Chapter Seventeen
Bodhi
I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking way too much about my night with Honor in the hotel and racking my brain to make sure I didn’t do something to hurt her.
It hadn’t been my intention to spend the night, and the pure panic in her eyes when she saw me in her bed the next morning is something I never wanted to see again.
She didn’t talk to me the entire flight home, even though I knew she was awake, and never responded to my text message asking if she was all right hours after we landed and went our separate ways.
She got into a car with her father and never looked in my direction once as they drove off.
So, there’s a very solid chance that showing up at her house is a bad idea. But when I came to her office to talk to her, Karina told me she went home sick. I don’t know what got into me, but I needed to make sure she was okay.
Sylvia answered the main door and told me I could go to the guest house and wait for Honor to wake up. It was Puck who’d greeted me at the door and guided me to the bedroom where she slept. Almost as soon as I stepped up to the door jamb, she stirred as if she sensed me.
“Bodhi?” Honor rubs her eyes like I’m a mirage. Her voice is raspy, and her face is pale, amping up my concern.
I push off the frame and approach her with caution. “Hey,” I greet, studying her glassy gaze. “Karina said you were sick, and Sylvia told me it was all right if I came in.”
Skepticism is still clear on her face. “And who told you that you could come into my bedroom?”
I flinch. “I followed Puck.”
She makes a face before putting her head back into her pillow like it’s too heavy to hold up. Her voice is muffled by the pillowcase when she says, “He’s a traitor.”
I notice the empty cup by her bedside table and go to the kitchen to pour her a new glass of water. “Here,” I say softly, setting it down within reaching distance.
She mumbles what sounds like “thank you” but I can’t be sure.
My hand cups her forehead, moving her hair out of her face and feeling the warm skin. “I must have given you what Gemma had,” I tell her apologetically.
Her eyes barely crack open. “But you’re not sick.”
“My manager makes me do an IV treatment every two weeks that helps my immune system fend off bugs,” I explain. I’ve always hated them, but they’ve helped me fight off a lot of the shit that gets spread around. “He doesn’t want to risk me not being on the ice.”
I expect some sort of sassy response from her, something teasing about how ridiculous that sounds, but that isn’t what I get. “Why are you here, Bodhi?”
Swallowing, I withdraw my hand and settle on the edge of the mattress beside her. “I was worried about you.”
The tiniest frown curls her lips. “It’s just a cold.”
I shake my head. “Not about that.” Taking a deep breath, I release it slowly and rub the back of my neck. “I thought I’d done something. Crossed a line with you at the hotel. You weren’t speaking to me. You’ve been avoiding me. I thought I hurt you.”
Her eyes widen slightly, and she forces herself to sit up. “You didn’t hurt me. You… We didn’t do anything.”
She has no idea what a relief it is to hear those words come out of her mouth. You didn’t hurt me.
“I needed to come here and apologize. To make sure that you were okay. That I didn’t…
” My Adam’s apple bobs under the disbelieving scrutiny of her glazed, tired eyes.
“The thought of hurting you in any way made me sick to my stomach. I’m sorry for not going back to my room at the hotel.
I meant to. I don’t even remember falling asleep. ”
Honor looks down at her lap. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“It made you uncomfortable,” I point out. She can’t argue with me. I saw the way she looked at me when my alarm went off. If it were my room we were in, she would have bolted. “I owe you an apology for that.”
She clenches her eyes closed. “Bodhi, I don’t need an apology. Nothing happened. I was…caught off guard. That’s all. It’s been a long time since I’ve woken up in bed next to someone.”
I shouldn’t ask but… “How long?”
Some color comes back to her face. “At least a year and a half,” she admits, sounding embarrassed. “Probably more. How sad is that?”
I shrug. “It’s been a long time for me too, honey. Unless you count waking up next to a six-year-old or one of her millions of stuffed animals.”
The image makes her smile, which sends the dark cloud away that’s been hovering over me. “I find that hard to believe. You’re…you.”
It isn’t hard finding someone to spend a night with if I truly wanted to. That’s the thing. I haven’t wanted to. Not since meeting Honor.
“I guess it’s going to take someone special for me to want to share my bed with” is the answer I come up with, causing her eyes to look up at me through her lashes.
This time, she has nothing to say.
“What do you need?” I ask, forcing my hands to remain in my lap. “I have the rest of the afternoon off.”
“What about Gemma?”
“She’s in school this week, so I don’t get her until Friday,” I explain. “I’m yours until then. For as long as you want me.”
I see the way her throat bobs, and I wonder what she’s thinking. Whatever it is, she doesn’t enlighten me. “I need some sleep,” is what she chooses to go with.
Nodding, I gesture to the door. “I’ll leave you be then. Should I—”
“Stay,” she blurts out, halting my steps. “I want…” She stops herself, pausing to bite into her lower lip. “I want you to stay.”
How can five words do so much to me? “I can hang out in the living room until you wake up,” I offer.
To my surprise, she shakes her head. “Is it… Can you stay in here with me?”
Does she mean…?
Wetting my lips, I go to ask when she moves the blankets back in the spot beside her in an invitation.
And despite myself, I don’t think twice before my feet are moving in that direction.
I ignore the fact that she’s a furnace who might actually melt my skin off if she could and settle in beside her fully clothed. We don’t touch. I don’t crowd her space. We simply lay side by side until she drifts off to sleep again.
Watching her with a small smile, I soak in her comfort and let myself close my eyes too.
It’s the best damn sleep I get in I don’t know how long.
*
I’m not foreign to the idea of taking care of someone when they’re sick or bribing them to take medicine when necessary.
With Gemma, all it takes is a new stuffed animal to get her to swallow a dose of cough syrup.
I’m at a minor disadvantage with Honor, because something tells me a Squishmallow isn’t going to convince her to swallow the horse-sized liquid capsule I bring into her room every six hours along with a cup of bone broth for protein since she won’t eat anything else.
However, my arsenal isn’t completely empty.
On day three of playing nurse, after going to practice, showering, and dropping by the bakery that Sylvia gets Honor’s favorite cannoli from, I come back with a white bag that smells like cinnamon and sugar to find Honor sitting on the couch in the living room.
“Look who’s alive,” I greet, locking the front door behind me and toeing off my shoes beside the haphazardly discarded pair belonging to Honor.
She seems confused as I drop the bag onto the coffee table. “What are you doing here?” Her voice is less raspy than it was, and she’s gained a little more color on her face.
It’s the same question she always asks me.
“I told you I’d be back when I left this morning,” I remind her. I believe her response to that was muffled gibberish into her pillow and a tiny bit of drool that was oddly cute.
Sylvia saw me pull out from the side driveway attached to the guest house and waved, and I didn’t fail to notice the way her eyes gleamed as she called out “good morning” to me as if to emphasize that I’ve been here all night.
I surmised that Coach didn’t know that, because he didn’t pull me into his office and threaten to cut off an important appendage or tell me not to hurt his daughter.
Practice had gone by smoothly, without so much as a raised voice from Erikson or any of the others, so it made for an easy escape.
Her eyes drop to the bag before coming back to me. “You didn’t have to come back. I’ve managed to keep myself alive this long.”
That seems like a loaded statement. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve always liked when people took care of me when I was sick. My mom used to comb her fingers through my hair or rub my back to lull me to sleep. It was comforting.”
I have an unsettling desire to comfort her. To run my fingers through her hair as her head rests in my lap until she falls asleep on me. To rub small circles over her back until her body eases into a blissful state where she’s completely at peace. I do neither of those things.
“My mother wasn’t like that,” she murmurs, voice barely a notch above a whisper. “She wasn’t a very affectionate person.”
I’m tempted to ask about her father growing up, but I already know there’s lingering tension between them. Did she have any affection from her parents as a child? Coach doesn’t exactly strike me as the hugs before bedtime type.
Instead, I ask the other question on my mind. The one I have no real right to know. “What type of mother was she then?”
Honor thinks about, the small frown on her face growing.
“The number of times she tried soothing me usually involved a glass of wine or sip of blackberry brandy to ‘calm my nerves’,” she tells me, seeing my wide-eyed expression.
“Needless to say, that was long before alcohol consumption was legal for me. It’s really a wonder I never formed a preadolescent drinking problem. ”