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“What—?” I began.
“The nightmare…” Lincoln interrupted. He paused, his eyes still glued to my hand as he worked. “You were thrashing around so much that you tore your IV out.”
My IV?
What the hell had I been doing with an IV in the first place?
I must have asked the question out loud because Lincoln’s dark eyes shifted to mine. “Is that really what you want to talk about right now?” he asked. That same weird look I was so sure I’d imagined earlier was back. He dropped his eyes again, but his jaw was so hard I was sure he’d break his own teeth.
I opened my mouth to tell him that the IV was exactly what I wanted to talk about but the soft sigh that escaped his lips as he shook his head slightly had me shutting up.
“How much do you remember after I found you in the bathroom?” he finally asked.
It wasn’t until the question cleared his mouth that images from just hours earlier began to permeate my brain. I’d been in the bathroom examining my arm when I’d gotten lightheaded. I’d felt hot and cold at the same time, and the pain when I’d struck my injured arm on the counter had left me sobbing like a baby.
And then Lincoln had been there.
I closed my eyes as I remembered how his body had been wrapped around mine as he’d carried me to his bed and lowered me onto it. There’d been so much strength in his grip but no pain.
I’d felt… safe.
“Not much,” I lied. Unlike all the other times I’d uttered words that weren’t true, I found myself dropping my eyes and swallowing hard. The nasty sour taste returned to my mouth for some reason.
Lincoln was silent for so long, even as his fingers worked to swap out the bandage on the back of my hand, that I was sure he was going to call me out on the lie.
“You were running a high fever and were also severely dehydrated, so I started an IV and pushed some antibiotics—”
“Pushed antibiotics?” I asked in confusion. “What does that mean?”
“I administered the antibiotics through the IV. Having you take them orally would have taken too long.”
I glanced at the IV bag that was hanging from the kind of pole I’d seen in hospitals.
“How are you feeling?”
Lincoln’s question made me jump. It felt like it was taking forever for my mind to process every word that was coming out of his mouth.
“Confused,” I admitted.
“Any head or neck pain?”
I took stock of how those parts of my body were feeling. Surprisingly, the stabbing pain in my head had turned into a dull ache and nothing more.
“No,” I said just seconds before Lincoln held out a thermometer. I dutifully opened my mouth before I could even consider telling the man to fuck off.
The thermometer beeped within a matter of seconds but when Lincoln removed it, he only briefly glanced at it before setting it on the nightstand. “Well?” I was forced to ask as Lincoln continued to bandage my left hand.
When he didn’t answer me, I made a move to reach across my body with my right hand to check the thing myself. Fire instantly shot up my arm, stealing my breath. The sharp reminder of what had landed me in the gorgeous nurse’s bed in the first place left me reeling. I stared stupidly at the snowy white bandaging that was wrapped around my arm as I held it protectively against my naked chest.
I jerked my eyes up even as my brain tried to command my mouth to scream in denial. But the second my eyes met Lincoln’s, I knew it wouldn’t matter.
He knew.
He knew and that meant one thing and one thing only.
I was fucked.
Truly and royally fucked.
