Oh my goodness guys, I am SO sorry for how long this took to update. The week really wore me out, then the weekend went from lazy Friday night to a huge weekend ordeal in a matter of minutes and... yeah, I won't bore you with the details. I'm basically going to finish typing the A/N (from my phone, no less) and head out again.

HUGE thank you to mariannabr for the lovely cover image - I was way too excited to update this because of that.

Anyway, here's Chapter 11!

Chapter 11

Hours later, Nick found himself elbow-deep in bath water and with a nervous tick, like he was interviewing for his first job or something. Jess's form was curled up on the couch, her eyes always on the door when he ventured out to ask a question.

Nick knew Jess would be difficult about letting go of her nightly duties, but there was a large part of him that was thankful for her presence. The cold and flu pills he'd given her earlier hadn't quite kicked in yet, so he planned on using his resource in Jess as long as she was somewhat coherent.

"This soap, right?" He questioned, walking out of the bathroom again, bubbles trailing down his arms, and Jess looked at him blankly from the blanket she'd formed around herself.

"Did you read what it said?"

He glanced down. No-tears body wash.

"…so yes?"

She rolled her eyes. "You're washing her hair, Nick."

Oh… duh. It was body wash. He knew that.

Sighing in defeat, he retreated to the bathroom where a wiggly toddler splashed around with her bath crayons. Jess had explained that they really wouldn't leave marks on the bathtub – that they were actually just soap – but Nick eyed the blue dye on her hands skeptically. It definitely looked like something that would not come out of clothes.

"Aly, where is your shampoo?" He asked.

"Over here!" She giggled, putting her crayon down and handing him a bright green bottle. He popped off the top, squirting a blob into his hand, and was completely overwhelmed by the smell of watermelons.

"This stuff is strong," he commented, rubbing the soap into her hair.

"It smells good," Aly smiled, putting her hand to her head and then bringing it back to her nose, sputtering when a few bubbles went up with the air. To keep from laughing too hard, he combed through her hair a few more times before he was satisfied that it was clean. He was just about to pick up a cup to rinse it out when Aly stopped him.

"Let me do it," she insisted, taking the cup from Nick. Amused, he watched as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to aim the cup just over her head. She was off by a few inches, though, so Nick found her hands and guided them to where they needed to be.

Her wrists flicked and sent a waterfall down her face.

Nick wanted to freeze time. He wanted to take a picture; he wanted to remember what this felt like every night that he didn't get to do this with her.

Sadly, the moment ended much too fast, and Aly was too young to sit still long enough for him to ask her to wait. So, he grabbed a big towel from the rack and pulled her soaking wet body out of the tub, careful not to bump her (now re-bandaged and waterproofed) knees on anything.

She pulled the edges of the towel around herself, the excess dragging on the ground behind her. Beads of water dripped off of the stringy ends of her dark hair.

"Look Momma!" She bounded into the living room. "I have your towel! I'm all grown up!"

He could hear Jess's groan from his spot in the bathroom.

"Nick, her towel is the small one."

He got up and poked his head out of the doorway, smiling sheepishly.

"She's pretty cute in it, though."

Jess fought the urge to return his smile, watching Aly from a safe distance away. The towel dragged behind her as she skipped around her bedroom, her voice humming some children's song to her teddy bear.

"Well, one thing's for sure: she's got your dance moves," she murmured. For the first time in years, Nick felt his cheeks flush. Was it pride? It wasn't something he was normally proud of. The two of them had such a strange way of getting to him.

"I beg to differ," he chuckled, the memories of those last few weekday mornings with Jess flooding back into his head. What had she said to her those days? It was that line she liked so much, the only one he remembered after she'd (somewhat) forced him to watch Dirty Dancing. Nobody puts Baby in the corner? Was that it? He really didn't know what had prompted him to first say it, really, but the reminder of her overly-dramatic hair flips just made him want to say it even more.

He realized entirely too late that he was staring right into Jess's soft gaze.

To make matters worse, she was staring straight back. She had a lazy smile at her lips, the kind of smile that Nick had woken up to so many times in the past, and also the very smile that made his heart leap and his stomach turn.

Apparently, four years hadn't changed that, either.

It's just the cough medicine, he reminded, and his knee-jerk reaction to that was to look away. It was a fight-or-flight instinct that he instantly wished that he could take back, as Jess picked herself up and coughed as soon as the moment was lost.

"Aly, go pick out some pajamas so you don't catch a cold and get sick like Momma," Jess spoke, her voice coming a little weaker this time.

Aly nodded dutifully from her doorway, and Nick followed her into her room. She picked out a purple set, one of the many things Nick's mom had sent her over the past month. He had been stocking all of the new stuff away for when Aly finally knew that he was her father… And the memory of telling her about his mother was one that he could go to work and ramble on and on about for hours to anyone that would listen.

"But I already have a grandma," Aly protested as Nick handed her the present. He'd waited an entire week to give it to her, hoping the adjustment wasn't moving too fast. His innocent 'this is from your other grandma' comment, though, was clearly bothering her.

"You've got two, Aly," Jess explained. "My mom and Nick's mom."

Aly thought about this. "So they're both grandma?"

"Yeah," Nick nodded, but Jess shook her head.

"You can call them whatever you want, Aly," she turned to Nick. "Nick called his grandma Nana."

Startled that Jess remembered that detail, he looked at her. "Yeah, I did. Her name was Allison, too."

"Really?" Aly's eyes lit up. Jess nodded.

"That's who you're named after."

The expression on his daughter's face was enough to make even the hardest hearts melt. Nick was fairly optimistic.

"So, Nana it is?"

Aly nodded excitedly, pulling open the box. "I like that."

Nick was snapped out of his reminiscing when he realized that he'd let Aly slip on the top backwards. He expected this, though. He had never been an expert at dressing himself, let alone someone else.

While he readjusted it, Aly let out a large yawn. Her hair still wasn't brushed, so Nick let her climb into bed while he went to go get her comb. He'd at least remembered to have her brush her teeth before her bath – per Jess's suggestion – and so his first attempt at bedtime was mildly successful.

She didn't need a lullaby when he returned, and her eyelids drooped slowly downward at every stroke of the brush. Nick smiled at his handiwork, bending down to kiss her forehead.

"'Night, Nick," she mumbled, drifting off to sleep.

As his lips touched her forehead, he smiled. "Goodnight, sweetie," he whispered, the words falling oh-so naturally off of his tongue.

He tiptoed out of her room once he was sure that she was asleep, and found Jess snoring softly from her spot on the couch. Her hand hung limply off of one side, her head propped up on the arm, and her mouth was slightly ajar.

Nick had to resist the urge to take a picture and use it for some kind of blackmail, because that's exactly what he would have done four years ago.

Mature, he chided himself while he went to pick up Jess. She groaned as his arm slid beneath her back.

"I'm fine," she muttered, still half-asleep. "I'll go to bed later."

"Yeah, sure, you're completely fine," he retorted, loosening his grip only slightly on her back. Surprised at his movement, she jerked and fell slightly backwards, her arms grasping at air before they found his neck. He pulled her back, full in control of her perceived fall.

He would've smirked, but instead, his breath hitched at how close their noses were to touching.

"Not fair." She groaned, unfazed by their proximity. "I'm sick."

His arm tightened around her again, while his other arm slid below her knees. She didn't protest this time.

He picked her up then, giving her his best I told you so smirk. Her body relaxed into his, her body fitting to his in all the places he remembered.

If she wasn't so sick, Nick knew he'd be approaching dangerous territory. She'd shed her robe a few hours ago, and even the thick flannel of her pajamas left little to his imagination. She was still Jess... She was still the girl he never quite got over.

"I am pretty drugged up," she admitted, her voice still raw. He chuckled and pushed open the door to her bedroom, setting her down onto her comforter. She tried to pull the blankets back, but Nick stopped her.

"Let me," he insisted, walking over to the other side to pull the sheets up.

It was in this movement that he noticed her shiver, void of the blanket that she had curled into on the couch. Gently, he placed a hand on her forehead, amazed at the heat that greeted his hand.

"You're burning up," he gawked. Jess shrugged.

"What'd you expect? It's a cold… and it came in May," she shook her head, her voice cracking again. "It'll pass, I promise."

Just as she said this, she shivered once more. He could always… Nick sighed, debating if what he wanted to do was only to help Jess or was for his own selfish reasons. He settled on the former, although he was pretty sure the latter had a little bit to do with it, too.

He should probably feel a lot worse about that than he did.

Slowly, he slid into the spot beside her, pulling her body close to his once more. Jess's eyes went wide in the dim light, and she put up a pretty pathetic resistance.

"It's okay," he reassured. "You're cold. I'm warm."

"Careful, Miller," she protested again, weakly. "This is probably contagious, and flu-shot or not, you shouldn't be this close."

His eyes were serious. "I'll take my chances."

Her resolve wasn't much, though, once she felt Nick's body heat through her pajama top. She let a sigh of content escape her lips before giving up and settling into his chest. She was warm, for sure. His hand traced soothing circles on her back.

"I need a saving grace, a hiding place…" he began, his voice not quite in tune. Jess sharply took in a breath. She pushed against his chest. "I don't have forever or time to waste…"

"You listened to the CD?"

"Of course," he replied easily. "Though, I never really pegged you as country listener."

"You do weird things when you're pregnant," Jess mumbled. Nick fought the urge to remark that Nick and Jess did weird things anyway. "And it's only one. I thought you'd stop at the Taylor Swift stuff."

He chuckled. "Believe it or not, there's a lot of happy memories with those songs."

Jess accepted this, settling further into his embrace. He could feel her muscles giving into the medicine, giving her some much-needed rest. Thank God he had done something right in that regard.

He hummed a few more lines along.

"She likes having you around, you know," Jess said after a while.

"Jessica, sleep," he coaxed. As much as he loved talking about Aly, this was not the time. "You're not going to remember any of this in the morning."

"Trying to," she shook her head, the syllables coming slower, "but I'm serious. I'm glad she has you now."

Nick smiled despite himself. "You've done a pretty great job, yourself."

"Thanks," Jess replied quietly. "It… It means a lot to hear that."

Nick closed his eyes and settled back, holding her tighter. Her body was so warm… he was surely sweating from contact… And probably in more ways than one. His heart picked up at the very thought.

"Why do you say that?"

Jess took in a deep, shaky breath, and he could tell that she was fighting to stay awake. An end was quickly coming to their conversation.

"Because… I've always felt like…" Her eyelashes skimmed his shirt as she drifted off, her voice growing quieter. "…felt like I have no idea… no idea what I'm doing…"

Her words took the air out of his lungs. Jess always knew what she was doing with Aly. Was there any way she had felt just as lost as he felt sometimes? Before he could reply, she took another sleepy breath.

"For... for the record," she whispered as she curled up closer to him, causing his heart to beat even faster before he could even stop her, "I really... really did love you."

He tried, he really tried, not to jump at her admittance. She loved him?

Past tense, Nick, it's in the past...

This time, he actually attempted to settle the way his heart picked up, a pitiful goal to stop thinking too deeply into her words. He further pushed back the longing that he'd bottled up since she'd shown back up, knowing that there was still a part of their relationship that wouldn't - well, couldn't - ever be realized, no matter how much he wanted to pull her close and never let her go. He was with Julia, and Jess knew that. Surely this was just an anomaly, something that she'd never admit outside of this context, due to her sickness.

It's the cough medicine, it's the cough medicine... She won't remember a thing.

Nick let Jess settling further into the sheets (and, consequently, him) in her sleep, trying to fight the many feelings that were bubbling to the surface. He knew better than to accept them… He knew better than to stay… Especially after that. But there he sat, more content than he should be with a woman that was not Julia.

He compromised that he'd only stay until her fever broke. No earlier, no later. He was doing her a favor, after all. How long had it been since someone had even taken care of her like this? She seemed content enough to have the help.

There wasn't much of a need to bother her before she really got some sleep, anyway.

Yes. He'd just stay until he was sure she'd be okay. Aly needed someone there while Jess was knocked out on cold medicine.

Involuntarily, he traced more paths on her back. With his free hand, he pushed a few strands of hair stuck to her cheek. She was back to lightly snoring again, a pretty good sign that she was contently asleep, but Nick could still feel the heat radiating off of her body.

Nope, not time to go yet.

So with Jess in his arms, and Aly sleeping soundly in the other room, Nick felt busy the day catch up with him, and eventually succumbed to the weight of his own eyelids. Just for a few minutes… He'd check in a bit if Jess's fever had broken… Only after a little nap.

Just for a few minutes.

So... does Nick actually only stay for a few minutes? Hmmm...

As always, Newgirl78 is to thank for all the beta work! Gonna try to catch up tomorrow on some of the story updates that I see happened in my absence. As always, hope you guys enjoyed this one!