I kick the golf ball at a gnome. “You really think you’re doing me a favor?”
It takes him a hot second, but he admits, “No.” He curls a piece of hair behind his ears. “I think my hand is sliced open from a rusted sheet of metal. And I’d prefer not to be stitched up by the guy who hates me. Nor the guy who hates you.”
Okay.
Okay. I’m here and more than capable of helping this tool, and he needs to suck up his fucking pride like I’m about to do. “I have a med kit on my bike,” I tell Thatcher. “Do you really want to wait five hours in an emergency room when I could do it right now?”
“Rowin is still on his way,” Jane reminds me.
“I’m better at suturing,” I say. It’s just a fact.
Thatcher rolls his eyes and just shakes his head. But the words out of his mouth are, “Go get it.”
Thank you.
It takes me three minutes to jog back down the staircase, grab the med kit and then return to the roof. And when I arrive, Thatcher has changed seats to a picnic table bench.
Jane is on the phone, chatting to someone. Hushed and serious. She paces up and down the makeshift putt-putt course.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask Maximoff, who calls Rowin again—that’s it, I steal his phone, and he glares.
“Farrow.”
“It’s fine. He’s coming here. Don’t worry about him, wolf scout.” Once I finish my residency, I’ll be working with Rowin Hart on the newly named med team, and I haven’t been imagining what that’ll be like. It’ll happen when it happens. In three years time. So there’s no point in obsessing.
But Maximoff—I wonder if he’s been overthinking. He hasn’t mentioned anything about my ex and medicine and me.
I look him up and down, more concerned. “Are you okay with him—”
“Yeah,” he cuts me off, definitely knowing where this is headed. “It doesn’t bother me.” He drops his putter off his shoulder.
I’m not sure I believe him. “If it does—”
“It doesn’t,” he says, voice firm.
I let it go. It’s not a talk that has to happen tonight. I return his phone to him, and he slips his cell in his back pocket.
Maximoff glances briefly at Jane and then tells me, “Your father called her back. She messaged Dr. Keene earlier asking for tips on how to treat a cut from a sheet of metal.”
“Sheet of metal?” I repeat, and he points to the rusted metal shaped like a mushroom.
“That was on top of a Grinch statue,” he explains. “It fell and almost hit Jane. Thatcher caught it.”
Thatcher is a good bodyguard, and I wouldn’t deny that just because I dislike the guy.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say and we head over to Moretti. Dropping the trauma bag on the picnic table, I rummage for gloves and other supplies.
Thatcher watches tentatively.
And as Maximoff leaves to go speak to Jane, I’m left alone with him. We don’t talk. I rest my knee on the bench next to Thatcher, hovering slightly over him.
I snap my gloves on and take his hand. He’s already removed the plaid flannel shirt. The air pulls taut every time our narrowed eyes meet, and believe me, I’ve thought about punching Thatcher plenty of times. But digging a needle in further while I’m treating him, just to hurt him—I would never.
That’s not who I am, and since he’s let me stitch him, he at least believes that.
I inspect the wound. A deep gash slices diagonally across his palm. It missed his thumb and fingers. He’s lucky.
“You have all your fingers,” I tell him, cleaning and disinfecting the wound.
Thatcher doesn’t wince. Or blink. He looks over at Jane and Maximoff, but I can’t read his gaze that well.
With a needle and syringe, I pierce his skin to numb the gash. Gentle and precise. He takes his eyes off his client and watches me work.
“I want stability for these families,” Thatcher tells me. “It’s why I voted to keep you as his bodyguard. Maximoff needed you to stick around. And if you planned to quit, I just wanted you to fucking do it—and I was pissed when you finally did. Because you just proved me right, and I wanted to be wrong.”
I suture his cut. “Well, you are wrong.” I don’t look up at him while I stitch. “I’m going to be honest, I don’t know a lot about you, Moretti. We don’t talk about personal shit, and I’m okay with that. But for you to act like you know me inside-and-out and for you to presume all of my intentions…that’s annoying.”
He opens his mouth, closes it, and in his silence, I lift my gaze more. He shuts down, staring impassively at me. Expression hard like reinforced steel. I recognize that look.
This is something my boyfriend does.
I don’t prod Thatcher to speak, and I finish the last suture, clean up, and bandage his hand.
“Done,” I tell him.
He stands, opening and closing his hand in a fist. I straighten up and snap off my gloves, discarding them…
Something wet drips down my forehead. I touch the droplet and look at my fingers…I see blood. My pulse spikes. I blink. No.
It’s not blood. It’s clear, but I feel like it’s all over me. Drenched in blood, limbs slipping against my limbs while I try to hold a body down. On floorboards. I can’t get a good grip.
I blink.
I look up. I see the night sky. Not ceiling rafters. I’m on the roof. And rain starts pelting my face. I smell rain on metal. My heart speeds. I hear the violent crunch, I feel the impact against my body—I struggle for the next breath.
Fuck. I shut my eyes tightly.
Fuck.
I hear screaming in the distance.
Fuck.
Slowly, I open my eyes, and I block out everyone but him. Maximoff is in front of me. Unyielding forest-greens holding me upright. “Farrow,” he calls out to me. “Farrow.” He grips my neck, and I’m more alert. Looking at him.
He knows.
He knows what’s wrong.
My eyes burn, and I shake my head. These traumatic events have clung on, and I can’t rip them off now. And I’m pissed that this is happening.
“It’s the rain,” I say, something thick in my throat. Each word is heavy and coarse.
I grit my teeth, breathing through my nose.
“Let’s go downstairs,” Maximoff says, his tough gaze cradling mine which grapples for clearer focus, and I hold his hand before we move—
The door opens abruptly. Light rain showering the rooftop as Rowin emerges, med bag slung over his shoulder.
Maximoff is about to speak, but someone else beats him to it.
“You can go,” Thatcher says, nearing the entrance. He holds the door open and motions for Rowin to leave back through.
Rowin glances at his bandaged hand and then to me.
“I said you can go,” Thatcher repeats, more sternly this time.
Rowin gives Thatcher a nod, and then he shoots me an annoyed look, as though I made him drive through traffic for no reason.
Right now, I’m honestly just trying not to have sensory overload from the car crash or the confrontation with the stalker.
He leaves, and as soon as I’m downstairs with Maximoff, in the empty Superheroes & Scones store, we wrap our arms around each other. Chest against chest, my pulse beats with his, and I hold the back of his head.
I breathe in his chlorine and citrus scent. He probably shouldn’t have been swimming with his injury. But smelling summer on Maximoff makes me smile.
It grounds me to the here and now.
25
MAXIMOFF HALE
“What are the antibiotics for strep?” I quiz my boyfriend. Printed flashcards fill my hand and scatter the coffee table inside the loft of Superheroes & Scones. Three-day-old red velvet cake from Jane’s birthday lies next to more study materials and energy drinks.
It’s afterhours in the comics shop. Empty. The only real time I can enjoy one of my favorite places on Earth.
Farrow slouche
s on a yellow beanbag, his muscular legs splayed over my lap, and I reach for my mug of tea. Sitting straighter than him.
He flips a page in a comic book on his lap and answers, “Ampicillin, amoxicillin, and PCN.”
Yeah, I have no clue if that’s correct. Not until I flip the card over and read the answer on the back.
Farrow is grinning at the comic. “You don’t have to tell me it’s right, wolf scout. I know it is.” His eyes finally flit to me. “Keep going.”
He has a USMLE Step 3 exam tomorrow. Tomorrow. He said it’s the test he has to pass to get licensed. And he hasn’t studied a single minute for it.
So when I heard that, I printed out a tower of flash cards and bought practice materials. Here we are. Only now I’m starting to think he agreed to this study session just out of pure amusement.
That know-it-all smile stretches his face, and he raises his brows. Like he’s waiting. But he’s also skimming a comic book. He grabbed one from the store downstairs.
I set my tea down and read off a notecard. “What is the most common cardiac manifestation of Lyme disease?”
“An AV conduction block or defect,” he says casually. “Why does this girl talk to…wait, are those demons?” He frowns and rotates the comic to check the front cover. Like he’s ensuring he grabbed an issue of X-Men.
He did, and I don’t need to see the panel. “That’s Magik. She’s the sorceress supreme of Limbo.”
His eyes meet mine, and he almost laughs. “Fuck, I’m just remembering how big of a dork you are.”
I’d shove his legs off me, but for some damn reason, I love them across my lap. So I end up giving him a middle finger instead.
Farrow only smiles more and flips a page in the comic. “Let’s go, wolf scout, show me how great you are at quizzing me.”
I meant to give him something, and this is a better time than never. I straighten the deck of flashcards and put them down. I capture more of his attention when I reach for my backpack with my good arm.
I already stressed the fuck out of my shoulder muscle earlier today. I tried to lift a stack of medical texts (study prep material), and now my collarbone thumps like stereo bass is blasting inside the bone.
Anyway, I’m not as concerned about my injury. Not lately. I’m more worried about Farrow after the rooftop. I’ve seen him hyper-vigilant before but never unresponsive and spaced out, and I knew it was serious.
We talked about it for a long time the past few days. Inside our steaming bathroom after a shower, he was towel-drying his bleach-white hair, the roots recently dyed, and I was brushing my teeth at the sink. And he called them intrusive memories.
“It’s happened before,” Farrow said. “When I was five and six.”
I spit in the sink and rinsed my mouth a couple times, the mirror fogged. So I looked over my shoulder multiple times, but he was relaxed, tying his towel around his waist. I listened carefully to him.
And he explained, “After my mom died, I only had one memory of her.”
I remembered. “You heard her calling your name.” I put my toothbrush in the mirror’s cabinet, and then I turned around, my gray towel tied on my waist too. And I neared my boyfriend and scraped my wet hair back with my fingers.
Farrow nodded, looking me over with a small smile. He leaned a shoulder on the misted shower door and reached out for my hand.
I drew closer before I grabbed hold. Our pulses slowing in the fucking heat, and there was comfort passing between us. Some kind of solace in the steam, and he looked at ease. I know, I know—Farrow Keene is always at ease, but more so than he has been in recent days.
He whispered, “I’d hear my mom saying my name at random times. I wasn’t thinking of the memory, but it’d surface involuntarily. It’s more of a sensory thing, and my father had his colleague speak to me. I was a kid, so I was confused.” Farrow held my gaze. “But he told me to focus on whether there could be a trigger. A time of day, a feeling, a sound.”
“Was there one?” I asked.
“Yeah.” His eyes trailed over my cheekbones. “A bed.”
Farrow explained that every time he’d crawl into his single-bed as a kid and pull the covers up to his chin, he’d hear his mom say his name. And instead of avoiding the bed, he returned to it every night. “I tried to ground myself to something else. Another sound, another feeling, and after a while, the memory fell back.”
It made more sense why he immediately told me, “it’s the rain,” on the roof. He was identifying the trigger, and he wasn’t panicked. He’s been mostly angry that it’s happening at all.
So recently, my aim is to take more stress off him. Make his days lighter and better. In any way.
Now that I have my backpack in front of me, I unzip the main section. Farrow is watching from the yellow beanbag with escalating interest.
He scrutinizes the tower of flashcards I put on the coffee table. “Quitting early isn’t going to win you high marks,” he tells me, ditching the comic and reaching backwards for a hacky sack from a bin.
“This is called a fucking break,” I tell him.
“A break,” he repeats. “That doesn’t sound like the Wolf Scout way.” He tosses the blue hacky sack, and I watch his fingers wrap around the crocheted ball. He stares into me. “I must’ve really loosened those laces…” he trails off as I pull out a gallon-sized baggie from my backpack.
Farrow crunches up to me, shoulder-level, and he takes the baggie from my hands. Inspecting the contents through the clear plastic. His brows keep rising and rising at me like what did you do?
“This is for the first day,” I explain, my elbow on his knee and hand on his thigh. “I have another one for the second day.”
Step 3 is a two-day exam. The first day is seven hours, and the second day is nine hours. Only a forty-five minute break during each day.
It’s brutal—or so I’ve read—even if it’s the easiest of all the step exams.
Each baggie contains two protein bars, crackers, mixed nuts, grapes, a whole apple, and two turkey sandwiches.
“It’s important you’re not hungry during the exam since it’s long,” I tell him. “At least that’s what people say on the sdn forums.”
His smile slowly expands wider and wider, overtaking the whole damn room. He’s not saying anything, and I don’t know. It makes me fucking nervous.
My neck heats, but I double-down on confidence and gesture to his chest. “Preparing for stuff is my thing,” I tell him.
He laughs, and before I interject, he tells me, “I love your thing.” His smile is a million watts of power and fucking beauty. He waves the baggie. “Thanks for these; they’re perfect. And now you’ve successfully earned your ninety-fourth preparedness merit badge.”
I feign confusion. “That many?”
He almost rolls his eyes and leans in, cupping my jaw. My hand slides down his thigh towards his ass, and our eyes rake each other for a boiling minute. And our mouths meet—I pull back, our lips separating before they even sting or swell.
Farrow frowns. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not distracting you before your exam, man.” My broad shoulder brushes his hard chest when I reach forward and collect the flashcards.
He tips his head. “You do realize I’m going to pass this exam even if I kiss the fuck out of you? Hell, I could fuck you all night, and I’d still ace it.”
I swelter, my muscles blazing with a hundred-degree desire. I try not to look at Farrow. Because if I look at my childhood crush who just said he could fuck me all night—I’m going to flash fuck me all night eyes.
“You can’t be that sure,” I retort.
“I kind of can. I know my shit, and this is shit I know.”
I force a grimace. “Looks like we know who has the better vocabulary now.”
“Always me, Harvard Dropout.” He reclines back on the beanbag, realizing that I’m not letting up, and he watches me flip through the flashcards.
I read off another one. “What are
the drugs that lead to hypercalcemia?”
“Lithium and thiazides.” He passes the hacky sack from hand to hand.
Correct. I don’t tell him since he already knows. “How was your shift yesterday?” I ask while I search for another card that looks more challenging.
Farrow has been in his residency program for over a month now, and he barely ever tells me about his workday. And for someone who’s a kindergartener with stress—you know: he’s like rubber, stress is like glue; it bounces off him and sticks to you—working at the hospital has really stressed the hell out of him.
He just never tells me why or how.
I don’t know…it’s been getting to me lately. Farrow never shuts me out, and I can feel him closing that door to his work life more and more as the days pass.
Farrow chucks the hacky sack in the bin and tells me, “Nothing to rave about.” He ends there, and he sits up.
And I’m determined to eliminate his stress, not bug him about it. So I don’t press on about the hospital.
Farrow opens his exam day baggie. Stealing the apple, he takes a large bite, and the longer I watch him, the more he lifts his brows at me. “You’re looking at me and not your notecards.”
“Thank you for that update,” I say and tear my gaze off his smile that’s doing a number on me today. I read a card. “What do acanthocytes on a blood smear indicate? They also look like spur cells but with more rounded spurs.”
I flip over the card and read the answer. My stomach sinks.
“Maximoff,” he says in a silky but rough breath. He knows why I’ve stalled. He holds the back of my neck, his thumb stroking my skin.
The text on the card is clear.
Hypothyroidism, alcoholism, and liver disease.
My grandfather died from liver disease. It’s weird how little moments that you least expect can creep up on you and make you remember people you lost. And the older I get, my feelings about my grandfather shift and alter.
“What are you thinking?” Farrow says quietly, putting the apple aside.
I flip the card back over. “I’m thinking about my grandfather.” I stare faraway. “After he died, I was terrified that my dad would go out the same way.” I motion to my head. “In my mind, if he even drank a tiny sip of alcohol, he’d just collapse. And that’d be it.” I glance at Farrow’s hand splayed on his kneecap, and I lift it up and slowly interlock our fingers.
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