Page 29 of Cinderella Is Faking It

“Yes, how did you-” The words died on my tongue as I registered the blood shooting into her cheeks, her face reddening before me. And not the cute, riled up blush that tinted the tip of her nose first. Swollen, patchy redness. “You’re allergic.”

“I’m going to lie down. EpiPen’s in a pink pouch in my bag. Jab into my thigh and hold for ten seconds, and uh… there’s wet wipes for your peanut hands before you touch me.” Her voice was losing air with every word as she climbed off the bar stool hands trembling.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” I darted around the kitchen counter, and my first instinct was to grab hold of her, but she had given me clear instructions. I grabbed her bag from the sofa. Del’s breathing came in gasps as I emptied the contents of her purse on the floor. Pouches. So many damn pouches. Pink. I snatched it up and shot to her side. Her face had taken on the same shade as her red lipstick as she stretched her neck, trying to get air. Fuck. I tore through the wet wipes, knocked the damn EpiPen from its packaging, pushed her dress up and held my own breath as I jabbed it into her. She didn’t even flinch as the needle went in. “You’re going to be okay, sweetheart,” I gasped, mentally counting down the seconds. Ten. She’d said ten. I left it for fifteen just to be sure. Then I got out my phone to call an ambulance because that’s what the packaging said to do.

“No. No 911,” she heaved, the first bits of lung capacity returning, glazed eyes on me.

“You need to go to the hospital.”

“No.” Panic crept into her voice. “Please. I’ll be fine.”

“Del, I’m not letting you die in my living room. You need medical attention.”

Her arm jerked up and she slapped the phone from my hand, strength returning to her muscles. “If you take me to the hospital, I will kill you. I am so fucking serious, Beckett.” She squeezed her eyes shut, her hand wrapping around her own throat. “Actually, I will hire someone to kill you and I will make it look like an accident.”

She wasn’t kidding, and I wasn’t sure if this was part of the whole ‘not leaving the house for 15 years’ thing or if she just hated hospitals, but the idea of getting an ambulance freaked her out more than dying here. “Fine,” I pushed the word through gritted teeth.

Del pushed herself up on her elbows and didn’t protest when I wrapped my arm around her back to help. “I have antihistamines. I just… need five minutes.”She looked down at her jittering hands.

“Blondie.”

“It’s just the adrenaline.” She flexed her hands and looked at me with dark, wide pupils. “You might have to help me get up. I get really dizzy from the epinephrine.”

“Come here,” I slipped my other arm around the back of her knees and Del automatically slung hers around my shoulders, no protest as I lifted her up. Her entire body trembled against my chest. She felt small, nestled against me. Not just physically. All the fire she had stormed in here with had cooled to embers. I placed her on the sofa and scrambled together all the small bags that had been in her purse. “Which ones are the antihistamines in?”

“Pink one, too.”

I just brought her the whole rainbow collection, before excusing myself for a minute and ducking into my bedroom to make a call. Isaac stepped into my apartment less than fifteen minutes later, patting me on the shoulder as he slipped past, medical bag slung over his shoulder.

“So, you must be the girl Beck tried to poison.” He slipped on his doctor mask, easy smile hiding the shadows under his eyes.

“Who are you?” Del asked, pushing herself up further on the sofa.

“Dr. Hunter, Boston Memorial, but victims of attempted murder by peanut can call me Isaac.”

“No, no, no.” She shook her head. His joke didn’t land because panic shot back into her eyes as she looked past Isaac to where I stood. “I said no 911.”

“It’s alright, darling. I’m not 911.” He tugged on his Guns’n’Roses shirt as if to prove a point, and definitely leaned into his accent. “Just a mate of Beck’s. It’s alright. You’re not going to the hospital.”

She visibly relaxed, swallowed, nodded.

I watched as Isaac took her blood pressure, had her blow into some plastic thing to measure her breathing and checked the swelling in her throat. “I have to check her lungs,” he announced and turned to look at me over his shoulder while he slung his stethoscope around his neck.

Del raised her brows at me when I didn’t respond.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“I have to take my dress off,” she said in a tone that implied a‘Duh!’at the end.

“Lifting it up will be fine,” Isaac quickly added. He could probably sense my pulse spike across the room. Logically, I knew he was a doctor and that came with a lot of indifference to the human body - but I’d seen him pull the stethoscope bit back in college, getting girls naked with some sleazy line about heartbeats - andthatIsaac was on my mind, when he raised his brows at me.

“Beck, please turn around. Please. I’m tired,” Blondie pleaded, chin quivering.

I was doing that to her. I was turning her into an exhausted, trembling mess, close to tears. My fucking curry and now my fucking ego. I turned around and braced my hands on the granite countertop, stone biting deep into my palm as I strained to listen like a creep. Some fucked-up part of me already considered that woman on the sofa mine. Realistically, Del was far from agreeing to marry me anytime soon, but when Isaac touched her, that fucked-up part of my brain was roaring that he was touchingmy wife.

After what felt like an eternity, Isaac finally cleared her, and I walked him to the door. A little too eager to get him out of my apartment. “Looks like you reacted quickly enough,” he said, walking with me, “but you will need to keep her on close observation for at least four hours, and if her condition worsens, you have to do this again, and call me.” He handed me a freshly packaged EpiPen.

“Thanks. I don’t need to remind you that-”

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