Page 89 of Dallas Rivals

The bad news?

I had mononucleosis.

Which meant two things.

One: I was going to spend the foreseeable future in bed.

Two: everyone now knew I’d been making out with Catherine under the football bleachers.

My mom wasn’t even trying to hide the argument she was having with my dad in his office. They were shouting loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

Most people expect responsible parents to simply cancel a trip if their child is ill—but my parents weren’t like that.

They just hired a nurse, packed their bags, and drove off like the house was on fire.

A man in his thirties, with greasy hair and thick glasses, showed up at my bedroom door. He introduced himself as Eder. The guy had to be at least six foot six—taller and broader than my dad, even.

The first day, he just wrote down my symptoms on some clipboard form, didn’t do much else.

By the second day, he ordered my brothers to stay away because I had to be in quarantine for two months.

I didn’t even know the door had a lock until he showed me—and, of course, locked me inside my own room.

At first, I thought it was great.

I could watch TV as long as I wanted, read without interruptions, play Nintendo, even think without hearing my brothers’ constant nonsense.

My two older brothers fought nonstop—something about the Green sisters—and Killian missed me, I could tell. He didn’t have much to do without me. Sometimes he’d sit on the other side of the door and talk for a bit.

The problem started when the fever spiked. I was irritable, sweating like a pig, and my head hurt so bad I had to shut the curtains.

The last thing I heard the nurse say was that my temperature was over a hundred and four—and that he needed to bring it down.

Wasn’t that supposed to be his job?

The delirium came later, and with it, the nightmares. Nightmares involving an adult doing things he wasn’t supposed to do, things involving his hands and my most private parts. When I came to, I was terrified, exhausted, and coughing a lot. I couldn’t really keep my eyes open for more than five minutes without falling asleep again, and then it would all start over.

The laughter.

The groping.

The fear.

During the second week, the fever began to subside.

“I need to go outside,” I groaned from under the sheets.

I felt hot and cold, I was in a terrible mood, and I couldn’t breathe.

“You can’t go outside. If you go outside, you could infect your brothers. Do you want that to happen?” replied the nurse’s voice.

Of course I didn’t want that, even though moans continued to escape from my throat, begging to breathe fresh air.

Something woke me up, a strange sensation. I opened my eyes and immediately knew something was wrong.

Moving my legs frantically and with what little strength I had, I pushed him away from me.

“What the hell are you doing?!” I shouted, my lungs unable to handle my outburst and I began to shake. Although it could also have been out of fear.