Chapter 3
three
Dani
I found him tangled in the sheets, hair damp against his forehead, mumbling something that wasn't quite words. The lamp on the nightstand cast a soft, golden pool across the bed. Luke lay against the pillows, shirtless, skin flushed with the fever that had crept in sometime after midnight.
His chest rose and fell in uneven rhythms. Every few minutes his brow furrowed, and I reached for the cool cloth again, pressing it gently to his forehead, his temples, the side of his neck.
His hand found mine in the dim light. His fingers were clumsy at first, then tightened with surprising strength. He didn’t open his eyes, but his voice came low and rough, like it had been dragged up from somewhere deep.
“Please, don't leave me.”
Something in me shifted into a different gear entirely. Not the soft, complicated one from the kitchen. The clinical one.
"Luke. Look at me."
His eyes opened, glassy, and for a second I didn't think he saw me at all.
"Dad?"
My stomach dropped for an entirely different reason than the one I'd braced for. "No. It's Dani. You're at Eli's."
He blinked, and the charm was just gone, stripped off by fever, and what was underneath looked a lot like a scared kid.
I made myself run the checklist instead of sitting with that. Fever this far out from the injury wasn't concussion behavior. It could be a virus he'd been fighting before he ever went airborne off that couch arm.
It could be something worse. I needed his temperature trending. I needed to rule out a wound infection at the cut site, and if either of those went the wrong direction in the next hour, no promise to Wyatt or Eli was going to keep me from calling an ambulance.
I checked the cut first. Clean, no redness, no heat under the bandage. Not that.
"Have you been sick the last few days? Before the party. Sore throat, chills, anything?"
"Throat," he mumbled. "Tuesday. I thought it was nothing."
Viral, then, probably. Riding in on top of the concussion like bad luck stacking on bad luck. Not nothing, but not the emergency I'd half-braced for either.
I let one slow breath out and reached for the cool cloth on the nightstand, some of the clinical iron in my spine easing enough to let the other thing back in.
“I'm sorry. I must have scared you.”
"No, you didn't. Sometimes fevers can drag us back down memory lane," I said, wringing it out.
His hand found mine, fingers too hot, faintly unsteady, and I froze. "Thank you, Dani."
I stayed very still. The cloth in my other hand dripped cold water onto the sheet. I didn’t move to wipe it.
And he talked. Fever-loose in a way I doubted he ever let himself do if he were sober.
He spoke about his father's death. His father had been the person he felt closest to.
He had introduced him to hockey. His death had shaped the person he became.
He'd started doing anything reckless enough to make the noise in his chest go quiet for a few seconds.
It started to make sense. His recklessness was a way to numb the pain. The cliff jumps. Fistfights he didn't need to be in. Backflips off furniture that had nothing to do with fun and everything to do with needing something louder than grief. Tears fell from my eyes before I could stop it.
"Please don't cry, Dani," he whispered. His large palm cupped my face as he gently wiped away the tears. I stared into his eyes, seeing everything he’d kept bottled up.
I couldn't wrap my head around the loneliness he must be feeling.
I thought of Lily, of what it would mean if she had no one except me.
I didn't want to imagine my baby alone if anything were to happen to me. Of course, Maya would step up without a doubt, but it wouldn't be the same for Lily.
His hand tightened around mine. "How do you do it? Alone, with Lily. Doesn't it wreck you, being the only one?"
I hadn't expected the question to land the way it did, straight through the center of me, past every wall I kept up specifically for nights like this.
"Every day, a little," I admitted. "Her father was an athlete too. Promised the world. Left before she turned one." I dabbed the cloth along his hairline, needing something to do with my hands. "So yes. I understand needing to feel something loud enough to drown out what you can't fix."
His eyes found mine, fever-bright and, for a second, entirely clear.
"He was an idiot," Luke said. "Whoever he was. His eyes drifted shut.”
"Yeah." Quiet. "He was."
“I see you with Lily,” he continued, eyes still closed, voice cracking at the edges. “The way you fight for her. The way you look at her like she’s the only thing that matters. I never had that after he died. My mom tried, but she was drowning too. I just...”
His thumb brushed over my knuckles. Slow. Almost reverent.
“You’re a good mom, Dani. You’re the kind of parent I hope I can be someday. As a father.”
The words landed heavy in my chest. I had spent years building walls against men who said pretty things and left when life got hard. But this wasn’t pretty. This was raw. This was Luke without the grin, without the cocky armor. Just a man burning up with fever and truth.
I swallowed hard. “You should rest.”
His eyes opened then. Not fully focused, but clear enough. Blue and burning. He looked at me like I was the only solid thing in the room.
“Stay,” he whispered. “Just for a minute. Please, let me hold you.”
I told myself it was only to monitor him. Only because his temperature was still too high. Only because he looked so lost.
I set the cloth aside and lay down beside him, careful to keep space between us. The bed dipped. His body heat radiated against my side. For a long moment we just breathed. The house was silent around us. Lily slept down the hall. The world outside this room felt very far away.
Luke turned his head toward me. His hand found mine again, threading our fingers together. His skin was fever-warm, almost too warm, but his grip was gentle.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.
I let out a shaky laugh. “You’re delirious.”
“Maybe.” His thumb traced slow circles on the back of my hand. “Doesn’t make it less true.”
The silence stretched. Heavy with everything we weren’t saying. I could feel the pull between us, the same spark that had hit me when our eyes met across the living room earlier. Only now it was quieter. Deeper. Dangerous.
I turned my head. Our faces were close. Close enough that I could see the faint scar above his eyebrow from some old hockey injury. Close enough to smell the faint trace of soap and sweat and fever on his skin.
Luke lifted his free hand. Slow. Hesitant. His fingers brushed my cheek, then slid into my hair, cupping the back of my head with a tenderness that made my heart stutter.
“Dani,” he whispered.
I didn’t pull away.
He guided me closer until our noses touched. His breath ghosted across my lips. For one heartbeat we stayed like that, suspended, uncertain. Then he closed the distance.
He kissed my forehead, my cheekbone, the corner of my jaw, slow enough that I felt each separate press of his mouth like its own small event, and something in me that had been locked down tight for years came loose all at once.
I kissed him back, pouring everything into the kiss.
He returned the kiss with equal strength, careful giving way to something rougher, more urgent.
His lips moved against mine with a gentleness that surprised me. I felt the tremor in his hand where it rested against my neck. The heat of his fevered skin. The way his breath hitched when I kissed him back.
Something inside me surrendered.
I shifted closer. My hand found his chest, palm flat over his racing heart.
His skin was burning. Smooth. The hard planes of muscle shifting under my touch as he rolled toward me.
Our legs tangled. The sheet slipped down around his waist. I felt every inch of him pressed against me, solid and warm and real.
The kiss deepened. It felt like we had both been starving for something we didn't know how to name. His tongue brushed mine and I made a small sound against his mouth. He answered with a low groan that vibrated through his chest and into mine.
We rolled slowly. I ended up half on top of him, my leg draped over his hip. His hands slid down my back, mapping the curve of my spine, the dip of my waist, exploring. Like he wanted to memorize every inch of me.
I pulled back just enough to breathe. Our foreheads rested together. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, but not from the concussion this time.
“I don't know if this is a dream,” he whispered, voice rough.
I let out a shaky laugh. “I'm not sure either.”
His hand came up to cup my face. His thumb brushed my lower lip. “If it is… don't wake me up yet.”
I kissed him again. Harder this time. Deeper.
His arms wrapped around me, pulling me fully on top of him.
I felt the hard length of him pressed between us, hot even through the thin fabric of his shorts.
My hips rolled without thinking, seeking friction.
He groaned into my mouth, the sound raw and desperate.
We moved together like that for long minutes.
Slow, rolling movements. Hands learning each other.
Mouths tasting. I kissed his jaw, his throat, the hollow beneath his ear.
He tilted his head back with a sigh that sounded like surrender.
His fingers slipped under the hem of my shirt, tracing bare skin, reverent and careful.
“Dani,” he breathed against my neck. “What have you done to me?”
I didn't know what he had done to me either. I sat up, straddling his hips, and pulled my shirt over my head. His eyes darkened as they moved over me. Not just hunger. Something softer. Something that made my chest ache.
“You're stunning,” he whispered.
I leaned down and kissed him again. Deep and slow. His hands slid up my back, unclasped my bra, let it fall away. When his palms cupped my breasts, thumbs brushing over my nipples, I gasped into his mouth. He swallowed the sound, answering with a low groan of his own.
We rolled again. This time he was above me.
His weight felt perfect. Grounding. His mouth moved down my throat, across my collarbone, lower.
When he took one nipple into his mouth, tongue circling, I arched off the bed with a soft cry.
He switched sides, giving the same slow, devastating attention until I was trembling beneath him.
His hand slid down my stomach, fingertips light, and paused at the waistband of my sleep shorts.
I caught his wrist.
He stilled instantly, lifting his head to look at me, breathing hard, nothing but question in his face.
"Not tonight," I said, voice unsteady. "You have a fever. I have..." I gestured helplessly between us. "Rules. I'm supposed to have rules."
Something shifted in his expression—want still there, banked but not gone, threaded through now with something gentler. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"I'm not going to argue with the person monitoring my vitals." A ghost of his usual grin. "Bad survival strategy."
I laughed, breathless, and the tension between us didn't disappear so much as settle into something warmer, less urgent. He gathered me back against his chest instead, one arm banded around me, his heartbeat still fast under my ear.
We stayed like that a long time. Tangled together, skin against skin, nothing below the waist but the plain fact of wanting each other and choosing not to, not yet.
His fingers traced slow, aimless patterns along my spine.
I felt his breathing gradually even out beneath my palm, fever still burning low under his skin, want still humming low under mine.
Reality crept in slowly anyway. The weight of what we'd already done. The lines we'd already blurred. The fact that I was his nurse. That he was a hockey player. That I had a daughter sleeping down the hall who had already lost too much.
I sat up too fast. The cool air of the room hit every place his hands had just been, and clarity came with it, unwelcome and complete.
"This can't happen again."
Luke's eyes opened, fever-glazed but tracking well enough to catch exactly what I meant. "Dani…"
"You're my patient. I'm supposed to be monitoring you, not…" I gestured helplessly between us. "That was the fever talking. For both of us."
"Was it?"
"It has to be." I stood, smoothing my shirt with hands that weren't quite steady. "By morning I want us to pretend like this didn't happen. Please, Luke."
He watched me for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind the fading fever-bright of his eyes.
"Okay," he said finally. "If that's what you want."
It wasn't. That was the terrifying part.
When I slipped out of bed a few minutes later and pulled my clothes back on, I felt his eyes on me the whole time.
I took his temperature one last time. 100.4, coming down, the number itself a small mercy. I logged it on my phone with hands that gave nothing away, and walked to the door.
I paused there. Didn't turn around. Every part of me wanted to turn around and crawl back into his arms.
I didn't.
I stepped into the hallway instead and pulled the door shut behind me, soft, final, and stood in the dark a long moment before I trusted myself to walk back to my own room.
Whatever this was, I told myself, it ended tonight.
I had a feeling this was only the beginning.