Page 71 of Three Pucking Words
“Whoa,” Karina says, halting at the doorway with her usual morning coffee in hand. Her eyebrows arch as they study me. “Are you okay? You’re not about to have an episode are you?”
Puck lifts his head and looks between us.
“No,” I muse, rubbing my forehead. I’d stripped out of my sweater twenty minutes ago when I started feeling overheated, but I feel ten times worse now. “Puck would alert me if he sensed a seizure.”
Saying I feel like garbage would be an understatement. I feel like garbage that’s been left out in the sun for two weeks straight on the curb that not even the trash pandas or homeless want to touch. I chalked it up to anxiety, to lack of sleep, to the internal panic over the realization that I have a big, fat crush on my father’s right-winger. More than that, I’ve harbored one since the night we met. All because he gave me a little attention, because he wasniceto me.
“I must have caught something when we were travelling,” I reason, realizing this goes beyond hormones. I’m used to getting sick because my immune system sucks.
Without hesitation, Karina says, “Why don’t you head home? I can pick up some of your work. I don’t have any meetings until this afternoon.”
I frown. “But there’s a lot—”
“I’m pretty sure your father will drag you out of here the second he sees you. I’d rather not be on his bad side if he thinks I’m forcing you to stay when you look…” She makes a face as she examines the cramped office. “Like you might pass out at any second. You’re not, are you? Because I don’t do well with blood, and there’s a lot of things you could potentially fall and hit your head on in here.”
“I didn’t feel nearly this bad when I woke up, or I wouldn’t have come in.”
She sets her coffee down on the corner of my desk and fills up a cup with some water from the cooler in the corner. “Here. Drink this and I’ll call you a car or get your dad to—”
“Don’t bother him,” I plea. “He seemed stressed last night, and his mood wasn’t much better today when I saw him talking to someone on the phone.”
I’m not sure who he was speaking to, but he wasn’t happy with whoever was on the other end. There was a lot of cussing on his part, then pacing back and forth in the hall. His words were spoken too quietly, but I heard the anger in them all the same. I haven’t seen him like that since I was younger when he and Mom would get into tiffs about visitation.
“I’ll get an Uber,” I reassure her, pulling up the app. My father paid for the premium annual service to save me money despite my protests, but I’m grateful he did.
Thirty minutes later, I’m in a car with Puck beside me and a bottle of water that Karina insisted I bring.
I don’t remember the car ride.
Or getting out and unlocking the guest house.
I also have no recollection of stripping out of my clothes, putting on pajamas, or crawling into bed.
And Icertainlyhave no idea when Bodhi showed up until I open my eyes long after the sunset and see him watching me from the doorway with a worried expression.
But then I hear him say, “Hi, honey.”
And my body feels warm for an entirely new reason.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bodhi
I’ve spent thelast couple of days thinking way too much about my night with Honor in the hotel and racking my brain to make sure I didn’t do something to hurt her. It hadn’t been my intention to spend the night, and the pure panic in her eyes when she saw me in her bed the next morning is something I never wanted to see again. She didn’t talk to me the entire flight home, even though I knew she was awake, and never responded to my text message asking if she was all right hours after we landed and went our separate ways. She got into a car with her father and never looked in my direction once as they drove off.
So, there’s a very solid chance that showing up at her house is a bad idea. But when I came to her office to talk to her, Karina told me she went home sick. I don’t know what got into me, but I needed to make sure she was okay.
Sylvia answered the main door and told me I could go to the guest house and wait for Honor to wake up. It was Puck who’d greeted me at the door and guided me to the bedroom where she slept. Almost as soon as I stepped up to the door jamb, she stirred as if she sensed me.
“Bodhi?” Honor rubs her eyes like I’m a mirage. Her voice is raspy, and her face is pale, amping up my concern.
I push off the frame and approach her with caution. “Hey,” I greet, studying her glassy gaze. “Karina said you were sick, and Sylvia told me it was all right if I came in.”
Skepticism is still clear on her face. “And who told you that you could come into my bedroom?”
I flinch. “I followed Puck.”
She makes a face before putting her head back into her pillow like it’s too heavy to hold up. Her voice is muffled by the pillowcase when she says, “He’s a traitor.”
