2022
Rose
Sunlight filters through the blinds as I blink my eyes open, and my first coherent thought is that I really regret not putting up curtains yet. The second is that everything fucking hurts.
God, what time is it?
I reach for my phone on the floor beside the air mattress and squint at the screen until the numbers stop swimming.
Eleven a.m. Damn it. I should've been at the office hours ago.
Somehow, I slept straight through all three of my alarms, which has happened approximately never in my adult life, and judging by the collection of missed calls and messages lighting up my screen, people have noticed.
I'm covered in sweat, enough that the T-shirt I slept in is sticking to my skin.
Didn't I adjust the thermostat before I lay down?
I vaguely remember doing it, but most of last night is champagne and exhaustion and moving boxes, so maybe I only thought about it.
I push myself onto one elbow to check, and the entire room tilts violently to the left while a throbbing pain blooms right between my eyes.
Nope.
I lower myself back onto the mattress and close my eyes until the apartment decides to hold still again.
We just moved into this building, and I was dead set on spending the first night in my first high-rise apartment, even if that meant sleeping on an air mattress surrounded by bare floors and eating takeout off a moving box.
We bought the tower months ago, renovations finally wrapped a couple of weeks back, and now the place is ours.
Headquarters downstairs, our homes above it, and floors of units we'll sell and lease besides.
The Sullivan & Bennett name on a building.
Something we made real enough to stand inside, even though I keep waiting for that fact to settle into my bones.
Maybe we celebrated too hard last night, and this is just a hangover with ambitions.
Because, holy mother of shit, I feel like hell.
I lie there staring at the ceiling, negotiating with myself over whether I should suffer through it and get downstairs to the office or close my eyes for another hour.
I never take the second option. I don't have a second-option kind of life.
There is always somewhere to be, something to fix, somebody waiting for an answer, and I've spent too many years making myself dependable to suddenly become the woman who sleeps until noon on a workday.
Then my body starts shuddering. It begins somewhere deep enough that I can't control it, a shiver rolling through me from my teeth all the way down to my toes, even though I'm sweating beneath the blanket.
I pull it tighter around myself and curl onto my side, telling myself that one more hour isn't going to kill anyone.
That's all the permission my body was waiting for.
Sleep takes me before I can even put my phone down.
***
I need to pee.
That's the thought that drags me awake, urgent enough to cut through whatever thick, ugly sleep I've fallen into.
At least the sun has stopped assaulting me, although I have no idea whether that's because the day has moved on or clouds have rolled in.
I don't care. The bathroom is twenty feet away and somehow looks like it's in another fucking zip code.
I try to throw the cover off and immediately know something is wrong.
They're too heavy.
Not actually heavy, obviously. They're blankets. Blankets don't suddenly gain fifty pounds while you're asleep. But my arms don't seem to understand that, and peeling them away from my body takes enough effort that I have to stop afterward and breathe.
This isn't a hangover.
That realization should scare me more than it does, but I need to pee so badly that fear is currently losing to my bladder.
I manage to slide off the air mattress onto the floor, where I stay for a moment with my forehead resting against the cool wood, gathering enough strength to get onto my hands and knees.
Standing isn't happening. Fine. Dignity is negotiable.
I crawl.
One hand. One knee. Then the other. Slow enough that the bathroom doesn't seem to get any closer, while sweat runs down my back and my arms shake beneath my weight.
Somewhere past the halfway point, they simply decline to participate anymore.
There isn't even a warning. One second they're holding me up, and the next they fold.
My face hits the floor.
I stay there, cheek pressed against the wood, trying to convince my body to move again.
It won't.
Then my bladder gives up too.
I feel it happening, warm and spreading beneath me, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Not one fucking thing. I'm a grown woman lying face down on the floor of the multimillion-dollar apartment I bought for myself, pissing on hardwood twenty feet from a bathroom I can't reach.
For some reason, that's what breaks me.
Tears spring hot behind my eyes as humiliation crashes through me, and one ridiculous thought pushes through everything else.
They're going to find my lifeless body in a puddle of my own secretions.
That's the headline. That's how this ends. Rosalie Bennett, attorney and businesswoman, taken out by whatever plague has invaded her body and discovered days later marinating in her own piss.
Wonderful.
I want to laugh, or cry, or crawl the remaining distance to the bathroom and salvage one shred of dignity, but I can't even lift my head.
The floor is cool against my face.
I close my eyes for just a second.
Sleep drags me under before I can open them again.
***
My front door alarm wakes me.
The sound seems to come from very far away, but I recognize it.
Someone has opened the apartment door, and a few seconds later the alarm goes quiet, which means whoever came in knows the code.
That narrows the list considerably, although my brain is moving too slowly to decide whether it's Jackson or Michael.
“Rosalie?”
Jackson.
His voice travels through the apartment and lands inside my skull like a hammer looking for something to break. I try to answer, but all I manage is a low sound that doesn't resemble his name or help or anything else remotely useful.
There's a beat of silence.
“Rose?”
The change in his voice scares me more than anything else has.
His footsteps come fast, and then he's in the bedroom.
“Fuck. Rose, what happened?”
I don't know.
I want to tell him that, but a second later I'm being lifted from the floor and gathered against his chest, one arm beneath my knees and the other supporting my back.
The movement makes everything inside me roll unpleasantly, but I don't care because it's Jackson.
I know his smell. I know the feel of his arms around me.
I know I'm safe there, even while some distant part of me is horrified by what he must have found.
“Rose. Baby?” His hand cups my face, turning it toward him. “Rosalie, open your eyes for me.”
Baby.
I like it when he calls me that.
I wish I could tell him. The thought floats through the fever with ridiculous clarity. Of all the things I should probably be concerned about right now, that's the one my brain decides to hold on to.
I like it when you call me baby.
I try to open my mouth and nothing happens.
“Jesus Christ, you're burning up.”
He shifts me more securely against him, and then I hear his phone.
His voice changes when someone answers, fear forced underneath something controlled as he gives the address and tells them what he found.
A woman in her thirties. High fever. Barely responsive.
Unable to stand. He found me on the floor.
Soaked.
Some distant, furious ember of me flares at the word.
Don't tell them that.
Don't fucking say that.
Don't look at me.
I want him to put me down long enough to let me clean myself up.
I want to know what else my body has done without my permission while I was unconscious.
I want to be properly indignant about the fact that the man I've spent years trying not to want has just found me lying half-conscious in my own urine, but even humiliation requires more energy than I have.
My mouth is so dry.
God, I'm thirsty.
Jackson ends the call and brushes my hair away from my face. Some of it is stuck to the clammy skin of my forehead, and he takes his time separating the damp strands, pushing each one back as gently as if I'm something fragile.
Then his lips touch my forehead.
My cheek.
My temple.
“They're coming, baby. Ambulance is coming.”
Another kiss lands against my forehead.
“I shouldn't have waited this long to check on you. I'm so fucking sorry. You weren't answering, but I thought you were sleeping off the other night and I...” His voice catches, and his arms tighten around me. “Fuck. I'm sorry.”
I want to tell him this isn't his fault, not to sound so scared.
I want to tell him I would've been furious if he'd broken into my apartment because I didn't answer my phone for a few hours. Wait. The other night? How long have I been here?
“I texted Bennet. He's coming back from the airport. He'll meet us at the hospital.” His thumb moves over my cheek. “Nod if you can hear me, Rose. Please. Look at me. Open your eyes for me, baby.”
I try.
I try so hard that something in my chest seems to strain toward the sound of him, but my body has stopped accepting instructions.
Sleep pulls me back under, anyway.
The last thing I know is Jackson's heartbeat beneath my cheek, going much too fast.
***
I wake slowly, disoriented enough that for several seconds I'm simply grateful the room is dark.
Then everything begins arriving in pieces.
Bed rails.
That unmistakable hospital smell.
Something beneath my nose.
An IV taped to my arm.
I'm in the hospital.
Fuck.
How sick was I?
I shift my head on the pillow and become aware that I'm not alone. There's another hospital bed pushed close to mine, which is strange because I'm fairly certain this is a private room.
Someone is in it.
No.
Someones.
Michael and Jackson are lying at opposite ends of the same hospital bed, both dead asleep.
I stare at them.