Jenny

He was helpless, completely and utterly helpless.

Seeing him lying there in such a horrible state broke my heart. It literally tore it to shreds. I could barely fathom the thought of him lying in that awful apartment with no one there to care for him.

I sat there on the floor in front of him with my fingertips in his hair, and my palm cradling the back of his head. When I looked up at my mom, she gave me an understanding look. 

I liked that she didn’t look at him with pity. He wasn’t some rough kid from the wrong side of the tracks to her. He was just a person. I felt bad that it’d taken me this long to see that.

“I’m going to get the thermometer, and see what kind of medicine we have in the cabinet. I’ll be right back,” she told me. 

Draven’s breathing was weighted. His lips were parched. There was absolutely no movement coming from him, other than the way his chest lifted as he breathed. Those slow pumps filled me with worry. I felt utterly helpless. Not to mention guilty. I should’ve kept on driving, never stopping at my house. I should’ve taken him straight to the hospital against his wishes. 

Bringing him to my house was the next best thing I could think of. It was the one place where I knew he’d be cared for. My mom was the best caregiver I knew. She would treat him like he was one of her own. It was just her nature. 

She came back into the living room with an armload of supplies. 

“I need to take his temperature first.” She laid the things on the coffee table beside us, before turning on the thermometer. As I started to back out of her way, she reached for my hand. “Stay,” she mouthed the words in a low voice. “He wants you here.”

I dipped my head. 

She ran the tiny thermometer across his forehead in one swift movement. It beeped indicating the number and Mom cursed loudly. “One o’ three point one.”

“A hundred and three degrees!” I startled him with my voice and he groaned. My hand went back to his head. “What do we do?”

“I’m going to fix you a bowl of lukewarm water. I want you to continuously pat his neck and his wrists while I run to town.”

“You’re leaving?” I felt on the verge of a freak-out. What if things got worse? I didn’t know what to do.

“I’m just running to town to grab some medicine.”

“We have medicine here,” I whisper yelled.

“He needs liquid medication, like the children kind. I’m not sure that he can swallow any pills and he needs something that will work fast that won’t be hard for him to take. I’m guessing he has the flu or something. We’ll keep an eye on his fever and if we can’t get it down then we’ll take him to the hospital,” she explained. I wanted to tell her everything that Draven had told me about going to the hospital and not being treated, but figured we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.

I made the right decision to bring him to my home, even against my better judgment. If Mom didn’t think he was ready for the emergency room, then he wasn’t. She was a mother after all. Those were the best nurses, at least in my opinion. I only wanted my mom when I was sick, no one else. 

It made me wonder if Draven wished he had his mother. I mean if you could’ve seen the way he lived. There were few words to describe it. Yes, he had a roof over his head, but literally, that was it. The place was empty, and dirty, and thinking about it left a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. It made me feel sorry for him, which would’ve been the last thing he’d want. Mr. Independent would never admit that he needed help from anyone. Even I knew that, and this past week was the first time I’d ever really spent time with him. Seeing that apartment made me wonder what kind of life he was really living. 

Son of a bitch…

I remembered the day that he was at my house having dinner. I remember thinking about the way he ate. Why had I not realized it? Why had I not seen that huge piece of the puzzle? I was so stupid. It was probably the only meal he’d had in weeks or longer, and we watched him eat with wide eyes wondering why he had zero manners in someone else’s house. I mean there were times that he didn’t even chew. He ate his food so fast that he could barely breathe. 

My eyes filled to the brim with tears. They rolled down my cheek as the memory flashed in front of my eyes. Selfish me was pissed that he was crabby to my parents, but hungry Draven was just eating until he was so full he couldn’t move. 

The tears continued to roll down my face as I brushed my hand across his head. I felt like a selfish, petulant child. I blew up on him because I didn’t want to tutor him anymore. Yes, he’s a major pain in my ass. But after seeing his home, and seeing him so broken and sick, I wish I hadn’t taken the easy way out. 

Mom placed the bowl of water next to me by the couch. “I’ll be right back. Do as I said,” she urged. 

I dipped the rag into the slightly cool water and rang it out. With ease, I rubbed it gently across Draven’s face, and down his cheeks. His eyes slightly parted open and I offered him a small smile letting him know that I was there. 

Over and over, I alternated wiping his face and neck, and his wrists just like Mom had told me to do. When his body shivered, I pulled the blanket from the back of the couch and covered him up. I sat down on the edge of the cushion against him, and gently placed the rag over his head. When he fully opened his bloodshot eyes and stared into mine, the tears fell hard down my cheeks. It was as if someone had opened the floodgates. His hand came up and rested against my back, where he gave me just a nudge. It was invitation to rest myself upon him. I sniffled, and his head nodded ever so lightly until I lowered my head down to his chest. My head rested right in the crook of his neck and his scruffy cheek laid softly against mine. In his time of need, he comforted me. It was a side of Draven Lepage that I’d never seen before. 

It was a side that broke every single wall I’d built. 

I lay there in his weak arms and for the first time I admitted to myself what I had been afraid of admitting all along, that somewhere deep inside my heart, there was a place for the guy who kissed me at a party, for the guy who had the worst attitude, for the guy who needed me to be by his side.

On paper he was everything I was not, but looks can be deceiving. In his heart, he was good. I saw that now. A little lost, sure, but he wasn’t as bad as I thought he was. I fed into the rumors and didn’t bother to look farther. I was ashamed of myself for that. 

“Don’t leave me.” He whispered again. His voice was hoarse, either from sickness or lack of use over the last week, and his tone was begging. I doubted Draven had ever begged for anything in his life.

“I won’t.”

My stomach leaped, and my heart sped up. This was scary territory. It was a dark, mysterious lake, and I was a girl with no life jacket. Would I sink or swim?