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Oh Lord, what do I say to that?
He paused and then with a straight face said “Because my mama would beat me up if I didn’t,” he said.
Sage froze.
He watched it happen — the processing, the disbelief, and then something cracking at the edges of her expression. A sound came out of her. Small. Breath-thin. Not quite a laugh, but the shape of one. The ghost of one. The sound her laugh would make if it was just learning to exist again after a long time underground.
It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard in his whole life.
“Your mama can’t beat you up,” she mumbled. Her hand moved toward the folded blue throw at the edge of the bed, fingers reaching, too tired to close the distance.
“Shows what you know,” he said.
He watched her reach. Watched her not quite make it, her arm going limp before her fingers found the blanket, her body making the decision that this was one effort too many. He waited. Gave her every second.
“Sage.” Quiet. “Would it be all right if I covered you? I’ll step back as soon as I’m done.”
She went still. Then — slowly, like something that had to be decided at the core of her before it could happen at the surface — she nodded.
He crossed to the bed. Took the throw. Unfolded it with one hand and drew it over her slow, announced, no sudden angles. It settled over her and she exhaled, a long, unsteady breath, like something she’d been holding since the diner finally, partially, released.
She looked up at him. Those blue eyes — fever-bright, exhausted, stripped of every layer she’d built between herself and the world — looked up at him from the pillow.
“You’re nice,” she whispered. Like she was telling him something important. Like she needed him to know she’d noticed.
He paused and looked around the room like someone might be listening. Her eyes widened slightly as he said “I’d appreciate it if you kept that between us,” he said. A pause. “It’d ruin my reputation.”
The ghost-laugh again. Barely there. Real.
He turned toward the door.
“Wait—”
He stopped.
“You’re going to come back. Right?” Her voice had gone small again. Not afraid, exactly — something like afraid, something that lived on the border between fear and need. “I…I don’t feel so good.”
Cal closed his eyes briefly. Then opening them he nodded..
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “You don’t have to do anything. Just stay there.”
She nodded. Closed her eyes. He was fairly certain she was asleep before he reached the bottom of the stairs.
He was back in four minutes.
He’d taken the stairs fast — not running, but a controlled urgency, his pace showing that he made a promise and understood exactly what promises meant to people who’d had them broken.
The medicine cabinet in the bathroom off the main hallway held supplies that would have impressed a field medic; fever reducers, electrolytes, broad-spectrum antibiotics. He’d have to assess whether she needed these or not. A digital thermometer, vapor rub, bandaging material, saline. Mama, Michael, and Isabelle had been shocked and then resignedly amused at his insistence on outfitting bathrooms in his home like field hospitals. He had looked at them and shrugged, memories of comrades bleeding out or losing a limb due to lack of supplies. His face must have shown it, since Mary Sue had hugged him and Isabelle had simply said, “Okay, bear.”
He grabbed the essentials. Added a glass of cold water, a bottle of Gatorade — cherry, the color of it bright and cheerful in a way that seemed suddenly important — and a second bottle of water for the nightstand.
He paused at the top of the stairs.
She wasn’t on the bed.
His eyes found her on the floor beside the bed, half-sitting, half-kneeling, her hoodie half off, her arms twisted up in it, struggling. Not panicking — “trying.” Her jaw was set with a stubborn determination like a girl who had been making do with little all her life and whole life and could not tolerate the idea of simply lying in a stranger’s clean bed while wearing three weeks of highway and rest stops and desperation on her skin.
“Sage.” He set the things on the nightstand. Kept his voice even. “What are you doing, honey?”
