Curiously, I stared at him. He stood and grabbed bags close to the bedroom door. Kneeling, he dug through them before standing up. A grin was plastered on his face when he faced me. My eyes dropped to his hand and I noticed a white box.
Approaching the bed, he retook his seat on the edge and handed it to me. My brows furrowed as I slowly grabbed it.
My heart stuttered as I opened the box. A gasp fell from my mouth and my eyes widened seeing the beautiful, yellow diamond tennis necklace. I couldn’t pinpoint the price, but it was clear it was expensive.
My stomach plummeted.
Setting the box down, I lifted my hands.“What did you do?”
My chest tightened, a knot grew in my throat.
His face balled up.“What are you talking about?”
I grabbed my phone again.
Did you buy this to make up for something you did back home? Did you sleep with someone else?
He eyed the phone and his jaw clenched. I wasn’t trying to upset him, but when Rome messed up or made me upset, he tried to buy me back as an apology.
Creed pulled his phone back out.
I’m going to say this once. I am not my brother. I got you this because I saw it and thought about you. I missed you and wanted you to see I was thinking about you. I’ll never try and buy you off if I fuck up.
I swallowed hard as guilt hit me. I believed Creed. I shouldn’t have thought he would do something like that, but getting random gifts wasn’t something I took pleasure in anymore. I lifted my hands again.
“Sorry.”
He shook his head and leaned down, kissing my forehead.
After a couple minutes Creed lifted and stared down at me. “Tell me what you need.”
“Hungry and Bella, bathroom.”
He nodded. “I’m on it, baby.”
Laying back down on my back I got comfortable in bed again. Summer would have come over if I called her, but after assuring her everything was fine before my appointment I couldn’t bring myself to call her. We had texted here and there, but that was it.
Bella hopped up from her bed and trotted out of the room behind Creed, who turned the lights back off before leaving the room.
____
“You know I never sugarcoat anything with you, Nakyra. I don’t like this,” Dr. Reynolds said. After some tests we were now sitting at her desk on the other side of the exam room. My ear infection was gone, but my right ear still had some lingering tenderness and swelling.
My head swung to the left to look at Creed who reached over and grabbed my hand. He had been great with taking care of me since he’d been back. He hardly let me out of bed, kept me equipped with hot compresses to help with the swelling in my ear, and rarely left my side. He worked out of my office for the most part, went to the hospital to check on his brother and his company one of the days, then was back at the house. A couple days after he returned I had started to feel better thanks to the medication I was on, but Creed insisted I continued to take it easy. Unfortunately, I could tell something wasn’t right when I was able to put my hearing aids back in and now Dr. Reynolds was confirming.
“How bad?” I whispered.
“Your right ear has worsened. Where before you could hear sounds as low as sixty-seven decibels, now you can’t hear anything lower than seventy-eight. I don’t like those numbers at all. I’ve looked over the notes from your otolaryngologist and it says your ears were bothering you for about a week before you saw him?”
“Not necessarily. There was some slight irritation, but nothing that alarmed me that something was wrong. I have sinuses and allergies so I figured one or the other was bothering me. It wasn’t until they became red, swollen to the point I couldn’t use my aids, that I knew something more was going on.”
She nodded and wrote something in my chart. “I’m going to adjust your hearing aids. Your left ear isn’t giving you any issues?”
I shook my head. “Once the medicine took effect, it went back to normal.”
“Okay, that’s good. Your numbers in that ear aren’t too different from last year.” She cleared her throat and folded her hands on the table. Her serious expression caused dread to fill my stomach like a hundred-pound weight. “I’m going tobe honest with you, Nakyra, we might have to reevaluate how we’re treating your right ear. With it continuously worsening, we might need to look into other options.”
I swallowed hard. “Meaning?” Creed squeezed my hand.
