“And you asked her out after that?”
“Who wouldn’t?” he replied, making it sound logical. “Sasha’s survived hell, she’s beautiful, she’s funny as fuck, her cat’s insane and unique, and we have a history few couples have.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it history. I mean, you’re both twenty, how much history could you have at that age?”
“She forgot to mention that we grew up together from birth,” he said drily and then filled her in on what we’d been talking about earlier.
When he was done, she looked between the two of us. “So, she used her period as a way to avoid you, you left her hiding for hours while you went to meet girls, and then you hit her with your car last night after she punched you in the crotch?”
“I did. I wish I hadn’t because she was already sick.” He stopped and pulled back to look down at me. “How are you feeling, by the way?” Then he asked the nurse, “Does she still have a fever?”
“Last time we took it, it was just over a hundred,” she replied, at the same time that I said, “Fine.”
I wasn’t lying or trying to be a brave soldier either. The medicine they’d given me meant I did feel fine. I wouldn’t want to try and stand—on the one leg that I could stand on—because my limbs felt like rubber, like one of those stretchy dolls. But I didn’t feel like hammered shit anymore, so that was definitely under the definition of ‘fine.’
“The Oramorph’s probably to thank for that,” the nurse winked. “Tastes like hell, but it does the job quickly.”
Then, looking back at Jackson, she shook her head slowly. “I wasn’t expecting any of that to be your story, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t romantic in a unique way.”
“That’s us.” He squeezed me against him. “Romantic and unique. We’re two peas in a pod, made for each other.”
Before I could reply—with the gagging noise that was itching to come out of me—she said, “So, are you waiting until you graduate to get married?”
“We haven’t really talked about it.” That might have been the most honest part of the story of our current relationship.
“What do you think, cutie-pie?” Jackson murmured, looking down at me with sparkling blue eyes. “Shall we wait until we’ve graduated, or should we say fuck it and go into Vegas and find a chapel?”
“Well, honey bee, I think we should wait and see what takes our mood. We’ve winged it so far.” Yet another truth, and it described what we were currently doing perfectly.
Sighing dramatically, he looked back over at the nurse. “See why we’re so perfectly suited for each other. It’s like we have the same mind.”
Given that I’d never looked at Jackson Townsend-Rossi as anything other than a pain in the ass, albeit a good looking one, and that it’d all changed thanks to a seriously sexy dream I’d had a few nights ago about him, I highly doubted that. If he knew what the feel of his muscled torso and crotch pressed against me was doing to me, he’d likely run for the hills.
Almost like he was reading my mind, he turned his head back to me, and his eyes dropped down to my lips.
“Well, it’s good to see you’re still here,” a voice said as the door opened, snapping us out of whatever had been going on in that moment to see the doctor standing smiling at us. “Time to do some checks on you, young lady. Which means that you, sir, need to let go of her.”
Slowly, Jackson moved his arms away from me, but before he got off the bed, he surprised me by kissing me gently on the forehead.
It was innocent, it was unexpected, it was random, but I swear it did things to me I wouldn’t have thought it could.
And, as the doctor went through everything, including shining a light into my eyes that brought a headache crashing back, Jackson stood next to me, his hand on me in some way the whole time as he watched what was going on.
“If you continue like this, we’ll allow you home tomorrow, but the nurse will still wake you up every few hours through the night tonight to do some checks so we can make sure you’re well enough to leave. Are you ready to look after your fiancée?” he asked Jackson.
“I’ve got a shit ton of stuff the guy who runs the store that sells disability aids recommended, so I’m hoping she won’t struggle at all.”
“I hope you’ve got a walk-in shower, because lifting her in and out of the tub’s going to suck,” the nurse snickered, making a note of my temperature on my chart.
That’s when I winced and looked at Jackson in horror. “I’ve only got a bath in my apartment.”