Page 34 of Sucker For You

He picked up his sandwich again and bit off more than even he could chew. He wiped pickle juice from his chin, then counted to sixty before he ventured back into the quiet.

“So, your list. You’re right. Structure’s helpful.” Meaning, he couldn’t be trusted on his own. He tried for normalcy. “Could you read some of the questions while we finish lunch?”

Her other shoulder moved.

“Thanks.” Now he went for a second laugh. “Reading’s the hard part for me. But I’m pretty good at oral stuff, so that’s probably a bonus for us—”

This time, her twitch was a full-body lurch. Isabel almost toppled off the couch. Heat flooded her cheekbones as her eyes widened in shock or disgust.

“Sorry! Again.Fuck, I didn’t mean—”

“I know.”

“We—our. . . it’s only on paper. Obviously, we don’t need to have sex.”

“Uh.” Her tongue was hot in her mouth. Beneath the cashmere folds of her sweater, her skin prickled, even while her body froze with anxiety and shame. “N-no.”

Obviously, we don’t need to have sex.

We don’t need—but then a shaft of sunlight lanced through the windows, and sudden vertigo likewise plunged fast through her temples and her stomach, between her thighs:

Migraine aura.

“Ah!No, I. . .I—” She staggered up from the couch to fumble for the Ceretobicin capsules in her overnight bag. Her palms were sweating, barely capable of unscrewing the cap, of tipping a pill down her throat with water from the bathroom faucet.

No, no, no—

She gripped the sink. She counted the humming pulses of a fluorescent light above the mirror. She counted the uneven flutters of her heart. She stared at her reflection, eyes stinging. But she didn’t blink as she waited for the glass to sizzle and warp, for the crescent blurs at the edges of her vision to solidify—signaling that she’d delayed too long before forcing down BioPulse’s preventative pill; that now the pain would come, would lodge itself like a spike at the base of her skull at any moment, any breath.

Another gasping inhale, counting.

Waiting. . .

And another.

Another. . . five minutes, then ten. . . But despite the vertigo and the heat under her skin, the agony she anticipated remained at bay.Breathe. Again, again. . . until experimentally, after her300th breath, she eased her grip on the porcelain. Her palms were striped white and red. Even as she watched, however, her skin equalized its color. Under her ribs, the constriction of her lungs eased, too.

Her heartbeat steadied.

Then her reactive nervous system.

Finally, her fear.

Which was good, of course. Averting a migraine was always good. . . thoughhadshe averted one?

Ceretobicin mitigated the worst of her allodynia. It didn’t erase the effects entirely. She should be feeling some residual pain. A regular headache, if nothing else.

She wasn’t.

Her prodrome had been real. The sensitivity to light, sound, touch, and temperature, the accelerated pulse? Yes,real. But no migraine. So what could explain her heat and dizziness in the living room? Isabel closed her aching eyes, numbering back the minutes for clarity, for data, for a warning.

Obviously, we don’t need to have sex.

Her body apparently had little faith in such a perfect arrangement—one that would secure her visa and Wes’s boat, while theoretically making few demands on either her or him.

We don’t need to have sex.

He hadn’t touched her. Wouldn’t touch her. He’d be on the far side of the world in a month or five weeks.