Page 82 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
His lips part. His eyes burn. “Because I’m not ready to lose you just yet.”
“I promise you won’t lose me.”
His smile is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. “No.”
“A.J.—”
“No,” he repeats, more firmly.
Question-and-answer time is over. To underscore that, he withdraws from me, and finishes unpacking the bag of groceries. I watch him in miserable silence. The final thing he takes from the brown paper bag is a disposable cell phone. Without meeting my eyes, he hands it to me.
“I brought your purse but left your cell phone at your apartment.” He adds, “This one can’t be tracked.”
Eric. Here he comes again, intruding with his jealousy and all the awful memories he’s gifted me. “You think Eric might try to track me with my phone?”
“I think he’s capable of anything, and I’m not taking chances, so you’re using a burner from now on.”
“What, forever?”
In his gaze is something dark and dangerous. “Until I know you’re safe.”
I’m about to ask more questions, but am seized by the irresistible urge to sneeze. I do—violently—jerking with the unexpected force of it. Thankfully I had time to cover my mouth and nose, or A.J. might have gotten doused with snot. “Ugh. Sorry,” I say sheepishly.
Then I sneeze again. And again.
“Was it something I said?”
A.J.’s being funny, but all at once a wave of heat flashes over me, and I break out in a cold sweat. “Whoa.”
“What’s wrong?” Worried, A.J. steps closer.
“I’m not feeling so good all of a sudden.” Warmth creeps up my neck, spreading over my face. My cheeks flush.
With a hand under my elbow, he marches me over to the leather couch, and directs, “Sit.”
Feeling strangely weak, I do.
He goes into the bathroom and returns with a thermometer. “Open,” is his next command, which I follow, allowing him to insert the slender glass tube under my tongue. In thirty seconds he removes it, looks at it, and frowns.
“Hundred and two.”
Within minutes, my head is pounding. A.J. feeds me two aspirin. After an hour lying on the couch, sneezing, feverish, wracked with chills, I can no longer deny the obvious.
I’ve come down with the flu.
Is this the universe’s way of trying to tell me something?
For five days, I’m completely out of it. I haven’t been this sick since I had strep throat when I was twelve and had to miss ten days of school. Other than calling my father and the girls daily to check in, I sleep most of the time, restlessly tossing, dreaming unsettling dreams of waking to find A.J. gone, or of Eric chasing me down a dark alley, his fingers grasping for my neck. When I’m not sleeping I’m groggy, my head pounds, my body is clammy and clumsy. The only time I get out of bed on my own is to shuffle to the bathroom like a zombie to use the toilet.
What does A.J. do with himself while I’m so ill?
The broody, moody, badass drummer turns into Florence Nightingale.
He gently wipes my sweaty forehead with cold cloths. He buys me every available type of cold and flu medication. He frets over me, fluffing pillows and smoothing blankets and worrying about every sneeze and sniffle. When I’m too weak to sit up to feed myself, he props me against his chest and spoon-feeds me chicken soup or organic ice cream he bought from the health store.
He even reads to me. There’s a moldering library on the first floor, and in it he finds a copy of The Princess Bride. He spends hours sitting next to me on the bed, reading out loud, doing all the different parts in different voices.
I’ve never been this well looked after, not even by my mother when I was twelve. I feel cocooned. Though I’m terribly sick, I feel spoiled. Bella’s even learned to love snuggling with me, on the pillow by my head during the day, at our feet at night while A.J. and I sleep.
