Page 46 of Take the Blame (Seaside Mergers #3)

Chapter Twenty-Five

ALTA

No matter how independent I got, when I was sick, I still wanted my mom. There was something about the familiarity of her that soothed a part of me that couldn’t be cured by medication, and I craved it now at twenty-six every bit as much as I did when I was a child.

“I’m coming over there right now, mija,” Amá said over the phone. “God only knows why your brothers and sisters haven’t checked on you already. You have been sick for a week without me knowing! Enserio! Que hacen !”

“ Amá , no,” I insisted for the hundredth time. “I only called because I wanted to hear your voice, but I don’t want you catching what I have. I swear I’m almost over it.”

“And what about your good-for-nothing siblings, huh? Don’t you nurse them back to health when they so much as bump their big heads?” she harrumphed.

“ Amá ,” I soothed. “I asked them not to come.”

“ Por que ?” I could hear the frown in her voice. “I don’t understand this?”

“Because I’m a big girl. I can handle a little cold, huh?”

Her silence was pointed. It meant something beyond what was being said, like it always did. My guess was, she didn’t like this one bit.

I sighed, her worry welcome but tiring too. “Just talk to me until I fall asleep again, okay? Porfa, por tu hija ?”

She sighed too. “And you have seen the doctor, yes?”

My silence was met with a frustrated groan.

“I’ll go soon,” I promised. I would be keeping that promise whenever I found the strength to string three consecutive steps together without getting tired. And take a shower, for that matter. Until then, I would settle for hearing my mom’s sweet, familiar voice lulling me to sleep.

“ Estupida ,” the woman grumbled.

The laugh that burst out of me was the best medicine I had all week. “ Sweet ” might have been an embellishment for Amá. “ Caring ” was more like it. I snuggled into that feeling of being cared for as I sank deeper into the mattress and closed my dry, heavy eyes.

Of course I’d gotten sick directly following an amazing weekend. Almost as soon as I left Harper’s bubble of laughs and orgasms, I started to feel funny.

It took only from the time I got home until it was time for bed for the full force of my condition to hit me. Headache, congestion, nausea, and this feeling of bone deep cold came out of nowhere. The decision to turn in early and maybe skip my morning run was an easy one to make.

The heavy weight laying over my chest when I woke up laughed in my face. A run? I was lucky if I could even walk to the bathroom without trouble. And it looked like I wasn’t making it into work either.

Each day I woke up hoping to be better or at least be well enough to go into work—I had only just started on the revitalization project and I wanted to do a good job. But each morning my body mocked me for thinking I was going anywhere. The best I could do was work on my projects from my bed.

Now, going on four days of this thing and I was beginning to feel like the crap on the bottom of someone’s shoe.

I don’t know what it was about being sick that made me feel emotional, but suddenly I wasn’t just contagious, I felt lonely and miserable, and not to mention anxious .

If I let this consume me much longer, I would miss the small window of opportunity that had just opened up for me at work.

And nobody understood.

Finally, things were turning around for me. I was taking control of my own future, asserting myself and was learning how to ask for what I wanted—I was finally on the right track.

It was just like me to reach a roadblock when I was finally picking up momentum.

“ Mija ?” Amá’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts, reminding me she was still there. She tsked, chiding. “ Escuchame , mama. I know you aren’t sleeping because you snore like a little bear when you are.”

I laughed, the pain in my chest breaking momentarily at her words. “ Amá ! I do not.”

“You do,” she said, a smile in her voice, a sigh following close behind. “And you are every bit as stubborn as your brother. Go to the doctor, mama . Close that computer and put your work away. I know you have not truly rested if you are there on your own.”

I scoffed as much as my sore throat would allow. She could tell that to my atrophied muscles, because I was definitely wasting away.

If not my body, then my mind. And maybe my heart too.

Present turbulence aside, I still loved my family.

They were my comfort and my support. Disagreeing with them had never made me want to dispel them.

I’d never been good at staying gone too long, even when things were rocky.

I’d rather wade it out and fight through it than leave things up in the air unresolved.

With that said, before my solution was always to give into what everyone else wanted, but now I was learning that sometimes what I want needs to come first. Subsequently, I had to prove to my family I wasn’t weak.

And unfortunately, standing your ground didn’t take sick days.

So as much as I wanted to curl into my older sister’s side or watch from a warm place on the couch as Ceci tried to make soup—burning it like she always did, I couldn’t.

I was being strong Alta, and strong Alta could get through a cold on her own. She could do it while keeping up with her responsibilities, too.

Giving up on the nap Amá almost lured me into, I fired up my laptop and knocked out a few more work tasks instead.

Then I got to work for my clients. Ticket commissions from the block party were due.

If I could just write up the checks and the breakdown report, I knew a guy who could deliver them for me.

And maybe he’d take pity on me and make me a cup of tea, too.

The banging on the door jolted me out of my sleep.

Jolted was probably too strong a word for it. The way my brain processed was slow. Every one of my senses felt stuffed, crammed full of whatever yucky things sicknesses were made of.

I shivered in the breeze of the ceiling fan. I’d turned it on before I laid my head down. I was hot then, but now I felt like a popsicle.

Alta popsicles—I’m not sure those would sell very well.

Banging so loud it felt like it was happening inside of my head continued, and I groaned.

Which one of them forgot their key? Or couldn’t read their messages, for that matter?

I’d strictly said: HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS! DO NOT COME.

Even when Mateo had dropped by earlier to do me a favor, I’d simply passed the small paper parcels through a crack in the door, waiting until later to give him instructions for what to do with it over a video call.

I had no idea if I was even a little contagious, but the message was all the same.

I got this.

Leave it to someone in my family to not get that message. Or just ignore it completely.

Whatever, it hardly mattered now as they stood on the other side of the door. Sure, it was annoying they were here to baby me once again, but I was also sort of excited to see someone. And I was tired of fighting it—Tired of being alone.

Sometimes it took a catatonic sick nap and the feeling like someone had scraped you hollow to regret your decisions. I could restart my campaign to be strong tomorrow. But for now, if they were already here, what the heck right?

Several minutes of struggling to move finally deposited me in front of the door. I opted to slip on large socks first, as I’d rather chew my own fingers than touch the cold floor right now. And the wall was my best friend the entire way there, helping me to stay steady the entire time.

The door continued to pound even as I stood right in front of it. If I had the strength to bang back, I would. Turns out I barely had the strength to pull the dang thing open. Thank God whichever one of my siblings that showed up had caught on, pushing it open as soon as it was cracked.

Exhausted, I leaned against the wall of the doorjamb, content to set up shop there for the night.

I should have known something was up when I didn't immediately receive an earful upon opening the door. It wasn’t like my siblings to be quiet about anything , and the goings on outside of the door was distinctly mute.

Still, even with this suspicious tipoff, it was the “Oh, baby,” delivered from the butteriest of voices that had my eyes wrenching open in surprise. And there, the sight of my every recent dream and my current worst nightmare was staring me right in my face.

“Harper?” I croaked. Woah, when had my voice turned into that ?

Yes, it was Harper, though he didn’t take the time to answer me. His eyebrows just pulled low on his face as he took me in. Was he glaring? I’d watched this man laugh for three days straight and now, on first sight, he was glaring?

Great .

“You look like shit, Boss,” were his next words.

Even better .

“I’m fine,” I lied straight through my teeth, or more accurately, through my golf ball sized throat. I think it was inflamed.

“Fine, my ass. You sound like a chain-smoker, and you look…”

I wasn’t so sick that I couldn’t glare back. This guy could really say the worst stuff sometimes. “I get it, Harper.”

“Alright.” He nodded, not taking his wary eyes off of me. When I just stood there, his eyebrows climbed his face expectantly, “So do you need help walking or…”

“No.”

“Then let’s get a move on,” he said, still lingering.

Blame it on the brain fog, but it still took another second for it all to hit me. When it did, I stood up straighter though it was difficult. “You want to come in?”

“Affirmative.”

“No,” I said, surprised he even wanted such a thing. “You can’t.”

“I have to,” he said. Slow. Simple.

My own eyebrows pulled together, confusion mixing with sickness and causing my head to throb. “Why?”

“You’re sick.”

“And that's not your business.”

“It’s exactly my business.”

“How is me being sick your business?”

His eyes narrowed, “Because you are my business. I take care of my business. I take care of you .”