wrong,” he said, grabbing the doorframe of the bathroom for stability.
“Wrong, how?” I asked, concern raising my voice an octave.
“I don’t know. Just wrong.” His stomach muscles seemed to contract. He clutched at his midsection and fell to his knees.
“Jared!”
Before I could kneel beside him, he lunged toward the toilet. He swallowed several times and I could almost feel the acidic bile as it rose up and burned the back of his throat. It refused to be squelched. Everything he had just eaten wound up in the toilet in a succession of violent purges.
With empathy guiding my every move, I jumped up to wet a washcloth, then knelt down and rested it on his forehead.
Breathing heavily into the toilet, he said, “Wrong like that.”
After I flushed the commode, I wiped the cloth over his face, being careful not to reopen any wounds. “You’re human now,” I said in my best scolding voice. “At least a part of you is. You have to be more careful.”
“I have to clean my mouth.”
I helped him to his feet. He shook, suddenly weak and pallid. And he was so tall, well over six feet, but I did my best to get him to the sink.
After he brushed his teeth, I filled a cup with water and tried to hand it to him. His doubt kept him from searching for it.
“You’re dehydrated,” I said as I placed the cup in his hands. “Take small sips.”
“I don’t feel dehydrated.”
“No matter, you are. Two days without H2O will do that to a person.” When he still didn’t drink, I pushed the cup up to his mouth. “We don’t have a very big water heater, so we run out of the hot stuff pretty fast. You might want to shower quickly.”
“Okay.”
I turned and pointed out the necessities. “Soap, shampoo, conditioner, a razor if you need one.” I had to admit, I liked the shadow along his jaw, but he might not.
“Thank you,” he said as he gingerly lifted his shirt over his head.
I turned from him with a gasp. Did six-packs get any sexier? “Um, okay, then. I’ll be downstairs.”
“Lorelei?”
I stopped but didn’t turn around.
After a moment, he said, “Thank you for the toothbrush.”
I smiled. “Yeah, well, you saved my life and all. It’s the least I could do.”
His silent laugh caused a rush of warmth as I closed the door. Then, with thoughts of melted cheese driving me, I hustled downstairs for a sandwich myself. Glitch had a magic touch with grilled cheeses. I could live off them if I had to.
“How is he?” Brooklyn asked.
“I’m not sure.” I took an orange soda out of the fridge and jumped onto a stool beside her. “He got sick.”
Glitch had the gall to look offended. “You mean he ate three of my sandwiches and then just threw them up?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, that sucks.”
“Yeah, for him,” I said with a bit of peevishness. “Not you, sandwich boy.”
“Hey, you want one of these or not?”
“Of course.”
He studied me suspiciously and pointed his spatula. “You’re not going to throw it up, are you?”
“Not likely.”
“Wait,” he said, suddenly smiling, “where’d you find it?”
I reached for my necklace with a smile of my own. “Jared had it. It must have come off when we were in the back of Cameron’s pickup.”
“Oh, right,” Cameron said, “when he was trying to choke the life out of you. That makes perfect sense.”
He sat at the breakfast table in the corner, sipping a Dr Pepper.
I chose to ignore his sarcasm. “Have you eaten yet?” I asked him.
“He doesn’t get another one,” Glitch said, waving his spatula as if it were a magic wand. “Five is the house limit.”
I whistled, impressed. “Well, I’m starving. Pass one over, pretty please.”
Sinking into a grilled and cheesy heaven, I devoured Glitch’s sandwich in less than five minutes along with a few chips and an apple for dessert. Afterwards, I sat chatting with Brooke and sandwich boy, all the while keeping track of how long Jared had been in the shower. And it was an awfully long time, much longer than the hot water would have lasted. I couldn’t keep from looking up toward my room every few seconds.
Brooklyn noticed. “Why don’t you just go check on him?”
“Okay,” I said, needing little encouragement. I jumped from the stool and raced upstairs. The shower was still on, the door still closed.
I knocked lightly. When he didn’t answer, I cracked open the door.
“Jared?”
When he still didn’t answer, my heart leapt in alarm. What if he got sick again? What if he’d passed out? Or worse. What if he disappeared back to wherever it was he came from?
With worry driving me forward, I rushed into the tiny room and pulled back the curtain. Then I gasped and stood frozen a solid minute. Jared stood under the rushing water, naked. And not just a little. He’d lifted one arm and braced it against the wall to rest his head upon. The other hand had grasped the pipe that led to the showerhead. His eyes were closed as ice-cold water sheeted off his shoulders and down his back.
With effort, I stopped my gaze from going any lower. “Jared?”
His grip tightened around the pipe as he pecked at me, and the emotion that poured off him, that glistened in his eyes, was none other than regret. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said, and I couldn’t help the guilt that washed over me. It was my fault. He wouldn’t be here if I could learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. Really? Falling in front of a delivery truck was the best I could do?
I plastered a hand over my eyes and felt blindly for the shower valves, trying desperately to avoid body parts. After turning off the water, I grabbed a towel off the shelf and handed it back without facing him. “Wrap this around your waist.”
He took it from me, and I heard the soft sway of material as he worked to fasten it around his nether region. The fresh scent of soap and shampoo filled the room.
“Okay,” he said.
I turned back and was struck speechless by the sight of him, devilish and handsome. Dark wet locks hung over his forehead, dripping water down his face and onto his chest. The bands around his biceps almost glistened, they were so inklike, so sharp. The width of his torso tapered to a lean, sculpted stomach. He’d managed to cover the most pertinent part of his maleness, which I was terribly thankful for. I took another towel, beckoned him to bow, then draped it over his head to dry his hair.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he repeated, his voice thick with sorrow as I massaged wetness from his hair, and a tightness cinched around my chest. He reached back and took hold of the pipe again, making me realize how low the plumbing was in the shower. I’d always thought it the perfect height. “I don’t know why I shifted and locked on to this plane.” He looked at me from underneath the towel. “I’m risking everything by being here.”
I couldn’t imagine what he must be going through. Was he afraid? I would have been. Absolutely terrified. Whatever he was feeling, he would not go through it alone.
“We can figure this out, Jared. I promise you.”
What did I expect? That he would want to stay here? That he would revel in his circumstances? Rejoice in the fact that fate had discarded him, like a kid abandoned at a truck stop in the middle of the night?
“At least while I was fighting Cameron of Jophiel,” he said, his voice rough with emotion, “everything stopped. I could think of nothing beyond survival.”
