“Miller,” I said, jostling him. “Wake up.”
He came awake slowly, sluggishly, and gripped his forehead with a grimace of pain as he sat up. “What…? Oh, shit.”
I shot out of bed and rummaged in his backpack. “You’re high. It’s dawn phenomena, right? I read about this. Did you eat a bunch of carbs last night?”
“Pasta,” he said and started to climb out of bed. “I need water.”
Gently, I pushed him back. “I got it.” I hurried to bring him a glass of water from the bathroom sink. He downed it in three long gulps while I rushed to his med kit to find the fast-acting insulin.
I murmured to myself as I tore open the bag, recalling what I’d studied since Miller’s first hospitalization four years ago. “One unit of insulin per every fifteen milligrams over one-fifty…” I did the math in my head. “Three units.”
I clicked his injection pen to distribute three units of insulin and climbed back on the bed. Miller lay heavily against the bedframe, watching me as I pushed up his sleeve to expose his arm. “You’re amazing, Vi.”
I’m scared shitless.
For months, Miller and I’d been estranged, and I hadn’t been around for his highs or lows. I’d forgotten how scary they could be, and the night he nearly died came racing back, sitting at the forefront of my thoughts.
I injected the insulin then sat with his wrist in my grasp, watching the numbers come down.
“What’s your fasting level?”
“Between 80 and 120,” he said, eyes closed, head tilted up and resting against the headboard.
I bit my lip. “They’re coming down.”
He reached 110 and leveled off and I slumped against the bedframe too.
“Sorry, Vi,” he said after a minute. “I hate doing that to you.”
“You’re not doing anything to me.”
“Scaring you.”
I smiled. “How scared I am is directly proportionate to how much I care about you.” I kissed his shoulder and left my lips against his skin. “Has it been hard?”
“It’s always been hard. But no worse than usual.” He opened his eyes and looked to me. “I missed that. You. Mom’s got her own stuff to deal with, and needles made Amber queasy. I missed being around someone who gave a shit.”
Tears threatened, but I willed them back. “I give a shit. I never stopped. Even when we weren’t speaking much or…at all. I never stopped caring.”
“I know,” he said, his gaze roaming my face, tracing me with his eyes. “Neither did I. I just had a fucking horrible way of showing it.”
He pulled me in to kiss him, but before our lips touched, our eyes met. In that instance—the length of a heartbeat—a lifetime passed between us. An understanding that he and I were inevitable. Fated. The boy with diabetes and the girl who was going to be a doctor. The girl with the romantic heart and the boy who wrote love songs.
Our lips came together in a deep kiss that was both heated but gentle, dire but reverent. The sweetness of the juice on our tongues mingled with Miller’s own sweetness. For all of his prickly, grouchy and mistrusting ways, he had the purest soul I’d ever known. And his innate goodness was the sexiest thing about him.
Well, that and his face, his body, his voice, his talent…
My giggle broke our kiss.
“Something funny?” Miller said, his hands slipping around my waist.
“No, actually,” I said, my pulse thumping as I climbed onto his lap, straddling him. “I’m very serious about how I feel about you.”
Miller’s smile faded as he took in my heavy breasts, barely covered by a thin scrap of cotton and held up by two spaghetti straps. “Jesus, Vi.”
“Touch me, Miller.”
I leaned over, affording him a full view. Beneath me, his erection was hard and heavy in his jeans. I rocked my hips over him as his hands came up under the shirt. Both hands kneaded my breast, thumbs circling the nipples.