Chapter 6
SIX
NORTH
This is not my first seizure, but this is my first Leo seizure. He doesn’t have epilepsy—I know that much. Easton told me it was a side effect of his brain injury from his accident. I don’t know the exact details other than it was a hiking trip gone wrong, and Leo’s husband didn’t survive.
Easton’s explained everything Leo has to deal with now, but I haven’t been around him enough to see any of the stuff Easton worries about.
Until now, apparently.
I’d been about ready to punch him in the face for leaning on my buzzer, but then I realized something wasn’t right. He was having horrible aphasia, and his words were coming out slurred and wrong.
And now there’s a container of some kind of pasta at my feet, Leo’s still in my arms, and I have just enough sense to time the seizure so I know whether or not to call dispatch and get an ambulance over here.
Thank god it only lasts a minute. I’m in a crouch as I hold him against me, and my thighs are burning, but his limbs suddenly go lax, and I stare down at him as his breathing begins to even out.
Then his eyes start to flutter. When they open, they’re not focused.
“Leo? Hey, can you hear me?”
He says nothing.
Luckily, I work out a lot because this job means having to lift furniture, sometimes beams that are on fire, and too often grown adult humans, so it doesn’t take much to hoist Leo into my arms and walk him inside.
I’m not sure he’s going to appreciate being in my shitty little house when he comes to, but I’m also not about to cart him up the street back to his place in this state.
And considering the guy can’t possibly hate me more than he does now, I’m not going to lose sleep over dropping him on my couch, which is arguably the most uncomfortable bit of furniture I own.
And it’s also the oldest.
I nabbed it from Mrs. Harold’s estate sale the week I moved in. She spent years letting her little shih tzus sleep on it, so it also smells like dog.
“Okay,” I murmur as Leo lets out a soft groan.
I press my fingers to his neck. He’s tachy, but his heart rate isn’t high enough for me to be worried.
His head tilts to the side, where I can see only his left eye is open.
I check his pupil, which seems to be responding to the light coming in through the window, and then he focuses on me.
“Hi.”
He blinks, and his mouth moves, but no sound comes out.
I press my fingers to his neck again and breathe out a sigh of relief that his pulse is starting to slow down. “I’m gonna go get my little kit, okay? I need to make sure you’re doing alright. Don’t move.”
If Leo were in his right mind, he’d probably cuss me out for saying something that moronic. His limbs are like the spaghetti in the container I dropped, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t remember up from down just yet.
I watch for another moment, almost afraid to leave him, but I’m not doing him any good sitting here. My kit’s in the kitchen under the cabinet by the table, so it takes me all of ten seconds to run in there and grab it.
On my way back, I eye the open front door, then dart over and grab the fallen pasta before closing it with a hard slam to ensure the wind won’t rip it open again. When I turn the corner, Leo is still on the couch, his arms limp at his sides, both eyes now open.
“Can you tell me who you are?” I ask as I prop my ass on the coffee table and take his hand. I have a tiny pulse oximeter, which does a fairly decent job, even compared to the equipment we use at work. I snap it on his finger, and he swallows heavily.
“Leo Harris,” he rasps.
“And me?”
“North…” He stops and frowns. I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t know my last name or because he’s just now realizing who he’s with.
“Wright,” I finish for him. “That’s fine, I won’t count that one against you.”
His hand twitches, and I wonder if he’s trying to find the muscles to flip me off.
Reaching into the kit, I pull out my little penlight and hold him by the chin. “This is going to suck.”
He doesn’t move as I flash it across his eyes, and luckily, both of his pupils are properly responsive. I click the light off and drop it in the bag, next to the loose pile of Band-Aids I should buy a case for.
“What am I doing here?” he asks softly.
“I don’t actually know. Uh…you had some food with you, and you seemed kind of pissed off. Then you had a seizure.”
His eyes go wide, and he sucks in a breath before grabbing his crotch. It takes me a second to realize why he’s doing that, and I immediately soften.
“No. You didn’t, ah—I mean, you’re fine. Nothing happened.” I really have had enough piss and shit to last me a lifetime, but in this case, I wouldn’t have thought twice. It’s not like he could have helped it, but I also know he would have been mortified to have it happen in front of me.
He lets his hand flop back down, and his cheeks turn a deep, mottled pink. “Thanks,” he whispers.
I nod, not really sure what to do now. “I should, ah, get you some water.” Standing up, I start to step away, but he grabs my wrist and holds tight.
“No.”
“Leo…”
“Just…can you wait a second? Sometimes the seizures happen in clusters.” He sounds all shattered, and as much as the guy has been a massive dick to me since the second we met, I can’t help but soften.
Dropping back to the table, I shift my hand, and his fingers loosen, but they don’t let go. Instead, he slides a touch down to my palm and begins to trace the lines over my knuckles and in the space between my fingers.
I don’t think he knows he’s doing it. I doubt his brain is fully back online because there’s no way he’d be touching me like this. Not with this kind of tenderness. Not with this sort of need.
My dick twitches in my pants, and I feel like a fucking monster because here he is, recovering from a seizure, and I’m thinking about taking my cock out and rubbing it against his.
Stop it, North. Get a fucking grip. You will not fuck the man who hates you. This is not how you’re going to finally, finally, lose your virginity.
I am not that desperate.
“You’re staring,” he says softly. His fingers spasm against mine, but he still doesn’t let go. “Does my face look weird? Is it droopy, or—”
“You look perfect,” I say, then blush. “I mean fine. You look fine.” He throws a look of severe doubt at me, and I roll my eyes. “You might think I’m the world’s biggest dipshit, but I’m also a trained EMT. I wouldn’t let you sit here twiddling your thumbs if I thought you were having a stroke.”
He blinks slowly. “How long was I seizing for?”
“Barely over a minute,” I tell him. He turns my wrist and I let my hand fall on my knee, palm up. He looks down at it, then touches the scar that goes from my middle finger across my palm, down to my thumb. “It’s not a war wound.”
He frowns.
“I got this trying to cut a bagel.”
His lips twitch, and then he bursts into laughter. “A bagel?”
I pull back, huffing and hot in the face, though there’s a huge part of me that doesn’t mind that I made him laugh. I don’t think I’ve seen him so much as smirk since I met him.
“Fuck off. Bagels are dangerous. And I was twenty, okay? My brain was still, you know, cooking or whatever.”
He nods and swipes a hand down his face. “Sure.”
“Look, my mom was home from her first stint in rehab, and I was just trying to take care of her, but I was sleep deprived and scared she was going to fall off the wagon.”
At that, he freezes. “Oh. I…sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Shit. Why am I telling him this? I wave him off. “It’s fine. Really.” The look on his face right now is dripping with fucking pity. “My mom’s good now, and so am I, in spite of my horrific bagel injuries.”
He nods and glances away, and silence settles so long it turns awkward. “Well, um…I should, uh…probably go.”
“I’ll take you back,” I say, slapping my thighs before standing up. I appreciate that he’s letting this all go instead of giving me the third degree about my past.
“Oh. No, thank you.” The words are polite, but his tone isn’t.
I snort. “Do you seriously think I’m going to let you walk home after a seizure?”
“I feel fine—”
“I’m sure you do, but that’s still not going to happen. You said they can happen in clusters, so I literally can’t send you off on your own. I can walk you, drive you, or call your brother.”
He stares, and I meet his gaze steadily. He might be bossy and rude, but he’s not winning this one.
After a short eternity of getting lost in his honey-brown irises with the thick black ring around the edges, he blinks, and I startle. Fuck, why does he have to be so pretty?
He’s different from his brother. Easton could be on magazines. Leo is more like a forest spirit, hiding amongst the trees, trying to lure you into his fae rings.
I try not to seem so obvious as he sits up and sets his feet on the floor.
“A ride will be nice. Thank you.”
I nod, then bend down to grab his pasta. “Here. You dropped this.”
“Oh. No.” He shakes his head. “That’s yours.”
I frown. “Uh…no it isn’t. This is definitely not mine.”
Whatever’s inside of here is an abomination deep from the pits of hell. Even if I were drunk, stoned, and suffering some kind of neurological event, I wouldn’t make pasta this horrendous. It’s swimming in some kind of milky juice.
“No. I mean,” he groans, sounding frustrated, and passes a hand down his face again. “I made it for you. Fuck, that’s why I’m here.” He sounds almost surprised by his own words. “I made you pasta.”
I yank the container back, holding it against my chest like the abomination pasta is suddenly precious. “You made me pasta? Why?”
“Because you sent crows to my house.”
I blink at him. Shit. Maybe he is having a stroke. I move to sit down, but Leo quickly waves me off.