Chapter 16
Robbie hadn’t seen Nadja with her eyes open in three days.
Not because she hadn’t been up. He could tell by the way the laundry basket looked and how her toothbrush moved around in the coffee mug on the bathroom counter.
But she was still asleep when he left for the morning and already in bed when he came back for the evening.
If the food he put in the fridge for her hadn’t been touched, he would have sounded the alarm.
He wanted to sound the alarm anyway, but she was her own person. He wasn’t her keeper. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He certainly wasn’t her mate. Not for real, anyway. And if she wanted to sleep on the same schedule as his mama’s old tabby, that was her business.
But that didn’t stop his worry from threatening to eat him alive.
A week after their arrival, halfway to the full moon, he came home smelling like fryer grease and sweat because someone (Rose) had heard him talking to JJ about doing fried chicken nights at one of the restaurants where he worked, and someone (everyone Rose told) had bullied him into doing one for the pack.
He expected to find Nadja asleep, as she had been for the past few days, and so he started stripping the moment he closed the cabin door behind him, peeling the sweaty shirt off his shoulders and fantasizing about a cold shower.
“You smell interesting,” she said from the kitchen table. While he wouldn’t exactly call the noise he made a shriek, it was definitely close.
“You’re awake,” he said, feeling stupid with his shirt tangled around his neck and arms, the damp cotton clinging to him like a determined octopus.
Her eyes looked glassy and feverish. She sat at the table in the kitchen, so pale that the light from the LED bulb overhead—JJ said he was going to drag the pack into more sustainable living if it was the last thing he did—made her look almost green.
“You don’t look so good, Doc,” he said, finally wrestling the shirt over his head, the cotton hanging limp from his hand at his side.
All of the worry of the last three days, every single nagging feeling that something was terribly wrong—all of which he’d tried to ignore—it all crashed around him like a rogue wave, threatening to swallow him whole.
“And you look amazing,” she said quietly. “Are you leeching my health?” She laughed, but it stopped short when her eyes rolled slightly back before she caught herself upright again.
He was at her side in a heartbeat. Not his heartbeat, which had frozen in his chest, but a heartbeat. He should have asked for permission before touching her, he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself from laying a palm against her forehead.
His stomach roiled. “You have a fever.”
“And you don’t,” she said breathily.
“No,” he said, dropping to a knee in front of her.
“You really do look amazing,” she said. “This place is good for you.”
He couldn’t argue with her about that. He felt stronger than he ever had, more solid. And aside from the constant need to be moving, he felt almost normal.
“You need a doctor,” he said, feeling as if his throat would close around the words.
“No,” she said, resting her hand over his on the table. “A doctor can’t help me.”
Oh, god. Is she dying? Is this one of those things where she’s too far gone for medicine to save her and she came here with me anyway and now she’s going to die here? The thought flashed so suddenly, so horribly, that he almost fell flat on his ass.
“Are you—” He couldn’t even say it.
“Technically, we all are, right? Entropy and all that,” she said weakly.
“What do you need?”
“Sleep.”
“You’ve been sleeping. That’s all you’ve been doing. And it’s clearly not working. You need a doctor. You need a hospital,” he said, jumping to his feet and pacing.
“Robbie,” she said, and he stopped on a dime. “Robbie, this happens to me sometimes. Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” he said, without thinking, his trust somehow a more potent feeling than his fear.
“I don’t need a hospital. They can’t help me.”
“Tylenol!” he blurted.
She smiled weakly.
“Okay, Robbie. You could bring me some Tylenol.”