The President's Daughter (Liam Payne) Book 6

Chapter 14

“How’re you feeling?” I ask.

“Great…” she replies sarcastically. “I could run a marathon right now.”

“Cool, I’ll go tell Mark,” I joke earning a glare from her. I can’t take her anger seriously though as I hold up another cracker for her and she obediently opens her mouth for me to drop it in. “So I heard you yelled at Lux.” She winces, shaking her head slightly.

“I wouldn’t say yelled…” she trails off guiltily. “I didn’t have enough of a voice for that. I just didn’t want her to get sick.”

“Oh but you don’t care if I do,” I tease.

“You brought it on yourself,” she chuckles. A shiver runs through her and she hands me back the cup of tea, grabbing the blanket and pulling it up around her. I offer her back the cup but she shakes her head. I let it go since she’s beginning to look a little green and I set the cup and crackers on the ground.

“Are you sure you’re all right? Do we need to stop at the hospital?” I ask in concern. She shakes her head, her mouth clamped shut as if, if she opened it, the 2 crackers I’d forced her to eat might make another appearance. “Well you should get some sleep then.” I say.

“Slept all day,” she croaks. I’m at a loss as to what to do and I look around the empty bunk, trying to find something. I finally spy an unused ipad on Lou’s bunk and I stretch across the aisle to grab it, almost falling off the bunk as I do so. When I’m finally stable back in the bunk, I turn it on and begin looking through the movies she’s got on it.

“Any preferences?” I ask her as I scroll through the many choices.

“If you pick a RomCom I might actually puke on you,” she warns. I can’t help but laugh, not surprised at all.

“Well how about our movie,” I joke.

“No,” she says bluntly, before I even have a chance to finish my sentence.

“Aww c’mon. It was good,” I say with a laugh.

“Absolutely not. I have to see you guys every day as it is. I don’t need to see a movie about you also.” I let out a laugh, shooting her an amused smile.

“What about…” I begin saying, cut off when she reaches over and taps on a movie, bringing it up on the screen. Her choice does surprise me. I don’t know if she picked it because she was sick, or if she just really liked Disney, but Despicable Me 2 was definitely not what I thought we’d be watching. “Err ok…” I say, trying to cover my surprise, tapping it again to play. I slide down on the bed so I’m all but laying down, my knees bent so I could rest the iPad on it. Elodie follows suit, curling up in her cocoon of blankets. I can’t help but chuckle as she cranes her neck so she can partially see the screen but still keeping space between us and lift my arm, pulling her over until her head is resting against my chest so she could see better. She lets out a complaining groan, squirming slightly to get away, but quickly stops, letting her head drop against me in defeat. I was momentarily surprised by how warm she was. I could feel the heat radiating off her.

“You’re going to get sick, and I’m going to laugh,” she tells me as the movie starts. “Don’t expect me to play the nurse.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I tell her with a smile. She’s quiet for a second.

“Yea you would. Those little nurse outfits. That’s totally a role-play outfit.” I let out a burst of laughter. “Stop,” she whines. “You’re shaking my head and the iPad.” I clamp my mouth shut, but can’t shake the smile. We eventually settle down and watch the movie. While she never actually laughs from any of their shenanigans, I would catch her smiling at the screen. A real smile. Not the sarcastic one or the ‘I just won an argument’ one that she often had. This one was unguarded and it really did transform her. Lying sick in bed, you couldn’t call her hot or sexy, but with that smile, you could tell she was naturally beautiful. As the movie continued, I found myself watching her reactions to it more and more and the actual movie less and less. Even as her eyes started dipping shut for longer and longer periods of time, I couldn’t pull my gaze from her.

“You should go,” she murmurs, startling me. She’d had her eyes shut for at least 5 minutes this time and I’d begun to think she’d fallen asleep.

“That’s ok. I can st—“

“No Liam. Go.” She says with a sense of finality in her voice. I pause for a second before slipping my arm out from under her and sitting up, turning off the movie. She doesn’t open her eyes during the whole process. Not even when I almost knock over the forgotten cup of tea at the foot of the bed.

“G’night Elodie,” I say as I drop the iPad back onto Lou’s bed and clean up the food and tea, heading back into the main area. I strain to hear if she responds, but there’s nothing. She’s already fallen asleep. It’s not until I get to the kitchen when I realize it. She’d called me Liam.