Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
FINN
Sunday stutter-stopped like tractor traffic on a one-lane road—lazy and uneven, moving in bursts and then stalling again.
One moment I was sweating through the sheets, then shivering under two blankets, limbs heavy with underwater fatigue that slowed every thought to a crawl.
Scratchy throat, steady throb behind my eyes.
Time slipped sideways, measured in lukewarm tea and swallowing pills that hurt on the way down.
I wasn’t alone. A cool hand brushed my forehead now and again, voice low and patient. Jesse? He’d… He’d taken me home, right? Foggy memory of slumping against him in the elevator, his arm around my waist.
Tired. So very tired. I still turned toward the sound, cracked my eyes open for a second.
Ugh, bright. Silhouette by the doorway. Familiar…?
Oh.
Not Jesse.
“Hey,” Neil said in a gentle murmur. It grated only very faintly against the dull pounding in my head. “You need to take this, okay? Then sleep some more.”
I blinked a few times until he shifted into focus.
He offered me a pill along with a glass of water, and I sat up against the headboard with a noise that was maybe a question.
Even the scant light that filtered in through mostly closed curtains made me feel queasy.
Stupid head. Stupid body. Stupid everything.
“Tylenol,” Neil said gently. “And fluids. Come on, Finn—don’t make me do the airplane thing.”
I tipped my head back, spine cracking in protest. “More fun if you did,” I croaked.
“Hmm, yeah.” He eased down onto the edge of the bed, ready to help steady my hand. “You definitely look in top shape to have some serious fun.”
“This is my party face.” I swallowed the pill, gulped some water that Neil had warmed so it didn’t irritate my throat. That accomplished, I fell back onto the pillow with a grunt and pulled the blanket back up like a shield.
“Yeah,” he said mildly, placating. “It’ll definitely bring all the boys to the yard.”
“Just want the one,” I muttered, not even really thinking, head too achy to weigh my words.
Neil paused, then wiped a damp cloth over my forehead. Not sure where he’d pulled it from. Magic, maybe. “Jesse?” he asked, hushed so it only just brushed against the edges of my consciousness.
I sighed, everything heavy and off-center. “Yeah. Him.”
“He seemed nice.”
“He’s…” I didn’t know how to finish, sleep pulling me down a dark road, slow and winding. “Good. He’s just… good, Neil. Why didn’t he stay?”
“‘Wish I could.’” Neil’s voice dropped. “That’s what he said.”
That… Yeah. A wispy memory floated in a corner of my mind. He had said that, hadn’t he?
“Me too,” I said because I wished. I wished. Even though I knew that he… We… That it wasn’t what we were. Couldn’t be. But I wished.
Another cough racked my chest. I closed my eyes until it got better, and then I just… kept them closed. Sinking.
How are you feeling today?
I stared at Jesse’s message and willed my brain to line up letters, words, some semblance of coherence.
The simple fact that I’d managed to check my phone today—that, right there, meant improvement.
Breathing was better. Marginally so. Air still scraping on the way down, lungs fluttering, but…
better. Like I might actually make it to the kitchen at some point today.
And—Jesse. He’d taken me home, wanted to know how I was doing. Even with, well, everything.
Little better. Less like I got run over by a truck.
I stared at the words for a minute until my vision started to blur. Then I added:
Maybe just a van. Twice. And then again.
He replied so quickly that I wondered if he’d been waiting for it.
The idea tugged somewhere warm and sweet behind my navel, even as I reassured him that while I was still running a fever, Neil was taking care of me.
Sam, too—she’d returned home Sunday afternoon from some guy she’d been dating.
“Nothing serious, but he knows how to use his hands and tongue, if you get my drift.” Since then, she’d stopped by several times to bring me soup and tea, less sympathetic than Neil but still so very, very appreciated.
I’d clearly won the roommates lottery, and I was pretty sure I’d told them that at some point last night, half-asleep but fully grateful.
Speaking of…
“Hey.” Neil rapped his knuckles against the frame of a door I’d left ajar, just in case I perished in my sleep—I didn’t want them to find me five days later.
“Drama queen,” Sam had told me when I’d mumbled something along those lines.
She’d also fed me more soup, so on balance, it had felt like a win.
I put my phone down and managed a smile. It tugged somewhere behind my forehead, tension still pressing in, but nothing like yesterday’s sickening drum beat. “Morning, Neil. How was your night shift?”
“Managed to grab some actual sleep, so, y’know. Not shabby.” He leaned against the doorframe, eyes warm. “You look vaguely alive.”
“Feel it, too.”
“Progress, then.”
“Yeah. It’s as if Pinocchio is a real boy now.” I slumped against a pillow I’d propped up against the headboard, pretty sure I still looked sleep-matted and worn. “Thanks for taking care of me, by the way. Above and beyond the job description.”
He shot me a grin. “Feed me leftovers sometimes and we’ll call it even.”
“I can do that.” I was a decent cook when I made the time, certainly better than the sorry choices the hospital cafeteria offered.
But cooking for just myself often didn’t seem worth the effort.
“Actually, I can do breakfast?” I still had eggs and milk, pretty sure, and flour must be hidden somewhere in the kitchen cupboards. “Like… pancakes?”
“Now you’re talking. Also, glad you’ve got an appetite.”
Yeah. It was minimal but there. “Proof of life, right?”
“Clearly.” Neil watched me roll out of bed, disheveled and greasy as I was. Should maybe take a shower, except that felt further out of reach than mixing some ingredients into batter and spooning it into a frying pan. That I could do.
I grabbed a new T-shirt, though, and cracked the window open wider so the room could air out while I was gone.
Neil waited, totally unabashed about hanging around while I changed.
I liked that about him—some straight guys would have made it a point to look away, while he just didn’t seem to care about drawing unnecessary lines, easy like it had been from the very start.
“Hey,” he said as we moved to the kitchen. “Speaking of job descriptions—pretty sure taking you home was far outside of it for Jesse.”
Yeah. It had been.
I hesitated. But—fuck it. I needed to talk to someone who was actually, physically here, not some talking head on a screen or a four-hour drive away like Eli. Someone outside the hospital universe who wouldn’t judge, just listen.
“Remember the guy I mentioned before?” I asked Neil.
His eyebrows rose. “The ‘it’s complicated because we hooked up before the program’ guy?”
“Yep.” I opened the fridge and fought a brief bout of dizziness, steadying myself against the door. “Well—that’s Jesse.”
Neil whistled. “He’s older, right? Senior resident?”
“Try ‘senior fellow.’” Milk. Eggs. I blinked them back into focus. “Bonus? Up until a week ago, he was my supervisor.”
“Whoa. The one you saved the baby with?” Neil dropped onto a chair and, at my nod, pursed his mouth in thought. “Okay, yeah, ‘complicated’ is putting it mildly.”
It was—and I hadn’t even mentioned our post-blackout slip-up just yet. I got a bowl for the batter, every move taking me twice as long, thoughts slow like mezcal legs running down the side of a glass.
“Tell me about it,” I muttered. “It’s like… He stepped back as my supervising fellow, but it would still be bad optics, you know?”
“Yeah.” Neil fell quiet for a moment, nothing but my shuffling attempts to crack eggs and measure milk, the low drone of our neighbor’s TV and the ever-present hum of New York traffic. “You want more, though.”
His tone made it a statement rather than a question—yet it burst like a water balloon inside my chest, made it harder to breathe, nothing to do with being sick. I swallowed. “I do, yeah. But he’d risk much more than I would.”
“He took you home,” Neil said slowly. “Hardly within professional boundaries. And the way he looked at you…”
My dumb little heart flipped over. “How did he look at me?”
“Like he was oozing worry and desperately wanted to stay.” Neil made it sound obvious, easy, when it was anything but.
I focused on whipping the batter into shape, tired muscles slower than usual, struggling with something my mom had taught me when I’d been just seven or eight, her bright laugh tickling the back of my mind even now.
“Very good, honey. Let’s just fish out these bits of eggshell, though, mm-hmm? ”
Fuck, I missed home. New York was too big, too bright and loud.
I could handle it—there was Neil, there were Khai and Tessa.
There was Jesse. But I missed clean air and green hills, the evening chirp of crickets and the post-rain croak of frogs, missed being able to see wide open skies and stars at night.
“You really think he wanted to stay?” I asked, the distant whisper of “Wish I could” echoing sweetly in my bones.
“Finn.” Neil’s voice dropped, and when I glanced over, he had both elbows planted on the table, his gaze uncommonly serious. “Look, I may not be the expert on love—almost proposed to my high-school sweetheart just before she decided she could do better—”
“Her mistake,” I cut in. “There’s no way she could.”
“Thanks, man.” His lips hitched up. “But truth is, she wasn’t wrong. We’d grown into very different people—she was just brave enough to see it before I did.”
“Still. You’re a catch.” Very true, even if I meant it one hundred percent platonically.
“Aww.” He pretended to fan himself, but the pleased tilt to his smile gave him away. “Anyway,” he continued, “my point is that I’m no expert on love. But that guy—Jesse? Yeah. Pretty sure he’s at least half in love with you.”