“I didn’t see anything,” Alex said.
Rowan took a breath, likely to deliver another smartass remark, but was cut off by a cough.
“You okay?” Jordy frowned.
“Ye-yeah—” Rowan wheezed but couldn’t get anything else out as he coughed again and again.
Jordy stepped in closer, reaching out. In retrospect, Rowan’s panting and gasping during the game felt ominous. He looked to be fighting it, but when he gasped, short of breath, the next set of coughs sounded deep and rattling.
“Rowan.” Jordy put a hand on his arm.
“It’s fine, just a tickle.”
“Do you have asthma?”
“No.” Rowan shook his head. “It’s nothing.” He tried to wave them off, but another cough weakened his efforts.
Jordy scowled. “Have you seen a doctor?”
Rowan shrugged. “I have an appointment.”
With both Pete and Rowan out, the game seemed to be finished, and everyone collected their things. Jordy had just about decided Rowan could be trusted to look after himself when he let out another racking cough.
That was it. Jordy grabbed his phone and started dialing.
“Who are you calling?” Rowan eyed the phone suspiciously.
“A doctor.”
ROWAN HATEDasking his friends for rides, but Pete’s wife showed up in her car to take him home anyway, and Jordy accepted her offer to drop them by the office on his behalf before Rowan could protest.
If Gem could see him now, getting steamrolled into accepting help… she’d get all kinds of ideas. She’d be very smug about it.
Truth told, Rowan was worried enough that he didn’t have the breath to complain in the car. He’d been wheezing and coughing and sniffling at night for more than a week, but until now it always cleared up in the daytime. He’d never even felt the need to take a day off work. Frankly, he felt better at the library than he did lying around at home.
Gem would probably say he was allergic to his ugly apartment.
In any case, he’d felt fine today. The refreshing air and exercise did him good. And there was nothing like the sight of Jordy shirtless and sweaty to make him feel alive, and also to regret swearing off men. OfcourseRowan had gotten a little breathless. The way Jordy swung him up over his shoulders like a sack of flour? Like Rowan wasn’t taller than most men. Be still his beating heart. And lungs. And dick.
But maybe he’d overdone it with the competition, because now he wanted to go home and crawl into bed and sleep for three days. With the option of sitting in the bathroom first with the shower running as hot as it would go, in an effort to loosen the tightness in his lungs.
He didn’t make small talk, leaving Pete and his wife to carry the conversation. He had the vague impression Jordy was probing them for information on how he could pay them back for the kindness, and imagined Jordy showing up at their flat one day with Shield season tickets, or making a surprise visit to their future child’s birthday party.
He must’ve dozed off, because the next thing he knew, someone was shaking his shoulder. “Rowan. Come on.” There was a pause and then Jordy added, “Maybe you should come too, Pete. Get that foot looked at.”
Pete brushed this off, despite what Rowan was sure was a blistering look from his wife, and Jordy hustled him into a nondescript medical building.
And then, in a surreal sort of parallel universe way, Rowan was sitting shirtless in a posh doctor’s office while a woman with thick plastic-rimmed glasses and elaborately braided hair listened to his lungs.
“How long have you had the cough?”
“A week or so? No, maybe longer.” He frowned. “A month? But it wasn’t this bad before, just like a tickle.”
She didn’t like that answer, if her frown was any indication. She rolled her chair away from him and indicated he could put his shirt back on. “And any other symptoms? Fever, headaches? Has the cough been productive?”
“Um, like coughing stuff up? Phlegm sometimes.”
“No blood?”
