to take care of you. So, please just let me do this.”
“Fine, but I’m warning you now,” I grimaced at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, “I look like death warmed over. Are you coming before you pick up Aiden or after, because seriously, he doesn’t need to be in here with my germs.”
My hair was matted to one side of my head, while the other side stood up in every direction. I hadn’t shaved in almost three days, and my five o’clock shadow was thick and showing all the white and gray hairs in it. My face was a pasty white, with a hint of green, and dark circles were like two black bruises under my red rimmed eyes.
Pulling my t-shirt away from my neck, I took an experimental sniff. “And I stink.”
Jackson laughed! The man honest to Goddess threw his head back and laughed heartily into my ear. “I don’t care about any of that.”
“You will when you get a whiff of me,” I warned, turning on the water in the tub so it could heat up. I needed to at least shower beforehe descended on me.
“Robert Cooper, turn that water off this instant,” Jackson growled in my ear, and for some reason, I did exactly as he had ordered. “I will help you clean up when I get there. Do not get in that shower by yourself. Libby, our floor manager, just got over this bug and she said she has never been as dizzy as she was the last few days. Her wife had to help her shower.”
“Fine,” I huffed, very aware I sounded like a petulant child, but also weirdly warm inside by the growl of his voice, followed by the gentle caring of him saying he would help me.
“I mean it,” he warned, and there was something in his tone, in the unspoken words he left hanging in the air, that caused heat to flush through me. A heat that had nothing to do with being sick.
I wouldn’t say I liked Jackson giving me orders, but…I liked Jackson giving me orders. Fanning my face, I decided I’d put that away until I could examine it fully when I was completely lucid. Because…yeah, that definitely needed to be examined.
“I’ll see you in a half an hour,” Jackson warned me, as I picked up my toothbrush. The least I could do was try to brush some of the funk in my mouth away before he got here.
A part of me wanted to say something snarky, or petulant, but all I managed was a heartfelt, “Thank you.”
