She sticks close but doesn’t touch until his efforts have him trembling, and her gentle hand lands on his back, soft and still. Must have spent at least half an hour trying to throw up his insides before the dry heaving stops and he slumps, nearly delirious. He’s pliable and easily moved, letting her guide him until his head rests in her lap where she sits up against the outer wall.
Slow fingers sift through his hair, brushing it back off his face and eliciting a tingle across his scalp. “Something you ate?”
“Something I drank. I think my filter is broken,” he grunts, eyes fluttering closed as she strokes from his shoulder to elbow and up again.
He’s still relishing being this close to her. Despite feeling like death warmed over, he’d go through this a hundred times if it meant he’d end up here, pillowed on her thighs.
“We’ll use mine from now on. It’ll pass. Deep breaths.”
“I got sick like this once in the cell,” he says absently, not having enough sense anymore to curb it. “Was the worst day. Thought it would never stop.”
“When?”
“A few years ago maybe. I was so fucking sick. Dunno what did it. Bad rabbit meat, or maybe they did it on purpose.”
She sighs. “Last time it happened to me was that Christmas Eve dinner we had at the hibachi place. Remember?”
He huffs. “You barely made it out of the restaurant. It had to have been the rice.”
They have spent almost every holiday together when he wasn’t relocated across the country by the army. Thanksgiving at some dive bar, laughing over hot wings, and Christmas eating fried rice out of the carton in her apartment. That particular holiday saw fit to send her food poisoning.
“I’ve missed spending those days with you,” he says quietly. “Aside from the getting sick part.”
“I have, too. I don’t even know what day it is anymore, but let’s just assume we’re spending the holidays together again.”
He nuzzles his cheek against her thigh, wrapping an arm around her knees. “Glad you’re here now. I don’t feel as shit as I would if I were by myself.”
“I haven’t done anything to help,” she says, sadly.
“Yeah, you have.”
She’s done more than she knows. He wished for this back in the cell while he was curled up on the floor more times than he can count. She feels like home to him, and that makes even the worst moments bearable.
“Why Arizona? You never really said, other than that hike you want to try out.”
“I saw a commercial for it a long time ago. One of the few things I never forgot.”
“Come on.” She nudges him like he’s teasing. “Really.”
“Nah, really.Arizona, get lost while finding yourself. Cheesy slogan, but it looked so…different from anything I’d ever seen. Like the perfect place to get lost and start over.”
“Is that what we’re doing out here? Starting over?”
“I hope so. I want to.”
“Me too.”
Chapter 23
Kara has never seen Wade so miserable. Even more jarring is how he clung to her while resting in her lap, curling his arm around her legs and settling in like she somehow made it better just by being there.
Not long ago, he was fresh off isolation and pressed up against the wall to avoid her. Funny how quickly things change.
Food poisoning is rarely deadly, but she’s hypersensitive. Seeing him suffer taps into a deep-seated fear of losing him again. She’s been awake half the night, watching the rise and fall of his chest after she urged him into bed, exhausted from the ordeal. He passed out fast once she tugged off his boots, pulled the blanket around his shoulders, and joined him, but her eyes took forever to finally close and only netted her a few hours of sleep.
What if she wakes up later, and he’s gone? Dehydration isn’t something to mess with.
It’s not the plague, she reminds herself. They’ve already survived that. He can survive this lesser ordeal, too.
