Chapter 12
A HELPING HAND
KNOX
Staten is…a stubborn woman, to say the least. She doesn’t like to be doted on. I thought most girls liked that sort of stuff. But nooo, I think she’d persevere through the Black Plague by herself or die trying.
Exhibit A: me attempting to get her to leave campus before her last class of the day. Amidst the name-calling and harmless swatting, she refused to even consider going home, so now I’ve got a sick stowaway who loves using me as her metaphorical punching bag.
I’ve never seen her so…out of it…before. I guess some part of me never realized that she got sick or dealt with measly afflictions like migraines. It’s stupid, I know. She just has this Superwoman thing going on, and she always seems so put together.
I’ve already pre-gamed the nerves making my heart wallop in my chest, and things are bound to get messier when she regains some of her awareness. I opted to take her to Crew and Harlan’s place. It’s the closest of my teammates’ apartments, and they’re not home right now, so it’s completely empty.
My teammates, of course, weren’t surprised that I was losing my mind over my slightly unrequited crush, nor were they surprised when I chose to skip hockey practice to take care of her.
When I pull up to the apartment complex—breathing a sigh of relief that my driving hasn’t woken her—I now face one of the hardest challenges in my entire life: getting her inside.
Coaxing a confession out of a guilty party would be easier than trying to corral the beast that is Staten Renault.
I turn the car’s ignition off, hop out of the driver’s seat to contemplate my next course of action, then bob and weave a few times in front of the rear door as liquid nitrogen pours through my veins. The best-case scenario is that I can still see after she scratches the shit out of my face.
Ugh, fuck it. I’m doing her a favor. She’ll feel better when I get her on the couch with a cool compress.
With no courtesy of a warning, I scoop her up into my arms and haul her to the door surprisingly fast. I don’t have time to worry about making the ride seamless. I’m fully legging it over to the third row of buildings, then trying to lure the key out from under the mat with only the toe of my shoe.
Unfortunately, she wakes up somewhere between “fuck” and “useless piece of shit.”
She stirs with a groan, her voice still marinated in the dregs of sleep. I don’t detect any immediate frustration, which means she hasn’t noticed that I’ve kidnapped her yet.
“Knox?” she slurs.
I flash her a guilty smile, my leg burning with all my maneuvering. “Hey, hi, hey. I’m here. You should go back to sleep. Everything is fine.”
Her uncharacteristic silence should have tipped me off that something was wrong. The beating of tiny fists on my chest does it for me.
“I’m going to kill you,” she growls, and I don’t need her to look me in the eyes to know that she’s angry enough to power a small town in the middle of a snowstorm.
“I’m doing this for your own good,” I argue, guiding metal out from coir and trapping the key underfoot before shimmying it up the side of the building like a burglar executing a perfect heist.
Before she has the chance to berate me more, I’m unlocking the door and trying not to grin when I feel her arms tighten around my neck. Her lack of opposition makes something terrible buzz in my belly.
A small whimper rings through the air. “Ugh, this sucks.”
“I know, Ace. The meds should start kicking in soon. I’m going to get you situated on the couch with a big glass of water. Just hang in there.”
Depositing Staten onto the couch gently, I try to ignore the skittering of my pulse, as well as my failed attempt in staving off the first cracks of inadequacy that begin to punch through the ice—all bruised knuckles and bloody runoff.
The only noise that tells me Staten is still lucid is the painful groans that seem to shake her vocal cords.
Fishing out a bag of frozen peas and wrapping it in a dish towel, I’m balancing a glass half full of water in my other hand while racing against an invisible clock.
She’ll be fine, Knox. It’s just a migraine. She’s not going to die.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” I ramble beneath my breath, narrowly tripping over my feet as I sprint out of the adjoining kitchen. I place my makeshift compress on her forehead without a veto, and the grimace on my mouth firms.
She deflates a little like a helium balloon. “That…that feels nice.”
I bark out a semi-maniacal laugh. “God, you should’ve heard my teammates. Said I’d ruin everything if I got too close to you. And they were goddamn right.”
The caliginous sky is grayscale while it plays peek-a-boo through the window, and I’m as still as an obelisk, afraid that if I move in the slightest, it will disrupt Staten’s recovery.
The painkillers must have started to kick in because her face isn’t frozen in worry.
However, much to my dismay, my irrational fears still hopscotch between each riser in my energy-depleted brain.
“What do you need? What are your pain levels on a scale from one to ten?”
“I’m not dying.”
“Migraines are serious, alright? One of my childhood friends used to get them all the time. He’d vomit whenever he suffered from one.”
Staten keeps her eyes shut despite the lack of light in the room. “I don’t…I don’t get them that often. Only when I push myself.”
Of course. I have to keep my off-color remark half-chambered.
She shouldn’t be pushing herself so hard, but the last thing she needs right now is for me to chastise her for getting sick.
I thought for sure she’d skirt around this topic.
If anything, all this conversation has done is enhance the mental acrobatics going on in my brain.
“Which you’re doing too much of,” I finish.
She snorts. “I’ve been working this hard since I was a teenager. I don’t get any days off.”
My heart echoes a sympathetic sentiment, and although she can’t see my face, I can feel a rigid determination score itself into my expression. “Well, you’re getting one today.”
My departure to the kitchen is, expectedly, followed by ungrateful grumbles. Migraines can last for hours. There’s only so much I can do to lessen her pain.
As my urgency takes a breather, I stroll back into the living room to hand her a drink, and her eyelids inch open the tiniest bit.
It’s a little off-putting that she isn’t giving me shit right now. She’s being…nice…and that either means that the migraine has become so unbearable she’s lost her sense of self, or she’s so woozy she doesn’t have the energy to insult me. Both are equally bad.
She takes gradated sips of water. “Thank you.”
An inflammatory kind of heat slithers down my neck. “Did you intend to give me a heart attack today?”
“I have pictured myself putting you in the ICU on multiple occasions.”
Surprising myself, I chuckle. “It would make us even.”
Sliding a throw blanket down from the back of the couch, I drape it over her, tucking her in like it’s her own personal chrysalis. She shifts around to assume the ultimate comfort position. Given her unresponsiveness, I’m about to leave when her hand shoots out to latch around my wrist.
“Can you…will you lie with me? I don’t want to be alone.” Her voice is overworked, quiet. Whether it’s because she’s embarrassed about what she said or just trying to regulate her volume, I have no idea.
Staten Renault—the girl who would do anything to keep me from wiggling myself beneath her code-protected layers—is asking me to stay.
A stammer passes the threshold of my tongue. “Uh, yeah. Of course.”
Trying not to displace her, I notch myself into the sliver of space she’s left for me, very aware that Crew and Harlan’s couch isn’t really made for two people…horizontally. I have trouble fitting onto a sofa with my height as it is.
Though, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that my heart constricts the tiniest bit when she fits the curve of her back perfectly against my front. Being this close to her is amazing—a rush, even.
I don’t really know what to do with my arms. Does she want me to hold her? Is it presumptuous if I don’t ask her and just do it? Should I ask her? I don’t want to bother her. She seems pretty—
“I can hear you thinking,” she whispers with an equal blend of annoyance and amusement.
My spine snaps straight. “Right. Sorry. I just, I’ve never…”
“Slept next to a girl before?”
“Slept next to you before.”
I can feel a blush heating my cheeks—can feel the homegrown humility start to set in. Farm to table.
If I didn’t know any better, it sounds like a smile kicks up her lips. “Hmm. Didn’t realize you were that intimidated by me.”
“You kidding? Diving with sharks would be less terrifying,” I jest.
“Nice to know I’m still your superior.”
As the conversation chugs along and my mental fog recedes, I wrap my arms around her without realizing I’ve done it.
And, since the night seems to be full of endless firsts, Staten doesn’t buck me off like I’m some rowdy cowboy with a death wish.
Holding her feels right. Being with her feels right.
We’ve barely skimmed the surface of our fake relationship, and already, I wouldn’t mind treading deeper.
Hopefully she can’t feel the ricocheting of my heart against her back.
“You’re not resisting,” I observe.
“Do you want me to?”
“No. I…I’ve just never seen you like this before. All vulnerable.” God, it feels as if someone has turned up the heater in this place. Maybe it’s the stupid throw blanket. How am I more delirious than she is right now?
“Trusting people isn’t really my forte,” she mumbles, and there’s a weight that tears at the edges of her words.
“I get that. I mean, I’m not caretaker savvy, but you—you rewire my entire body sometimes.”
Rewire is an understatement. I’m a completely different person around her. She isn’t dissuaded by my brain’s mess of fritzing cables or my unplugged vulnerability. Staten Renault has got me hook, line, and sinker.
“I guess we’re learning a lot about each other today,” she says with, surprisingly, no disgust in her voice.
Staten flips around so she’s facing me. I thought I needed the light to admire her beauty, but she’s just as radiant in the dark.
“I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but thank you for saving me from four p.m. physics. I would probably be in a ball crying somewhere if you hadn’t found me.”
I nod. This girl has been cracked open by the world and still expected to perform. I don’t know how she does it—how she moves through life with so much grace.
“I’ll always be here if you need me,” I tell her.
“Is that a stipulation of our agreement?”
She’s talking about this whole fake relationship thing. English might not be my best subject, but even I know the definition of “fake.” Whatever I think is happening in the sanctity of Crew and Harlan’s apartment is just a figment of my wildest dreams.
I don’t know if Staten can really see anything in the obscurity, yet I feel a frown stretch across my mouth. “No, it’s not.”
It was an innocent question. I shouldn’t feel…disappointed…by it. And I’m about to ask Staten a follow-up before I hear the slight rumble of a snore. Despite the dehydration and the light sensitivity and the nausea, she finally felt safe enough to fall asleep.
I don’t intend to wake her.
I also don’t intend to hold her again, because it will be too hard to let her go.