Chapter Seven
A Fever Night
I didn't tell anyone I felt unwell. That's a habit from years of running a studio on a skeleton budget — you don't stop until you physically can't move. By the time I understood that the headache and the chill weren't going away, I was already on the floor of the studio bathroom.
Lily found me. Lily called the penthouse.
I'd told her to call a car, not a person. I found out later that she hadn't.
I was on the studio couch with a blanket when Lucas arrived. He was still in a suit. It was four in the afternoon — he'd been in meetings. I know because I heard him on the phone as he walked in, ending a call in a way that suggested the person on the other end was not pleased.
He crouched down in front of me.
His hand went to my forehead without hesitation. No preamble. Just his palm, cool and certain, against my skin.
"One-oh-two," he said, like he had a thermometer built in.
"I'm fine."
"You're not." He stood. Looked at Lily. "Do you have ibuprofen?"
He managed the next four hours with the same manner he managed everything — efficiently, without fuss, without comfort that felt performed. He got me to the car. He got me to the penthouse. He found the medicine in the bathroom cabinet, brought water, adjusted the thermostat.
He didn't flutter. He didn't hover. He just handled things.
By midnight my fever had climbed instead of fallen. I surfaced from a restless half-sleep to find the room dark and Lucas sitting in the chair by the window, a document open on his tablet.
"You're still here," I said. My voice came out rougher than I intended.
"You're still sick."
"I don't need — you don't have to—"
"Sophia." Quiet. Final. "Go back to sleep."
I looked at him for a moment. In the low light he looked different — less composed, somehow. Or maybe it was the fever.
"You had a meeting," I said. "I heard you cancel something."
A pause. "It wasn't important."
Something about that sentence — the flatness of it, the complete absence of resentment — made something shift behind my ribs. I closed my eyes before my face could say something I hadn't decided yet.
He crossed the room once more to check my temperature — his hand again, efficient, impersonal. Except that he didn't move it immediately. A moment longer than necessary.
Then he went back to his chair.
I woke at six to gray morning light and the sound of rain.
He was still there.
Asleep in the chair. Fully dressed. Head tilted slightly back. The tablet dark in his hand.
He'd stayed the entire night.
I lay very still and looked at him and tried not to think about what it meant that the sight of him sleeping in that chair made my chest do something it had absolutely no business doing.
Remember what it is, I told myself.
But looking at him, I was already less certain.
