Page 42 of Checking It Twice
He returns with my entire toiletry bag and a glass of water.
“Which one?” he asks, dumping the contents onto the counter.
“Blue bottle. Two pills.”
He shakes them into his palm and helps me sit up against the bathroom wall, holding the glass steady while I swallow them down. His hands are gentle, careful, like I’m made of something fragile.
“Better?”
“It takes time to work.” I lean my head back against the cool tile. “I just need to wait it out.”
“How long?”
“A few hours. Maybe longer.”
The silence lingers, and I can practically hear him thinking, planning, trying to figure out how to fix something that can’t be fixed.
“Okay,” he says finally. “What else do you need?”
“Dark. Quiet. Time.”
“I can do that.” He’s already standing. “I’ll tell my family you’re not feeling well, cancel whatever plans they had—”
“No.” The word comes out sharper than I intended. “Don’t cancel anything because of me. This is your family time.”
“Clare—”
“I’m not ruining your family’s Christmas plans just because I have a headache.”
“This isn’t just a headache. You threw up. You’re sitting on a bathroom floor.”
“It’s fine. I’ve dealt with these before.”
But even as I say it, I know this one is different. Worse. The kind that’s going to knock me flat for the rest of the day, maybe longer.
He crouches beside me again, his face serious. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I close my eyes, too tired and in too much pain to maintain the pretense. “Sometimes they last two days. Sometimes I can’t keep anything down. Sometimes the light sensitivity gets so bad I can’t even have my phone on.”
His sharp intake of breath tells me he’s putting together exactly how not fine I am.
“Right,” he says, and there’s something different in his voice now. Determined. “New plan.”
Before I can protest, he scoops me up off the bathroom floor like I weigh nothing, one arm under my knees, the other supporting my back. The movement makes my head throb, but there’s something comforting about being carried, about letting someone else make the decisions when thinking feels impossible.
He settles me back on the bed, arranging pillows behind my back like he’s building a fortress.
“Stay here,” he orders, already moving toward his dresser. “I’m going to fix this.”
And even through the haze of pain, I can’t help but think that Mitchell Drake trying to “fix” a migraine might be more dangerous than the migraine itself.
The last thing I see before I close my eyes is him pulling on sweatpants with the focused intensity of someone preparing for battle.
I should probably warn his family.
But my head hurts too much to care.
Chapter Eighteen
