Page 116 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“Drop it in the hall, and then go to your mum. When you have a free minute, text me the appointment times and I’ll make sure she’s there.”
Auden came close, pulled me abruptly into an embrace so tight I could hardly breathe. I sensed it was more for him than for me. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I know she’s not your favorite person.”
I hugged him back. “You know me better than anyone, Auden Guest. Do you truly think I’d let her or you suffer when I could help?”
He pulled back to look at my face. “No,” he said after a minute. “No, I know you wouldn’t. But this is also a heavy thing to lay at your feet, and I want you to know I’m grateful.”
“You’re family, Auden. This is what families do.” Families take in the people who need help, they take in siblings and niblings and cousins and the cousins of cousins. They care for their old, their sick, the ones who need a favor and the ones who’ve used up all their favors already.
I considered Auden my family, and that meant my help, my home, and my time were his to ask for.
I gave him a final squeeze and then I made a shooing motion that was so much Ma’s it actually alarmed me for a moment. One person to take care of, and suddenly I was my mother, ready to flutter around and mutter half-prayers, half-grumbles to myself.
“Go get the bag,” I told him. “Then go to the hospital. I’ll take care of everything else.”
It started with a glass of water.
The thing was, I was no more qualified to watch over another human being than I was performing brain surgery or flying a helicopter. My only experience caring for other people was within the paradigm of kink, where the rules were clear and the limits even clearer.
Kink and Delphine had one thing in common though: the consequences for fucking up were d
ire.
I did not want to fuck up. Not only because I was Rebecca Quartey and I didn’t do fuckups, and not only because it was important for me to help Auden—but because the thought of Delphine not getting better, the thought of her slowly leaking away through invisible punctures I couldn’t patch, twisted my belly and flooded my mouth with metallic-tasting panic. She had to get better. She had to have the sun in her face once again. I’d make sure of it.
Pretend she’s a sub in your care, Rebecca. Where would you start?
I examined her, automatically running through the metrics I use during and after a scene. Hydration, blood sugar, temperature, comfort, mood.
The truth was, I’d never had a sub who seemed to be failing every single metric, and anxiety nibbled at my thoughts. What if I couldn’t help her? What if I failed?
I took a deep breath and then another one after that. Start at the beginning, Miss Genius. What metric needs addressed first?
Her lips were chapped.
Okay.
Chapped lips were a problem I could solve.
I filled a glass of cool water, found some no-nonsense lip balm, and then walked over to the sofa.
It took her some time to look up at me, and when she did, what I saw in her eyes stole my breath away.
Or rather, it was what I didn’t see that scared me, because her eyes were empty.
Normally a light, halcyon honey-gold, they were the color of dust today. The color of cracked and lifeless earth.
I’d meant to be gentle, to coax her. Maybe I’d thought I’d reason with her, to use the looming reality of inpatient treatment to stir her into agency again.
But the panic took me so hard in that moment that I defaulted to instinct. I defaulted to the only way I knew to care for someone else.
“Drink this,” I ordered brusquely, extending the glass. “Take breaks, but finish it all.”
For a moment, my words seemed to hang in the hair, and I wished I could yank them back into myself. What in God’s name was wrong with me, talking like this? Giving explicit instructions like she was my submissive for the night?
I was about to qualify it, about to add more words to try to make it less a command and more an invitation, when she took the glass and tipped it obediently to her lips.
And when she did—a flash in her eyes.
