Chapter Eight
Something cool pressed against my forehead and pulled me awake.
I blinked slowly. My eyelids heavy. Everything was fuzzy and disoriented. Fever-slick sweat trickled into my eyes. I blinked it back, and there was Dawson sitting beside me, cross-legged on the floor. His body was hunched over the mattress. His calloused hand wiped the washcloth against my skin.
The last thing I remembered was collapsing on the floor. I didn’t remember Dawson coming back or how I ended up on the mattress again. Did he find the Kubotan? I wanted to check, but I could barely move my head off the pillow. My entire body ached.
His mask was gone, and he was naked faced.
His brow was furrowed in concentration. He smoothed the cloth in slow motions back and forth across my temple with gentle care.
His fingers lingered in my hair. He brushed back the curls plastered to my face and tucked them behind my ear the way my mother used to do when I was little.
“You’re burning up,” he murmured softly.
I couldn’t talk. I just nodded. Or maybe I didn’t.
All I knew was the cool rag felt so good. Too good. My body leaned into him even as my mind screamed at me to pull away, but I couldn’t. Not from the first bit of relief I’d experienced in days. It was only seconds before the fever pulled me back under.
I drifted in and out of fitful sleep. Dawson was there every single time I opened my eyes.
His face hovering above me. A wet cloth on my forehead.
Placing ice cubes in my armpits. His voice whispering kind things.
Telling me it was going to be okay. Sometimes he was humming underneath his breath.
I slipped in and out. Unable to tell if it was real or part of the fever.
Was he actually tending to me or had my mind stitched his face into my dreams to create a safe space?
But there he was again, close enough that I could feel the heat rolling off his body and smell the pungent sweat on his skin. His gaze stayed fixed on me. For the first time, I saw something human in it.
“You’re up,” he said, brushing the damp hair from my forehead when he noticed me staring at him.
I blinked hard. Still disoriented. “You took your mask off.”
His cheeks flushed red like I’d caught him doing something shameful. “I did.”
It was strange seeing him like this. Just a man. His pale skin blotchy and days-old stubble shadowing his jaw. Dark eyes rimmed red. He looked like someone who’d just come off a double shift, not someone who had dragged me into the woods and tied me to a mattress.
The fever sucked me under again into dreams that didn’t feel like dreams at all.
Just half-lucid flashes jerking me back into childhood memories.
Me running through the sprinklers with my sister.
Both of us squealing with our hair plastered to our faces.
Standing in my high school gym in a navy blue robe that didn’t fit, with my diploma clutched in my fist while I searched the bleachers for my parents’ faces.
When I surfaced again, Dawson was reading to me. His voice was low and halting as he repeated the words of an old John Grisham paperback. Another time I woke to the scrape of a spoon against a bowl. He was crouched beside me, steadying my head with one hand and feeding me soup with the other.
“Open,” he said gently.
I parted my lips, too weak to argue, and he tipped the spoon in. Warm broth slid down my throat. It tasted amazing. Felt even better.
“I used to do this for my daughter when she was sick,” he murmured, almost to himself.
My eyes fixed on him. “You have a daughter?”
He hesitated, then nodded once. “Yeah.” He said her name so quietly—Aurora—I almost missed it. The word left his mouth soft and reverent. It was so different from the voice he used for everything else.
I didn’t ask him anything more, but I didn’t have to. The weight of her name in his voice told me everything. She was important.
The fever pulled me down again.
This time, when I stirred, he was still there. He adjusted the blanket higher over my shoulders and tucked it in around me. His hand brushed my temple once more, lingering just a second too long.
“Go back to sleep,” he whispered. “You’re safe now.”
Safe. How could that be? But my body was too heavy to fight it. My eyes fluttered closed as the warmth of the blanket enveloped me.
And for the first time since he took me, I let myself fall.