Can You Keep A Secret?

Chapter Ninety-Six

           

-Brooklyn's POV-

            It was the fever that had eventually pulled me down into sleep, and the next few days passed in a blur. I slept as often as I could, because being awake was the closest I'd ever been to Hell. I would wake up struggling to breathe, and it wouldn't get better from there – The aching would set in, and then the hot, yucky discomfort of the fever. For quite possibly the first time in my life, I wasn't even hungry. At the very least, hopefully Blair was happy – I'd definitely stuck to his rules about staying low. I hadn't even left the bed.

            It was hard to keep track of what was going on around me, so I didn't even try. I remembered hearing Andy talking on a livestream – "Where's Brook? Brooklyn's ill right now." I'd heard them discussing yet another trip to A&E, but I'd protested with a "NOOO!" I didn't know what would happen if I tried to get help – Would they ask any questions? If they did, if I ever had to tell the truth, I feared that he would come back for me.

            I knew that Liv had left, and I felt awful that I couldn't go to see her off – I had tried, but Rye had insisted that I wasn't going anywhere, and Blair had stayed to look after me. We weren't on the best of terms right now – We'd had arguments before, mostly about my hair, but never anything like this. I felt like he was mad at me, that he was certain that I'd put all of this onto myself, and he was right.

            For their part, the boys had basically turned into homebodies looking after me – Mikey would stick the thermometer into my mouth and Andy would rest a cool cloth on my forehead. Jack got the terrible job of forcing me to take the medicine that tasted so awful that I almost coughed it right back up, and Rye took the night shift. They even forced me out of bed once to clean the pillows and sheets – Mikey had let me wrap up in his blanket, and kissed my forehead while I clutched at it and shivered.

            The one good thing about the sickness was that it allowed me to avoid any questions about what had happened. Want to know something? Too bad, I'm asleep. I had a fair amount of questions myself, though – Like, who had been watching me, and for how long? Could they somehow still see me now, or only when I left the flat? How did the guy know Stacey? How did he know me? Was he why she had broken up with me? Or was she like him, and shared the belief that I'd been cheating? Even if I'd been well, I wouldn't have been able to ask her any of those things – Not with the thought of what he'd do to me an ever-constant threat stuck in the back of my mind. I wasn't sure what hurt the most – the sickness, the wounds, or the ache of the unknown.

            At the very least, the others were gradually becoming their usual boisterous selves again, while I died a slow and painful death. I didn't even have the energy to want to be like them – I felt like a cranky old man watching them toss a footy around the room. When I said that out loud, Jack had laughed and come over and kissed my nose.

            "You're not an old man. You're our perfect little Brooklyn." I'd smiled, even though the movement hurt.

            "Even though his farts smell like death," Andy had said, tossing the ball into the air and catching it again. They had then launched into a massive discussion of everyone's flaws. I had popped in my opinions every now and again until I broke into a massive coughing fit.

            At that, Rye had said, "You should probably try and get back to sleep," just like the overprotective mum that he'd become. He had turned the lights off and forced Jack and Mikey outside to play football and keep their restlessness away from me. He and Andy had then quietly played with their respective electronics, and left me to fall back asleep, which was exactly what I did now. All of this thinking was exhausting.