A battering ram hit my head.
Either I had the worst hangover or I’d gotten a cold. It felt like both.
I watched Chantilly snatch all the yogurt from the fridge. Hannah staked her claim on the sodas. Cayden scarfed down the cold cuts. Ida Marie ate string cheese without peeling it like a psychopath.
I’d grown past refusing Nash’s food, but part of me wondered if he’d stop making me lunches if I caved and grabbed snacks with witnesses in the room.
I hid a sniffle in my tissue, tempted to curl into my bed in the penthouse’s spare room. An actual mattress and silky sheets with a thread count higher than my bank balance.
This morning, I’d walked into my closet and found it cleared. The panic came first. Fury came second. The return of my vision came last.
A note on the floor read:
I’d give you a key, but we both know you already have one.
NASH
It wasn’t Nash’s handwriting, which made sense since he’d been with me the entire time. It looked like Delilah’s.
I was still staring at the fridge when Nash entered.
“I thought we were over this. Take what you want.” He reached into the fridge, somehow grabbed me exactly what I would have chosen, and tossed it on the empty couch cushion. “I’ll still make the damn lunches, Tiger. Eat. Whatever. You. Want. Fuck.”
I reached for the juice pouch and pepperoni pizza Lunchables. My hip bumped the Jana Sport. A cascade of tissues fell to the floor
Nash spotted them, taking in the sheer quantity. “Are you sick?” A litany of curses sailed out of him. “I told you you’d get sick in the rain.”
“I told you so? Really?” I tore open the Lunchables and ate a pepperoni, smiling at him despite the congestion. “Are we five? You can do better than that.”
Nash collected my Jana Sport. “Come on.”
I tore into another pepperoni slice. “I already opened this.” The tray rattled in my frozen palms. “Can’t waste food.”
He nicked the meal and slammed it beside Chantilly’s yogurt. “Eat this.”
She jolted from the desk. “But—”
“Eat it.” His back ended her response. A thick brow arched at me. “Problem solved. We’re going.”
“I’m hungry,” I protested, but I followed him into the elevator.
He pressed the G button for the garage. “I’ll pick up McDonald’s on the way.”
I exited the elevator first. “I hate McDonald’s.”
“Virginia hates McDonald’s. You love it.” Nash unlocked his car, swung the door open for me, and waited for me to settle into the seat’s leather. “You’re obsessed with peeling the breading off their McNuggets and shoving them into a McDouble with fries, which by the way is fucking disgusting.”
“My McMasterpiece. Yum.” A sneeze swallowed my moan. The tissue filled my palm. Being sick sucked. “Don’t knock it ‘till you try it.”
I ate my McMasterpiece on the way to the doctor’s office. The final bite spoke of regret. I considered vomiting, but Nash’s car still smelled of petrichor and mud. Plus, he no longer had a roof. Maybe I’d done enough damage to the car.
“This is pointless. It’s just a cold. It’ll go away on its own. One week max, but probably less.” Without a heater in my Alabama studio, I’d gotten so many colds, I was a pro at this point.
“We’re still going to the hospital.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
I hid my smile, because I read between the Nash-colored lines. He cared. It was cute. Warm, even. Like watching Ben and Nash merge into one being. The affection of Ben, mixed with the brash exterior of Nash.
“Can you finish this?” I held out a little cardboard box. The naked McNuggets filled it, white without the breading.
He wore a scowl, but he ate them all, since neither of us believed in wasting food. A question filled my mouth the entire drive.
Do you think it’s lust?
He’d told me to ask when I was sober, but every time it crawled toward my lips, I dug my nails into the leather.
This poor car. So abused by me.
At the hospital, Nash parked in a slot reserved for staff and guided me to a private entrance. We weaved through plain halls, stained by the stale scent of chemicals and death.
The intake room buzzed. Two teens clutched onto burned arms from a Fourth of July pyrotechnic display. An elderly woman rocked in her seat, rubbing at her arms. Patients filled every chair in the waiting room, and more stood to the side in various states of disheveled and broken.
“We’ll be here all day.” I groaned, brows dipping together when I noticed Nash walking to a door.
He arched a brow as if to say, Well? You coming or what?
A nurse approached him. “Sir, you can’t go in there.”
“My last name is on this building.” He flashed her a wolf’s smile. “I’ll go where I want.”
“Oh, Mr. Prescott.” The heels of her sensible sneakers squeaked with her retreat. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t catch your face. I’ll page a G.P.” She fled, not once turning back.
I groaned and followed Nash through a hallway he seemed to know well. “Don’t tell me you’ve turned into that douche.”
“That douche?”
“The one who pulls the money card every chance he gets.”
“Not usually.”
I stumbled after a sneeze and allowed Nash to steady me. “You donated this building and named it after yourself?”
“I named it after Dad.” He held a door open for me. “It’s the Hank Prescott Medical Center.”
“Oh.” I racked my brain for a polite way to say, horrible idea, but came up short. “He would have liked that.”
Nash snorted. “No, he wouldn’t have.”
“Yeah, he would have hated it.” I hopped onto the exam table. “He would have called it useless fanfare. Why’d you do it?”
“For starters, I wanted him immortalized by someone who isn’t you, me, Ma, or Reed.”
“If someone else remembers him, it makes his existence real.”
“Yeah.”
No wonder Nash’s chest was so broad. It housed such a big heart.
I wanted to apologize again for his loss, but it seemed inadequate. I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but that seemed inadequate, too. I settled for studying him.
Nash tugged at the otoscope covers. Three coasted to the floor. He kicked them near the door. “The doctor that forced Dad off the trial is on the board of this hospital. It’s why I chose to rename it. I want that motherfucker to see it every time he attends a meeting.”
More words fringed his mouth. They laid dormant there, unspoken. I would have pressed, but an older doctor stepped into the room.
“Nash.”
“Dax.”
Dax adjusted the stethoscope around his neck. “Heard you caused a scene out there.” He crushed the otoscope covers beneath his sneakers and cursed.
A smile ghosted Nash’s lips. “Driving my car through the building until I reached this exam room would be a scene. Civilized conversation, however, is not.”
“When have you ever been civilized?” Dax tossed the plastic and exchanged his Paw Patrol gloves for blue latex ones. “Who’s this?”
I waved. “Emery, and considering I’m in the room, too, you can ask me your questions directly.”
“Right. Sorry.” He snapped the gloves and approached. “I’m a pediatrician. I’m used to asking the parents, but it’s a full house today.”
The lack of a clipboard had me on edge. Didn’t all professionals use clipboards?
Nash toyed with the I.U.D. pamphlets, selecting one for the brand I’d gotten from my campus’ medical center.
Dax’s eyes followed mine to Nash. “Would you like Mr. Prescott to leave? Your confidentiality is a right.”
“I’m fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Doctors creeped me out, mostly because Virginia had raised me on concierge doctors and in-house medical care.
“Not a fan of doctors?”
“Sorry, I’ll tone down the bite.”
Nash’s lips pressed together as if he didn’t believe me and found it amusing.
Dax pulled out a thermometer. “I take it you’re sick? What are your symptoms?”
“It’s just a cold.”
When I didn’t elaborate, Nash took over, listing the runny nose, coughing, sneezing, and bajillion other things he’d noticed in a single car ride. An otoscope examined my ears and nose. A thermometer determined my temperature. The metal of the stethoscope chilled my back.
And at the end of it all, Dax told me what I already knew. “The cold should go away in three to ten days without medication.”
“That’s it?” Nash leaned against the wall, face resembling a concerned coach’s. “No pills? Remember, it’s your head that I’ll be after if something happens.”
“It’s a cold, Nash. It’ll go away on its own.” Dax handed me a lollipop from his Paw Patrol fanny pack. It earned him a smile. “If you have a headache, take an over-the-counter NSAID like Advil or Tylenol.”
I unwrapped the lollipop. “Got it, Doc. Thanks.”
Dax left me alone with Nash. His bespoke suit paired poorly with my skinny jeans and tee, but I liked the dynamic. It was us.
I sucked on the candy, waiting for him to speak.
He toyed with one of the tongue depressors in a jar. “Why are you smiling?”
“I love Ben. You are Ben.”
The stick stalled in his fingers. “You remember last night?”
“All of it…” I shifted. The paper beneath my thighs crunched. “I might have been drunk, but I remember it all.”
Ask the question, Em.
Nash snapped a depressor in half and toyed with the fringe, probably collecting splinters. “Why Durga?”
“Her sacred animal is the tiger. She’s known as the Inaccessible.”
“Your Insta handle.”
The full-blown smile probably looked goofy and obnoxious, but I refused to tamp it. “You stalked me on Insta?”
“Of course not.”
My lips remained tipped up. I’d let this lie slide.
“Last night, I asked you a question. You told me to ask again when I’m sober.” My free hand toyed with the exam table’s paper. “Do you think this is just lust?”
“Ask me again later.”
“But—”
“If I say yes, you’ll feel like shit on top of being sick. If I say no, you’ll want me on you, all over you, in you. Do you really want to be sick when that happens?”
When.
Not if.
“I’m a master at healing,” I warned him, ruining it with a sneeze.
If he were the eye-rolling type, he would have. I think I’d seen him do it once in my fifteen—almost sixteen—years of knowing him.
“I don’t doubt it.”
I considered my next words. Ben was obsessed with penance. So was Nash… and he wanted my dad’s address.
“What will you do to my dad?”
The question sucked the energy out of the room and replaced it with uncertainty. I knew Nash needed closure, but it hurt that it had to come from my dad.
Nash tossed the sticks into the trash and tilted my chin up with a single fingertip. “I just need to talk to him.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
I shuttered my eyes, rested my forehead on Nash’s chest, and whispered, “He’s in Blithe Beach.”
Turns out, betrayal doesn’t sting as much when you do it for someone you love.
