Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 66

Chapter 61: Hives Outbreak

Logan’s POV

I noticed the hives first at breakfast.

Nick had come down already dressed for school, dragging his backpack by one strap the way Mrs. Peterson always told him not to, and I was halfway through my second coffee and a stack of emails I’d been ignoring since yesterday, but had no choice but to start going through there, even though it was literally the last thing that i wanted to do.

I looked up when he climbed onto the kitchen stool, and something made me look closer-something in the way he kept shifting, his shoulders twitching, his fingers scratching absently at his forearm.

“What’s on your arm, buddy?”

He looked down at it like he’d forgotten it was attached to him before he shrugged his shoulders as he replied. “Itchy.”

I came around the island and pushed up the sleeve of his school shirt. Across his inner forearm, a cluster of raised welts had formed overnight-red and angry, some of them already scratched raw where he’d been at them in his sleep. I turned his arm over, checking the other side. More there, smaller but multiplying, spreading across his body, turning his skin red.

“Does it hurt?”

“Itches,” he said again, with the emphatic precision of a six-year-old who felt the distinction was important. “Really bad. I woke up and it was itchy and I couldn’t sleep.”

I pulled his collar down slightly and found more of them tracking up his neck, disappearing into his hairline. Whatever this was, it hadn’t started on his arm. It had started somewhere and spread.

“Mrs. Peterson,” I called. She appeared from the hallway, already dressed and ready to help.

“Nick’s got hives. What does-” I stopped, because I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. What does Sedona usually do. I couldn’t say that out loud, not with Nick sitting right there, looking at me.

“What’s the usual protocol?”

Mrs. Peterson crossed to Nick and examined his arm, her expression professional but her eyes showing concern.

“Mrs. Hayes kept a specific cream. A homemade preparation she made herself. She kept it in the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom, she also always kept one in Nick’s bathroom just in case.”

“I know where it is.” Nick jumped off the stool, already moving toward the stairs. “Mom always puts it on when I get the bumpy ones. It smells like-” He stopped as soemthing crossed his face, like pain and nostalgia before masking it as neutral.

“It smells nice,” he finished, quieter. “Can I get it?”

“Go ahead.”

He went upstairs. Mrs. Peterson and I stood in the kitchen not quite looking at each other.

“Will the cream help?” I asked.

“It always has before. Mrs. Hayes made it specifically for his skin. She researched-” Mrs. Peterson paused, seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “She spent a significant amount of time developing the formula. She tried different combinations herself and found one that worked without irritating his skin further. She kept the ingredients in the pantry. The lavender oil, the specific beeswax she ordered-”

I heard Nick’s footsteps on the stairs, and then on the landing, and then descending again. I heard the pause before he reached the bottom.

The first cream Mrs. Peterson brought back from the drugstore lasted approximately four minutes on Nick’s skin before he started crying that it burned.

I read the ingredients twice as if reading them again would change something. Hydrocortisone, some preservatives I didn’t recognize, a fragrance component at the bottom of the list. Nick’s skin had always Fested to synthetic fragrances. Sedona had mentioned it multiple times, had quietly removed all the Fabric softener from the laundry, had switched to fragrance-free soaps that I’d never noticed had changed.

I hadn’t noticed.

Mrs. Peterson washed the cream off his arm while he cried, tears rolling down his face. Mrs Peterson was gentle and efficient and clearly distressed herself, though she kept it contained.

“We need the other kind,” I said, when the cream was off and Nick had calmed down slightly. “The kind without fragrance.”

T’ll check which ones- Mrs. Peterson was already on her phone, researching.

“Mom knows which ones,” Nick said. He’d stopped crying but he was still sniffing, sitting on the bathroom counter with his arm cradled against his chest, not quite touching the tender spot, although he wanted to. He gripped his elbow tightly as he continued speaking.

“She always says read the ingredients first. She says always check for the bad things before you put anything on my skin.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn’t you read it?”

I didn’t have an answer for that either.