Chapter 34
CHLOE
The rain caught up with us.
Not that night, and not the next morning, but by the second day the sneezing started.
Emma first. A tiny, delicate sneeze that she followed with a dramatic declaration that she was dying and needed immediate medical attention in the form of ice cream and unlimited television.
Then me. A headache that crept in behind my eyes and a throat that felt like I had swallowed sandpaper and a cough that rattled in my chest like something had come loose.
Sawyer was the only one standing. Of course he was. The man had taken a bullet and walked it off. A rainstorm was not going to touch him.
He was terrible at being a nurse. And by terrible, I meant perfect in the most infuriating way possible.
He woke up before both of us. I heard him in the kitchen, moving with the quiet deliberateness of a man who had spent years moving through a cabin alone and knew where every creaky floorboard was.
By the time I dragged myself out of bed, wrapped in a blanket and feeling like someone had filled my skull with wet concrete, there was soup on the stove and tea on the counter and Emma was on the couch in a nest of blankets that he had constructed with the architectural precision of someone building a fort for a small queen.
“Drink this,” he said, handing me a cup.
“What is it?”
“Tea. Honey. Lemon. My mother’s recipe.”
“Your mother gave you a sick recipe?”
“My mother gave me a lot of things. Drink.”
I drank. It was good. Hot and soothing and tasting like something a grandmother would make while telling you that everything would be fine, and I hated him a little for being right about the tea the way he was right about everything practical.
Emma was worse than me. She had the kind of cold that turned a six-year-old into a limp noodle, all her usual energy drained, her nose red and running, her eyes glassy.
She lay on the couch under her blanket fort with Sir Chomps-a-Lot and refused to move except to sneeze and to request increasingly specific items.
“Papa, I need juice.”
He brought juice.
“Papa, the juice needs a straw.”
He found a straw.
“Papa, Sir Chomps-a-Lot needs a blanket too. He is cold.”
He tucked a washcloth around the dinosaur with a seriousness that should have been funny but was actually the most tender thing I had ever witnessed.
He rotated between us with the efficiency of a man running a military operation, except the battlefield was a cabin and the soldiers were a sneezing woman and a six-year-old who kept requesting specific episodes of a cartoon about a detective rabbit.
Soup for me. Juice for Emma. He changed the cold cloths on Emma’s forehead every twenty minutes.
He reheated my tea when I let it go cold because I fell asleep sitting up on the couch.
He ran a bath for Emma with the water at exactly the right temperature, not too hot, not too cold, and carried her to the tub because she was too tired to walk.
I watched him from the couch. This man who had fought in a war and taken a bullet and broken men’s bones with his bare hands, crouching beside a bathtub and making sure the water did not go in his daughter’s eyes while she splashed weakly and told him about a dream she had about a dinosaur who ran a restaurant.
“We are so lucky to have you,” I said when he came back to the living room. My voice was hoarse. Scratchy. The kind of voice that made every word feel like it was being dragged across gravel.
He sat on the edge of the couch beside me. His hand found my forehead, checking my temperature, and his palm was cool and rough against my skin.
“You both are the only thing I have now,” he said. His voice was quiet. Steady. The voice he used when he was saying something true and did not want it to be mistaken for anything less. “This is my responsibility. As a father and your future husband.”
“You keep saying future husband.”
“Because that is what I am.”
“We have not discussed a wedding.”
“We do not need to discuss it. It is happening. The timing is flexible. The outcome is not.”
I smiled. Even sick, even with my head pounding and my throat raw and my body aching, the man could make me smile. The certainty of him. The absolute, immovable certainty that he carried like other men carried wallets, always present, always accessible, always there when you needed it.
He leaned down to kiss my forehead.
“No,” I said, pressing my hand against his chest. “You will get sick too.”
“I do not get sick.”
“Everyone gets sick.”
“I have an immune system built by the United States military and ten years of eating questionable food alone. I do not get sick.”
“Sawyer.”
“Fine.” He pressed his lips to my hair instead. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of it, far enough that my germs could not reach him. A compromise. The kind of compromise that only Sawyer Cole could make and somehow turn into something that felt more intimate than a kiss.
The day passed in a haze. I drifted in and out of sleep.
Every time I woke up, something had changed.
A new cup of tea. A fresh blanket. The television playing something quiet for Emma.
Sawyer moving through the cabin like a shadow, anticipating needs before we voiced them, fixing things before we knew they were broken.
By evening, Emma was feeling better. Not well, but better.
The color had returned to her cheeks and her appetite had come back enough to eat half a bowl of soup and demand a cookie for dessert, which Sawyer gave her because that man could not say no to his daughter even when sugar before bed was a terrible idea and he knew it.
He put her to bed. I listened to the routine from the couch, the teeth brushing and the story and the whispered goodnights, and by the time he came back to the living room I was half asleep again, curled on my side with my blanket pulled to my chin and my body aching in the way that sick bodies ache, all over, all at once, a generalized misery that made every position uncomfortable.
“Bed,” he said.
“Too tired to move.”
He picked me up. Just scooped me off the couch, blanket and all, and carried me to the bedroom.
His shoulder was healed enough for this, had been healed for weeks, and the ease with which he lifted me, like I weighed nothing, like carrying me was the most natural thing in the world, made my heart do something complicated even through the fog of the cold.
He set me on the bed. Pulled the covers over me. Brought me water and more tea and a cold cloth for my forehead. Then he went to take a shower.
I lay in bed and listened to the water running.
The steady sound of it, rhythmic and warm, and I thought about this man.
This stubborn, grumpy, impossibly good man who had spent the entire day taking care of two sick people without complaint, without rest, without a single moment of impatience.
Who had tucked a washcloth around a stuffed dinosaur because his daughter asked him to.
Who had called himself my future husband like it was a fact of nature that required no negotiation.
The water stopped. I heard the shower door open. The rustle of a towel.
He came out of the bathroom with the towel around his waist and water still running down his chest. His hair was damp, dark, pushed back from his face, and the sight of him, the planes of his body in the dim light, the scars and the muscle and the broad shoulders, hit me with a force that cut through the fog of the cold like a blade through gauze.
He opened the dresser to find a shirt and I moved.
I got up from the bed. Crossed the room. He turned when he heard me and I did not give him time to ask if I was okay or tell me to go back to bed. I pulled him by the towel. He stumbled forward, surprised, which was a rare thing for Sawyer Cole, and I caught him by the waist and kissed him.
“Chloe, you are sick…”
“I am feeling better.”
“You have a fever.”
“I have something else too.” I kissed his jaw. His neck. The hollow of his throat where his pulse was beating fast, faster than it should have been for a man who had just stepped out of a shower. “You took care of us all day. Let me give you a payment.”
“You do not owe me anything.”
“This is not about owing.” I looked up at him. His green eyes were dark, the pupils blown wide, and his hands were at his sides, clenched, the tension of a man who was trying to be responsible and losing the battle. “This is about wanting. And I want to.”
I pushed him toward the bed. He let me. That was the thing about Sawyer.
He was the strongest man I had ever known, physically and mentally, but when I pushed he let me move him, not because he was weak but because he trusted me.
And trust, from this man, was more intimate than anything our bodies could do.
He sat on the edge of the bed. I stood between his knees. His hands came to my hips, instinct, and I took his wrists and moved them to his sides.
“Keep them there,” I said.
His jaw tightened. His eyes burned. But he kept them there.
I pulled the towel away. Knelt in front of him. And the sound he made when my mouth found him, a low, rough groan that he bit off behind his teeth, was worth every minute of the fever and the headache and the day of being helpless on the couch.
I took my time. Slowly. Thoroughly. Using my mouth and my hands and everything I had learned about what made this man come apart.
He was so controlled in every other area of his life, so disciplined, so measured, but here, in the dark, with my mouth on him, the control cracked.
His hands left his sides. One found my hair, gripping but not pushing, letting me set the pace.
His head fell back and the sounds he made, deep and broken and getting louder with each passing minute, were the sounds of a man who did not know how to let go but was learning.
“Chloe.” My name, groaned, a warning. “I am going to…”
I did not stop. I took him deeper, hollowed my cheeks, increased the pace, and when he came apart his whole body went rigid and his hand tightened in my hair and the sound that came out of him was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
Raw. Unguarded. The sound of a man who had been taking care of everyone else all day finally letting someone take care of him.
I stayed where I was until the tremors stopped. Then I climbed up beside him and he pulled me against his chest and we lay there in the dark, breathing together.
“Are you okay now?” he asked. His voice was wrecked. Hoarse.
“Yes,” I said. “And I needed to give a payment for the best nurse in Colorado.”
“I told you. You do not owe me.”
“And I told you it was not about owing.”
He pulled me closer. His hand stroking down my back, gentle, the roughness gone, replaced by the tenderness that he saved for these moments, the quiet ones, the dark ones, when it was just us and the walls were down.
“Go to sleep,” he said. “You are still sick.”
“Bossy.”
“Always.”
I smiled against his chest. Pressed a kiss to the scar on his shoulder, the one from the bullet, the one that was healing but would never fully disappear. He inhaled sharply at the contact but did not pull away.
“Thank you,” I said. “For today. For all of it.”
“You do not need to thank me for being a father. For being a partner. This is what I signed up for.”
“You did not sign up for anything. I showed up at your sawmill with cookies and refused to leave.”
“And I have not been able to get rid of you since.”
“Would you want to?”
“Not for a single second.”
I fell asleep against him. Warm and safe and still a little feverish, with his heartbeat steady under my ear and his arm heavy around my waist and the knowledge, settled deep in my bones like the foundation of a house, that this man would take care of me and our daughter for the rest of our lives, not because he had to but because he wanted to.
And that was the difference between Jonathan and Sawyer. Jonathan had taken care of things to own them. Sawyer took care of things to love them.
I knew the difference now. I would never forget it again.