Five long minutes passed. Then ten. Landon fiddled with his phone, his hands, the book. Finally, he heard the telltale sound of an old door opening and closing. “Hello?” Landon called out. Heavy feet holding up a heavy frame clomped up the spiral stairs until Graham’s unmistakable mane of reddish-brown hair came into view.
“Oi!” Graham said. “Is Rose just in the back, then?”Why is he here?Landon wondered, knowing rationally that he had every right to be. Graham read his mind, as Graham was wont to do. “She’s got terrible cell service in this cave, but it sounded like she’s not feeling well?”
“Nosebleed,” Landon said, at the same time as Rose called out from the back, “Over here!”
“You all right there, lass?” Graham asked, walking toward her with the sort of protective stance the body naturally assumes when someone you love is hurt.Love.The word whistled through him.
Rose’s neck was bent as far back as Landon had ever seen it. “My nose just won’t stop bleeding.” Blood dripped down her handsand landed in splotches on the floor. “It’s slowing down, but I feel kind of dizzy.”
“Let’s get you home.” Graham’s eyebrows furrowed, and he draped an arm around her waist, holding her steady.
“Can we rain check the rest of the day, Jamie?” Rose asked, staring up at the ceiling in an attempt to stop the flow. “I promised you’d fall in love, and I only halfway delivered.”
“Oh, yes,” Landon said, reflexively, the way a knee pops when the doctor hits it with a hammer. “A rain check it is.” Everything in him wanted to reach out for her, hold her, lay her head back on his lap and smooth her hair, tell her he would take care of her. But Graham and his beefy arms were there and would no doubt do exactly what Landon would have when they got back to his palatial flat. “I hope—” he said, and paused a moment. He hoped too many things. “I hope you feel better.”
“I’ll make sure she does,” Graham said. He shot Landon a smile, but there was something underneath it that gave Landon pause.
This wasn’t my fault, he wanted to say, even thought about saying. Instead, he followed a few steps behind Rose and Graham like a shadow and waved goodbye when Rose locked the doors behind them.
Chapter Eighteen
In her entire life, Rose had never felt more like a cliché.Fuck, fuck, fuck, she thought, clutching the toilet like it had the power to get her out of the mess she was in. The overheads burned bright, and Rose felt the start of a migraine. She called Poppy before she could do something stupid, like call Landon.
“What’s wrong?” Poppy’s clear, high voice cut straight through her spiral. She was grateful for it, though she’d been expecting her chirpy voicemail.
“Aren’t you at work?”
Rose could almost see Poppy waving her hand through the air to accompany the scoff she blew into the phone. “Your calls always come through. Aren’tyouat work?”
“Yes,” Rose whispered. And though she was alone in the women’s bathroom, at any second, she might not be.
“So, what’s wrong?”
Rose pressed her fingers between her eyes to see if she could stanch the incredible pressure building. “I feel sick.”
“Did you really call me on a Tuesday to ask for permission to go home sick from work? If that’s true, then yikes. But I know that’s not true, so tell me.”
Not saying it out loud did not make it any less true, Rose reminded herself. “I’m nauseous.”
“And?”
“And I was nauseous yesterday. And the day before that.” Rose dropped her head back to the toilet, worried, again, that she was about to be sick.
“Like, you’re puking?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to make me tell you, or do you want to just say the damn thing.” Poppy’s words were harsh, but the tone was as comforting as she knew how to be.
“Fuck,” Rose said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Go take a test,” Poppy said. “This could still be nothing.”
Whatever was wrong with her, Rose was sure it was not nothing. “I can’t believe this. I’m so careful. So, so careful, sometimes I worry I’m not even fun in bed.”
Poppy laughed. “You’re definitely still fun in bed.”
“I feel dizzy,” Rose said, lying down fully on the bathroom floor. She fanned her face with her hands, aware it only made her look likemoreof a cliché.
