Page 30 of Fighting For You
Jude
Ispent the day checking her temperature, force-feeding her medicine and water and any little scrap she would eat, which was basically nothing, and pretending to do anything other than pace and search online for ways to help her get better.
By evening, her fever had ratcheted up, as had my anxiety. Adam reassured me she was okay based on her vitals and the fact she was still drinking, even though she seemed so out of it the last time I’d woken her. But he’d given me strict orders to get the next round of meds in before the fever went higher, so I had my task.
I sat on the bedside and nudged her a few times before she reluctantly woke.
“Jude, I’m sick.”
Something burst in my chest, her use of my name never ceasing to elicit both pleasure and pain.
“I know, Pop. Take your medicine so we can get this fever down.”
“I’m so sick, though,” she whimpered, the smallness of her voice painting her illness across the space.
I hated this. I hated seeing her like this—so meek and miserable. I’d never take her fire for granted again, even when it was aimed like a weapon in my direction.
“Baby, please. Take your medicine. I promise it’ll help.”
She blinked up at me, dark eyes hardly seeing. I lifted the little plastic cup containing the two pills to her lips, then raised a glass of water and she let me guide her head back so she could swallow, the other hand cradling her and righting her head when she finished.
She shut her eyes and simply breathed, her color high and breaths pronounced. I wondered whether she was having a hard time breathing, but her cough hadn’t been quite as bad the last hour or so. Maybe she’d fall asleep again for a while and after dozing, the fever would finally break.
“You called me baby?”
My stomach clenched, but I didn’t answer right away, only waited for the meds to kick in. I didn’t want to have to put her in a bath again, but I’d have to if this didn’t work.
“It’s nothing,” I said, not about to explain a damn thing to her in this state.
Her eyes opened slowly, gaze unfocused as she reached for my face and brushed a hand along my cheek. I froze, not sure whether to pull away or lean into her touch.
“You know, you’re almost handsome.”
I couldn’t hide the huff of laughter. “Am I? Just almost?”
Her glittering eyes sparkled back at me, and I knew I shouldn’t listen to a damn word she was saying let alonetake it to heart, but I wanted to. Somehow in the last twenty-four hours, I’d gone from eschewing anything to do with her to hanging on her smallest movement.
I wanted everything she’d tell me, especially when her guard was down. If that made me a villain, well, I was already the bad guy in her story, wasn’t I?
“Thought you were dangerously hot the day I met you. And you’re so big…” It came out all dreamy and almost breathless. “I thought about you too much.”
I swallowed hard, the angel on my shoulder screaming at me to walk away and not take from her in this state, but the devil won out. “What’d you think about?”
She bit her full bottom lip and shut her eyes. Just this sent my pulse racing even harder, but then she said, “All kinds of things I can’t tell you. What it might be like to have your big hands on me, to be under you… I’d probably suffocate, but—” She coughed, then laughed. “What a way to go, right?”
I nearly choked on air, images of exactly what she said burning into my mind in full color and vivid detail.
But then she added, “I knew you’d never hurt me.”
My heart thundered in my chest as disbelief and a wanting so acute I might’ve asphyxiated on it hit instantly, but a painful crush of something else hit, too.
What if I’d elbowed Kurt out of the way years ago? What if I’d shed the persistent, almost superior need to be patient and let her come to me and instead let her see I wanted her? Would she have wanted me back then? Would we have had a chance to live out her fantasy, and mine, instead of spending years at odds and hurting?
As it often did, my brain locked up and I couldn’t beg for more or say anything to keep her talking. She’d melted me.
She shook her head, like she was clearing it of the fog that’d settled over her, then pinned me with her glassy gaze again.
“You’ve got it all, Rawlins. It’s just that scowl. That perma-frown you can’t seem to shake.” She pressed her fingers between my brows as though she could banish the lines there, then poked at the corner of my mouth to coax it into a smile. “Especially around me.”
