14. Kiara
— ? —
Kiara
The thermometer beeps. I read the number and my blood goes cold.
“Mama.” Kieran’s voice is weak, scratchy. “I feel bad.”
“I know, sweetheart. I know.”
I press my hand to his forehead. His skin is flushed and hot, burning under my palm. His eyes are glassy, unfocused. He hasn’t eaten anything since he started feeling sick, and now his temperature is climbing despite the medicine I gave him an hour ago.
“Is Victor okay?” he asks.
“Victor is fine. He’s right here.” I press the stuffed velociraptor into his arms. He clutches it weakly, his small fingers barely gripping the felt. “He wants you to rest.”
“Okay.” His eyes flutter closed. “Okay, Victor.”
I leave the room and close the door. I stand in the hallway with my hand over my mouth, trying not to panic.
This isn’t the first time Kieran has been sick. Children get sick. It’s normal. But his temperature is higher than it has ever been, and he’s so small, and I’m so tired of doing this alone.
I’ve done this alone for four years. Every fever, every nightmare, every scraped knee and stomach bug and ear infection.
I’ve held him through all of it, made every decision, carried every fear by myself.
And most of the time I manage. Most of the time I convince myself that I’m enough, that he doesn’t need anyone else, that we’re fine on our own.
But right now, standing in this hallway with my sick child behind that door, I don’t feel fine. I feel terrified. I feel exhausted. I feel the weight of every sleepless night and every worried hour pressing down on me.
I pick up my phone. I dial before doubt can stop me.
Jensen answers immediately. “Kiara?”
“Kieran is sick.”
“How sick?” I hear movement on the other end, the sound of him standing up, grabbing keys.
“His fever is high. Higher than I’ve seen. I gave him medicine but it’s not working and he’s so tired and I don’t...” My voice breaks. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m coming.”
“You don’t have to...”
“I’m already leaving.” A door slams. “Tell me what you need.”
“I don’t know.” I lean against the wall, sliding down until I’m sitting on the floor. “I don’t know what I need. I just needed to hear someone else’s voice.”
“You have my voice. You have me.” His breathing is quick, like he’s running. “I’ll be there soon.”
He hangs up. I sit on the floor with my phone pressed to my chest, waiting.
The time passes slowly. I check on Kieran every few moments. His fever hasn’t broken. He drifts in and out of sleep, mumbling to Victor about dinosaurs and the museum and the tall man who knows about pterosaurs.
I stand in his doorway and watch him breathe. My chest aches with how much I love him, with how terrified I am of losing him, with how desperately I wish I didn’t have to face this fear alone.
The buzzer sounds. I run to let Jensen in.
He appears at the door with a paper bag clutched in one hand. His hair is wild, like he didn’t stop to comb it. His shirt is buttoned wrong. His face is pale with worry.
“How is he?”
“The same. Maybe worse.” I step aside to let him in. “I don’t know. I can’t tell anymore.”
He moves past me into the apartment, heading straight for Kieran’s room. I follow close behind, my heart pounding.
Jensen kneels beside the bed. He touches Kieran’s forehead gently, his large hand almost covering our son’s small face.
“Hey, buddy.”
Kieran’s eyes flutter open. “Tall man.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I’m sick.”
“I heard. That’s why I brought supplies.” He opens the paper bag and pulls out ice packs, electrolyte drinks, a new thermometer still in its packaging. “This thermometer is more accurate. The one your mama has is probably reading slightly low.”
I stare at him. “How do you know what thermometer I have?”
“I noticed it in your bathroom when I was here last week.” He tears open the packaging. “I noticed it was an older model. The digital ones can drift over time.”
He noticed. He remembered. He brought a better one.
I watch as he takes Kieran’s temperature. The number that flashes on the screen is even higher than before. My stomach drops.
“We need to get the fever down,” Jensen says. His voice is calm, steady, like he’s done this a hundred times. “Tepid bath. Not cold. Just slightly below body temperature. It’ll help bring him down faster than the medicine alone.”
“I know how to give a bath.”
“I know you do.” He looks up at me, and there’s no judgment in his eyes. Only concern. “I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just telling you what I’m going to do.”
He scoops Kieran up, blankets and Victor and all. He carries him to the bathroom like he weighs nothing.
“Start the water,” he tells me over his shoulder. “I’ll hold him.”
I turn on the faucet. I adjust the temperature until it’s lukewarm, testing it against the inside of my wrist the way my mother taught me. Jensen lowers Kieran into the water, clothes and all.
“It’s cold,” Kieran whimpers. His small body shivers.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Jensen’s voice is soft, soothing. “We need to bring your temperature down. It’s only for a little while.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know. But sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. That’s how we get better.”
“Victor is getting wet.”
“Victor can handle it.” Jensen brushes the wet hair back from Kieran’s forehead. “He’s a velociraptor. They were very adaptable.”
Kieran almost smiles. Almost.
I kneel beside the tub, running water over his forehead, his arms, his chest. Jensen holds him steady, one arm supporting his back, the other hand stroking his hair. We work in silence, the only sound the splash of water and Kieran’s occasional whimper.
“You’re very brave,” Jensen tells him.
“I don’t feel brave. I feel bad.”
“Brave doesn’t mean you feel good. Brave means you keep going even when you feel bad.”
Kieran considers this, his feverish eyes fixed on Jensen’s face.
“Then I’ll be brave.”
“I know you will.”
We keep him in the bath until the water loses its cool. Then Jensen lifts him out, and I wrap him in the biggest towel we have, rubbing gently to dry him without chilling him. We carry him back to his room together and change him into fresh pajamas.
His temperature has dropped a little. Not enough, but some.
“The medicine should kick in soon,” Jensen says. “Combined with the bath, it should bring him down to normal.”
“Should isn’t the same as will.”
“No. But should is the best we have right now.”
We sit beside Kieran’s bed, one on each side. Jensen holds Kieran’s small hand in his larger one. I stroke his hair, feeling the damp strands slip through my fingers.
We wait.
The time passes. Kieran sleeps fitfully, waking to cry and then drifting off again. Each time I take his temperature, the number is a little lower. The medicine is working. The bath helped.
But the fear doesn’t leave me. The bone-deep terror of being responsible for this small person, of knowing that his survival depends on my choices, of being the only barrier between him and a world that could take him from me.
“He’s going to be okay,” Jensen says quietly.
“You don’t know that.”
“Look at him.” He nods toward Kieran. “His color is better. His breathing is steadier. The fever is coming down.”
“What if it goes back up?”
“Then we deal with it. Together.”
Together. The word lands in my chest and stays there.
Kieran stirs. His eyes open, clearer than before.
“Mama?”
“I’m here, sweetheart.”
He turns his head and sees Jensen. “You’re still here.”
“I’m still here.”
“I feel better.” He yawns, a huge yawn that stretches his whole face. “Victor says thank you.”
“Tell Victor he’s welcome.”
Kieran’s eyes close again. His breathing deepens into real sleep, not the fitful drifting of fever.
I take his temperature one more time. Normal. The fever has broken.
“He’s okay,” I whisper.
We sit there for a while longer, watching him sleep. His chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm. His fingers are curled loosely around Victor. He looks peaceful. He looks safe.
Jensen stands up slowly, carefully, trying not to make any noise. He reaches down and takes my hand, pulling me gently to my feet.
“Come on,” he whispers. “Let him rest.”
He leads me out of the room and into the hallway. I start to move toward the kitchen, but he stops me. He turns me around so my back is to him, and his hands come up to rest on my shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking care of you.” His thumbs press into the knots at the base of my neck. “You’re carrying so much tension. You’ve been up all night.”
I should tell him to stop. But his hands are warm and strong, and the pressure feels so good, and I’m so tired.
“That’s it,” he murmurs as I let my head drop forward. “Just breathe.”
His fingers work into my muscles, finding the knots of stress and fear and exhaustion that have built up over years, not just tonight. I feel myself softening under his touch, feel the tightness in my shoulders slowly releasing.
“You know what I used to think about?” I say quietly. “On the bad nights. When he was sick or scared or wouldn’t sleep. When I was so tired I couldn’t see straight.”
“What?”
“You.” The word slips out before I can catch it. “I used to lie in my bed and wish you were there. The one I fell in love with. The one who used to rub my shoulders just like this when I’d had a hard day.”
His hands still on my shoulders. I hear his breath catch. “Kiara.”
“I know it’s stupid. I know I was supposed to hate you. And I did hate you, during the day, when I was busy and distracted. But at night, when everything was quiet and I was alone...” I swallow hard. “I missed you so much it felt like dying.”
He turns me around to face him. His eyes are wet.
“I missed you too.” His voice is rough. “Every single night. I’d lie in my bed and wonder where you were. If you were okay. If you were thinking about me.” He cups my face in his hands. “I never stopped loving you. Not for one second.”
“Jensen.”
“I’m here now.” He presses his forehead to mine. “I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to do this alone ever again.”
He kisses my forehead. Soft. Gentle. A promise.
“Let me check on him one more time,” he says. “Then I want to hold you. Just hold you. If that’s okay.”
I nod. I can’t speak.
He goes back to Kieran’s room. I follow and stand in the doorway, watching.
Jensen crosses to the bed and looks down at our sleeping son. He reaches out and brushes the hair back from Kieran’s forehead, the same gesture I’ve made a thousand times. Then he bends down and presses a kiss to Kieran’s temple.
“Goodnight, buddy,” he whispers. “I love you.”
He pulls the covers up around Kieran’s shoulders, tucks Victor more securely under his arm, adjusts the pillow.
When he straightens up and turns back to me, there are tears on his cheeks.
I reach out and take his hand. I pull him out of the room, into the hallway, and I push the door almost closed behind us.
Then I kiss him.
This kiss is desperate. Hungry. Five years of loneliness and grief and want pouring out of me and into him. I grab the front of his shirt and pull him closer, and he makes a sound against my mouth, surprised and wanting, and his arms come around me and crush me against his chest.
I feel everything. The heat of his body through our clothes. The pounding of his heart against my breast. The strength of his arms wrapped around me. And lower, pressing against my stomach, the hard length of him, unmistakable, undeniable.
He wants me. Even now, even after everything, he wants me.
And God help me, I want him too. I want him so badly I can’t breathe. I want his hands on my skin and his mouth on my body and his weight pressing me into the mattress. I want to forget everything except the way he feels inside me. I want to lose myself in him and find myself at the same time.
I pull back just far enough to speak. “My room,” I say. “Now.”
His eyes are dark, his breathing ragged. “Are you sure?”
I take his hand and place it over my heart. He can feel it racing. “I have never been more sure of anything.”
I lead him down the hall.