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“Okay, so that will start working in about twenty minutes, and you’ll feel better.”
Her eyes opened slowly and locked on his. “Thank you.”
“Everyone needs someone sometime.” He shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to be a guardian angel. I guess I get to finally live out that particular fantasy.”
Her smile was small and tight.
“Good guy,” she whispered, as if talking hurt too much.
“I have my faults.”
He looked down and noticed she still wore her sneakers, so he took them off and pulled up the covers.
“You should change.”
“No.”
“No, you mean it’s all too much right now and you’ll change later?”
“That,” she whispered.
He went to refill the glass of water and brought the wastebasket for her in case she needed to be sick, then returned to the bathroom and found a washcloth. After rinsing it, he soaked it in warm water and then wrung it out. Taking it back to her, he lowered it over her eyes.
She sighed. His mom liked this too.
“Where’s your phone?”
“Pocket.”
He slid his hands under her jeans and found the pocket situated over a very nicely shaped butt cheek. Pulling it out, he placed it beside her on the bed. As he was about to leave, her hand reached out and took his. Ford looked down at the small fingers wrapped around two of his larger ones and felt something inside him shift. A surge of heat filled his chest, so fierce that it dropped him into the seat beside her bed.
Vulnerable, he thought. Ford’s Achilles’ heel had always been vulnerability.
She turned, dislodging the facecloth. He let it drop because her eyes caught and held his. Brown or a deep green. He didn’t know this woman and would likely never see her again, but in that moment he felt closer to her than he had to a woman in a long time.
Why?
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.
Thank you for sitting with me, Ford. I feel vulnerable when I have a migraine. The pain makes me weak, and being alone is hard.He remembered his mom’s words then, so he leaned in and brushed a finger down her cheek.
“Go to sleep now. I won’t go until you’re out, okay?”
“’Kay,” she whispered. There was silence for a while, but her eyes were still on his. “Wh-what are your faults? You said you had some.”
“My siblings could name several, but the main one is I don’t get much sleep.” He said the words softly.
“Th-that’s not a fault.”
“Feels like it,” he muttered. And why he’d said that to her right then, he had no idea. Maybe because he’d never see her again. It felt kind of freeing to say the words he’d held inside for so long.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried to talk about his problem, but the time had never been right. Plus he was Ford, the oldest Winter and the one others looked up to. He didn’t have weaknesses.
Except he did. A huge one.
“I don’t like thunder,” she said slowly.
“I’m hoping you don’t dive under the bed like my sister’s puppy. Bee wears this thing called a ThunderShirt. Maybe you could get one fitted?”
