by Jay Hogan
“What I am saying…,” I continued, sounding dejected as fuck, “is that I’m pretty sure I am that person, and a week ago I would have said absolutely yes to your suggestion, but it would’ve been the wrong answer.”
He shook his head and tried to take back his hand, but I held on.
“It would’ve been wrong because you were spot-on when you challenged me. Just assuming I could handle whatever Crohn’s threw at me was flip and insulting to you. I had no idea what it would be like, watching you go through what you did, still are. And it has nothing to do with you shitting like a trooper on laxatives and spending enough hours in the bathroom to give Carmen a run for her money…”
That at least got a smile.
“… and even less to do with whether or not you can bottom for me or for your own wants, for that matter, or that you might not always be in the mood. Jesus, Drake, I’m not that much of an arsehole… pun intended, and by the way my arsehole has no problems standing in place of yours, for days, weeks, or forever for that matter… just saying.” I winked.
He rolled his eyes. “Such a fucking martyr.”
“I know, right? Come closer, please.” He did, and I leaned forward and popped a kiss on his nose. “It’s about making sure I go into this next ‘us’ deal understanding as much as I can about what it is I’m promising.”
“Promising?”
“Yes, Mr Park, promising. Because I’ve realised something as well. You and I have a chance here. A chance to have something special—and God, who’d have thought those words would ever come out of my mouth.” I took a minute to focus. “I care about you, Drake, maybe more…”
This time his smile actually hit his eyes, and God, I nearly gave him everything right there and then. But I swallowed hard and pushed on.
“… but we’ve got more baggage going into this than most. At the risk of sounding like a dick, there’s three in this relationship― you, me, and Crohn’s. And we can’t pretend it won’t have a voice. I love that you want this with me, more than you know, but I really want this to work, and you have an advantage I don’t. You know your disease and what it takes to live with it. I need to catch up, and you, mister, have some ghosts of your own to lay to rest. You can’t tell me you’re not still burying yourself about what happened with Prim, right?”
The lines drew tight around his eyes and he nodded reluctantly.
“So all I’m asking is that you trust me and allow me a little bit of time, and let’s both do what we need to so we don’t screw each other up later. Can you give me that?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Drake
“IT’S NOT like I had much of a choice, was it?” I grumbled, blowing on my chamomile tea as Aaron parked himself sideways at the end of the couch, facing me.
My mother stayed over the first couple of nights at home, and stocked my fridge with ready-to-eat meals, generally hovering and fussing until I couldn’t stand it any longer and sent her home to her husband. She left happily enough, taking my snarky impatience for the genuine sign of improvement that it was. Aaron picked up the reins, calling in daily after work to keep me fed with gossip and enough company to stop me going completely insane.
My health was mending… slowly. A little occasional bleeding south of the border, usually precipitated by eating a little too much, but overall the cramping was manageable, and I was perkier than I’d been in weeks or at least not grumping as much, according to Aaron.
They’d removed my central line the day before, giving me my first tube-free shower, which I relished. I’d even wrung one out while in there just to celebrate and clear the pipes, an even perkier sign of my recovery. That I might have pictured a certain detective’s mouth wrapped around said appendage was simply down to a need for efficiency, so I didn’t exhaust myself, right?
I still needed protein and high-calorie shakes over the day to supplement my intake due to the lingering sensitive bowel, but I tried not to dwell too much on that. Whether I needed surgery or not was a concern for my follow-up appointment next week and nothing I could do anything about now. All in all, I counted myself lucky. Flares could run months, and I’d escaped with a couple of weeks. I didn’t know if it was the new drug or just chance, but you wouldn’t catch me complaining either way.
Aaron nestled deeper into the couch cushions with an almost orgasmic sigh. I’d splurged big time on this one item of furniture since I could spend days at a time holed up on it if my Crohn’s was backchatting me. The coffee in his hands smelled bloody delicious, and the fact I’d bought it expressly for Caleb only added to the full-on sulk I currently had going.
“He said he needed time to ‘catch up.’” I added air quotes. “What could I say?”
“And you’ve heard nothing in six days?” The question was followed by a delighted moan as he took his first sip of the coffee.
I frowned. “Not exactly. He got home two days ago, and there’s been a few texts,” I admitted petulantly. “But all in the range of ‘got home safely,’ ‘tired and off to bed,’ ‘hope you’re doing okay,’ ‘Carmen is driving me nuts’”—at least I’d smiled at that one―“Hardly dripping with innuendo or how much he’s missing me.” I may have pouted.
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” Aaron mocked. “He was pretty honest with his feelings. I don’t think that much can have changed in a few days.”
“Six days.” I counted them off on my fingers. “He’s apparently got a lot going on, police reports, statements, and… stuff. Too much to ring me, apparently.”
“He asked for space. To get things right. For you.”
“It’s sadistic if you ask me. He must know I’m sitting here stewing, just waiting for him to call.”
Aaron purred through another sip of coffee. “Just like when you sent him packing and didn’t call him?”
Ouch. I scowled. “That was uncalled for… though… alarmingly accurate. Bastard. You’re supposed to be on my side. And will you stop with the obscene noises. You’re driving me crazy.”
“Wow. We are in a bad mood.” He prodded me with his foot. “But this coffee deserves obscene noises. It’s fucking gold. How come you never bought it for me?”
“’Cause I don’t love you….” Shit…. Goddammit.
Aaron choked on his mouthful, blowing coffee out his nose and managing to spray most of the couch back cushions in the process. “What the…? Jesus Christ, Drake, look what you made me do.” He stabbed a finger at me. “Don’t fucking move. You’re gonna tell me everything.”
He dove for the kitchen and returned with a tea towel to clean up the mess while I sipped nervously on my tea. One cat now minus bag. Fuck. My. Life. There was zero chance Aaron was gonna let that one slide.
Lobbing the tea towel over the breakfast bar and onto the kitchen tiles, he jumped back on the couch and eyeballed me. “Right, gorgeous, spill.”
As I said, zero chance. I took another mouthful of tea. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He scooted closer till he was eye to cheek with me, mostly because I wouldn’t turn to look at him. “Okay, now that’s just plain creepy,” I said, drawing back.
He grabbed my chin and turned me to face him. “You’re telling me you love this guy? Really?”
I pulled a face. “Maybe. But it’s too soon, right? I mean, that would be just stupid.”
He let me go and fell back on the couch with a sigh. “Hell, Drake, I don’t know. You’re asking the guy whose boyfriend just dumped him for a bigger salary, remember? If you’d asked me three weeks ago, I’d have said I loved that fucker with all my heart and that he felt the same. Now, if I never see the bastard again, it’ll be too soon. Who knows with this shit? But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see you two have something going on, and you don’t do this, Drake, not since Jared and even then, I didn’t hear the L word from you for a long time. You sure about this?”
I snorted. “Of course I’m not bloody sure. No, scrap that. Am I sure I love him? Pretty much. When I heard he
’d been hurt, I damn near couldn’t breathe, Aaron. Everything fucking stopped in its tracks. Nothing mattered except getting to him and laying my hands on his skin, even more than worrying about my health.”
Aaron said nothing, just drank his coffee and waited me out.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. That because I’d changed my mind he would just fall at my feet and be thankful? Not so much, as it turned out. No, now he needs to think about things. Talk about having your words shoved back down your throat. As far as I can tell, that’s code for ‘it’s me, not you.’”
Aaron scoffed. “Did he say that?”
No. “He may as well have. What if he decides he can’t do it? That it’s all too much? That I’m too much? And let’s face it, being my boyfriend is hardly winning the lottery, right?”
Aaron punched me in the arm.
“Ow.”
“Anyone would be damn lucky to have you as their boyfriend.”
“Yeah right. My Grindr profile should read: ‘Snarky, professional workaholic with yo-yo sex life and limited recreational opportunities. Needs his own bathroom, fussy eater, and overall save-the-planet weirdo.’ Any one of those on their own could be a deal-breaker, let alone the whole package. If I was a house I’d be listed as a fixer-upper, money trap, high maintenance project. Who’d be crazy enough to sign up for that?”
Aaron’s eyes popped comically. “Oh. My. God. You are such a fucking drama queen.” He leaned over and pushed my droopy bottom lip back into place. “You’re just pissed because you want everything in your time, how and as you want it, fuck anyone else. You’ve always been like that.”
Wait. What the hell? “I do not… and I have not ever been… what you said… just then.”
“Drake—” He regarded me fondly, as one would an argumentative toddler. “—I love you dearly, you know that, but you’re a controlling selfish little shit at the best of times.”
My mouth gaped. Aaron was your quintessential poster boy for Door Mats R Us, something we clearly needed to have a long chat about after his recent boyfriend fiasco. So if nothing else, those words from his lips made me sit up and listen. “Wow, tell me what you really feel, friend.”
He shrugged. “Whatever. You know exactly what I mean, so suck it up, friend. It’s never bothered me because I understand you need to wear that hat a fair bit to keep you healthy. But since Jared… it’s like it’s become your default attitude. You need to lighten up, man. Caleb’s been up front with you. Give him what he needs. Stop looking for reasons to doubt him. He’s not Jared.”
He reached across and pulled me in for a quick hug, then let me go again. “God knows you deserve to be loved, Drake… we all do.” His voice fell off at the end, a grimace of hurt and regret on his face.
Fuck. Colour me fucking selfish, again. Aaron had his own relationship shit to deal with. “You miss him?”
Aaron sighed. “I miss what I thought we had, before I knew it for the lie it was.” He studied me. “You miss Caleb?”
My chest squeezed. “Like a fucking limb.”
He stared for a minute, then nodded. “We’re bordering on pathetic here, you realise that? Any more and we’re gonna have to go clubbing, sink some tequila, and fuck a few random guys in the bathroom just to get our man cards back.”
I rolled my eyes, sunk down in the couch, and put my feet on the coffee table. “You first,” I said, drawing the blanket over my knees.
He laughed and stretched his legs out over mine. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that… tomorrow.”
I snorted. “You’re right about one thing, though.”
He cocked his head.
I looked my best friend in the eye. “You and me? We absolutely deserve to be loved. No doubt in my mind. After all, look at us.” I plumped a pillow under my head. “We’re fucking catches, right? Now grab the popcorn and tell me what ridiculous rom com we’re gonna watch while we paint each other’s toes.”
MY CAR raged like an oven in the unusually warm spring sun, beads of sweat running down my cheek as I sat and waited. I should just turn around and go home. The waiting room blinds had flickered once already.
It’s not that I didn’t want to see Dana and Carly. Jesus, I missed them like crazy, but it did nothing to get me through that clinic door. They’d visited the day after I got home, filled me in on the locum midwife they’d hired until I got back to work, and though initially I’d bristled at the idea, I also felt incredibly relieved.
Knowing there was someone to ease their load helped me feel less guilty about leaving the two of them in the lurch. My income would suffer a bit, my clinic percentage being cut in order to pay the locum, but it was a small price, and one I gladly paid. Every mental conversation I had about returning to work left me fraught with lingering panic, a panic currently evidenced by my inability to even open the damn car door.
I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I’d need to come back regardless, but it hadn’t. I was a third stakeholder in the place, and there was administration and shit that needed taking care of whether I was working or not. But it had still thrown me for a loop when Dana called and asked if I would come in and do some paperwork. The Richter seven wobble in my stomach said it all. And now, sitting outside the clinic, forget damn butterflies, freaking bats beat in my chest along with a telltale numbness in my fingers that warned I was a sparrow’s fart away from a panic attack.
“Hey.” A hand tapped my driver’s window, and I was immediately swept back a couple of months to another hand, same window, same car park. Caleb. Dammit. I’d been doing so well too. Liar.
“You coming in or are you just gonna sit there and drop the tone of the neighbourhood?” Dana peered through the glass.
I flipped her off and pushed open the door, gingerly finding my feet.
She took one look at me and drew me into her arms. “Hey, you. How’s it going?”
I let her hold me for a bit while I got my bearings, a tide of conflicting emotions spinning in my head. She smelled of antiseptic and baby and pregnancy and just… Dana, sweet, ridiculously bossy, Dana. It was so familiar and so damn soothing I almost lost it right there on the street. When she finally let go of me, I was surprised I even managed to stay on my feet.
She brushed a hair from my eyes and searched hard for a moment. I held her gaze as steady as I was able. I could do this.
She smiled. “Sorry to ask you to drive in, but I kind of figured, well….”
I sighed heavily. “Back on the bike, right?”
She frowned. “Maybe. Did I do the right thing?”
The wince came unbidden. “We’ll see soon enough.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Shit, sorry.”
“Nah.” I straightened my back and took a deep breath. “Cass would be proud of me. It’ll make me seem less like a loser when I tell her next time we meet.”
Dana brightened and slid her arm through mine. “So, you’ve seen her?”
“Twice, so far. Thanks, by the way.”
Cass was a counsellor Dana had used and recommended. Hell, if Caleb was gonna take his part seriously, I needed to as well. I had nothing against counselling, but I’d just never felt the need. Having Crohn’s, I was used to a fair amount of introspection, but after that first session with Cass, I realised I didn’t know shit. Working through stuff on your own didn’t hold a candle to being called on your crap face-to-face by someone who knew what they were doing. Had I gone to counselling after Jared left, I could’ve maybe saved myself some heartache.
“How’s it going?” Dana asked warily.
I grinned. “She says I’m work in progress.”
“Jesus, we could’ve told you that for free.” Dana laughed, and I suddenly realised we’d made it to the clinic steps without me even noticing. Not giving me a chance to change my mind, she opened the door and muscled me down the corridor and into her office. “Carol’s using yours. I hope you don’t mind.”
I didn’t, though I admit it felt a bit weird. I took a s
eat and gazed around as if seeing her space for the first time. I felt… numb.
Dana sat behind her desk and studied me with a frown. “You look like you’ve seen a damn ghost.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. How’s the Crohn’s?”
“Getting there. Where’s Carly?”
“On a call-out.”
Silence drifted between us and a few seconds became a long awkward moment.
Dana’s brows arched. “Right, then. Great catch-up.”
I snorted, grabbed her stress ball, and began working it in my hand. “Sorry… again. My inner arsehole is getting a good workout lately. It just feels strange, you know. Two weeks ago I was healthy, blindly doing my job, had a new boyfriend, and things were looking up in my life. Now I’ve lost a baby, lost and regained a boyfriend, I think, lost a client, who still hates me by the way, my health tanked, and I’m terrified of delivering another baby.”
She stared at me for a minute then bit her lip. “Poor baby. Life sucks sometimes, right? Now….” She pushed some rosters my way. “Take a gander at those and let me know what you think.”
It was all done with such a straight face and an air of boredom that I couldn’t help but laugh. I grabbed a pen and fired it at her. “Bitch.”
She ducked and let it sail past. “Bastard.”
We both chuckled. “God, I’ve missed you,” I said.
“Likewise. But seriously, you’ve had a hell of a time and no one deserves a shit show like that all at once. You sure you’re okay being here today?”
I nodded and suddenly realised it was. I was okay with it. And with that, relief flooded through me, and I discovered an urge to talk after all.
“I get that losing the baby wasn’t my fault,” I started. “And I know getting Prim to hospital in time to save her was a fucking miracle. She could’ve easily died at home. Her grief and anger about what happened don’t change those truths, but it hurt, Dana, it so fucking hurt….” I choked up and took a few seconds to settle.
Then I continued, “I suppose I’ve been waiting for her to tell me I wasn’t to blame before letting myself move on. Cass says that’s a mistake, and I get that. The problem is, knowing I’m not to blame and feeling okay enough to deliver another baby without reliving the nightmare of Hannah are two entirely different things. And if I can’t feel at peace about what happened, if I’m at risk of panic attacks like I nearly had outside in my car, then I’m not safe to practice.”