Page 51 of Victorious: Part 2
“You okay?” he asks, his voice soft but still thick with worry.
“You were prepared,” I murmur. “You had everything ready.”
Phoenix exhales slowly, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “Spent a night down a medical rabbit hole after I knew we were coming on this trip. Figured if I were going to be watching your back, I should actually know what to look for.”
The words hit harder than the sugar crash. Not an obligation. Not duty. He cared enough to learn.
“Most people panic,” I say, lifting my head from his shoulder to look at him again. “Or treat me like I’m glass.”
“You’re a hell of a lot of things, Clover. Breakable ain’t one of them.”
That warmth from earlier spreads through me again, mixing with the remnants of fear and exhaustion until I don’t know whether I want to cry or curl into him and never let go.
That’s when Dracula saunters up, dragging what looks like a mutilated lizard in his mouth as if it’s his Nobel Prize.
He drops it at Phoenix’s feet with a proud meow, breaking our moment.
Phoenix stares down at it with a look of pure disgust on his face. “Your cat’s clearly unhinged.”
I let out a weak laugh. “Yeah, but you love him.”
He snorts out a scoff. Undeniably, he’s trying to deny it. “No comment.”
We sit together on the desert sand for the next fifteen minutes while I try to bring myself back into some semblance of working order. I check my blood sugar scanner again, and the number blinks up at me.
Ninety-two.
“We’re back in business,” I state, sitting up straighter.
Phoenix finally lets himself breathe, his shoulders relaxing just a fraction, and he pulls my phone from me and begins working away on it. I glance at him, wondering what in the hell he’s doing. “Don’t you believe me?” I question, a little annoyed.
He chuckles, turning the screen to show me he’s sent a screen snapshot of my numbers to Maverick, typing that I am ‘All good.’
I chuckle, shaking my head, and snap my phone back off him. “You know he receives all my alerts and can check my monitor, right? He didn’t need the snapshot.”
Phoenix shrugs, sinking back into the sand. “Just wanted to be thorough,” he replies as a text comes back.
I raise my brow at Phoenix and chuckle. “He’s probably going to call me a smart-ass now, you know that.” I swipe to open the message from my brother with a sly smirk.
Mav:You better stay that way. Or I’m flying out and dragging your ass back myself.
I shake my head, rolling my eyes before I show Phoenix the message. “He’s not gonna let this go,” I mumble.
“Good,” Phoenix states, eyes still scanning mine like he’s memorizing me. “Someone’s gotta look out for you. Lucky for him, I’m already on the job.”
We fall into comfortable silence, both lost in our own thoughts and the hypnotic crackle of the camp stove flame. Dracula has curled up between our sleeping bags, purring softly.
“Phoenix?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you… for doing this with me. For not thinking I’m crazy for wanting to sleep under the stars.”
“Thank you for showing me there’s more to life than simply getting from point A to point B.”
I turn to look at him and find him already watching me. In the firelight, his face is all shadows and golden highlights, and something in his expression makes my heart skip.
“We should probably get some sleep,” I say softly.
