Chapter 36
Nora's POV
He pulled back first.
Julian lifted his head slowly, and for a moment he just looked at me—his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth, his expression unreadable except for something careful and deliberate underneath it. Like he'd made a decision and was holding himself to it.
"You still need rest," he murmured. "I'll get you something to eat."
He stood before I could form a response, and I watched him move toward the door. Lily padded after him, tail swishing.
Ten minutes later he came back.
He was carrying a bowl of oatmeal. Steam curled off the surface. He sat down on the edge of the bed with the focused attention of someone disarming something dangerous, and dipped the spoon, blowing across it slowly before holding it out toward me.
I reached for it automatically.
"I've got it," I started.
"You're still weak." His tone left no room for argument. "Let me."
I let him. Partly because my arms genuinely were heavier than they should have been, and partly because I didn't entirely trust my own voice right now.
He was careful in a way that looked like it cost him something—checking the temperature of each spoonful, making sure nothing spilled, watching my face more than the bowl. There was nothing practiced about it. It was painstaking in the way that only real effort looks.
"You know," I said, aiming for lightness, "you actually have the makings of a chef."
He raised one eyebrow. "If this is the benchmark, I'd be out of business inside a week."
A laugh caught in my throat. It came out quieter than I intended. "I don't care what anyone else says. I think this is the best oatmeal I've ever had."
Julian went very still for a moment. Then his hand moved to my hair—not possessive, just quiet—and he said, "I'll take that under consideration."
When the bowl was empty, I exhaled slowly, sinking back against the pillow. The warmth had spread all the way down to my fingers.
I pushed back the blanket to get up, and the cuff slid down my wrist in a way that was wrong—too much fabric, too soft. I held my arm out and stared at it.
This isn't my shirt.
The heat that flooded my face had nothing to do with any remaining temperature. I yanked the blanket back over myself on pure reflex and sat there, breathing deliberately, trying to apply logic to the situation. He was taking care of you. You had a fever. Your clothes were soaked through. It was a medical necessity.
None of that helped even slightly.
"You changed my clothes." It came out more accusatory than I intended.
He stopped. His expression shifted—something working its way behind his eyes as he put the pieces together. "You were soaked through from the fever breaking. I was worried about you getting cold." He paused. "I didn't—I made sure not to—I kept—" He stopped again, clearly discovering that there was no elegant phrasing available for what he was trying to say.
"Get out first," I said. It came out before I thought about it.
A shadow moved across his face. Brief, but I caught it—a flicker of something that looked genuinely hurt, and then gone. He nodded once, and turned, and closed the door behind him without a word.
---
I sat in the silence.
I just sent him out like he'd done something wrong.
I pressed my palms over my eyes and stayed like that for a long moment. The fabric of the borrowed shirt bunched softly under my wrists. I could feel how carefully it had been chosen.
He picked this out for you.
The embarrassment was still there, but underneath it something else had taken shape—a warm, persistent pressure that I recognized for what it was. I cared too much. That was the whole problem. If I hadn't cared, none of this would have hit me the way it did.
I got up slowly, then caught my reflection in the mirror. I looked tired. I also looked like someone who was about to go downstairs and apologize, which was exactly what I was going to do.
I took a breath. Pushed the door open.
Lily was lying across the threshold, and she lifted her head the instant the hinges moved, tail already starting to move back and forth. I stepped around her and looked down the staircase.
Julian was standing in the center of the living room with his phone pressed to his ear, jacket off, posture carrying the weight of whatever conversation he was navigating. His voice was low and measured: "I understand. I'll handle it tomorrow."
I stayed where I was on the stairs. Lily had stood up behind me, and when I glanced down she'd started toward me, apparently deciding I was her responsibility in his absence.
The moment Julian saw me, his expression moved. The professional quiet he'd been wearing dropped completely. "You should still be in bed," he said, and he was already moving toward the stairs. "What's wrong—is the headache back?"
"No," I said. "I just—I came to apologize."
He stopped at the base of the stairs and looked up at me. I came down the last few steps carefully, one hand on the rail, and he met me at the bottom and guided me toward the couch without making it look like guiding.
"I overreacted," I said, once I was sitting. "You were taking care of me. I know that. I just—I didn't handle it well."
"I should have found another solution." He said it easily, no defensiveness in it, settling beside me. "I should have woken you and asked."
"You couldn't have, I was barely—" I stopped. "Okay. We were both doing our best."
Something in his shoulders released almost imperceptibly.
He got up, came back with a glass of warm water, and handed it to me. "Anything still hurting?"
"No." I wrapped both hands around the glass and let the warmth settle into my fingers. "I heard you on the phone. I'm taking up too much of your time."
"You're not."
"Julian."
"It's a backlog. I'll deal with it tomorrow." He said it without inflection, like it was simply a fact and not a decision. "I'm not leaving you here alone today."
I wanted to argue. I looked at him instead—the slight crease between his brows, the deliberate steadiness in his posture—and the argument dissolved.
"I can help," I said. "With the files. I know I'm not at a hundred percent, but I can organize documents or—"
"No." The word was immediate. "You rest."
"Then I'll just sit here."
A pause. "Fine." He said it like it was a concession, but the edge of his mouth moved slightly. "You sit there. And don't touch anything."
He settled into the chair beside the couch and pulled up his tablet, and I arranged myself sideways along the cushions while he pulled a folded throw blanket from the arm of the chair and tossed it at me without looking up.
For a while the only sound in the room was the tap of Julian's stylus and the occasional soft shuffle of pages being reviewed.