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“Alma, do you have a thermometer anywhere?”
I could have told him not to bother, that I could confirm I was running a fever without check my temperature, but I didn’t have it in me to fight. Instead, I forced my mouth open and whispered, “Bathroom.”
His fingers ghosted over my forehead again, the gentle touch lulling my eyelids closed. “All right. I’ll be right back.”
In my head I saiddon’t bother. Get the hell out, but in reality, I lay like a limp noodle. I hadn’t realized I’d dozed off until I was jolted awake by the press and drag of something hard from the center of my forehead to my temple. When I blinked my hazy eyes open, I saw Roan standing at the side of my bed, looking at the read-out on the thermometer with a hard set to his jaw.
“102.4,” he said in a voice that sounded an awful lot like a growl. “I think you should let me take you to the emergency room.”
Not a chance in hell. Not only because there was no way I would go to the emergency room, but also because there was no way I’d go anywhere withhim. “No emergency room,” I insisted. “I just need some Tylenol to break it.”
He put the thermometer on my bedside table and braced his hands on his narrow hips. “Okay, I’ll get it. Where do you keep the Tylenol?”
I curled my lips between my teeth as I tried to dig through the cobwebs covering my brain. “Um... I don’t think I have any.”
Roan’s head fell forward, and his hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He let out a sharp hiss when he encountered the bruises and let his arm fall back down to his side. “That’s fine. I’ll go.”
The skin between my brows puckered. “You’ll go where?”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a set of keys and swung them around his index finger. “To get you some medicine. Now you lie here and don’t move until I get back,” he ordered, pointing at me with an authoritative finger.
I did my best to shoot fire from my eyes. “Don’t bother coming back. I don’t want you here.”
My proclamation was punctuated by a sudden coughing fit that was so bad I thought I might pee myself. By the time it passed, stars were floating in front of my eyes and I was too dizzy to fight.
“Uh-huh,” Roan said knowingly. “That’s what I thought. Now sleep. I’ll be back.”
“I don’t want you to come back,” I mumbled as my eyes grew heavy and the side of my face pressed deeper into the pillow. Before I could threaten him with calling the cops or anything like that, I was out cold. The last thing I remembered was Roan’s fingers lightly dragging across my jaw in that familiar way he used to do.
13
ROAN
Istood in one of the aisles at the family-owned pharmacy, staring at the rows upon rows of medications, feeling like a fish out of water. I’d been so determined when I left Alma’s house earlier, but now that I was here, I didn’t know what the hell I needed to buy in order to make her feel better, and I began to panic.
When I first laid eyes on her I’d been so shell-shocked she’d even answered the door that I hadn’t noticed anything about her appearance—well, aside the from the fact she was wearing one ofmyold T-shirts and very little else. When I finally noticed how pale she was and saw the dark circles under her eyes, the bolt of lust that had shot straight to my groin fizzled into nothing as worry set in.
I’d never felt more helpless than when I was holding her hair back as she crouched over that toilet, and when she slumped in my arms, without the energy to fight me the way I knew she wanted to, I nearly threw her over my shoulder and hauled her out to my truck, insisting she go to the emergency room.
Now that I stood here trying to figure out what the hell she needed, helplessness set in again.
“Fuck it,” I grunted to myself before using my arm to sweep all the different medicines into the plastic basket I was holding. Better to be overprepared than underprepared after all.
I was in the process of trying to stuff a few bottles of Pedialyte in with everything else when a woman came up beside me. “Son, you look like you’re about two seconds from losin’ your ever-lovin’ mind.”
I turned to take in the woman who’d accurately called me out. She looked like she was knocking on the door of ninety with skin as thin as crepe paper and a permed helmet of hair rinsed blue. She wore a velour track suit and was watching me with a gaze so shrewd it felt like she could see every single thing I was thinking behind her oversized clear plastic rimmed glasses.
She had a basket in one hand like me and a balled fist on her cocked hip, one orthopedic shoe-clad foot kicked out. “You look more out of place than a hooker at a convent. You need help with somethin’?”
“Oh, uh . . .”
She looked down at the contents of my basket before those shrewd, cataract-speckled eyes returned to me. “Constipationandanti-diarrhea medicine? You’re not careful with that, you’re bound to explode your insides, child.”
My head whipped down to the variety of pills I’d dumped into the basket and noticed for the first time that I had a bunch of shit that would be useless to Alma.
“Fucking hell,” I grunted, reaching around to massage the back of my neck. Christ, who would have known trying to buy some medicine could be so stressful?
“Okay, so maybe I do need help.”
