Page 47 of Crash

“In what way? You want to know what color it was?”

He fixed me with a look that could have melted steel. “There is nothing funny about this.”

“Disagree. I shall find the humor in this from now on.”

“Tessa.”

“It was brown,” I relented.

Dear Diary. You know how I’ve had a massive crush on Blake Morrison since basically forever? Today, I talked about the color of my vomit with him. #RelationshipGoals

“You had no breakfast.”

“Bingo.” I forced myself to focus on anything but how his forearms looked with his sleeves rolled up.

He sighed, running a hand behind his neck, and for a moment, I let myself notice how the movement made his shirt pull tight across his biceps. He caught me looking, and I quicklyaverted my eyes, suddenly fascinated by his collection of medical journals.

“Okay, look.” His voice had that tone that meant he was about to say something I wouldn’t like. “There’s one variable we haven’t ruled out yet.”

“Only one?” I arched an eyebrow.

“I’d like to hire a professional environmental inspection company,” he said.

“What, pray tell, does a professional environmental inspection company do? By the way, they could seriously use a marketing person to help them shorten that name.”

“Perform a visual inspection of the property, looking for any signs of water damage or mold growth.”

“We already did that.”

Blake leaned forward, and the intensity in his eyes made my esophagus spasm. “And now a trained professional will. They’ll have tools that measure moisture with meters and infrared cameras. They’ll also collect samples and send them off to a lab.”

Labs. It had been my experience that anything with the wordlabin it wasn’t cheap. Or quick.

“How long would that take?” I tried to ignore how close my body was to his. Close enough that I could feel its heat.

“When I did it a couple of years ago, I got my results back within ten days.” His fingers drummed against his bicep. “Could be longer, could be sooner. Depends on how backlogged the labs are.”

“And after that?”

“After that, we’ll know if your environment is causing your health problems.” The drumming intensified.

I narrowed my eyes. “But? Because I definitely heard a bigbutin your voice, Blake.”

He winced. “They can’t squeeze us in for a couple of more weeks.”

“Which puts us at three and a half weeks until we find out if this is causing me problems?”

“Correct.” The word came out clipped, like it physically pained him. Like watching me suffer was somehow harder on him than the actual suffering was on me.

I took a deep breath, bracing myself for what I knew would be the biggest hurdle. The one that had been lurking behind all my medical decisions this past year, like a loan shark waiting to break my kneecaps.

“How much do they charge?”

“This is a question we need answered,” he said firmly, suddenly finding his desk calendar fascinating.

“And yet my bank account will ask again.” I pressed my lips together. “How much will this cost?”

Blake’s jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath his skin in that way that made me want to reach out and smooth it with my thumb. “Will it influence if you go through with it?”