“I don’t mind staying a little while longer, but I need to go home later, at least for an hour.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered that he had to leave to go do something. Just like he had when he’d babysat Jessie and Benny with me, and just like when he’d eaten dinner at my mom’s. But I didn’t focus or question what and why he had to leave. I was too tired.

“You can go now if you want.”

“No, it’s only five, Meatball,” he replied. “I’ve got hours. It’s fine.”

“I’m sure you have better things to do.”

The arm over my shoulder went down, and Ivan’s hand went to my shoulder, cupping it before going up and down my upper arm, one stroke up, one stroke down. “Be quiet and go back to sleep, all right?”

Sleep? It sounded wonderful. Just fucking awesome.

Without arguing, I closed my eyes, and asked with an exhale after I got a whiff of the light cologne he wore every day without fail, “Do you do this for all your partners? Or just the ones you’re stuck with for a year?”

Beneath my cheek, his body tensed and stayed tense even as he answered. “Stop running your mouth and go back to sleep, would you?”

I moved my palm just enough so that it lay directly over the flat, solid slabs called his abs. I’d seen them a hundred times in glimpses here and there when he’d take off his sweater, or reach up to stretch or scratch his stomach… but I hadn’t touched them. Not once in more than brushes. But they were just as hard as they looked.

“You really don’t have to stay,” I repeated myself again as exhaustion weighed heavy on my eyes, trying to give him an opening.

He sighed, and I sensed him shaking his head. “Nobody else is going to take as good of care of you as I will.” He had a point, didn’t he? The faster I got better, the better it would be for him. For both of us.

If that was disappointment in my belly, I ignored it. It didn’t matter. He was here now, doing what nobody else would want to do.

“Before you fall asleep again, where’s your remote?” he asked.

Reaching behind me blindly, I grabbed the remote off the other nightstand and then dropped it on his stomach.

And I passed the fuck out.

Something warm touched my mouth later, and I’d swear I heard, “Drink it, baby,” whispered to me.

And I drank it all. Whatever the hell it was.

I woke up at one point, sensing my head on something hard, and peeked my eyes open enough to find that I had my head on a lap, my arm thrown over kneecaps. The television was on softly, and the comforter I’d crawled under had been kicked down to the bottom of the bed.

I was sweating. Hot. But somehow I managed to fall back asleep.

“Jasmine,” a familiar voice whispered into my ear, stroking my hair and then arm. “I need to go home.”

I felt like shit. All I could do was mutter, “Okay.”

Ivan’s familiar hand stroked my hair, my arm, my wrist, lingering there. “Your cell is right next to you. Your mom said someone would come check on you. Call me if you need anything though, all right?”

“Uh-huh,” was all I managed to get out before his fingers, or his hand, left my wrist.

“I’ll be here in the morning,” he said, something warm and damp touching my forehead so lightly and quickly, I thought I might have imagined it.

“Thanks,” I whispered in my one moment of clarity, my throat parched.

“I left you water on both nightstands. Drink up.”

Something else touched my forehead, and I sighed an, “Okay, Vanya.” Then, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Chapter 15

It was the poke to my forehead that woke me up. The “wakey, wakey,” that came after it that got me to open my eyes and squint up at the finger hovering over my face. But it was the dryness coming from my throat and the dull pain from my head that had me shoving down the sheet I had pulled up to my neck. I had no clue where my comforter had gone.

Sitting with his butt halfway on the bed, with his hand above my face, was a clean, fresh-looking Ivan in a blue T-shirt that made his eyes look as if he had on colored contacts.

“What do you want?” I moaned, shuffling up the bed until my shoulder blades rested on the headboard.

He ignored my borderline rude words and smiled. “Get dressed. You need a shower and you need to get out of this room for a while.”

I watched him the entire time I yawned, wincing at the soreness coming from my throat, and then reached over for the nearly empty glass of water that had been sitting on my nightstand since Ivan had left it there last night. Sipping what was left of the room-temperature water, I blinked at him and asked, “And that’s why you had to wake me up? To tell me to shower?”

“And get you out of the house.”

But I didn’t want to leave the house. Much less my bed. And especially not to shower.

His fingertip came at my face so fast I didn’t get a chance to move out of the way before he poked me on the forehead. “Get moving. Lacey isn’t exactly patient.”

“Who’s Lacey?”

“You’ll meet her in a minute. Hurry up. I’ll get you another glass of water in the meantime.” Ivan stood up and made a face. “Brush your teeth too.”

For a second, I thought about blowing out a long breath of air just for his comment, but didn’t have the energy… and he’d been nice to me for the most part. He’d at least gone totally out of his way since the day before.

I could keep my sick breath to myself this once, even though he was being an ass.

But the question remained… who the hell was Lacey and why did I have to meet her? Especially when I was sick. Just as I was about to open my mouth and argue with him, my head gave a throb to remind me my body was making up with this one virus, all the months and possibly years that had passed since the last time I’d been ill.

My whole body said, “fuck you,” as I flipped the sheet to the side and swung my legs over the edge. I wasn’t new to aches and pains, but there was a certain kind of hell that being sick put your body through. Everything from my eyeballs down to my toes ached and seemed to creak just from those movements, and I only barely held back a groan as I slowly stood up.

Ivan let out a “huh,” maybe seeing my face or sensing the stiffness in my movement, but he didn’t say anything else.

Just that was exhausting. “I don’t feel like doing anything.”

“I’m not going to make you do anything,” Ivan returned. “I already said that you need to rest.”

I eyeballed the jeans he had on. “Then… where are we going?”

His facial features didn’t give anything away. “Nowhere bad.”

I blinked.

“Do you trust—” He made a face. “Never mind. Just get dressed.”

It said how tired and crappy I felt that I didn’t argue or ask any more questions. I dragged my feet toward my dresser and pulled out underwear and a bra, becoming even more tired after that. Casting a side-look at Ivan, I found him still sitting on my bed… watching me. I sighed, and he raised his eyebrows again.

“I’ll be back in ten,” I basically whined, shuffling toward my door.

“Holler if you need me.” There was a pause and then, “I’ve already seen you almost naked twice. It’s no big deal.”

I would have choked if I had the energy, but I didn’t. I would have given him the finger too, but that didn’t happen either. All I managed to do was grab my bathrobe from the hook behind the door. I headed, huffing and puffing, to bathroom across the hall that I used to share with Ruby back when she had lived here. It took me longer than normal to shower, and it was only because my legs felt so damn prickly that I forced myself to shave. I didn’t have the energy to put lotion on or anything. I just barely managed to pull on my underwear and my most comfortable bra.

I slipped on my robe and was just about to tie the sash on it when my arms gave up. I just held it together at my waist as I dragged myself back to my room, asking myself one more time: Who the hell was Lacey? And, where the hell were we going?

I had barely made it two steps into the room… barely seen Ivan sitting on the edge of my bed directly besides my nightstand… barely caught on to the fact that the top drawer of it was open… barely caught on to the fact he was holding white sheets of paper that he shouldn’t have seen and shouldn’t have known existed, when Ivan’s head snapped up and I saw, I saw, his face was a color it shouldn’t have been.

And then he lost it.

“What the hell is this?” he asked, shaking the papers in his hand, angrily, so angry, so fast, I really felt bad.

Only for a second. But it still happened.

The breath I hadn’t realized I’d blown out of my lungs, came back in me before I managed to hiss out, “What the hell are you doing looking through my things?”

It was a sign of how angry he was that he didn’t immediately have a comeback for me.