Everything felt wrong. Like my brain was three sizes too big for my skull. Like my bones were made of glass. Like my face was all scrambled up, my eyes on my chin. Nothing hurt, not really, but it all felt…wrong. Before, there was so much pain. Like I’d been smashed thin with a hammer. But now everything felt almost numb, the feeling where your foot falls asleep.

I tried to blink my eyes open, pry them apart, but they didn’t budge. Slowly, awareness broke through me, one by one. I was lying in a bed. A really stiff one, with scratchy sheets. I couldn’t move an inch, to move my exposed skin off the fabric.

“Jo?” a soft voice entered my awareness, enough to make me jerk. Internally. I didn’t feel my body move. “Jonas?”

Your voice is loud, I wanted to say. Can you be a little quieter?

“Is she awake?” a different voice interjected, lower, deeper. The mere sound of it made everything jerk awake, and that’s when the pain came. As soon as my body moved, the smallest twitch, it woke a wave of ache. Most of it was centralized in my chest, as if someone was trying to carve out my lungs. “How can you tell she can hear you?”

“I don’t,” the loud voice returned, and I realized it held a familiar, feminine lilt. “I just hope she can.”

I could, I seriously could, but I wished that they’d both just shut up. Just for a minute.

I tried to think of the last thing I could remember. Beck was over. The first time he’d been to my apartment. We sat on the couch. No, we made out on the couch. What happened after? I didn’t feel good. I had a headache. He left, and…

“I wish I hadn’t left her alone that night,” the second voice said on a sigh. “I knew she wasn’t feeling well. I thought she just needed extra sleep.”

Beck glanced over at me, falling asleep on the side of the couch. I no longer was able to keep my head up, and laid it on the arm of the couch. The angle was horrible, painful, but I couldn’t move. “Jonas? Maybe I should go. You can sleep.”

Each word was punctuated by a stabbing in my temple. “Maybe. Yeah, that’d probably be best.”

My eyelids fluttered; I could feel them tickle my cheeks. “She probably won’t want us here when she wakes up,” the feminine voice said, close to my ear.

“We’re all she has.”

Beck tucked me against his body before I knew what was happening, and I let out a yelp of surprise. “What are you doing?” I demanded as he pulled me up off the couch, one arm threaded behind my knees, the other supporting my back. Bridal style.

“I’m carrying you to bed,” he said simply.

Hubba-hubba. Under different circumstances, my mind would’ve gotten away from me, but everything in me hurt too much to be able to contemplate what could’ve happened any further. “I can walk, you know.”

“I know.” Beck angled his chin to look down at me. “But I’ve got you.”

“Jonas.” A woman loomed in front of my vision, and that was when I realized I’d opened my eyes. I could only tell it was a woman because after my vision began to clear from the kaleidoscope of blurs, I recognized her fiery hair. When Kelsey smiled, it quivered. “Jonas, oh my gosh. You’re awake. You’re finally awake.”

Finally? How long had I been asleep?

And gosh, why was my mouth so dry?

Kelsey picked my hand up off the bed and brought it up. I saw rather than felt her squeeze my fingers, as if awareness was slowly coming back to it, my brain slowly coming awake. And I didn’t want it to.

“You almost died,” Kelsey said, her voice digging into that word and grounding it out. “You contracted pneumonia. And it—it was bad, Jonas. Your organs were failing. They were saying sepsis. Beck came in to visit you for your next shift, and you weren’t there. We were worried, so we checked on you.”

Pneumonia? I guess that was why my chest felt like it was going to explode, like I couldn’t breathe. But I got pneumonia? From what? How does one even get pneumonia? Not to toot my own horn or anything, but my immune system was killer; I never got sick.

“Good thing we found you when we did, too,” the voice on my other side said, and I fought to turn my neck, to meet his eyes. I couldn’t though. There was something at my nose—a thin tube wrapped around my head—that kept me from turning too far. I tried to find him from the corner of my eyes, but he was just out of sight. “You had a high fever. Super high. They were wondering if there’d be…what was the word they used?”

“Deficits.”

I watched enough Grey’s Anatomy to know what deficits meant, and I relaxed further into my bed. Honestly, this all felt like an episode of Grey’s, like I’d been interjected into an episode itself. Swallowing felt like trying to swallow sand, a grittiness sticking to my throat. I didn’t know how to get the message across. Kelsey kept talking, something about how Sally, our owner, had gotten nervous when I didn’t show up for my shift because I always show or I always call. Strong emphasis on always.

I tried to focus on moving my lips. “W—wa—” Trying to speak felt like someone had dropped a lit match into my lungs, and they burned from the inside out. I licked my lips. “Water.”

“I’ll get it!” Kelsey said quickly, dropping my hand as if the fire had traveled there. “Don’t worry, and don’t talk. I’ll be right back.”

I heard Beck shift just off to the side of my vision, and I tried to wiggle my fingers to grab his attention, like a call, come hold my hand. I didn’t manage much more than a twitch of movement, but he caught it immediately. His warm fingers wrapped themselves around mine, his touch much gentler than Kelsey. I saw his amber colored hair just from the edge of my vision. “You worried me, you know,” he said, voice as soft as a whisper.

I’m sorry, I thought back to him as if he could hear me, chest aching for a different reason. I didn’t mean to worry you.

“But you’ll be okay now,” he went on, determined, still caressing my hand. It felt nice, comforting, even though I couldn’t see his face. “You’re safe now.”

Safe. What a strange word to use in this context. It latched on to my brain, tugging at it. Safe from pneumonia? Or did something else happen? I couldn’t ask, so I was forced to remain silent.

But then Beck shifted, and there he was. His beautiful face filling my view. His eyes were a deep purple and haunted, smudges under his eyes looking like bruises. When he blinked, it was sleepy, and when he smiled, it was tired. Beyond that, though, I saw everything underneath. I saw the slump to his shoulders, the worried lines around his mouth. Seeing him worry made pain pinch at my heart, because it reminded me of another time. When police showed up at my door, when I was escorted to a hospital. Of people dressed in black, a pastor praying over two closed caskets.

I wanted him to kiss me, to chase the thoughts and feelings away, but I couldn’t get any words out. And then Kelsey was back with the water, and Beck remained silent the rest of the time.

The weeks after my recovery were strange. I read online that pneumonia recovery typically tends to be a week or so, but from the severity of mine, the doctor said to expect it to take longer. Long enough for me to miss Halloween, so I had no idea what Cassian got to dress up as. I couldn’t go out because the symptoms clung to me like a second skin. Chest pains, headaches, loss of appetite, nausea—the works. The ugly, disgusting works. And it totally didn’t help that I had company for it.

“Seriously,” I said as I readjusted the cool compress on my forehead, sighing. “I’m gross. This is embarrassing. You’re probably just waiting to be able to kick me out.”

Beck sat at the other end of the couch with his legs stretched out in front of him. He wore a simple pair of pajama bottoms, with little green aliens on them. His shirt was loose and a little big. Even though it had to be well into the afternoon, Beck still wore his pajamas. He said it was to make me feel more comfortable—since I practically lived in mine now—but I had a feeling he enjoyed the excuse to be lazy. “It’s not embarrassing. We’re nursing you back to health. I think it’s cute.”

I pretended to gag. “My illness is cute?”

“What I’m trying to say is that I like having you around,” he said, looking down at his hands. He had his fingers splayed, and seemed to count each knuckle. “I’d say we could watch TV, but I think it’s broken.”

“Broken?” I snorted, glancing at the black screen. “It was fine last night.”

“Yeah, well, I have the opposite of a magic touch.”

I had to disagree with that.

This whole pneumonia thing sucked on so many levels, but really because I hadn’t been able to kiss Beck. In the beginning, I refused to kiss him—I was sick. Deathly sick, apparently. No kissy. But lately, as I continued to get better, Beck seemed to keep his distance. Like now, he sat on the opposite end of the couch, pressed as close to the arm as he could. Though I wished it wasn’t the case, I wondered if seeing me so sick ruined everything. Had we been dating long enough to have that buffer? That ‘oh, I saw you sick but you’re still cute in my eyes’ buffer? I mean, he’d seen me throw up. So not attractive. And he said that he liked having me around—he was the one who rallied to get me to stay—but was that the truth? Or was he just waiting to get rid of me?

I shifted on the couch, drawing my legs a little bit closer to me. “I have to go back to work soon,” I said, picking at the hem of the blanket over my lap. “I have some money saved up, but I need rent money.”

Beck looked up from his hands then, a line forming between his brows. “Rent?”

“It’s due at the end of the month.” And yeah, I had stuff saved up, but not that much. Not that much to lose two entire paychecks and still get by.

That line didn’t fade. “But you’re staying with me.”

“Temporarily, yeah. Until you’re convinced that I’m not going to die in my sleep or anything and I go home. But my apartment is still there, so I’m still being charged for it.”

“Why don’t you just move in with me?”

I choked on the breath I inhaled, causing me to start on a coughing stint. Those were dangerous for me, because they usually resulted in me throwing up. I doubled over, trying to swallow my way through it as I coughed and coughed. Beck jumped off the couch and went for my glass of water I’d left on his countertop. “Here,” he said, crouching down in front of me. “Have a drink.”

I took it and drank greedily, using it as my excuse to think of a response to his question.

A strange sort of smile quirked his lips. It almost looked…embarrassed. “If I’d known that question would’ve nearly killed you, I might not have asked.”

“We’ve only been together four months,” I told him, reaching out with my free hand and grabbing his. “It just seems so sudden.”

“Your friend told me I was taking too long to stake my claim,” he said with a slight shake to his head. “She said I needed to ask you to move in with me or tell you that I love you.”

I jolted again, and if my throat hadn’t been soothed by the water, I would’ve coughed again. I stared at him for a moment, just listening to my rasping breathing. “So you’re only asking because Kelsey told you to?”

The purple in his gaze flashed as his eyes widened. “No! No, no, no. That’s—I can see how it could seem that way.” Beck placed his hands on my knees, angling his chin between them and peering up at m through his lashes. My anger was gone in a moment, replaced by something else. “I want you here with me, Jonas. I enjoy just being with you. And you can say no if you feel it’s too soon, but I don’t think we’re like normal couples. I just…” He paused, his gaze going elsewhere. Like he was looking at me, but not looking at me. “Everything feels different with you.”

“A good different?” I asked hopefully.

Beck simply smiled at that, his rosy lips stretching into a grin. “A great different.”

I reached out and threaded my fingers through his silky hair, feeling it slip against my skin like silk. “If it’s so great, why haven’t you kissed me since I got sick? Are you afraid of germs?”

He pressed his mouth against the side of my knee, causing fire to burn a path from there. I was so glad I hadn’t jerked that time—with my luck, I would’ve kneed him in the face, surely. “You almost died, Jonas.”

“You are afraid of my germs.”

“No, I was afraid of making anything worse.” He chuckled, his breath slipping against my skin. “You scared me. Seeing you sick like that scared me. I mean, you’re still recovering.” Beck pushed to his feet and came to sit beside me on the couch, picking up one of my hands. “And I’m not asking because Kelsey told me to, and I’m not saying any of this because I’m trying to ‘stake my claim’ or whatever that’s supposed to mean. I’m asking you because…well, because I want you here with me. Because I love you.”

I gripped his hand tighter, leaning close to him. “You love me.”

Beck didn’t seem to understand the severity of the phrase, the sacredness of it. The phrase lit me up on the inside, and if I thought I felt warmth before, I was flooded by it now. In my mind, I could see the precise way his lips curved to the words, the timbre of his voice. I would remember it forever, the way he said those words. I love you. “Of course I do,” he answered me, reaching out to slide a finger along my temple. “I’m the luckiest person in the world, you know.”

“Are you now?”

His gaze dipped down to my mouth. “Say my name.”

I had to roll my eyes a little. “Beck.”

“No, say my name,” he said. “My full name.”

Oh. I touched my forehead to his and smiled. A second after I spoke, I saw the light and heat fill his eyes. It was the feeling I got in my chest when he spoke those three words, but only in a look. That feeling was living in his eyes now, and my heart turned over on itself. And this might’ve been different—he might not have realized the importance of ‘I love you’, but it was clear he felt it, if just from his eyes. “Beckihem.”