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“Nothing,” she whispers, her voice hoarse.
“Want me to get in with you?”
Her eyes meet mine. “Would you?”
Every survivalist magazine ever written has touted the benefits of sharing body heat. Like I needed that excuse.
“Of course.” I walk around the bed, and she rolls to face away from me. “How close do you want me?” I ask her, unsure about how intimate she wants this to be.
“As close as you can get.” Her teeth chatter.
I practically wrap myself around her, one arm over her waist as I pull her back against me.
“Can you take your shirt off?” she asks quietly.
“Yeah.” I pull it over my head and pull her back against me again. She hums out a sigh of contentment.
“That’s so much better,” she says. Her jaw is still quivering, and although she feels warm to me, I can tell she’s not. I reach down and lift the back of her shirt so that we’re front to back, and she lets out a sigh. “Even better,” she whispers.
My phone dings from its place on the nightstand. I roll over, pick it up, and look at it. It’s just Katie telling me the address and that the appointment is at twelve-thirty. I text her back really quickly so she knows I got it. Then I wrap myself around Abigail again.
“We have to go to the doctor at twelve-thirty,” I say quietly.
“Okay.” She lifts her head about an inch and stares at the sheets. “Did you change the sheets?”
“The other ones were gross.”
“I’m going to owe you big time after all this,” she says quietly and settles down again.
I smooth her hair down between us so that the curly strands aren’t going up my nose. “You don’t owe me anything.” I
lean forward and press a kiss to her shoulder, lingering there long enough to smell the lemon scent of her. “This is the most fun I’ve had in a really long time.”
“Your life must have been shit for the past few years then.”
Yeah, it was. But it’s not right now.
After a minute or two, her teeth stop chattering. I try to lift my arm from around her and roll away, but she grabs my arm and whispers, “No, please stay.”
So I stay. I stay so long that I fall asleep holding her. And it’s the best sleep I’ve had in a really long time.
24
Abigail
“It’s just a virus,” I tell Gran later that day.
“Not the flu?”
“Test was negative for the flu.”
“Not the kissing disease?”
“Not mono, Gran. I already told you.”
“No strep throat? You did say your throat was hurting.”
“No, not strep. It’s just a regular old virus that will pass on its own.” I take a sip of the purple juice that Ethan had left for me when he left to go to work, after he’d brought me home from the doctor. He’d all but carried me back in the house. I’d worn one of his comfortable old hoodies the whole time we were gone, and I still have it on. I lift it to my nose and smell Ethan. It’s a mix of earth and the past, a smell that’s so familiar to me that I’d know it even blindfolded.
