Page 62 of Wrecked on the Mountain
I blink at him. “So… you brought both.”
“Obviously,” he says, like I’m the one being unreasonable. “Couldn’t risk bringing the wrong cure.”
He opens a drawer, grabs one of my bowls, and starts ladling soup with the care of a battlefield medic.
“Jamie, I said I had a headache. Not that I was dying.”
“I know,” he replies, setting down a spoon. “But there’s also this.”
He arranges a collection of headache remedies on my counter. Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, some fancy migraine medication that's surely prescription-only.
"Um. Okay. I work in a hospital, Jamie Striker, but right now I'm a little concerned you robbed a pharmacy."
"Doc Greene owed me a favor," he says with a shrug that suggests this kind of favor-calling is perfectly normal around here. "Said she'd rather overprescribe than have you suffering."
He's also unpacked the small lavender heating pad, the kind you warm in the microwave, and found a tin of some kind of balm in amongst all the stuff laid out before my eyes.
"This is peppermint temple rub," he explains, holding up the tiny metal tin. "Mom swears by it. And I'll heat up the pad for your neck, in case it's workplace induced tension."
I bite my lip, thinking about a very different kind of workplace tension.
Maybe Jamie bending me over his desk had something to do with this… headache. His strong hands gripping my hips, the delicious sting of his palm against my ass…
Nah.That'sthe kind of workplace induced tension I could definitely learn to live with.
I stare at him, at this collection of thoughtful remedies he's gathered, and something cracks open in my chest.
"So you immediately rushed over with soup and medicine because...?"
"Because that's what you do," he says simply, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "When someone you..." He pauses, jaw working like he's chewing on words he's not ready to say. "When someone on your team isn't feeling well, you check on them."
My heart does that acrobatic thing again, but I force myself to focus on the pharmacy bag he's unpacking.
"You didn't have to do this," I whisper.
"Yeah, I did." His voice is gruff as he brushes a lock of hair away from my face, his fingers lingering a second too long. “How is it? Still pounding?”
"It's..." I start to give him the polite lie, the "it's fine" that I've been giving everyone for months. But something about the way he's looking at me, like my pain actually matters to him, makes the truth spill out instead. "Actually pretty awful. But I don't think it's entirely physical."
He frowns and grabs my hand, leading me over to the living room. "What do you mean?"
I sink onto my couch, suddenly exhausted by the effort of pretending I'm fine when I'm not. Jamie follows, settling beside me with careful distance, like he's afraid I might break if he sits too close.
"I mean," I say, curling my legs under me, "I think my brain is tired."
"From what?"
I gesture vaguely around the cabin, toward the now-cold tea, the discarded textbook, the chaos inside me. “This. You. The entire town. All of it.”
Jamie's eyes narrow, and I can see him shifting into protective mode. "Did someone say something to you? Do something?"
"No, God, no." I shake my head quickly. "The opposite, actually. Everyone's been amazing. Too amazing."
"Okay then. I'm not following."
I take a breath, trying to find words for feelings I've never had to articulate before.
"I dunno. Maybe I've never had time to just... sit. To enjoy things. To let myself want something that isn't about work. Or healing. Or fixing someone."
