Page 17 of Sunny Skies Ahead (Watford Sweethearts #2)

Chapter twelve

Kameron

F or the first time in six years, I woke up with a scratchy throat, an aggressive cough, and a pounding headache. I was freaking sick.

Imogen had texted me to say she arrived late last night.

I’d been upstairs in my bed, trying and failing to take my mind off of the phone call with Gail.

Around midnight, I finally forced myself to stumble downstairs and take some decongestant meds.

It was spring, anyway. Didn’t people usually get sick in the winter?

After a night of tossing and turning, I returned downstairs. I opened the screened window in the kitchen to rotate some fresh air through the living space, futilely hoping that the soft smell of mountain pine would clear my sinuses, to no avail.

Around 8 a.m., Imogen strolled through the front door of the farmhouse. I tried to raise my hand in greeting and failed miserably, letting out a weak “hi” from where I was curled up in the fetal position on the couch.

“What’s happening right now?” Imogen said, shrugging off her laptop bag and laying it on the dining room table.

“Hurts to talk,” I sniffled .

Imogen’s confused expression morphed into one of pure delight.

“Kameron Miller, are you ill?”

My silence was damning.

“You are sick,” Imogen said, crossing her arms over her chest and shifting her weight to one foot. “The man who always jokes about his perfect immune system is sick . In the middle of spring, no less.”

“Don’t be mean,” I mumbled, meaning it as a joke. Imogen’s expression softened.

“I’m sorry,” Imogen said softly, coming to kneel in front of the couch. She reached out and swept my hair off my forehead. I closed my eyes, savoring the feeling of it. “Do you think it’s just a cold?”

I opened my eyes again, just a fraction, so as to not aggravate my headache with a sudden onslaught of sunlight.

“If I say yes,” I croaked, coughing for emphasis, “will you make fun of me?”

Imogen’s laugh was sudden and breathtaking as she threw her head back with the force of it. Even though the sudden noise made my skull rattle, I didn’t say a word, content to watch her just as she was. Stunning. Effortlessly so.

“I will keep my judgements as internal thoughts.”

“Thanks,” I said, my usual dry, mocking sense of humor falling short as another cough rattled my body.

“Alright champ, you stay here.”

“I can rally, just give me a few minutes,” I said, moving to push the blankets off me and stand.

Like hell was I going to let a cold make me miss out on a day with Imogen, especially when I’d resigned myself to a weekend without her.

Not to mention that I dreaded checking the grant proposal email to see if there were more rejections.

God, I’d forgotten how much being sick sucked.

“No rallying for you,” Imogen said, placing her hand on my shoulder and pushing me back down towards the couch. “You need to stay horizontal.”

“But, the grants—”

“I’m here to help,” Imogen said gently, stroking her fingers against my cheek once more.

The touch sent shockwaves through my body.

“Let me go make myself some coffee and then I’ll sit with you.

We can go through the emails together. I’ll read the important ones aloud and you can tell me how you want to proceed. Okay?”

I shuddered, but not because of the fever. Because Imogen was far too caring and too kind. Imogen, who had every right to make fun of me for being a man-child about having a cold and feeling under the weather, but instead was choosing kindness.

“You’re a nice lady,” I mumbled. Imogen looked stunned for a moment before she let out another twinkling laugh.

My heart stopped and restarted in my chest. I wanted to hear that sound every damn day.

Knowing that it was my stupid quips and comments that often made her make that beautiful sound drove me wild.

“Thank you. I think you’re nice too, for what it’s worth.”

Imogen took a step away from the couch, but I snagged her wrist before she could go too much farther.

“Thank you for staying. ”

The words were rough and sticky in my throat.

There was a reason I’d prided myself on my inability to get sick these last few years.

Being sick reminded me of the dark days with my mother’s depression, where I was sick a lot, and my mother wasn’t present to take care of me.

The two of us had spent many days laid up on the couch with the house a wreck, moldy dishes in the sink, dust mites gathering in every corner and crevice.

My lungs rattled with the force of my coughs and my mother—

My mother just sat there with me, a vacant stare on her face as she glared at the wall.

Day in and day out. I finally mustered up the courage to ask one of my friend’s moms to drive me to urgent care so I could get something to ease the pain.

I had to come up with the most elaborate cover stories to dissuade the present parents from calling CPS on my mom.

My mother isn’t mean , I remember myself saying. I love my mom. It’s just been hard since my Dad died.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, unable to deal with the torrent of memory washing over me.

I wasn’t a sickly, scared, grieving child anymore.

My mother was better now. She would never be the person she was when my father was still alive.

That ship had long since set sail. But she was healthier.

She was still alive. She had people who cared for her.

Even if she couldn’t remember it.

I swallowed down my nausea as Imogen reappeared.

“Talk to me,” she said. She gestured for me to sit up, sitting down on the couch and letting me lay my head in her lap as she got comfortable. My head was swimming from the sensory input of my cheek pressed against her warm thigh, and the wave of memory threatening to drown me.

“I hate being sick,” I whispered. Imogen put her freshly brewed coffee on the end table and laid her hand on my head.

She stroked my scalp with her fingertips, and I bit my tongue to keep an embarrassing moan from escaping.

Imogen’s hands in my hair was surely a conjuration of my illness-addled brain, but I intended to savor every moment.

“Is this okay?” she murmured, running her hands through my hair. As if she needed to ask. I nodded, and she continued to rub my head as I found my next words.

“I hate being sick because it reminds me of my mom.”

Imogen’s hands didn’t falter. She made a low hum in her throat, a gentle encouragement for me to continue. I inhaled deeply, letting the scent of jasmine and citrus ground me.

“My dad died by suicide when I was a teenager.”

Imogen exhaled, long and steady. This isn’t really how I’d wanted to tell her about my dad.

As important as my father’s story was to the mission of Winding Road, I didn’t enjoy talking about it so openly.

Mostly because people don’t know what to say or how to act when you tell them you’ve lost a parent to suicide.

For most people, it’s so gut-wrenching that their only response is “I can’t imagine.

” Others try to cover up their own discomfort by offering meager platitudes like “they’re in a better place” or “at least their suffering is over.”

To someone who is grieving an earth-shattering loss, that’s about the least helpful thing you could say. Add in the fact that I was barely a teenager when it happened, and you had a perfectly reasonable explanation for why I didn’t like to talk about it.

Imogen didn’t say anything, and I knew it was because she was processing the information.

She was controlling her own reaction to the news because she cared for me, and she knew how important it was to regulate your own reaction before opening your mouth to say something, particularly when someone shared about their trauma. My chest tightened at the realization.

“I was barely fifteen when it happened. I was at school when I got the call. And there’s a lot of shit that happened afterward, but the long and short of it is that my mom never fully recovered.

My parents were the ideal couple. They were obsessed with each other.

My childhood was perfect because of them.

My dad went to work, and my mom stayed home with me.

But when he died, a part of her died, too.

We were never the same after that. Our family was irrevocably severed. ”

I stopped then, painfully aware I’d already said too much.

“Thank you for telling me,” Imogen murmured. “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here for you.”

“That means more than I can express.”

It did. I should have known Imogen would understand that it was sometimes more damaging to try and come up with something to say, instead of just sitting with the discomfort of it, of processing.

I’d been sitting with this knowledge for years.

I’d heard a lot of crap from people, everything to I’m so sorry or that’s awful , as if I don’t know how awful it is, having lived that experience first hand .

“Sorry for dumping that on you,” I murmured. “Being sick makes me sentimental, apparently.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Imogen said, voice still soft as her fingers scratched my scalp gently. “I recall you once telling a shy girl at a wedding that you’d be there to hear her story whenever she was ready to tell it. I’m grateful that you trusted me with part of yours.”

Damn if my heart wasn’t putty in her freaking hands.

I felt it in that moment, the growing feeling I couldn’t keep denying.

I was falling for her. Not in the big, grand gesture, lovey-dovey way, but in the raw, real, heartfelt way.

In the way that you come to adore the small details of your relationship with someone, the small things you look forward to and appreciate about the person in front of you.

I was falling for Imogen Phillips, and as much as the rational part of my brain was telling me to pull back, that we’d both only get hurt in the long run, the more my heart and my body resisted.