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ALMA
It felt great to be back to my normal routine after being sick. The fever hadn’t returned after I’d kicked Roan out of my house, but that might have had to do with the fact that I kept up with the strictly regimented medicine schedule I found written on the notepad I used for grocery lists. I still hadn’t had the energy for anything serious yesterday, so I spent it resting my body, watching Netflix, and yelling at Tortellini for standing at the front door and meowing every few minutes, like he was waiting for Roan to come back.
Now I was back at rehearsals, and some of the girls and I had made plans to meet up with some friends from outside of work to listen to the band playing at the Tap Room later tonight.
After roughly forty-eight hours of stressing and thinking about Roan, Roan, Roan, I was looking forward to getting him off my mind with a girls’ night out.
I still wasn’t fully back to one hundred percent, so after we finished rehearsing the last number, I collapsed onto the floor of the studio and spread out on the cool wooden floor, letting the chill sink into my aching muscles and overheated skin.
Asher plopped down next to me and handed me a water bottle before taking a long pull from her own. “Still feeling a little draggy?”
I forced myself up to sitting and gulped back the water. “Yeah, but I’ll get over it soon. That flu kicked my ass, but I bounced back pretty fast.”
Marin stopped in front of us and slammed a hand down on her cocked hip. “I still can’t believe you didn’t call a single one of us to help. What had wejusttalked about the day before?”
I swallowed the huge gulp of water I’d just taken and glared up at her. “In my defense, I wasn’t really in the state of mind to call anyone for help. I don’t even remember most of it. When I wasn’t sleeping, I was practically delirious.”
McKenna’s brows pinched. “God, babe. I didn’t realize it was that bad.”
“Oh, yeah. I haven’t been knocked on my ass like that in a long time. The fever alone made me shake so bad, every muscle in my body ached. And I didn’t have anything at the house to break it. I didn’t have anything.”
“Then how in the world are you here right now?”
A record scratched in my brain at Asher’s question. I blamed it on the lingering effects of the flu that had knocked me on my ass and made my mouth run away with itself before my brain could catch up.
“What?”
“Well, I had the flu like that last year, and if I hadn’t had Owen there to take care of me, I probably would have ended up in the hospital. Sickness like that doesn’t go away if you don’t treat it, and you just said you didn’t have medicine at home and were too delirious to drive.”
I knew I had a tendency to sing my friends’ praises, but it was times like this when they were more of a pain in the ass than anything else.
“Oh, uh, well... I think maybe I just have a really strong immune system?”
It was easy to see by the looks on their faces they didn’t believe me, but before I could double down on my lie, the door to the studio opened and our head of security, Silas, came in, carrying an obscenely large arrangement of peonies and hydrangeas in a pretty vase decorated with twine and lace ribbon.
“This just arrived for Alma,” he said with a knowing glint in his eyes.
Sloane jumped up and jogged over to her man. “ForAlmayou say?” She looked back at me with mischief in her gaze, and I knew what she had planned.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever moved faster in my life. Before she could go scrounging for a card, I darted off the floor and raced toward them both. If not for the fact that Silas was strong as hell, thanks to a past in the military, I would have bowled them both over as I scrambled for the arrangement. I didn’t need to read the card to know who my favorite flowers were from. Other than my family, Roan was the only person on the planet who knew that little bit of info. I could only imagine what the card said, and I sure as hell didn’t want my friends reading it. Especially before I did.
I wrapped an arm around the vase, holding it to me as I fished the little card from the plastic stand in the center of the arrangement and stuffed it down the front of my sports bra. Becausethatwasn’t obvious!
McKenna looked at me with suspicion etched into her face. “You know, you’re being really cagey. Almost like you’re trying to hide something.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said on a laugh that wasn’t believable in the slightest. “I’m not hiding anything.”
Sloane crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyelids at me. “Then tell us what the card says.”
“Oh, I already read it.” All eyes whipped his direction at Silas’s pronouncement. “I read it as soon as it was dropped off. It said: ‘Hope you’re feeling better, Freckles. If you need me, you know where to find me. R.’”
“I can’t believe you read my card!” I cried. “That was mine! You had no right!”
Sloane raised up on her tiptoes and cupped his cheeks, pulling his face down for a loud, smacking kiss. “Andthis! This right here is one of the main reasons I love you. You understand my craving for gossip and you feed my habit.”
All eyes whipped away from Silas and swung to me like they were watching a tennis match.
“I read the card to make sure there wasn’t any kind of threat. I was doing my job,” Silas stated calmly.
