“Where are we going?”
Exhaustion could mimic drunkenness, she’d once read, but she’d never seen it before today.
“Bed.”
“That’s good.”
She got him shuffled to the closest patient bed, then turned him to sit. She immediately launched in, unfastening his suit so she could get him out of it.
If his coordination had been something under his control, she would’ve been stripped naked by the time she got his coveralls pooled around his waist. As it was, he kept fumbling with the zipper pull on the lighter suit she wore inside, like it was some strange contraption he’d never seen and couldn’t make his fingers effectively grip.
“You’ll have to do it,” he muttered, clearly thinking they were up to something besides her trying to get him undressed in case of emergency. She needed his arms bare for a line and vitals.
Playing along still seemed like the easiest thing. “Okay. I’ll do it later. You stand up for me? I want to get your coveralls down.”
He nodded, grabbed the edge of the bed for support, and then the wall once he got upright, and she took everything down as quickly as she could, leaving him in just his boxers and the thermal shirt he’d worn beneath the coveralls.
Once more, he sat, and she stayed down there to get his boots off.
His skin always felt warm to her, but today he felt feverish. Did exhaustion cause fevers? She wasn’t immediately sure. It made a kind of sense, any kind of trauma to the body could make it react with a fever, and extreme sleep deprivation was definitely a kind of trauma.
“Feet up,” she said, standing and trying to swing his legs into the bed as she did, but his heels touched down on the mattress and she felt his arms around her the next second, the world tilting.
His coordination problems aside, his mouth found hers as if guided by a laser, and the mattress at her back confirmed what he really thought was about to happen. The man was probably only technically awake, but he still had enough energy to pick her off the floor and roll.
And kiss.
Sweet mercy, the man knew how to kiss. Months since she’d felt his mouth on hers, and it was the same, saturated with that drugging euphoria he’d always been able to create with the barest brush of his lips or the glide of his tongue.
She wanted to wrap her arms around his shoulders and just let the good feelings roll over her, but there was just enough functioning gray matter left to remind her: it wasn’t right. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Even if he’d started this, she’d be taking advantage to let it continue. Knowing that, it still took her several long, drugging kisses before she got control enough to press his shoulders back, giving a strong enough hint for him to understand.
He leaned back just a touch, so his nose brushed hers and his quick, warm breath fanned her cheeks.
“West?”
“Hmm?” He stayed up long enough to indicate he was listening, but then leaned right back in and kissed her again, trailing little nips and suckles along her jaw to the side of her neck.
The softness of his lips, the familiar and unfamiliar crisp brush of his beard, the way his tongue slipped out to stroke her skin, it all scrambled her thoughts almost as much as sleep deprivation had scrambled his.
He didn’t seem to even remember they’d broken up. Twice, basically.
She gave a little tug to the hair on the back of his head, not enough to hurt but enough to urge him back again.
“What are you doing?” she asked softly, catching his gaze when he was up again.
He smiled, eyes half-closed, a dreamlike happiness flowing off him. “Snogging you senseless.”
Had he ever looked at her that way? Unguarded and open and...it looked like love. God, she really didn’t know how to tell what love looked like. He’d told her he didn’t love her. He’d made it very clear.
Maybe they were both confused. Maybe he was mentally in those few days before Charlie had died...and he hadn’t come to whatever realization had prompted him leaving.
Jerking him out of somewhere so happy felt awful, but she had to stop this.
She nodded to his simple, adorable answer, and when he leaned in to kiss her again, she turned her head.
Undeterred, he continued nuzzling and nibbling, and her foggy brain came to another realization. He wasn’t trying to get her naked. This was cuddling. Kissing just to kiss? Not how they usually operated.
But she wished it had been. It was as sexy as it was sweet.
And she had to stop it. “Why?”
“Why am I kissing you?”
“Mmm-hmm...”
He pulled back again, still happy. Amused, even. “You suddenly don’t like kissing me?”
God, she didn’t want to do this. And she couldn’t do it with the warm, solid weight of him pressing her into the bed, when every instinct said it was right. She got some traction in the mattress and slid up just a little, his gaze still tracking her, befuddled.
She couldn’t just blurt out, Remember how you don’t love me and ran two hemispheres to get away? It might be true, but it would be like kicking a puppy at this point.
“Where are we?” she asked instead.
Still confused, he looked up and at the room briefly before focusing on her again. “You don’t want to kiss at work?”
Not about what she wanted. By the saints, she wanted to stay right there with him, kissing, cuddling, everything...
She tried again. “Where are we?”
“Medical ward?”
Good. This might work. Without unnecessary cruelty.
“Right. Where is that?”
He caught on that she was leading him somewhere, and his answers became slower and, for the moment, more confused. “Fletcher?”
“That’s right.” She puffed, watching him slowly starting to catch up. “Where is Fletcher?”
“Antarctica.”
It was getting through. He leaned up just a little bit, clearly picking up that he was missing something, but not sure what yet.
“Why are we in Antarctica?” she asked finally.
She could see the second it clicked. His brow softened, then went slack. A look of undisguised grief bloomed in his eyes for an earth-stopping second, then he was moving, rolling off her.
“Lia... I’m sorry. I don’t... I don’t know...”
She slid off the bed and, once on her feet, turned to urge him back against the bed; doing things had a way of letting her feel in control. Or at least let her cover her lack of it. “It’s okay. Why did you come back?”
“I had to,” he said softly, his eyelids drooping.
“Why?”
Eyes closed, and mouth that had been working so beautiful started getting sluggish. “Didn’...have anywhere else...to go.”
He’d be asleep in a moment. If she wanted answers, she needed to get them now. Even if it just sounded like he’d slammed her with the truth she knew he didn’t realize he was saying. Like a drunken confession, but with a fever.
He wouldn’t have been allowed to just come back on his own. He’d have to have arranged it, gotten permission. People didn’t just get to visit Antarctic research stations without a job waiting for them or maybe special permission. There wasn’t any other way to get there than through the actual official transport. He’d gotten permission, and came straight back.
“Are you taking over Tony’s study?”
He opened his eyes, and nodded. “Yes. That’s why I came back.”
The official line. He probably didn’t even realize he’d said something else a moment ago. Both reasons might be facts, but the first? That was truth. And that made her heart ache, too.
“Did you sleep at all while you were gone?”
“Couple hours in Dallas.”
“Hotel?”
“Airport.”
So,
no rest really.
“Did you sleep on the plane at all?”
“Don’ remember,” he mumbled. She could almost see reality shrinking in his eyes.
“Boat? West?”
He shrugged, eyes closed again.
Basically, no sleep for three days on top of a few days with a couple of hours here and there, and thousands of miles of extensive, arduous travel. Amazing he’d made it at all.
Why would he do that? They would’ve let him recover a couple of days in Dallas before getting on another plane. There was time, at least a couple of weeks left before travel would become all but impossible.
She couldn’t keep him awake any longer. “Let me get that shirt off you, and then you can sleep. I’m going to get your vitals, okay?”
He leaned up and she helped him out of the long-sleeved shirt, and when he laid back again, he said nothing else, breathing slow, regular and deep.
He hadn’t answered, but he also hadn’t said no. She’d be failing to take proper care of a patient if she didn’t check him out.
She grabbed the nurse on a stick and went to work.
* * *
Temperature, elevated.
Pulse oxygen levels, great.
Blood pressure, also elevated.
Through it all, he didn’t so much as flinch, sleeping hard enough to add to her concern.
Fever could be an illness, sign of either a bacterial or viral infection. Or it could be unrelated, and all about his lack of sleep.
A blood panel would make her feel better about letting him sleep it off...
Five minutes later, she’d drawn several vials of blood, which he’d also slept through, and she went to run it for results, one thought circling her brain: he came back.
If he hadn’t been so clear about not loving her, she’d have taken it for a chance to not be done. But it was far more likely that she was the excuse that allowed him to come back, when the truth was more about his rootless existence. She may not want to live in Portugal full-time due to the expectations placed on her there, but she always could go there when she needed to. She was always welcome, even if that was also where she’d be reminded she was a disappointment. She had a fail-safe, break-in-case-of-emergency home to return to. It didn’t seem like he did.
More worrying still, for a man who lived in the future and delighted in his future plans, him not having future plans to go to said something else was very wrong.
How had Charlie died?
CHAPTER NINE
BATHROOM.
The driving need for a bathroom dragged West from sleep.
Before opening his eyes, he swiveled and rolled, lifting the blankets as he went, but half turned, felt a tug at his arm and a little pinch of pain.
He froze, opened his sluggish eyes, and a hospital room came into focus.
Patient room. Fletcher.
He laid back again, surveying his body as he did.
IV in left arm, lightly stinging.
Hospital gown.
Need for a bathroom...
He lifted the blanket and peered beneath. A catheter line laid across his thigh.
Damn it.
He didn’t need a bathroom. It just felt like he needed a bathroom.
Lia.
Her face swam up in his mind, pillows behind her head, cheeks pink. Lips pink...
Hell. He’d kissed her. In this bed. More than kissed, but less than he’d wanted to do. Still wanted to do, but was now in control enough to remember that he had no right to touch her. Not like that. Not anymore. Not after what he’d done.
How had he forgotten what they were now?
Always.
He groaned and flopped his head back against the pillow as the word came swimming back to him.
He’d been out of his mind, and plowed under by that one word rolling through his brain on repeat over thousands of miles. Sempre. Always.
In the next instant, he heard running and Lia appeared in the doorway, eyes wide, assessing.
“Catheter? Really?” he asked, then mentally kicked himself. Should’ve said something else. All the time gone, he’d only thought about that one word. Sempre. Always.
He’d abandoned her again, lied ugly, and she’d said always to him.
“You’ve been asleep...unwakeable—” she stopped to check her watch “—for almost twenty-one hours.”
“Twenty-one hours?” he repeated, the words not seeming possible. “Since I got back? Twenty-one hours?”
She nodded, and he looked a little closer as she neared the bed. There was a hint of darkness under her eyes, made more noticeable by how peely-wally she looked. Tired. Exhausted. But relieved.
She moved around his bed to check his IV, the drip rate, the amount of saline left on the pole. “You had a fever, and you fell asleep while I was checking your vitals.”
“And?”
“Elevated blood pressure. I did a blood panel, which you also slept through, and ran it. Dehydration, elevated white count, and I was worried about dehydration, so I ran a line. A few hours later, when you still refused to wake up, I decided to set the Foley.”
He didn’t need to do anything but look into her eyes to see how worried she’d been. Still was. And he wasn’t sure how to explain it to her. How he even explained it to himself.
Leaving had felt like dying. Like a mistake. Like another abandonment. If he left her here and something happened to her—he’d heard stories about how dangerous things could get in the winter. There were self-contained, survival pods dubbed lifeboats all over the station for a reason.
If something happened to her and he wasn’t there...that would be the end of him. No matter where he was, that would be the end. Words he couldn’t just blurt out to her.
Stay on point. The catheter. Just thinking the one word, he felt it again, and couldn’t help wincing. “It’s my first. I have new sympathy for patients who’ve complained about them in the past.”
She grinned a touch, nodding. “I know.”
“What else?”
“I did another panel a couple of hours ago. White cells decreased. I think you’re on the mend.”
His body bounced back faster than his mind.
“Let’s check vitals again,” she said. She wheeled the mobile tool caddy to his bedside, and he let her get on with it. “If your pressure looks good, and you feel like it, I’ll bring a kit for you to deflate the Foley’s balloon and remove it. I just didn’t want to leave it when you were so far gone and I was pumping you full of fluids.”
“Thanks,” he said as she took the thermometer back and made a note of all the readings.
It was a matter of dignity, letting him handle it. She certainly had done a myriad of far more pleasurable things with his penis, but this was different.
And that intimacy had been before, when they were together, and they weren’t now. Something he’d had to admit had to change. A faulty plan, at least once he’d seen her again. She was harder to walk away from in the flesh...with those big pretty eyes full of dashed hopes.
“I’ll get the kit,” she said, taking the mobile vitals trolley with her to the door. “But wait for me to get back before you get up.”
“I was pretty bad, eh?”
“I’m not sure how we got you into the bed.” She stopped at the door to look at him again, not mentioning his obvious mental break when he’d been a horny zombie at his return. “Are you feeling okay?”
Not really.
“I’m fine,” he lied. Physically, he felt fine, but the rest? Conflicted about the deal he’d made with himself that allowed him to return, to even try to put things back together with her. “Just never slept so long before. Kind of hungover. And trying to think of what I can even say to you.”
She nodded, the worry in her eyes spiking for a moment, then settling again
into that same tired concern. She’d heard him, and didn’t want to acknowledge the spiky topic. She focused on his health. “Headache?”
“No. Just sluggish, or something. And both amazed and dismayed to have needed such tending.”
“You don’t need to say anything. You’d have looked after me, too.”
Either purposefully taking his words to be about gratitude rather than confession, or unaware it could be anything else.
“I abandoned you, Lia.”
The word made her breath hitch, then her mouth actually turned down at the corners. The soft plushness he couldn’t get enough of compressed with the ghost of worry and exhaustion. And again, she dodged it. “I’ll get the kit and go to the galley to bring back lunch.”
Before he said another word, she buzzed off to tick off her tasks, leaving what he needed to rid himself of the Foley, and disappearing.
He set to work with the syringe at the port to draw the saline out of it, and then took a deep breath, and pulled.
It came out, and with it, a relieved breath.
Always stayed there, in his mouth, ready to come out every time he spoke, but that seemed like something he should work up to, as well. He couldn’t expect her to just take him back because he’d returned. All sins required penance.
The rest of the words—words he didn’t understand or remember—seemed to be as hope-filled to him. But the foreign sounds hadn’t stayed with him long enough to be translated. He’d drained the battery on his phone trying to string together what he remembered of the sounds to create faux Portuguese words for a translation app to work with, and got nothing. Tried to reverse engineer with guesses in English, but none of that had looked right, either.
Not the direct, traditional words of a love confession. He knew how to say I love you in Portuguese: amo-te.
But he’d heard the emotion in her voice, seen it in her eyes. Nothing else fit with whispered goodbyes and teary cheek-kisses.
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