Chapter Ten – Ivy #2
“This is slander. My toast and I—” The sentence dissolves in a cough that scrapes my throat raw. He’s there with the jar immediately, like he was waiting.
I drink. Blink away the tears pulled to the surface by the cough. He doesn’t comment. He tucks the blanket higher and adjusts the cloth like it matters where the corner lies. It does. Everything he touches feels a degree more bearable.
“Tell Bailey I’m here,” I manage.
“I will.” His eyes flick to the blue case on the coffee table, then back to me. “Anything I need to know? Triggers, red flags?”
Heat that isn’t fever rises in my face. “A fever can be… not ideal. But this feels like a plain old virus. I have the nasal spray if it goes sideways. In the blue case. It’s labeled.”
He nods, absorbing the plan like it’s a fence line map. “Okay.” He waits a beat. “Do you want me to call—” He cuts himself off. “Never mind.”
“Who?” I ask, even though I know.
“Your mom.”
A laugh slips out that has no humor in it. “She knows how to find me when there’s a camera. She’ll be fine.”
His mouth tightens, something flint-hard passing through his gaze before it softens again. “Soup,” he says, like it’s a promise, and strides for the kitchen.
From the couch, I watch him move: the efficient economy of his body, the way he opens cabinets without a creak because he knows exactly how much pressure to use, the quick reach for a pot, the thunk of a drawer as he locates a wooden spoon by sound alone.
Water runs. A burner clicks. He hums under his breath, tuneless and low.
It grounds me more than any mindfulness app I’ve ever been bullied into downloading.
I doze. I come back to the sound of a spoon tapping the rim of a bowl and a soft curse when he tests the heat with his own wrist. He brings the bowl over, steam rising, and sets it on a folded dish towel on the coffee table.
The smell—chicken, thyme, and something bright like lemon—makes my throat ache in a good way.
“Can you sit up?”
“Only if the room behaves.”
He slides an arm behind my shoulders and slowly lifts me. I try to help and mostly manage not to be dead weight. He settles beside me, thigh to my hip, and fits the bowl into my hands only when he’s sure I have it. He keeps his palm near the base anyway, just in case.
I sip. It’s hot and perfect, and my eyes burn for the stupidest reason. “You made this?”
“Used to cook after morning chores for Dad if Ma was at the school.” He watches my face when I swallow. “Mind the lemon. Lila swears it cuts a sore throat.”
“It does.” I breathe through my nose, and the sharpness opens something that’s been stuck since I woke. “Tell Lila I said thank you.”
“She’ll take full credit.”
We sit like that for a while, me sipping, him quiet, the house settling into evening around us.
He keeps adjusting the cloth, swapping it for a fresh, cool one when the first one gets warm.
At some point, he texts Bailey again, keeping her updated.
She replies with a flurry of heart and nurse emoji and a threat to deliver popsicles at dawn.
He turns his phone face down after that, and the room becomes just breath and spoon and the intermittent shift of his weight when he resettles to keep my shoulder supported.
“Do you do this for everyone?” I ask sleepily when the bowl’s half gone.
“What—make soup?” His mouth tips at one corner. “Only for the deserving.”
“And the undeserving?”
“Toast,” he says dryly, and I almost laugh soup into my sinuses.
He takes the empty bowl to the sink and returns with more water, then worries a wrinkle from the blanket with a thumb as if it offends him. I watch his hands and think ridiculous things: that they could hold a life and make a person feel easy in their skin.
The thought scares me, and I must show it, because he goes still. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “Everything.” My voice thins. “I was supposed to go to Nashville tomorrow. Meet with Celeste. Be a good little brand.”
His jaw ticks. “You don’t.”
“I know.” I breathe once, slow, and the room lists a little less. “This”—I gesture at my fevered body, the way the walls keep doing a soft tide—“is probably just my immune system filing a complaint.”
“Or your body saying the quiet part out loud.”
I huff a tired laugh. “Since when do you talk like a therapist?”
“Since I figured out fences and people break the same if you overtighten them.”
“You calling me a fence?”
“I’m calling you something worth mending right.” He says it like the weather , and it lands like weight where I need it.
I look at him, at his steadiness, and the decision clicks into place with a relief that makes my eyes burn. “I’m not going,” I say. No apology. No caveat. “I’m staying.”
His shoulders ease a fraction. Not triumphant but relieved, like he’s been holding a gate against the wind, and it finally latched. “Good,” he says simply. “Then the only thing you need to do tonight is sleep.”
“I’ll text her.” I fumble for my phone, thumbs clumsy but sure. Not coming tomorrow. Health first. Don’t schedule anything without my consent. I hit send before I can massage it into something palatable. The whoosh feels like dropping a stone I’ve been carrying too long.
I set the phone face down and meet his eyes. “There. Official.”
He nods, the approval quiet and warm. “The rest can wait.”
“It scares me how much I want this”—I swallow—“to stay simple.”
“It’s allowed to be,” he says. “Here, it is.”
I sink back into the pillow. The cool cloth kisses my forehead.
His fingers adjust it like it matters where the corner lies.
I already have his number memorized—cell and the stupid landline that sounds like it’s been ringing since the nineties—but what steadies me is the way he’s looking at me now, like he means it when he says he’ll be right here.
“Try to sleep,” he adds, voice low. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t have to sit guard.”
“I know.” With a half smile, quick and real, he nods toward the blue case on the table. “And if you need more than soup and stubborn, I’ll handle it.”
The laugh that escapes me is soft and scratchy. I let my eyes close, his palm settling lightly over my wrist like a promise, and for the first time all day, my body believes me when I tell it we’re staying.
I close my eyes. The room shifts from bright to dim as the sky moves outside.
Time warps the way it does when you’re sick and somebody else has their hand on the wheel.
I drift. Wake to the scrape of a chair being pulled closer.
Drift again to the sound of him talking low on the phone—Bailey, I think—assuring her he’s got it, that I’ve eaten, and my fever’s trending down.
Once, I wake to a cool hand smoothing hair off my face, and I want to cry with the simple kindness of it.
“Rowan?” My voice is a rumple of blankets. I don’t open my eyes.
“I’m here.”
“Can you—” The request is ridiculous and small and costs me more than it should. “Will you stay?”
The chair creaks. Warmth moves closer, then his palm wraps loosely around my wrist, heavy and steady where it rests on the blanket. “I’m not going anywhere, Ivy.”
I let that sentence sink into me. It threads through tight places and loosens them. Somewhere in the house, a floorboard pops as the temperature falls. A night bird calls. His thumb drifts absently, barely there, over the inside of my wrist, counting a rhythm my body wants to match.
I sleep.
I surface once in the dark to the sound of rain. I must’ve asked for the window. The air is wetter, cooler, the scent of petrichor winding into the room. My throat hurts less. My head hurts the same. I turn my face toward the sound and crack my eyes.
He’s there on the chair, long legs stretched out, nodding off despite the awkward angle, hand still on my wrist like a promise he forgot to remove.
The porch light paints his profile in soft gold—the stubborn line of his nose, the cut of his jaw, and the tired kindness in the set of his mouth even asleep.
Something in my chest expands so fast it’s almost pain.
“Rowan?” It’s barely air.
His eyes open. He tightens his hand, a reflex. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I find a smile. “You look uncomfortable.”
“I’ve slept on worse.” He sits forward, elbows on his knees, close enough that I can feel the heat off him. “More water?”
“In a minute.” I swallow. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For making soup. For not hovering and somehow still not letting me be alone.” I wet my lips. “For this.”
His gaze drops to where his hand covers mine on the blanket, then comes back to my face like he’s landed on a plan. “How do you feel about a bath?” he asks, voice low and sure.
“A what now?”
“The clawfoot in the hall holds heat like a furnace,” he says, already rising. “Steam’ll help. Epsom salts if you can smell past the fever. I’ll make it hot, and you tell me when to stop.”
I should say I can manage. I don’t. “Okay.”
He squeezes my fingers once and disappears down the hall. Pipes groan, water roars into porcelain, cupboard doors thump softly. Lavender drifts back—wild, clean—like a hand smoothing my hair.
He returns, crouches, and slides one arm behind my shoulders, the other beneath my knees. “May I?”
“Yes.” Too fast.
He gathers me like I weigh nothing and stands, steady as the house itself. The room wobbles, then my cheek finds his chest—cedar, soap, summer air—and the wobble quits.
Steam curls from the tub as he nudges the door with his shoulder. Bubbles crowd the rim; two towels wait warming on a chair. He thinks of everything.
“Too hot?” he asks, lowering me so my fingers can test the surface.
“Perfect.”
He sets me on the closed lid, steadying me until I’m sure I’ll stay. “Clean T-shirt and a robe on the hook,” he says, studying the ceiling like it’s suddenly fascinating. “I’ll be right outside. Knock or say my name if you get lightheaded.”
“You’re very bossy.”
“Only when it’s useful.” He waits a beat, then murmurs, “Take your time.”
The door stays a sliver open—trust and safety in an inch of light. I undress slowly, knot my hair, and ease in. The heat takes me whole. Muscle by muscle, the ache lets go. The lavender settles my pulse like a lullaby.
“You still with me?” he asks after a minute, like he can hear my exhale catch.
“Mmm. Might never leave.”
“Good,” he says, smiling in the word. “Give me five minutes’ warning so I can bring water.”
Steam ghosts the mirror. When the fever fog lifts a notch, I call his name.
He knocks once and eases the door wider, eyes on the far wall, a glass of cold water in one hand and a chipped enamel pitcher in the other.
“You’ve got half the tub on your head,” he says gently, noticing the crown of bubbles clinging to my hair.
“Can I help you rinse? Less work if you don’t have to dunk. ”
I should be embarrassed, but I’m not. “Please.”
He rolls his sleeves, keeping his gaze steady and high.
A small towel appears from nowhere, and he lays it across my collarbones like a barber’s cape—modesty without fanfare—then kneels by the clawfoot.
“Lean back for me,” he murmurs, sliding one forearm beneath my neck so the curve of his wrist cradles my head.
“Tell me if it’s too hot. The pressure okay? ”
The first warm pour is heaven. He works his fingers through my hair in slow, sure strokes—care, not choreography.
Lavender blooms again under his hands, and the ache behind my eyes loosens like a knot finally yielding.
He massages the temples with his thumbs, gentle circles that make my lungs remember how to fill.
Another pour. Another. He squeezes the ends, rinses until the water runs clear, then pats along my hairline with the towel like he’s erasing the last of the day.
“Head up,” he says softly, twisting the towel into a loose turban that smells like sun and cotton. “Got you.”
He offers the towel without looking, then helps me to my feet, and when the room tilts, his hand is already at my waist to steady me. The warm robe lands over my shoulders like a promise.
He crouches to slip thick socks onto my feet—quiet, matter-of-fact care that undoes me more than any grand gesture. Then he bends, scoops me up again, and carries me back down the hall.
“I’m staying right here tonight,” I murmur into his shoulder, meaning more than the room.
“I know.” His cheek brushes my hair. “Rest. The world can wait.”
He carries me past the living room and turns left instead of right, shoulder nudging a door open. His room is spare and steady—light blue walls, a plain quilt the color of wheat, and a window cracked for rain. It smells like clean cotton and him.
He lowers me onto his bed—fresh sheet, fresh blanket, pillow just so—and tucks the warm towel around my calves.
The mattress gives in a way the couch never could, and my whole body sighs without asking permission.
He leaves for a moment, then sets a glass of water and a small plate of crackers on the nightstand, like he’s thought three steps ahead of me all evening.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“For what?”
“For everything. For… staying.”
“That part’s easy,” he says, eyes steady on mine. “It’s what I do. I’ll wake you up to give you another dose of medicine later.”
He clicks the lamp down to a soft halo, then drags a folded blanket to the floor beside the bed and settles with his back to the frame, one shoulder within reach—close but not crowding.
I slide my hand over the edge until my fingers find his.
He doesn’t startle. His palm turns, warm and broad, thumb skimming the back of my knuckles once, calm and sure.
Rain begins its patient tapping along the eaves.
Heat lingers on my skin, lavender in my hair, his presence a counterweight on the rope I’ve been gripping too tightly.
My eyes fall shut. The last thing I feel before sleep takes me is his thumb tracing that slow circle, keeping time with a house—and a man—that hold steady.