Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
OLIVIA
Olivia was a bedside nurse for Annabelle for a day and a half, spoiling her with pancakes and princess movie marathons. When she managed to nap, Olivia made headway on the rest of the leaf costumes and got her workouts in.
But now?
Now Olivia felt like her body’s gears were covered in chunky peanut butter. Sticky, slow, and getting slower.
A cough racked her chest, and she took a sip of tea.
I will not get sick.
She sniffed through a stuffed-up nose. She just needed to sleep it off, but there was too much to do.
Finish these costumes, dinner with her family, Luca, and AB tonight, not to mention practice for her audition tape.
The thing she needed to do most of all and had done so little of in the last four days.
She rolled her shoulders. If there was anything the last twenty years had proved, it was that discipline would get her through most things. She couldn’t let her class down, and she definitely didn’t want to look like managing two kid dance routines was beyond her abilities.
Just work harder.
Luca had offered to grab Annabelle from school since he had been in the neighborhood at the right time, and Olivia expected them back any moment.
She was knee-deep—literally—in tutus. She pinned fabric around the enormous leaf costumes, making them appear like giant leaf ballerinas.
Now just sew it on super fast, she thought, running it through the machine. Holding it up, she admired her work through the haze of her heavy eyelids.
Oh shit. She’d accidentally sewed the entire thing together through the middle, making it impossible to put on.
“Fuck,” she said, thunking her head down on the table and closing her eyes for a blissful second.
Her head pounded, but she didn’t have time to deal with it.
The door opened, and a tornado burst through. “’Livia, ’Livia. I got a B-plus on my spelling test.” AB held the paper up.
Olivia dragged the fifty-pound weight of her head and put it over her shoulders.
“That’s great. I’m so proud of you.” Her voice came out croaky.
Luca stopped in his tracks when he saw Olivia, eyes wide with concern.
“Hey,” he said softly. She wanted to lean against his leg and hip, but she kept her hands to herself.
No need to confuse Annabelle.
His eyes scanned her face. “You look terrible,” he said gently.
She laughed, but her chest caught with a cough. “You really know how to talk to a girl.”
He grabbed the thermometer gun that they’d used to make sure Annabelle was okay to go to school that morning.
“Holy fuck,” he muttered. “One-o-three.”
“Degrees?” she said through heavy eyelids.
“You need to lie down immediately.”
“I don’t have time.” She shook her head, pulling up the costume onto the sewing machine.
Wait, no, she thought, looking at it slowly, her head fuzzy. I have to unpick all the threads and start over.
Tears pulled at her eyes at the thought of getting even further behind.
“What’s your mom’s number?” Luca called.
Olivia rattled off the seven digits from her childhood. Wait, why? “Think she wants to come unpick threads with me?”
He ignored her question and held the phone up to his ear. “Hey, Martha. We have to cancel tonight.”
“What? Nooo,” she said, turning. “I’ll be fine.” She’d looked forward to spending the evening with her family, her not-boyfriend, and her favorite kid.
“Yeah,” Luca responded to a question her mom was asking. “One-oh-three.” A loud sound on the other end of the phone had him pulling it away from his ear. “She caught a cold from Annabelle.”
“I’ll take some Tylenol. I’ll be good as new in a couple of hours,” she said, even as her eyes were closing.
He leaned the microphone away from his mouth. “Do you want to get Pop sick?”
Oh. In theory, Pop was healthy as a horse, but eighty-three-year-olds didn’t recover from colds easily.
“No, it’s fine, Martha. I’ll keep an eye on her. We have a guest room.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Olivia said, standing up and getting dizzy and sitting back down.
“I gotta go, Martha. I’ll keep you posted.”
She squinted at him through puffy eyes. “I don’t like this.” She wagged a woozy finger at him. “Conspiring with my mother.”
“People want to help you, Olivia,” he said with a smirk. He leaned down and felt her face with the back of his hand. “A little clammy, too.”
“Well, you don’t smell so good after a whole day of work,” she said, trying to muster up an insult that hurt as much as clammy skin.
“I don’t?”
“No, that’s a lie,” she said, putting her head down on the table and sighing out that ache in her chest that would develop into a horrendous cough. “You smell great.”
“’Livia, wanna to come play bubbles?”
“AB, Olivia is sick, so she’s going to rest upstairs.”
She sighed and coughed. “This is silly. I’ll just go home to my bed. I don’t need you getting sick, too.”
He waved his hand, dismissing the idea. “My immune system is made of steel after getting every cold when Annabelle was in preschool.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to go lie down somewhere soft.” She stood up and took two steps, closing her eyes as the room tilted.
“And I will be handling this from here on out,” Luca said, picking her up in a bridal carry, her legs swept out from underneath her.
“Whoa!”
Annabelle giggled.
“Are you laughing at me?” Olivia flopped her head upside down to look at Annabelle.
She got a giggle-filled “Yeah” in response.
Olivia was too tired to do anything else. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against Luca’s chest as she felt him taking the stairs up to the second floor.
“You can stay in Pearl’s old room.”
“This is such an inconvenience,” she muttered, even though she snuggled against his chest.
“I like the inconvenience,” he whispered against her cheek, kissing her forehead.
“I’m clammy. Ugh. Don’t kiss me.”
“I’m made of stronger stuff than that, Olivia,” he said, laying her down on the edge of a clean bed.
Luca pulled back the covers, and she climbed into the fresh sheets. “What man keeps fresh sheets on his guest bed?” she muttered, sighing out the aches in her body.
“Lucky timing. I just put this on,” he said, tucking the blanket back up around her.
Small, heavy footsteps walked in. Olivia opened her eyes and saw Annabelle holding her ballet book. “I’ll read a story to you to make you feel better.”
“AB, she needs to rest.”
“It’s fine,” Olivia said, coughing. “It’s only fair. I read it to her five times yesterday.” She smiled, meeting Luca’s eyes.
His tender concern was tinged with helplessness, as if he was worried this was some nineteenth-century consumption and not just a normal cold.
Annabelle sat on the edge of the bed, flopping her legs back and forth.
“Can you read the whole thing?” Olivia said through a stuffed-up nose.
“Yep,” Annabelle said confidently.
Luca strode out the door. “I’m getting the humidifier.”
Olivia closed her eyes.
Just for a minute. Then I’ll go to my house so I don’t bother them.
The next thing she knew, Olivia was opening her dry, heavy eyelids in a pitch-black room. The sky was dark, and Platypus was tucked in beside her in the bed.
She smiled through her coughs and cuddled the animal as she turned, every bone aching.
A small pharmacy sat on the bedside table. Crackers, cough drops, medicines, tissues, and water all competed for space beside her plugged-in phone.
The door cracked open as she kept coughing, and Luca walked in wearing pajamas, his hair mussed as if he’d been asleep.
A sight for literally sore eyes.
“Here, take this.” His voice was quiet and gentle as he gave her the tiny cup of cough medicine.
Right, medicine could help with the coughing. She hadn’t thought about it.
This felt so foreign to her. It had been literally over a decade since someone had taken care of her when she was sick.
“You didn’t need to get up,” she croaked as she took the medicine.
He aimed the temperature gun at her head. “Take some Tylenol, too.” He handed her some pills and a water glass. “Your fever is still pretty high.”
“You’re sexy when you dole out medicine,” she muttered, handing the glass back to him.
The effort to sit up and take the pills exhausted her, and she immediately lay back down, cuddling Platypus.
He sat beside her on the bed, and the scruff of his beard highlighted his smile in the dark room. “See you found Platypus. AB insisted he watch out for you.” His hand rested against her hip, and she wanted to curl into him at how good it felt.
Olivia chuckled. “He’s been a big help. Pretty much the ideal Platypus, getting up in the middle of the night to take care of me. Insisting I stay at his hou—” She was interrupted by a series of sneezes.
A cooling, Vicks-scented tissue was in her hand by the second sneeze.
“I’m a mess,” she croaked.
Luca stroked her hair, an amused smile on his face. “You’re the prettiest sneezer I’ve ever seen.”
Oh god. His muscles wrapped in his Henley shirt, the flannel pants, the hair that was a little all over the place.
And those kind eyes that looked at her like she was special.
“Stop being perfect,” she moaned. She pulled his arm around her as she turned in bed, bringing him with her.
He chuckled as he let himself be pulled down over the covers, spooning her with his delicious body heat. He tightened his arm around her. “Just for a few minutes, then I need to let you sleep.”
“Heating blankets have nothing on you,” she muttered, her eyes already closed. “Thank you.”
“For keeping you warm?” he whispered against her ear.
She sighed, a bone-deep, yearning sound. “For caring.”
Hours later, the sun was bright in the room as Olivia woke up. Gentle voices floated up from downstairs in a familiar, clipped, bright cadence. Bowls and cutlery clinked like people were eating.
Footsteps moved up the stairs, and her mom peeked her head through the door.
“Hey, sunshine,” she said quietly.
“Mom,” she said through her coughs. “I don’t want to get you sick.”
“Luca said your fever broke this morning. I brought Pop’s chicken noodle soup.”