Chapter 73: A Little White Coma

"Were you shining a light—" Nova started, and her voice gave out mid-sentence. The cough came back, punishing her for attempting speech, and she surrendered to the water bottle again.

"To wake you up, obviously." Maria stated this like it was the most reasonable medical intervention in the history of medicine. "No one believed me that it would work." She crossed her arms with the satisfaction of a woman accepting her award.

Nova gave a nod. Fair enough. Her head was splitting. The light worked. She was awake. Sure.

"Derek is going to be livid that you woke up without him. He hasn’t left your side for two days—"

Nova choked on her water. The cough that followed was violent enough to make something beep on the wall. Two days.

"—the infirmary, Nova. And Tavian finally convinced him to go take a breather and get some food and you wake up without him. The hover yacht is stationed in Wavecrest for a few hours, actually. Everyone is out and about. The Alpha is doing it for Princess Celeste or something. She wanted to—"

Nova’s brain processed roughly half of that. The half she heard sounded crazy. The half she missed was probably worse.

"—but anyways, can you fake sleep? When he comes back? Poor guy. You can wake up again for him."

Maria stiffened. Her chin lifted. Her eyes unfocused for a fraction of a second.

"I could be wrong." Maria shook her head immediately. "No, I’m never wrong. Tav has entered the yacht and Derek is with him. Matebonds are so interesting." She clapped her hands together with the delight of a woman who had just received breaking news and appointed herself anchor. "That means they are back."

She reached across the bed and pulled the water bottle out of Nova’s grip before Nova could mount a defense. Nova’s hand closed on air, her fingers grasping for the bottle like a woman watching her last lifeboat row away.

"Close your eyes and be asleep."

Nova looked at Maria. Maria looked at Nova. Nova looked at the water bottle in Maria’s hand, now held behind Maria’s back like a hostage.

The expression on Maria’s face was the expression of a woman who had set her terms and the terms were non-negotiable. The water bottle was leverage. Consciousness was currency. And Maria Emberclaw was running the exchange rate.

This was insane. Certifiably, undeniably, medically-inadvisable-for-a-woman-hooked-to-an-I.V. insane. But here they were.

Nova closed her eyes.

Maria nestled into the chair beside Nova’s bed with the composure of a woman who had been sitting there innocently for hours. Nova cracked one eye open and caught her scrolling through dresses on her holo-feed wristband, swiping left on a red gown with the focus of a woman whose best friend was faking a coma three feet away and the best friend was secondary to neckline options.

Nova’s eye shut.

She wasn’t sure how long had passed. The faking turned into the real thing at some point because her body was still running on fumes and fumes ran out. Sleep pulled her under without asking and she went willingly because the alternative was lying still with her eyes closed while Maria shopped and her head jackhammered behind her temples.

What woke her was Maria’s voice.

"I’m going to try it."

Then that goddamn light in her eyes again.

Nova’s face scrunched. The headache was worse than before because apparently napping had made it angry instead of quieter.

Nova’s eyes opened. She blinked a few times.

"Nova, you’re awake!" Maria announced, launching herself across the room with the full-body commitment of a woman performing this hug for the first time in her life, not of a woman who had done this exact thing forty minutes ago.

The squeeze was identical. The angle was identical. The rib-crushing enthusiasm was frame-for-frame the same. Nova’s brain, foggy as it was, clocked the replay with the bewildered clarity of a woman watching a rerun she had already lived through.

Maria pulled off of her and then Derek was there. His lips found the side of her head before she had finished processing the transition, warm and urgent, his hand cradling the back of her skull like he was confirming she was real and solid and present and his mouth was the only instrument he trusted for verification.

Nova coughed. The sound broke the kiss and her lungs took center stage with the enthusiasm of organs who had been waiting for their solo.

"Derek?" she rasped, and coughed again. Her voice sounded like gravel running through a blender.

Behind Derek’s back, Maria gave a thumbs up. Full extension. Bright-eyed. The face of a woman accepting an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in a Medical Drama She Had Written, Directed, and Produced.

Except that Nova wasn’t acting.

Maria crossed to the refrigerator cabinet, pulled out a water bottle, and handed it to Derek with the seamless efficiency of a stagehand who had rehearsed the prop exchange.

"I’ll be back, Nova," Maria stated, already halfway to the door with the exit timing of a woman who knew when to leave a scene and had been counting the beats.

Derek cracked the cap and brought the bottle to Nova’s lips before her hands could get involved. No consultation. No offer to let her hold it. The decision had been made and the decision was that her hands were retired from water bottle duty effective immediately.

Her fingers found his anyway, wrapping around his knuckles as he tilted the water into her mouth. She drank slowly this time, partly because Maria’s earlier warning had stuck and partly because his hands were steadier than hers and the contrast was doing something to her chest that she was going to blame on the fever.

He pulled the bottle back. His thumb swiped the corner of her mouth where a drop had escaped. The gesture was so casual and so intimate that her face caught fire for the hundredth time since she’d met this man and the quota showed no signs of being met.

He didn’t pull away. His hand stayed on her jaw, thumb still resting where the water had been, and then he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against hers.

Her hand found his on her face. She gave it a gentle squeeze.

The door opened behind him.

Astra walked in carrying a scanner and a look that said she had been summoned from something more interesting and was billing for the interruption.

"Well. I stand corrected. The light worked."