Always Have: A Bad Boy Romance(29)

She crawls into bed naked, her hair still dripping. I help extricate her from the towel and quickly pull the sheets and comforter around her. I try so hard not to look at her, not to see her beautiful body. It isn’t for me.

I go to the kitchen and get her a glass of water. I make sure she only takes a tiny sip and take it away before she drinks more. I wonder if she wants to swish with mouthwash, but I don’t want to do anything that will trigger more vomiting.

Her eyes are closed, so I leave her long enough to toss my wet underwear in her dryer and put my other clothes back on. Jeans with no underwear is the worst, but I don’t want to walk around her apartment naked. I’m careful as I zip, because f*ck.

I clean up the vomit in the hall and the bathroom, throwing all the towels in the wash. I find a container of cleaning wipes with bleach under the sink and go around the whole place, wiping everything down—doorknobs, handles, drawer pulls, light switches. I figure I’m probably going to get whatever virus she has—the fever makes me pretty sure it isn’t food poisoning—but I don’t care. I’m bigger and stronger than she is. I’ll deal with it if I have to.

By the time the place is clean, my underwear are dry, so I gratefully put them back on. I go in to check on Ky. Her eyes flutter open and I grab the water to give her another sip.

“Hey,” she says. Her skin is ashen and her lips a weird color of waxy blue. The circles under her eyes are worse, and a sheen of sweat glistens on her forehead.

“Shh,” I say. “Don’t talk. Just rest.”

“I feel like I’m gonna die.” There’s a tinge of fear in her voice that makes my heart ache. She looks so tiny and frail, all wrapped up in blankets, her face so pale.

“You aren’t going to die,” I say. “I promise I won’t let that happen.”

“I puked in his car.”

“Fuck his car.” I’m dangerously close to breaking the unspoken pact—but he dropped her off when she’s this sick? It isn’t right. Anger fills me again. I take a breath, but hold back from saying anything about it. I don’t want to make her feel worse. “Do you want more water?”

“No,” she says. “I’m so cold. I can’t get warm.”

I touch her forehead. She’s scalding hot, but she’s shivering beneath the covers. “You have a fever.”

“This sucks.” Her whimper is so sad. I sit on the edge of the bed and touch her face, letting my fingers caress her burning skin. I should stop. This is how I’ve always wanted to touch her. Soft and familiar. Intimate. She’s not mine to touch, and she’s sick. Even if she wasn’t, I know she won’t cheat on Derek. I don’t want her to. I won’t have her like that.

I’d rather not have her at all.

That thought hurts way too much. I’m torturing myself, moving my hand across her forehead and down her face, like I have right to touch her this way. Like she’s not my best friend.

I realize her eyes are wet with tears, and I stop, pulling my hand away. I clear my throat. “I’ll let you rest. I’ll be on the couch. If you need anything, just call for me.”

“Please don’t leave me.”

Her voice is so soft, I’m not sure I hear her. But her huge eyes look up at me, pleading.

“No,” I say, touching her face again. “I won’t leave you. Not ever.”

“I’m so cold.”

She’s still shivering. I know how to get her warm, but I don’t want to do it. It shouldn’t be me.

But I’ve already done this much, and she needs someone.

She should need Derek, but she has me.

I slip off my jeans and shirt, and crawl into bed with her. She’s already on her side, so I get behind her and pull her body toward me, letting our skin touch. I’m very glad I dried my underwear already, because her bare ass on my cock would be an absolute disaster. As it is, I angle my groin away from her so she won’t feel my hard-on. But I touch her with every other inch of my body.

She’s so hot, I quickly begin to sweat, but I ignore the discomfort. At first she’s shivering hard, but it doesn’t take long before my body heat seeps into her. She relaxes against me and her violent shivers become a few tremors. Then her back is moving in a slow rhythm, her arms and legs loose. I hold on to her, my hands around her belly, my face near her still-damp hair. I’m completely surrounded by her scent. It’s in her hair, on her skin, in her sheets. I’m floating in a sea of it, an ocean of lilac breeze.

I start to get uncomfortable, and I’m way too hot, but I don’t move. I won’t move until she needs me to. I hold her for dear life, wishing desperately for her to get better, wishing even more desperately that this moment will never end. That I’ll never have to go back to the reality of our life. The reality where we are just friends and we date other people. Where I f*ck girls I don’t care about and feel like shit about it later. Where she dates guys who are too stupid to see how f*cking special she is.

Our timing has always been shit, but this is worse than usual. I’m completely intoxicated by her body next to mine, but I won’t do anything about it. I can’t. She isn’t mine to have, and unless something changes, I have to find a way to live with things the way they are.

But right now, in this moment—even though she’s passed out with a fever—she is mine.