Chapter Ten
I’m still burrowed in his sweatshirt when Wes parks halfway down a dirt road, a small supercell starting to come together a couple miles across the endless stretch of fields to our right.
The pain behind my eyes is worse, but on the plus side, if my head explodes, I won’t have to decide what to do about my inconveniently growing attraction to him.
“You’re awfully pale.” He frowns and raises his hand like he’s going to touch me before dropping it to his thigh abruptly. “You sure you’re up for this?”
“Of course.” I summon up a smile and breathe carefully through my nose. We’ve only got a couple of hours of semi-decent conditions today. I can make it that long. “But if you try to make me yell at the sky again, I reserve the right to leave you here.”
My joke doesn’t land. Wes doesn’t take his attention off me, his frown deepening. “It’s eighty degrees. You shouldn’t be cold.”
“I’m fine,” I insist, reaching for the door handle. And yeah, maybe it takes me a minute to get my feet under me when a little bit of sunshine sends the same signal to my stomach as a roller-coaster drop, but I don’t puke. That’s something.
Wes comes around to my side of the car and stands with his hands braced on either side of my shoulders. It effectively traps me in place. If I wasn’t worried about possibly throwing up on his shoes, his intense focus on me might even be sexy.
“You’re not fine.” There isn’t a shred of doubt in his voice. “Tell me what’s going on with you. You know better than anyone how dangerous it is to be out here if you’re not at one hundred percent.”
“Says the man who takes stupid risks all the time.”
Wes doesn’t budge. “Not with you.”
I squint behind my sunglasses, the brightness of the day not helping the snowballing pain.
The cool darkness of a hotel room beckons, but I grit my teeth and try to ignore it.
No one knows if Nature Shots will host another contest like this, but even if they do, will I be invited back if the image I submit is just okay?
Unlikely.
Pain shortens my temper. “So you’re allowed to take risks but I’m not?” I snap, shifting my weight to duck under his arm.
Wes effortlessly blocks me, his chest almost touching mine. “Not without telling me what has you looking like you’re about to pass out,” he demands, searching my face for an explanation.
“Migraine. Nothing life-threatening. You can stop with this caveman thing now.”
“My mom gets migraines,” he says, low and firm. “When she gets the look on her face you’ve got right now, she stays in bed for two days. You shouldn’t be out here, Sloane.”
I glare over his shoulder, watching the storm spin almost lazily.
I can already tell this particular storm isn’t going to do much.
The winds are too light for it to be sucking in energy.
The forecast was never great. The only other system that might produce anything is way the hell up in South Dakota.
“We’re already here. Let’s just shoot this storm and then you can lock me up, okay?”
“I’m not trying to lock you up,” Wes replies, frustration creeping in. “I’m trying to help.”
Sinking my teeth into my bottom lip, I close my eyes and focus on slow, even breaths. I’m already having trouble keeping my eyes fully open, which doesn’t bode well for taking any kind of decent photo.
I want to shove Wes away. I want to grab my camera and march out into the field and photograph the shit out of this storm. Not hide in bed because my body decided to have a fit.
But it doesn’t really matter what I want when my skull is being held together by red-hot barbed wire.
“Fine.” I sag against the car as defeat sours my mood. “You win. But we need to be in Kansas tomorrow, so let’s at least do the drive this afternoon.”
“That’s a six-hour drive.”
“Yes, thank you, I can read a map too.”
Wes stares down at me like he wants to toss me over his shoulder, frustration hardening his jaw, but all he does is let out a long sigh. “We will try to get up to Kansas, but if this gets worse, we’re stopping.”
“Not a lot of hotels out here.”
“There are enough.”
We glare at each other, tension ratcheting up.
I’ve worked through countless migraines, and even when I’ve accepted defeat and slunk into bed to sleep it off, it’s always been something I’ve done alone, even as a kid.
I don’t need Wes to fuss over me. He didn’t come out here to while away the afternoon in a hotel room.
“Why are you being so pushy about this?”
“Why didn’t you leave me on the side of the road?” he counters without hesitation.
We’re so close we’re breathing the same air, the flecks of blue in his gray eyes bright in the sunlight.
If either of us so much as shifted our weight, our lips would touch.
His gaze drops to my mouth, and for a second I think he’s going to kiss me.
I want him to kiss me. It would be a great distraction from the increasingly sharp pain building behind my eyes.
Wes clears his throat and backs off, scrubbing a palm over his face and staring out at the field with his back to me. “If you really want to stay, I’m not going to force you to do anything,” he says, his voice nearly lost on the wind. “But I really think you should take the day off.”
“But the contest—”
“Will be there tomorrow.” He turns back to me with worry tightening his mouth. “You and I both know that this storm”—he jerks his thumb over his shoulder—“isn’t a Nature Shots cover in the making.”
I swallow hard, a fresh wave of nausea rising as the wind shifts and the acrid scent of manure stings my nose. As much as I don’t want him to be, Wes is right. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
I nod slowly, closing my eyes and trying to breathe through my mouth. “Yeah. I’d like to try to get at least a couple of hours north, but it’s getting worse.”
Wes guides me back into the car with gentle hands. “Do you have meds with you?”
“Yeah. Top pouch of my camera bag.” They make me tired and loopy, otherwise I would have already taken them, but there’s no real point now in pretending I’m going to be getting anything done today.
He grabs the plastic bag with my prescription meds, hands me a fresh bottle of water, and watches with a furrowed brow as I swallow.
We make it two hours before I’m throwing up on the side of the road, just barely holding it in until the car comes to a complete stop. This time, when Wes says we’re done, I don’t argue.
Wes books us two rooms at the closest hotel he can find while I brush my teeth with bottled water on the side of the road and try not to die of embarrassment. “You can just drop me off and go without me,” I croak, my voice hoarse. “This doesn’t have to completely ruin your day too.”
“My day isn’t ruined.” He leans around me, opens the passenger door, and nods toward the car. “Hotel is twenty minutes out. Almost there.”
The meds aren’t exactly working, but they are making me tired. I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know, Wes is extracting me from my seat belt. “I can do it,” I protest despite my clumsy fingers. He backs off—at least until I go for my bags.
“I’ll come back out for them.” He slips an arm around my waist and tugs me into his side. “Let’s get you out of the sun.”
I want to argue. I have plenty of practice at fighting through migraines when I need to. But his embrace feels good, the heat of him bleeding through our clothes as we walk-shuffle into the cool interior of the lobby.
I sink gratefully onto one of the small couches and close my eyes while he goes to check us in. There must be a pool nearby, the high-pitched shrieking laughter of kids carrying through the lobby and making me wince. I’m still focusing on taking long, deep breaths when Wes returns.
“C’mon, darlin’,” he says softly, tucking a room key envelope into his back pocket. “Is there anything I can get you?”
I shake my head and instantly regret it when my vision goes dark around the edges. It takes all my effort to hold it together long enough to get into the elevator, up two floors, and down the hall to my room.
Moaning with relief at the blessed darkness, I stagger toward the bed. I’m dimly aware of Wes tugging off my shoes and putting the room key down on the nightstand. He murmurs something about bags, the car keys jingling in his hand, and then I hear footsteps and the snick of the door closing.
What feels like moments later, I blink awake and squint into the semidarkness. A Wes-shaped shadow comes into focus near the window. “Go back to sleep,” he says quietly, right before doing something that sounds like ripping tape.
I sit up gingerly and blink in the dim room. The meds must finally be doing something, because I can almost open my eyes fully despite the throbbing pain. “What room are you in?”
“Not ready yet. I’ll hang out downstairs for a bit after I finish this.”
I frown at the mention of the uncomfortable couch in the lobby.
Wes has done so much for me today that it doesn’t feel right to banish him to concrete furniture.
“If you don’t mind the dark you can just stay here.
” I watch as he rips off another long piece of tape and then presses the curtain to the wall, covering the light gaps to make the room even darker. “Where did you find tape?”
“Hardware store. It’s painter’s tape, so it will come right off.”
I can’t blame the migraine for the way my throat goes tight. No one has ever gone out of their way like this for me. Most of the time when I’ve admitted to having a migraine, the men I’ve dated have all but rolled their eyes and told me to take some ibuprofen.
Wes finishes taping off the curtains. It’s blessedly dark in the room now, just enough ambient light from the various LEDs on electronics and the cracked bathroom door to illuminate the worry creasing his brow.
He sits down on the edge of the mattress and sets the tape next to my room key.
“You might feel better without the braid.”
I start to reach for the elastic, but he bats my hand away with a light touch and unravels my hair before running his fingers through the dusty strands.
A sigh escapes when he does it again. “That feels nice,” I mumble into the pillow.
I don’t care that I shouldn’t be letting him get this close when I feel too awful to keep him at arm’s length. It’s too good to stop him.
“You sure you don’t want me to let you sleep? They said it could be another hour or two before my room is ready.”
I want Wes to stay right where he is, running his fingers through my hair in soothing strokes, but I can’t make myself ask for it. Not with words, anyway. When he starts to pull his hand away, I wrap my fingers around his wrist and tug his hand back toward my head.
“Guess I’m staying, then.” His soft laugh is laced with what I swear is affection. “Here, this will be more comfortable.”
Wes kicks off his shoes and climbs onto the bed next to me before tugging my head onto his lap, my hair fanned out over his thighs.
The king-size bed gives us plenty of room for the awkward position, but I forget all about that when he starts to gently knead the rigid muscles along the back of my neck and shoulders.
“Does your neck usually lock up like this?”
“Sometimes. This is a bad one,” I whisper into his leg, curling closer. My eyelids are heavy, dragging me down as he delicately works the tension out of my neck. It feels so good that I have to bite back a sigh.
“Anything else I can do?”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing.” I relax into him despite distant alarm.
The voice in the back of my head protests against Wes witnessing me like this—a lump of a human whose own brain launches attacks against her—but I can’t bring myself to push him away.
Not when he’s expertly loosening the muscles in my neck.
Not when it feels so good to not have to do every last little thing for myself for once.
Even if I’m all too aware that the next time this happens, when I’m alone again, it will be that much harder.
But I’m still wrapped in Wes’s giant hoodie, finally warm, and too tired to do what I should. With the comforting weight of his arm on my shoulders, I let the beckoning blackness have me.