Chapter 44

Ciara! Baby…where are you?”

Having flashbacks of the scene weeks ago when he wandered through her home and couldn’t find her, his heart raced, afraid of a repeat performance.

Ciara!” The house looked more lived in than last time and he sighed in relief when he found her bed empty, made and the light to the bathroom off. But where was she?

Almost tripping over her cat, he finally bent down and scooped up the black fur ball. Stupid thing loved Nick, was always curling up around his ankles and nuzzling in his neck when he’d sit with Ci on the couch watching TV. “Hey, Lexie…where’s Mommy, huh? Did she disappear?”

Lex purred as he rubbed behind her ears, still wondering through the guest room and office, not finding her there or hearing a reply. Feeling the cat tense to get down, he opened his arms as she plopped to the floor and disappeared downstairs. Following her downstairs, he turned down the hall in time to see Lex’s tail slide into her flap on the mudroom door at the back of the house. Nick forgot about this room since Ciara had some odd neighbors to the back and they avoided going in and out that way. This time, he followed the feline down the hall and opened the door.

And smacked his hand to his mouth trying not to laugh out loud at the site before him. All he could see was a pair of legs, starting at mighty fine ass down to dangling feet, hanging from the washing machine, as her head dipped into the well of the washer, apparently digging out laundry far too far out of her reach.

He calmed his hidden giggling down and was relieved she was still oblivious to his presence. She’d even spoken to the cat when she came in to use the liter box. So, he took full advantage. Sneaking up on her, he brought his hand back and smacked her ass. How dare it hang there and tease him like that?

“AIGH! Holy!” She hopped down from her perch on the rim of the machine and landed firmly on his toes.

“Ouch! Shit! Ciara!”

“What! My God, don’t you announce your presence anymore?”

He had to laugh. Her hair was going every which way from hanging almost upside down in the washer and she was flailing dripping wet scrubs in her hands. “I’ve been calling you all through the house, woman. You really, uh…throw yourself into your laundry.”

She stood staring at him, blowing a disobedient curl out of her face wondering what in the sam hill was so funny. “What!?”

“You’re beautiful, that’s what. Gimme those.” He took the damp clothes from her hands and tossed them into the dryer, peeking into the washer for any more. Seeing it empty, he slammed it closed.

“Wait, wait…dryer sheet. Gotta have soft uniforms.”

“Of course.”

She hiked up on her tiptoes to grab the box and was stopped in her tracks when his body pressed into hers, his hand brushed her hair aside and his lips gently sucked on her neck. His hand found hers on the box and he mumbled into her skin, “I got it.”

“Mmm…yes you do.” She lowered off her toes and let him step back, tossing the sheet in the door.

“You’d better start it. You’ll have Dr. Barbie clothes if I mess with it.”

“Now that would suck.” She set the dryer and escorted him out of the room. “You know, you should learn to do laundry though, Nick. I mean really. 22 years old and you can’t wash your own blue jeans?”

“I CAN…I just…I’d rather pay someone.”

“Lazy ass.”

“You like my lazy ass.”

She reached around him, squeezing his…lazy ass and kissed his chest. “Yes, that I do. So…I got a phone call today.”

“Yeah? From?” He plopped down on her bed watching her fold another load of clothes, dipping his hand in to help now and again.

“My sister. Seems I’ve become somewhat valuable now that she’s getting itchy to go on a vacation.”

“How’s that? God, how do you fold a bra?”

“You give it to me…” She snatched it from his hand and shook her head. 3 sisters and he can’t fold a bra. Nice work, Jane. “You…match sox.”

“K, that I can do. So, what’s up with sister dear?”

“Her and hubby wanna go on a cruise…to Alaska no less. Anyway, they asked if I’d take the kids for the week.”

Woah! A week? You think you can handle that?”

“Well, yeah…I’m not real thrilled with spending a week off with them 24/7 though, but uh…yeah, I can manage, dear.”

“I didn’t mean…of course you can. Where’s this green one? He’s lonely.” Nick started snooping through the basket and on the floor for the escaped sock.

Hozone. Just toss it over there on my pile.”

Hozone?” He looked to where she was pointing and his eyes bugged out. “Good God….are all of those lost sox?”

“Yep. Lost in the hozone. You know, the land of lost hose. Someday I’ll sit down and probably find matches to every one of ‘em…in the pile.”

“Probably. So, when is the cruise?”

“Yep…um, next week? Yeah…I’ll have to rearrange my schedule at the end or something. I’m supposed to work.”

“Could I help?” He matched another pair of sox and bopped her on the nose before tossing them aside. “God, you wear a lot of sox.” He pulled out a t-shirt and almost died. How old was this thing? And how did she get it?

“You want to?”

“Sure. If I’m home…we’ve got some meetings scheduled here soon.”

“Okay, well…” She put down the shirt she was folding and looked at him. “Are you sure, Nick? I mean, they’re young…2 and 5. It’s not gonna be easy.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll help. And I have to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

He lifted up the t-shirt. An old one of his. One he’d seen her wear years ago. He never knew how she got it then, and wondered even more now, knowing she still had it. “Where did you get this?”

Her face reddened and she looked down, trying to dig for some magical answer in the laundry basket. “Um, well…I got it a few years ago.”

“Yeah, I know. I remember seeing you in it back…god…a long time ago.”

“Well, um…you see…”

Yesssssssssss……”

“AJ would kinda ransack your room for me.”

“What!?”

“Well…you see, I missed you and um, AJ and I, well…we kept in touch too.”

“You did? How come I never knew this?”

“It was our little secret.”

“But AJ can’t keep a secret for shit.”

“He kept this one. He understood, I guess. He’d used leave one of his t-shirt’s at home with his mom and she’d wear it to bed…kinda connected them. So, he’d ransack your shirts on tours now and again and send me one or two. They’re old and beat up as hell now, but I still wear ‘em to clean…or sleep in or whatever.”

“You’ve always done this?”

“Yep…from when you first started traveling. AJ snuck me his number once…always looking for the girl, you know.”

“Of course…”

“And one night I was bored and called him. So, that started it all. We just kept it under wraps. He kept me going when everything was so crazy these last few years.”

“I had no idea…where was I?”

“No one knew. We didn’t act it whenever I was with all of you. He was afraid you’d be jealous.”

“Jealous? Well, I probably would have been, now that you mention it.”

“Yep, soooo…the secret’s out. You have no idea how much he helped me. The t-shirts just kinda started it all.”

“So, if you guys were close, did you know about the rehab and all of that?”

“Nick, I knew nothing. I was heart sick. Totally heart sick. And really, we’ve not talked much since then. We didn’t do real good with communicating last tour either.”

“I still feel like shit about that.”

“Don’t. I mean, well…we screwed up. But now, I guess it’s unimportant.”

“True…this is too cool.” He held the shirt up again, looking at it’s faded design. “You know what’s weird?” He put the shirt down and pulled out a pair of white hose. “Besides these.”

“Gimme dat. Work hose. What’s weird?” ”I never noticed any of these were gone until I’d see you with one of ‘em on. I just figured…hell, I don’t know what I thought.” He leaned across the basket and softly kissed her lips. “Thank you. I love it.”

“You’re welcome. Now I can just ransack your clothes myself.”

“True. I’ve got enough t-shirts to clothe a small country. Seems every city I went into they were giving me shirts. Ugly assed things and t’s.”

“Yeah…you know those ugly ones were a joke, don’t you?”

“Yep. That’s why I wore ‘em!” He beamed with pride on that one. Operation Fugly Shirt. Cracked him up, so he figured he’d play along. Never one to give much of a flip about how he looked, it worked perfectly. Put Kevin in a tail spin about image and fed into the fan’s game. Why the hell not?

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Jesus…another bra. You’re the underwear queen.”

“I like my skivvies. Are we almost done? There’s no bottom to this thing.”

“Here…last one.” He tossed the shirt to her and threw himself back on the bed. “That’s enough laundry for me. I’m ready for a nap.”

“Aw…poor baby. You’re so over worked.” She quickly collected the clothes off the bed putting them in the appropriate drawers and crawled onto the bed next to him. Within minutes he was asleep. Having way too much energy to lay that still, she slid out of his warm arms and busied herself cleaning.

He never moved. This really was unusual. Sleeping an afternoon away during tour was expected, but now? No. Something was up. After she was done with the bathroom, she walked over to him, and brushed his bangs off his forehead. Woah

“Nick…honey.”

“Mmmm…yeah?” He turned his head looking up at her with dark, sallow eyes.

“You feel okay? You’re awful warm.”

“Umm…I dunno…” He rolled away from her, curling further into her pillows. “I’m cold.”

“Yep…honey, you’ve got a fever. Does anything hurt?”

Nothing. He was snoozing again. With a sigh of pity and frustration, she pulled a blanket from her closet and tossed it over him figuring there wasn’t much she could do for him at this point.

A few hours later, she checked in on him and he was still asleep, but much less peacefully so. “Honey…come on. You need to get up.”

“I’m so cold…damn, my throat hurts.”

“Yeah? Anything else hurt?”

He finally shifted himself to sitting, rubbing his eyes and head, squinting at the light coming in the window. “Just about everything. When the hell did this happen?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it hits like a brick.”

“I think my head was.” He brought his knees up, resting his elbows on them, holding up his head.

“C’mere…lemme look at your throat.” She found her work bag and dug out a pen light. “Say ‘ahhh’.”

Aaaaaahhhhhhh.” Wasn’t playing doctor supposed to be fun? He was not having any fun.

“Nope, no white stuff…just red and puffy.”

“Meaning?”

“Not strep…probably the flu, a lousy cold…viral crud.”

“Mmmm…I hate being sick. I’m a wimp.”

“You used to work sick all the time.”

“Now I don’t have to. You can pamper me.” He flashed the most pathetic cheesy grin and fell back on the pillows again. “Okay. That was enough fun. I’m goin’ back to sleep.”

“Get up, Nick. You need food and fluids.” She pulled him back up, groaning at the effort. “You’re going to be a major pain in my ass, aren’t you?”

“I try.”

Shaking her head, she leaned in and kissed his head again. Not scorching hot, but warm enough to be sick. Poor thing. Poor Ciara.

******~~~~~~******~~~~~~

The only blessing to Nick being sick was he was in bed waiting for her when she got home from work. She could definitely get used to that. The negatives? Because of her illnesses and mostly because of the medicines she had to take for them, she was prone to illness as well. Somehow she rarely if ever caught anything from her patients. But in her home? In her bed? Move over, Nick. You have a roomy.

It was day three of their shared illness. He was on the upswing and she was just sick of it all. Sitting up to sleep, laying down, in the covers, out of the covers, dishes piling up and no one having any strength to do anything about it. The cat was probably shitting all over the place. Her blood sugar was so out of whack she was guessing hourly as to what to do. Eat? Take a shot? Sleep? Run around the block? Ugh.

Waking up from her third nap of the day, she heard water running the kitchen and found her infirmary partner gone. She summoned up enough strength to pull herself out of bed and pad her way to join him. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Dishes. We’ve been pigs this week.”

“Yeah, well…how you feeling?”

“A lot better. I need to head home for a bit. Get some paper work, check messages, that kind of thing.”

“Okay. I need to call in again. I’m just gonna bag this whole week.”

“Might as well. You gonna be okay for your sister’s kids?”

“Yeah, but I called mom while you slept yesterday. She’ll take the baby. I’ll just have Nathanael.”

“That’ll be easier anyway.”

“Yeah, probably. Did you ever see if that’d work for you to finish out the week with him?”

“Nope. You went to get my clothes. Haven’t been home to check my planner.”

“Make sure you do. If not, we’ll have to work something else out because Mom doesn’t want them both for some reason.” She had had enough standing already and slunk into a kitchen chair holding her head up with her hand. “I’m sick.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” He flipped a puff of suds towards her almost hitting her but falling on the floor for the cat to bat at until it mysteriously disappeared.

“I wanna feel better. You’ve been here all week and I’ve not even enjoyed it.” She was downright pouting. It was pitiful.

He let the water out of the sink, dried his hands off and pulled up a chair next to her. “You still have a fever, Ci. Maybe you need to be seen.”

“Yeah, I’ve probably got another damned ear infection. I’ll just take some stuff I’ve got here.”

“Okay…you just seem worse than I was is all.”

She looked up to him from her gaze at the wood grain of her table and smiled. “It’s my life. Nothing is simple.”

“I’m sorry.” He brushed her curls back and softly kissed her lips. “Let’s get you back in bed, huh?”

“Okay.”

He took hold of her arm and they silently walked back upstairs to her room. The bed hadn’t been made in days either, so he fluffed her pillows for her before letting her lay down. Tucking her in, he kissed her on the head and made his way out. Being sick sucked. Being sick with Ciara was tolerable. He just didn’t like that it took more out of her than it should. He’d never seen anyone sleep as much as she had. He wanted her well…or at least Ciara’s version of well.

******~~~~~~******~~~~~~

And it did eventually come. One night before the niece and nephew were to arrive, she went to work. It sustained her. She was crazy without work. Knowing she’d have another week off with the kidlet, she had to get a night in. She missed her patients. Missed her routine.

She was surprised to see Nick’s truck in her garage when she pulled in from her night at work. Figured he’d seen enough of her place over the course of the week that he’d disappear for a night or two. Gathering her belongings, she made her way in, realizing he must be asleep in her bed. The house was dark and quiet.

She tiptoed upstairs and showered in the guest bath as not to disturb him. Finally making it to her room, she had to smile. A warm body in her bed waiting for her. How she had longed for that for so many years. And not just any warm body. Nick’s warm body. His back was to her and he was curled up in a ball, breathing steady and sweet. Her heart swelled at the sight of him there. Just like so many times before, he somehow brought healing. Calm, comfort, peace and healing…

***

 

 

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