Page 95 of Business Casual
“Stubborn,” I mutter to myself, slipping it into the lock and letting myself in. I’m going to melt this damn key down and make her a necklace with it. I’m going to toss it into the abyss.
I shut the door behind me.
“Nova?”
There’s a heavy thump from somewhere upstairs. I hang my jacket next to hers on a hook shaped like a cat’s ass and stack the files on the table. The stairs creak as I walk up, my heart somewhere in my throat. Nova’s house is usually bursting with sound and light and color. It’s too still in here. Too dark.
I push open her bedroom door with the palm of my hand. There’s a lump in the middle of her bed, her blond hair on the pillow. She twists beneath her heavy comforter.
“Nova girl?”
She shifts beneath the blanket again. In the muted light I can see her face scrunched up in pain, tension in the lines by her eyes and her shoulders hunched up to her ears. She’s curled in a tiny ball, like the smaller she makes herself, the easier it’ll be.
“Charlie?” she rasps.
My heart squeezes like someone’s got their fist wrapped around it.
I sit down on the edge of her bed and rub my hand up and down her thigh through the blanket. The little line between her eyebrows eases. “You got a migraine, baby?”
“Yeah,” she whispers, eyes still shut tight. “Told Nessa to leave the files. What’re you—” She makes a tiny, frustrated sound. “What’re you doing here?”
I don’t answer her question. “You didn’t tell her you were hurting, did you?”
Nova blinks open her eyes, half lidded and heavy. Her lashes brush against the apples of her cheeks with every extended blink. She’s not looking directly at me, but somewhere over my shoulder. “No,” she whispers. “I didn’t.”
Of course she didn’t. Because Nova is stubborn and doesn’t do a damn thing she’s told and would rather suffer alone than bother anyone for help. I blow out a breath and run my hand over the length of her thigh again. She shifts closer and all my frustration slips awaywhen she carefully tips her forehead to my knee, like that tiny point of contact makes her feel better.
I stare at her hands fisted in the blanket. Her small form curled tight.
“What do you need?” I ask quietly.
“I’m okay.”
“Nova.”
“I’m fi—”
“If you say you’re fine, I’m gonna lose my shit. And you know how dramatic I can be.”
She huffs a laugh as I squeeze her thigh.
“My medicine,” she finally manages after three heavy swallows. “I—”
I give her the space to let her try to find her words, but she doesn’t finish her sentence.
“You, what?”
“I’m having trouble seeing,” she tells me in a whisper. “I can’t…I don’t think I can do it by myself.”
I know how hard it is for her to say those words and to trust me enough to hear them. I rub at the curve of her hip. “That’s all right. I can help.”
She mumbles the name of her prescription, and I go searching in her bathroom. It’s already sitting out on the counter with two other orange bottles, like she couldn’t tell which was the right one before she gave up and climbed into bed. I read the tiny instructions and shake a pill into the palm of my hand, then fill up a mug in the shape of a strawberry with water from the tap.
She’s propped up against the pillows when I find my way back to her, hair tangled over one shoulder. I hand her the pill, but her hands are shaking too bad to manage the mug.
“Easy,” I tell her, tucking my hands around hers. She scrunches her nose as she sips, bleary eyes blinking over the rim. Cute as all fucking hell, even when she’s trying her best to be intimidating. A kitten without her claws.
Her pinky inches out to loop over mine.
