“I don’t know.This morning sometime.”
He picked up a glass of water and shook some aspirin out of the bottle.Handing her both, he said, “The Tamiflu should start helping before too much longer.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“It will.”He hoped.“How bad do you feel?”
“Terrible.Like I want to crawl in a hole and pull the cover over myself and wake up sometime when I’m not sick.”
“Sit up.”
She looked at him suspiciously.“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Still grumbling she did so.Ryan reached behind her to get her pillows.He fluffed them then put them back behind her.“Thanks.Who taught you that?It’s not a doctor thing.”
He laughed.“My mom used to do it for me when I got sick.”
“My mom was never around when I was sick.”
He knew she’d been raised by a single mom but he didn’t know much else.He smoothed a hand over her hair.“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged.“She did what she had to do to survive.Fortunately for me, I never had to depend on a man to support me so that I was left destitute when he abandoned me.”
“That’s what happened to your mom and you?”That explained a lot.
“More or less.Never mind that, though.You can be sure I’ll be there for my daughter.But I hope like hell she doesn’t get this.”
“Our daughter,” he reminded her.
“For now,” she said.
“What does that mean, for now?”
“I didn’t want to get into this.”
“Apparently you did or you wouldn’t have said what you said.”
She frowned and shrugged.“It means I can’t trust you to stay.For all I know you’ll get bored and decide you need to leave, and Sophie will be left with a single mom.Except this single mom is in a lot better shape than my poor mom was.”
“I’ll let you go to sleep.”He left the room before he got even angrier.Sure, she had reason to be upset about how he’d left, although they’d never talked about the idea of him staying.And she hadn’t told him about the baby, either.But damn, he hadn’t realized that she might actually hate him.It sure as hell sounded like it though.
Still pissed when she woke up, Ryan said, “You don’t have a lot to eat but I can make you soup.There’s frozen pizza too.Or I can go pick up something if you feel up to staying with Sophie.”
“You don’t need to take care of me.”
“Somebody needs to.”
“If you really don’t mind, I’ll have soup.You can eat the pizza if you want.”
He made Aria some soup and took it to her.She thanked him and he shrugged and left to eat the pizza and tend to the baby.He figured he’d stay overnight but hoped she’d be better enough in the morning for him to at least be able to pick up food and shower and change clothes at his place.
As for the rest of it, the fact that she totally didn’t trust him and might not ever trust him, they were going to talk about that tomorrow as well.Ryan had thought, okay, hoped, that he and Aria might be able to salvage their relationship, but so far that looked like the last thing on her mind.He wished it didn’t matter to him but it sure as hell did.
*
Two days later,Ryan left her house to shower, change and to pick up groceries.He’d gone home quickly the morning before too, but this time he intended to stay longer.Today Aria was much better, the medicine having done wonders.And though she told him she didn’t need his help anymore she was fairly sure he wouldn’t pay any attention to her.
