Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jude
J ess spent most of the day sleeping, then she’d cough so hard she’d nearly gag and slump back against the pillows clutching her ribs. I hadn’t been truly sick in years but remembered how that kind of cough could make you ache.
Doc finally called me around noon.
“Sorry, I’m just now getting back, I was in a meeting. How is she now?”
I’d texted him last night and he’d responded, advising Tylenol for the fever and monitoring, plus fluids and rest. As her cough ramped up, I’d been in touch. The snow kept coming, which wasn’t entirely unusual for a fluke late October storm, but I could really go for not setting any records. It was an hour’s drive back to Silverton and we were at a higher elevation here. The snow was likely worse up this way, plus the roads wouldn’t be plowed. I could get us down in my truck, though I didn’t have chains this early in the season… what a mess.
“Her fever was down when I checked an hour ago, but she seems to have chills—keeps piling on blankets whenever she wakes up. She’s coughing a lot and just looks miserable.”
All the raging about her showing up at my cabin had come to an abrupt halt when she’d passed out last night, but I couldn’t help but feel she shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be the one to see her like this. When she was conscious and well again, she’d hate having been stuck here with me.
A pained moan followed by a round of coughing came from the bedroom and Adam must’ve heard it, too.
“Biggest concerns are the fever getting too high, dehydration, and adjacent complications which we don’t need to worry about. I’m guessing it’s flu since Cookie had it, but who knows. If that’s the case, the best thing you can do is keep her hydrated, keep up with the meds, and if her fever pops up and won’t come down, you’ve got to do a lukewarm bath to get it down.”
Anxiety pulled every muscle in my body tight and I didn’t respond—couldn’t have found words for all the money in the world.
A bath. Give Jessica Korbel, a woman who actively hated me and thought of me as her enemy and ruiner of her happiness, a bath.
Sure, Doc! No problem! That is totally a thing I can do without losing my mind or making her feel like I’ve crossed every possible boundary a woman can have.
Maybe if it was someone else… Kenny? Even Catherine, if it had to be a woman. It wouldn’t be fun , but I’d take care of a friend. But… Jess?
I swallowed hard, wondering if I was coming down with the same thing she had. Maybe that accounted for this nausea and dread and stark feeling of I cannot do this.
“You can do this, okay? She’s going to be okay. Snow should clear in a day or two, and I bet she’s through the worst of it within the next twelve hours or so, based on what Cookie said.”
I grunted, still no words at the ready, heart still galloping and breaths still short.
“Go take care of her, and do what you can to take care of yourself, okay? If you go down, too, you call me and we’ll figure out how to get you both out. In the meantime, I’ll keep the girls updated through Jo so they know what’s going on and can rally when she’s back home.”
In truth, I felt fine so far, and based on the internet searches I’d done, I wouldn’t be likely to get sick for another few days unless I’d already been exposed via someone else. The nervous energy stemmed from the mention of giving Jess a bath, but it wouldn’t come to that. Her temp would drop and it’d be fine.
Worst case, there were ways the team could get to us—everything from bringing a truck with chains up or even a helicopter from the hospital… but it wouldn’t get that bad. I wouldn’t let it.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, and hung up, rushing to the room when I heard another moan.
She’d stripped off her shirt and pants, her legs now splayed out on top of the bed, and her cheeks were flushed. My breath rushed out at the miles of exposed skin before I drop-kicked my brain and moved to her side.
“I feel so bad,” she whispered, not even bothering to open her eyes.
I scanned her forehead— damn. One oh three again. “Hey, we gotta get you cooled down. ”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m nearly naked in your bed.”
Words I wouldn’t admit to having imagined come from her lips, but now that they had, I mentally punched the idiotic part of my mind that started giggling about it and grabbed the water. “Sit up a bit and take a drink.”
“My head hurts.”
I checked my watch. “You can take more medicine in an hour, but right now, you need to drink. It’ll help your head, too.”
She opened one eye and glared at me, then her other fluttered open. “I’m sorry.”
“Hush.”
Gripping her upper arm, I eased her into a sitting position and held the cup to her lips. She looked at me with brows pinched like she didn’t understand, her eyes bloodshot and dry.
My heart squeezed. I slid a hand behind her head to support it. “Tip back a little, Pop. You can do it.”
She eyed me as I eased her head back while tilting the drink, grateful when her lips moved and she actually swallowed the liquid.
“Good girl. Now we’re going to?—”
“I may be delirious with a fever, but if you ever good girl me again, Beast, we’re going to have issues.”
I cleared my throat, not allowing myself to laugh at her show of strength. “Apologies, Pop. I’m just glad you’re cooperating. You and I both know you don’t take orders well, and especially not from me.”
Her eyes were barely open now, but she somehow managed to glare at me. “You don’t take orders well from me either.”
Might depend on the context .
I slapped the thought down and held the water to her mouth again. She complied and sighed when I rested her back against the pillow. I brought two cool washcloths and set one on her forehead, the other on her chest.
“That feels good and also awful.”
I huffed a laugh. “Sorry, but Doc says you need to cool off or I have to give you a lukewarm bath.”
Her eyes jumped open. “You will give me a bath over my dead body.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to stay a smile. “I will do what I need to do to make sure I don’t have your dead body on my hands at any point. I’m pretty sure your friends would end up in jail for murder—at least Elise and Dove would. Those two would go feral. And Winnie and Nikki would help hide my body while Jo wrote out the alternate history for the cover up. Poor Catherine would have to go into hiding so she wouldn’t have to lie to anyone about what happened. So that’s why we’re doing wash cloths first. Bring down your temp and we’ll be just fine.”
A smile flickered across her face before she sighed, long and aggrieved, but then launched into a coughing fit. When she finished, she reached for the water of her own accord, then startled. “Do you know where my phone is?”
“Haven’t seen it. Did you have it when you got here?” It hadn’t occurred to me she might’ve dropped it when she fell.
“I don’t know if I brought it in. Maybe it’s in my car?”
“I’ll get it for you. You stay here and cool down. Don’t get under the blankets again. When I get back, if it’s not dropping, it’s bath time.”
She didn’t acknowledge the words, but I thought I heard something about rude, bossy beast as I left.
Twenty minutes later, I’d dug out her car and managed to move it closer to the house since she’d left it at the end of my driveway like she was going to breech the property covertly instead of knock on my front door, retrieved her phone, and returned to find her asleep again. But when I checked her temp, she’d jumped another half a degree.
“Get up, Pop. Time to cool you down.”
She didn’t respond, so I gently shook her shoulder. When that didn’t rouse her, my pulse notched up.
“Pop, wake up.” Still nothing. “Pop.” Again. Had she passed out instead of falling asleep? I patted her cheek. “Jess, wake up.” Worry grated at me. “Jess, you gotta wake up now.”
Damn, she was so hot—it felt like there might literally be fire under her skin. Her eyes opened but she looked completely out of it. I couldn’t wait any more.
“I’m going to pick you up and we’re going to the bathroom, okay? Don’t kill me.” She could, too, if she were in her right mind.
With one arm behind her shoulders and one under her knees, I lifted her nearly dead weight. She gasped and tensed as the movement set in.
“What—what are you doing?”
“You’re not cooling down. I’m taking you to the bathroom.”
I sat on the side of the large tub and settled her on my lap while holding her with one arm across her chest as I turned on the water, waiting until it felt right. Standing, I brought her with me gently, settling her feet next to the tub.
“Step in for me,” I said, worried that if I set her in there myself, she might slip.
She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher, then lifted one leg over the side while standing on the other. I held her arm as she stepped in on the other side, then slowly lowered into the barely warm water.
Everything about this was too intimate, too wrong for me to be doing with her, and yet some animal part of me was greedy to be the one who helped her. She needed help and for once, for once , it was me.
“This is awful. And now my underwear is wet.”
She drew her knees up and hugged them, resting her head on her arms, and shut her eyes. I needed to pour some water over her shoulders and get her neck and chest and underarms wet with the cool water, but then she’d be completely soaked.
“I need to get your back wet. We could wash your hair if it’d feel good—might help.”
My voice sounded weird but maybe that was due to how much I’d spoken in the last few hours. Perhaps it sounded odd because all of this was a waking dream. Touching her fevered skin, offering to wash her hair… this was the work of a lover and I…
It was the pain in my chest every time I brushed her hair from her face to check her temperature or refilled her water. It was the pressure in my head and the swoop in my stomach when she looked at me with pleading and apology, or with surrender, instead of loathing.
She stared past me now in what looked like a trance, then sat up and reached backwards without warning. I averted my eyes just in time and heard the rasp of cotton on the ground next to me.
Something… happened. Inside me. On an elemental level. And I wasn’t proud of it, but my pulse hammered in my throat at the realization she’d just tossed her bra to the floor and was now sitting all but naked in my tub.
In almost any other scenario, this would be the start or end or at least part of any given fantasy. But all of those versions of the story came with a different history between us and certainly a different present reality. They didn’t feature the woman in question with glazed eyes and a high fever and only here because she couldn’t leave.
It wasn’t just the situation, though, or her state of undress. It was this… tenderness wending through me. I didn’t recognize it much less know what to do with it, so I just let it be.
“I don’t think I can do my hair,” she said, drawing my attention back to her.
The notches of her spine stood out as she rested her head down on her arms encircling her knees again. I could see the full, beautiful expanse of her back and sides, but everything truly private was hidden. Maybe it made me a total idiot, but I was relieved. I didn’t want to see anything she didn’t want to show me, and she could hardly want that right now.
She’ll never want it, sucker. Damn these thoughts that’d invaded when they’d been kept under lock and key for so long.
“Be right back,” I mumbled, running to get a cup to help rinse her hair. When I came back, Bones was leaning over the tub sniffing at her and she had a little smile on her face.
Lightning struck, a bolt straight from my brain to my heart. The pull at the corners of her perfect lips and the way she craned her neck to get closer to my mutant cat’s furry little face… Of course she’s a cat person.
“Tilt your chin up,” I said, filling the cup with the running water.
Her instant compliance was another strike, a weird thrill that she trusted me to do as I asked, along with the more vivid knowledge that in any other circumstance, she wouldn’t. Though she’d trusted me to some degree at Snowberry—she knew I’d do my part, I wouldn’t break cover, and she was safe with me like I was with her—at least on a purely professional level. That was something.
But this… she was as vulnerable as someone could get. She’d likely let anyone help her, but the reality it was me— me, dammit! —made me want to pound my chest and maybe sob a little. Emotional whiplash was a familiar bedfellow lately, but it’d taken a dose of steroids since she’d knocked on my door hours ago.
Her mouth fell open as I worked water into her dark brown hair. I’d always liked it, and nothing had changed in that vein—it was beautiful, as was she. She likely had fancy shampoo that smelled a lot better than mine, but I used some of what I had, lightly scratching against her scalp when she sighed at the contact. With the bubbles worked from her scalp to the ends at her shoulders, I rinsed. One cup, two, the suds slid down her bare back and trickled a path along her neck, running past the ridges of her collar bone and into shadows I didn’t allow myself to mine.
During rinsing, she began shuddering intensely, so I shut off the water.
“Can I get out?” Her voice emerged so small, it was criminal.
A check of my watch indicated she’d been in there six minutes. Was that really all? I’d lived a lifetime of thoughts in these fleeting moments with her at my mercy in this space. What a weird thought, because I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. The thought made me ill, despite what she might think. Still, a wild sense of satisfaction snaked through me as I felt the weight of the situation again.
When I swiped at her forehead, the temp had come down a bit, though she was still damp and I wasn’t sure whether it was at all accurate after my shoddy job washing her hair.
“It’s only been a few minutes,” I said, then noticed her forlorn look and hurried to add, “Let’s give it another minute before you get out.”
The next sixty seconds ticked by slowly, and while it did, I prepped the bathmat and got a large towel for her.
As I reached out a hand, her eyes found mine first. Her teeth chattered and she blinked fast. “Can you not look?”
It wasn’t accusatory or angry, it was… pleading.
“I won’t. Let’s do it like this.” I held out the towel in front of me to create a curtain she could wrap up in.
“I think I need your help, though. To stand up.”
The last few words had a watery quality, and I internally begged her not to cry.
No. Noooo. What would I do if she cried?
I wasn’t someone who cared if a woman cried, or a man did for that matter. Hell, I’d spent more time crying in the last few months as Omi deteriorated and then passed than I’d spent doing anything else. But this was Jess. And I suspected seeing her sick or naked wouldn’t hold a candle to seeing her cry on the list of things she didn’t want to share with me. I’d witnessed it twice before—once after a mission gone wrong and a second time when she came to me demanding to know what’d happened with Kurt.
“Grab my arm and steady yourself while you stand, and I’ll get the towel around your back. Then you can wrap up in it, and I’ll help you out. Just tell me when you’re covered.”
I tilted my head way up so my gaze was pinned on the ceiling. She steadied herself with one cool hand on my wrist, then leaned enough weight I could tell she was standing. I slipped the towel over her shoulders and felt her tugging it from my other hand.
“Okay.”
Her soft word gave the all clear and I looked down to see her completely tucked into the towel, only her face and wet hair to be seen.
“Can I carry you?” I didn’t want to assume, but if she was shaky enough to be worried about standing up on her own, I didn’t want her to fall getting out of the tub.
“Yes.” Another whispered word.
My stomach flipped.
Seconds later, I set her on the couch. “Stay here for a minute and let me change the sheets.” I bolted to my bag and got out some boxers and a T-shirt. “If you want to get out of your wet stuff, toss them on the floor and I’ll get them washed so you can wear them later. For now, put these on if you can.”
Ten minutes later, she was nestled into the bed with my clothes on, something I wouldn’t overthink, and her temp wasn’t gone, but it had lowered enough to not keep me in panic mode. I’d wake her in a half hour when she could have more medicine.
I’d do anything. Anything to get her better. I loved and hated the way she was fully dependent on me, but it couldn’t last, and I had to be able to tell her I’d done everything to get her well quickly. I’d never survive her anger when all this was over if I didn’t. Maybe it’d mean another bath or maybe I’d need to hike her out of here on my back… whatever it was, I’d do it.
“I’ll be back. Shout if you need anything,” I said stupidly, because she could hardly summon the strength to speak let alone shout.
Just as I was at the door, I heard it .
“Thanks, Jude.”
I turned, a weird tightness in my chest, and I resisted the urge to say, “No, thank you .”