He stirs and pushes up on one elbow. I hear his breath catch before he huffs out a gravelly laugh. Last night, I crawled into his bed and fell asleep tucked against him like I’d been doing it for years. He thinks I’m here for that.
I hate that I’m not.
“Sloane.” His voice is thick with sleep. “Get over here.”
“I need to go to the hospital.”
Silence. Then the click of the bedside lamp, and light floods the room. My heart clenches at the way his expression goes blank, then shifts to something worse as he takes me in.
I must look like hell. I’m gripping the doorframe because letting go would mean sinking to the floor. My oversized T-shirt—his T-shirt—is soaked, and I’m shaking so hard I can hear my teeth rattling.
He’s out of bed before I fully process the look on his face, crossing the room in three strides. His hands grip my arms, steadying me, his palms rough against my burning skin.
“Jesus. You’re on fire.” He presses the back of his hand to my forehead, jaw tight. “When did it start?”
“I don’t know. I woke up shaking.” I hate that my voice soundsthin and reedy. “My temp is almost 104. With my history, that’s?—”
“An emergency.” He finishes my sentence with a calm that doesn’t match what’s happening in his eyes. “We need to get you to Reno. It’s a bigger hospital, better equipped for…”
“Complicated patients,” I finish with a pathetic laugh, then swallow roughly. “Reno, it is.”
It takes him mere seconds to pull on jeans and a T-shirt, shove his feet into boots, and grab the flannel off the back of a chair. He doesn’t fumble or panic. He moves like this isn’t his first middle-of-the-night dash to the ER, a fact that sits in my belly like a stone.
His mother was sick. He took care of her. She died anyway.
And now his cancer-patient situationship is standing in the doorway burning up with a fever, and he’s grabbing his wallet and phone from the dresser with steady hands even though his eyes are telling an entirely different story.
“Should we wake Cody?” I ask.
“No. I’ll text him later.” He takes a blanket off the end of the bed, wrapping it around my shoulders. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk.”
He studies me for a beat, and I can see him deciding whether I’m full of shit. Then he puts his arm around my waist and guides me toward the stairs like I couldn’t find my way without him. My legs are doing a truly pathetic job of holding me up, so pride feels like a luxury not worth the price in this moment.
We step outside, and my body doesn’t know how to reconcile the mountain cold air with the inferno under my skin. I shiver so violently that my teeth audibly clack together. Jensen’s arm tightens around me.
He opens the rental car’s passenger door, and I grab the handle to pull myself in, but I’ve got the strength of a tadpole, and my coordination is shot, so I just stand there gripping the door like a drunk person trying to look sober.
“I’ve got you,” he says, and then lifts me into the seat like Iweigh nothing. It’s not dramatic like the sweeping movie gestures I’m a sucker for, but tears sting the back of my eyes, and my heart swells before the pain spiking through my head reminds me this is not a romantic interlude.
But when his fingers brush my collarbone as he buckles the seatbelt, the contact sends a shudder through me that has nothing to do with the fever.
“Stay awake,” he says. “Talk to me.”
“About what?” I ask like it’s a joke.
“Anything,” he answers, dead serious. Right. This is serious business.
He shuts the door, rounds the front of the SUV, and gets behind the wheel. The engine turns over, and he backs out of the driveway. “Let’s talk about earlier. How are you that bad at dancing?”
A ghost of a smile crosses my face. “Rude.”
A smile he blessedly returns as our headlights cut through the dark. “Accurate.”
The road from South Lake Tahoe to Reno winds through the mountains, mostly empty at this hour. The forest is thick on both sides, and the yellow center line blurs if I stare at it too long. Jensen fiddles with the vents, and I press my head against the cool glass of the window.
I should call Jeremy and let him activate whatever emergency medical network he undoubtedly set up for this scenario. He probably put an entire medical team on speed dial as soon as I hit town, with a spreadsheet to track it.