Chapter Sixteen
Jackson
July
"Put me down, Jack-Jack," Blaire moans.
"Shut your face, woman," I bark, carrying her from where I found her on my bathroom floor toward the guest bedroom. She weighs about as much as an argument and puts up half of one, which is how I know she's genuinely sick. The real Blaire would've bitten me by now.
Bennet's on a flight back from Europe, due in early morning and then heading straight from the tarmac to the Meridian building.
Blaire's at my place tonight so I can pay off my end of a lost bet: one baseball game, the most boring sport ever inflicted on mankind.
We made it four innings before she went gray and bolted for my bathroom.
This is the second time she's vomited today, and this last round she barely had the strength to get herself off the tile.
I set her down on the bed, prop a couple of pillows behind her and go grab water and a ginger ale from the kitchen. When I come back, she looks small in a way Blaire is never small, curled into herself with her eyes closed and all that usual fuck-you energy nowhere to be found.
I don't like it.
"You've been feeling like shit on and off for months, Blaire.
I've got to put my bestie-foot down. As the standing authority figure in this bestihood, I'm making you a doctor's appointment for the morning, or you make it yourself, but one of those two things is happening.
" I press the ginger ale into her hands. "Now drink."
"Standing authority figure?" Her eyes barely open. "Who elected you?"
"Me. Landslide victory. Drink."
She barely manages to sit up, but she takes a few small sips while I watch her like it's my job.
She's so fucking pale. She made me promise not to worry Bennet, and I'm honoring that mostly because there's no reaching him over the Atlantic anyway, but I'm already regretting the promise. If this were my girl, I'd want to know.
Then again, if I call him the second his plane lands and tell him I spent the night carrying his wife out of my bathroom while she puked her guts up, he'll probably have the driver diverted here and arrive with a private medical team and a priest.
She sinks back against the pillows, and when she speaks again, her voice has gone quiet.
"I hate doctors and hospitals, Jackson." She pauses.
"The doctors I saw back then had to know what Colt was doing to me.
All of them. And every one of them looked at the chart instead of at me.
I've been in more hospital beds than I can count.
So yeah, I know I don't go when I should. I know it's a problem."
Her eyes come back to mine, and there's Blaire again, exhausted as hell but still in there.
"But you're right. I'll go first thing."
I sit on the edge of the bed and take the ginger ale before it slips out of her hand.
"I'll drive you myself." I keep my voice easy.
Getting pissed about every doctor who failed her isn't going to help her tonight, and she doesn't need me going full Bennet when I've just convinced her to go willingly.
"And for the record, any doctor who looks at a chart instead of you tomorrow answers to me.
I'm on the 40 Under 40 now. I know at least four lawyers. "
She lets out a weak laugh.
There we go.
"Four whole lawyers?"
"Minimum. I'm extremely influential now."
"You're a douchebag."
"And yet I'm still the elected authority of the bestihood."
She closes her eyes, but there's a tiny smile left on her face, which was the entire point.
"Sleep, Bumble-bee. I'm leaving the door cracked, and this bin goes right here if the need strikes again. Don't you dare try walking to the bathroom. I've already carried you once tonight and my back is a finite resource."
"Thank you." It comes out small and drowsy, and she means it for more than the ginger ale.
"What are brothers for, huh?" I pull the covers up to her chin, tucking her in like the world's largest, most reluctant nanny. "If you get vomit on my bed, I'm kicking you in the tit."
"You'd have to catch me first," she mumbles into the pillow, already half gone.
"You can't currently walk, Sis."
"Exactly. Sitting duck. No sport in it." Her eyes stay closed, the words starting to dissolve at the edges. "Coward."
I flip off the lamp and stand in the doorway a few seconds longer than I need to, watching the covers rise and fall, doing the thing I do now: worrying about the people who belong to me.
Tomorrow, a doctor. Whether she likes it or not.
I grab my phone off the counter and dial Jenn.
It's funny. I'm surrounded by people I consider family now, and I couldn't tell you exactly when that happened.
Jenn and her fiancé Joseph are expecting their first child, and she has been extremely vocal about every side effect of said condition, which currently makes her the resident authority on feeling like absolute garbage.
"Jackie boy, this better be good. I was just about to come on my fiancé's cock."
"Goddamnit, Jenn."
"Fucking hell, Jennifer," Joseph mumbles somewhere in the background, in the exhausted tone of a man who has accepted that this is simply his life now.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. "When you're done with... that, I need a favor. Blaire's not doing great, so I'm keeping her at my place tonight. I need you to grab her some things. Overnight stuff, clothes for tomorrow."
"Is she okay? What's going on?"
The shuffling starts immediately, followed by Jenn's muffled voice, presumably aimed at Joseph. "I'll suck you off later to make it up to you, give me five minutes, will you?"
I'm collecting foul Care Bears for women friends.
This is my life now too.
"She's been sick on and off for a while, vomiting today. She's pretty weak."
"Fuck, my poor girl. Yeah, I'll be over soon."
"Thanks, Jenn. Door's unlocked, just come on in. I'll send my driver for you when you're ready, or you can just send the stuff back with him."
"No, I need to lay eyes on my girl for a few minutes at least." There's a pause, and when she speaks again her voice has gone soft and wobbly enough that I know exactly where this is headed. "You're a good big brother, Jackie. You're gonna make an awesome dad one day."
She sniffles.
Fuck.
"Don't you start fucking crying on my phone, Jennifer." I point my finger at absolutely nothing, because that's going to help.
"Don't yell at me! I can't help it!" she wails, and there goes the dam.
Fucking hell.
"Jenn, listen..."
"Hey, man." Joseph's voice cuts me off as the phone changes hands, calm as a hostage negotiator while Jenn sobs gloriously somewhere behind him. "We'll get her stuff over soon. I'll handle the waterworks."
Give this man a prize.
"Thanks, man. See you soon."
We hang up, but her words don't go with her.
You're gonna make an awesome dad one day.
Kids aren't something I've let myself spend much time thinking about. Not seriously. There have been too many other things in front of me, and for a long time my marriage made the entire question laughable anyway.
But I know exactly who my brain wants to put beside me the second I let the thought breathe.
Nope. Not tonight.
I put that one in the drawer I borrowed from Rose where I keep the things I can't afford to want yet and head down the hall to check on my patient.
A knock stops me before I get there, and the front door opens without waiting for an answer.
"Hey, you."
Rian glides inside, heels dangling from two fingers, already at home in a way I don't remember authorizing and haven't gotten around to minding.
"Hey."
The smile arrives on its own. She crosses to me and I pull her into my arms, burying my face in her neck and breathing in that expensive scent, and then I'm tugging her by the hand toward my bedroom because I'm a needy bitch right now and past pretending otherwise.
"In a rush, are we?"
"Fuck yes. But we need to be quiet. I've got a visitor in the guest bed."
She stops so abruptly my arm jerks backward with hers.
"Is it..." She takes a breath. "Is it her?"
She doesn't say Rose's name. She never says Rose's name, actually, like avoiding the syllable somehow keeps her out of the room. Usually I let it go. Tonight, it's not the question that catches me. It's the way Rian's entire body has gone rigid, all that warmth from three seconds ago gone.
"No. It's Blaire. She's sick again."
"Why can't her husband take care of her if she's sick?"
The acid in her voice gets my back up immediately.
"He's out of town. And I don't owe you an itinerary for my time, Rian."
"We're getting married, Marcus!"
"Keep your fucking voice down." I back us into the living room, away from the guest hall, because the last thing Blaire needs is to wake up to whatever the hell this is. Any interest I had in getting Rian naked has packed its bags and left.
She crosses the room and folds her arms around herself. At first I read it as attitude, but that's not it. She's holding herself together. I've seen her do it before, the same way she gripped that wineglass the night she proposed this whole arrangement.
Granted, things have changed since then.
We made the deal, started selling the relationship, and then I drunk-called her to my hotel room and fucked her while thinking she was Rose.
She doesn't know that last part, and she never will if I can help it.
But after that night, we kept sleeping together.
We have fun. I like her. She likes me. The sex is good.
None of that was supposed to change the terms.
No actual strings.
Just an arrangement.
At least that's what I thought we were still doing.
"What is this, Marcus? What are we?"
"An arrangement. One you drafted, one you pitched, one you agreed to, Rian. I won't tolerate this jealous act."
"Why won't you kiss me on the mouth?"
Holy hell.
I drag a hand over my face. I don’t need this tonight.
"We've gone over this." I keep my voice low, although she's making that increasingly difficult. "Are you seriously this bent out of shape because Blaire is sleeping down the hall?"