Ivan muttered something under his breath that didn’t sound very nice, but his palm stroked my hair some more, brushing through the strands like the last thing he wanted to do was hurt me. For once. It was nice.

“They can see her at noon,” Coach Lee finally said. “We need to reduce her fever in the meantime. Did you give her a painkiller already?”

“Yes,” the man whose thigh I had my head on replied.

They whispered some other words to each other, words too low for me to care about while I was debating if I could offer to pay Ivan to keep running his fingers through my hair, when I felt a tap to my cheek. “Hmm?”

“Time to get up,” Ivan whispered. “You need a shower.”

Get up? “No, thank you.”

There was a pause and then, “I’m not asking. Get up.”

“I don’t want to get up,” I whined.

“Okay,” he agreed too easily. “I’ll carry you in.”

“No thanks.”

His hand stroked over my head, then picked at the corner of the towel over my forehead and peeled it off, brushing his fingers over the skin there with those hands I knew so well that had never been so gentle before. His voice was low as he said, “I know you don’t want to, and I know you feel bad, but you need to get up, little hedgehog. You need to cool down.”

I groaned and ignored his h-word.

Ivan sighed, but his hand still petted my hair. “Come on. Get up for me.”

“No.”

There was a snicker and another stroke. “I wouldn’t have thought you were a baby when you got sick,” he said, sounding amused I thought but wasn’t sure because I was too busy trying to zone out how shitty I felt.

“Uh-huh,” I agreed, because my mom had always said the same thing. What a crybaby. I didn’t get sick often. It wasn’t like I tried to milk attention… even if she would have given it to me. But she was always more worried about my sister than me having a little cold or cough, and I’d never cared.

“Are you going to get up?” he asked, palming my forehead with a hiss I wasn’t so sick to not know it meant my skin was hot.

“No,” I said again, rolling onto my side so that my cheek was pressed to his thigh and my nose was at his hip. His crotch was right there, but his dick could have been out and I wouldn’t have cared.

“You’re not going to get up on your own?”

“No.”

There was a pause and a definite sound of amusement when he finally grated out, “If you insist.”

I insisted. I really insisted, especially as another shiver racked through my entire body, my spine aching in that way it only did after a bad season and real illness. I wasn’t getting up.

But Ivan had other plans.

Plans that involved him sliding out from under me while I groaned in protest at the loss of the most uncomfortable pillow I’d ever laid my head on, but beggars can’t be choosers so I’d take that hard thigh any day. Those plans were then followed up by two arms sliding into the same spots they’d been in minutes before: supporting my shoulder blades and the underside of my knees. Then, he lifted me and started walking, each step solid and balanced.

And I didn’t argue. Not even a little bit.

It might shame me later that I didn’t even try and help him with my weight to ease the load; instead I just lay there like a kid being carried to bed after a long car ride, with my head resting against his shoulder while I shivered some more. I could have walked, of course I could have. But I didn’t fucking want to. Not when he was so willing to help me out.

And just feeling his warm, hard body against me made me feel a little better.

In no time at all, he opened a door I hadn’t noticed before, leading us into a bathroom. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a shower stall with a sink and toilet. Ivan squatted and slowly let me get to my feet, where a head rush made me dizzy.

“You need a cold shower,” he said, stabilizing me with the arm around my shoulders.

“Ugh,” I mumbled, closing my eyes. He was right. I knew from the rare times I’d seen other people with high fevers how dangerous it could be. I didn’t need to lose any more brain cells. Another shiver tore through my body, and that had Ivan letting go of me and stepping around to turn the handle on the shower.

“Come on,” he urged.

I tried lifting my arms but let them drop when they didn’t move much more than an inch away from my body. Fuck. I was more exhausted than I could ever remember being before.

With a swallow, I opened my eyes again and thought, Fuck it. I’ll go in fully clothed. I had a change in my bag. Lee or Ivan could grab it for me. Doing my best impersonation of every single member of my family on Christmas, I stumbled forward, squinting my eyes because the bright overhead light was goddamn blinding.

But two steps before just walking right into the stall with my socks still on, Ivan’s arm went up, parallel to the floor, and blocked me from going any further. “What are you doing?” he asked.

I peeked at him. “Going in?”

“You’re fully clothed.”

“No energy to take my clothes off,” I said, sounding hoarse.

I didn’t miss the way he rolled his eyes. “I’ll help you.”

“Okay,” I whispered, not thinking twice about it. Why would I? He’d had his hands all over my body daily, had already seen me basically naked, seen me half-dressed, and in skintight clothes. We were past being self-conscious.

He hesitated for a moment… and then smiled a little. He took a step to the side to stand in front of me, that funny, small smile on his face, and he reached for the bottom of my tank. And before either one of us could overthink it, he pulled it up over my head.

Unlike some other girls I knew with little to no chests in figure skating, I always wore a sports bra. I liked the support. They didn’t need to be moving around the place when I was upside down, even if there was hardly anything that moved.

And if Ivan was surprised that I wasn’t braless under my clothes, it didn’t show on his face.

Then again, if he was, I barely had my eyes open so I might have missed it.

But his hands continued their path down until he got to the top of my tights, and taking a knee, he stripped those down my legs. Just as I was about to try and toe my socks off, still down there, he picked up one of my legs with one hand, and with the other, pulled off the thin socks and bandages I’d put on that morning, dragging the flat of his thumb over the arch before lowering my foot and picking the other one up. He did the same to it, his eyes lingering on my toes if I was seeing correctly, and if I’d had the energy, I would have scrunched up my sparkle pink nail polished toes. The fact that he glanced up at me and smiled, kind of threw me off, but I didn’t let my thoughts linger there. My stomach gave a roll, and I just barely managed not to throw up the breakfast I’d forced down that morning.

Ivan snickered as he gave my heel a squeeze and dropped my foot. “In you go, champ.”

I was dead asleep when something—or someone—hit my forehead. Hard.

Then that something—or someone—hit me three more times, one right after the other. It was the fact that there was a rhythm to it that had me snapping my eyes open.

Someone was knocking on my forehead.

And that someone was Ivan.

Ivan who was leaning over me, his fist held just a couple inches away from my face. He was smirking. At me.

“Wake up, Outbreak monkey. It’s time for your next Tylenol.”

I blinked. Then I looked at the ceiling behind him, trying to remember what the hell was happening. It was then, as I was wondering that, that my head reminded me it was still hurting. Still hurting. I shivered, a reminder that I’d had a fever. More than likely still had one if the tremor that went through my body meant anything.

I was sick. The doctor had said it was a virus. Ivan had driven me there, then afterward, taken me to the pharmacy, where I’d sat in the car, shaking from hot to cold, to buy a bottle of Tylenol because I couldn’t remember how much I had. Then, he’d taken me home. Home to an empty house because my mom and Ben were gone, enjoying the beach and doing fun shit I would love to do.

Instead, I was in my room, under the covers, having my forehead used as a bongo drum by someone who was clearly enjoying it.

“What time is it?” I asked, trying to scoot up toward the headboard while I blinked, just barely noticing how raspy and hoarse my voice sounded. It was even worse than it had been before.

“Time for you to take your Tylenol,” he replied, shaking the fist he’d been using to knock on me.

I groaned and tried to roll to my side so I could go back to sleep, but he grabbed my shoulder and moved me back to lay the way I’d been.

“Two more and then you can go back to sleep,” he tried to compromise with me.

“No.”

Those glacier eyes stayed locked on me, his facial expression still a happier one than I ever would have bet on. His voice though, didn’t sound so playful. “Take the pills, Jasmine.”

I closed my eyes and moaned at how much my back and shoulders ached. “No.”