by Chelle Sloan
Once I see him, it’s like I can’t look away. The man is gorgeous in a way I’ve never seen before. I’ve never really had a thing for older men—I’d guess he’s about ten years older than my thirty years—but the slight salt-and-pepper in his hair is making my body tingle in ways it has never done. He’s built, but not so much that he looks like he lives in a gym. His broad shoulders taper down to a slim waist. The dress shirt he’s wearing fits him perfectly, and of course, the sleeves are rolled up to show the perfect amount of forearm. As I catch myself staring, I snap my head up, but it’s only to see his brown eyes, which are just a shade lighter than his almost black hair, which is the same color as his perfectly trimmed beard.
I must stare a bit too long as Mark looks over his shoulder before shaking his head. “I’m sorry, my brother Garrett here is probably creeping you out. He does that from time to time. My sincerest apologies.”
I shake my head. “No worries. Hi, I’m Miss… Paige… Paige Blackstone.”
“Garrett. Garrett Dixon.”
I extend my right hand out, then realize my error as he is holding Makenna with his right arm. As I switch to hold out my left, I can’t help but notice the gold band around his ring finger.
Of course. The first man I’m attracted to in literally years is married. Wouldn’t my mom be so proud of me? We would finally have something in common.
“So you’re the woman who has performed a miracle on my nephew? I didn’t realize I’d be meeting a real-life angel tonight.”
My cheeks heat from his words, which sound awfully like a pickup line that shouldn’t make me blush. I hate that I’m having this kind of reaction to him. He’s making conversation. Saying nice words about me as a teacher in relation to his nephew. But the tone of his voice, and the way he’s looking at me, it’s definitely not the way a married man should be looking at any woman.
Not only am I attracted to a married man. I’m attracted to a married manwhore. Look at me, Ma! Aren’t you proud?
Before I can respond, Garrett winces as Charlie slaps him on the shoulder. “Dammit, Garrett! What did I tell you? Did you not listen to a word I said! Don’t make googly eyes!”
“Dammit, Garrett!” Cullen repeats, giggling from around his mother’s back.
Charlie sighs before leaning down and picking up Cullen. “I promise you, we aren’t as Neanderthal as you think.”
I shake my head, happy for Cullen’s interruption. “Really, it’s fine. I need to be going anyway. It was good seeing all of you.”
I tell Cullen I’ll see him tomorrow and make my way back to my classroom, where I shut the door and quickly fall into my desk chair.
In all my years of teaching, I have never found any relative of a student so attractive that I had to make sure I didn’t drool in front of them. In my defense, the man I just met doesn’t look like most of the dads, uncles, or brothers who have come through my classroom doors.
I never thought I had a type. Apparently, that’s because I never met Garrett Dixon.
None of that matters though. He’s married. He’s older. He’s the uncle of one of my students. It’s not forbidden for teachers to date relatives of students, but it’s definitely frowned upon, at least while you have them in your class. And if I am one thing, it’s a rule follower. Even the unwritten ones.
Besides, even if none of those factors existed, I don’t have time to date. I have things I need to do. Differences I need to make. A world to help make better.
Being in a relationship definitely gets in the way of all of that.
And that’s what I try, but fail, to tell myself as I lie in bed later that night, thinking of the sexiest man I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Chapter Seven
Garrett
If there is one thing I love about living in Virginia, it’s days like today. Here I am, one week from Christmas, and it’s warm enough to run on the beach. It’s sixty degrees with a slight breeze and all I see is miles of sand in front of me.
It’s the perfect way to unwind after a stressful week.
“You ready?” Trevor asks, retying his shoes.
“Hell yeah.”
We start off at our normal warm-up pace, letting the wind hit our faces as our feet connect with the sand. The good thing about running with Trevor is we never feel the need to make small talk just for the sake of it. Sometimes we vent about work. Sometimes he’ll share with me his many female conquests, always reminding me what single life is like and what I’m missing out on. When I was debating on whether or not to ask Annika to marry me, he let me pro and con every reason for five miles. I insisted that there were many pros to marriage—including that donors loved giving money to doctors with pretty women on their arms. He just kept saying the reason “you’d be married” and putting it into the con column.
Thinking back, he did have a point.
“What is Annika up to today?” Trevor asks, breaking the silence after the first mile.
“Who the fuck knows,” I begin, and realize it’s the truth. I have no fucking clue where she’s at. “If I had to guess, she’s buying shit she doesn’t need after drinking overpriced mimosas with women she doesn’t like.”
Trevor laughs, and I join in to make it seem like I was kidding. Annika is now on an allowance, so if she’s choosing to use that on frivolous things, then that’s her decision. He might be my best friend, but even he doesn’t know how bad things really are in my marriage. He doesn’t know about the cut-off credit cards, or the cut-off sex. For all he knows, my marriage is fine and dandy.
If he opened his eyes and took them away from his woman of the week for five seconds, he could probably figure out that things aren’t all rainbows and butterflies in the Dixon home. Why else would I be staying at the office until all hours of the night doing paperwork that isn’t due for another month? Does he think I did next year’s clinic budget ahead of time for shits and giggles?
Trevor is just as selfish as I am, maybe more. And he might be a brilliant doctor, but he’s a clock watcher. I don’t remember the last time I saw him pull a late night in the office. So he’ll never realize that I’ve been putting in late hours to simply avoid Annika at all costs.
Even if he did realize that I was pulling insane hours, I don’t know if I’d tell him the truth. I don’t think I’d tell anyone the truth. Not him. Not Mark or my mom. How do you tell the people closest to you that yet again you have a failing marriage? That they were all right and I shouldn’t have married Annika? It’s embarrassing. I’m a successful doctor still in the prime of my life and I can’t make a marriage work.
“Can you imagine if we didn’t get to run on the beach? God, I’d be a miserable sonofabitch.”
I let out a big breath, thankful for the change of topic. “Wait, you aren’t already a miserable sonofabitch? This is you being nice?”
He barks out a laugh. “You know we are both assholes. It’s what makes us friends.”
He’s right. We are both cut from the same cloth, not the good kind, and I can’t imagine this phase of my life without him.
I didn’t have a friend like him in New York. Hell, I don’t think I had an actual friend in New York at all, or maybe even since high school. Between my residency and being married to Michelle, I didn’t have time for friends. Any doctor who was in my class or around my age I saw as my competition. I didn’t have a buddy to go grab a drink with after work. No, the only “friends” I had were the ones I rubbed elbows with at the charity events that Michelle and I attended. And those weren’t friends. I knew it then and I know it now. But I needed them. They are the reason I was able to later forge a successful practice in a city like New York.
Come to think of it, I did have time for my nurses. We can call them friends. In break rooms. I was never too busy for them. Those “friends” are the reason I lost everything. My marriage. My practice. My growing wealth. It all went down the drain because I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants.
Do I regret it? Yes.
Not the sex. Not a chance I’d ever regret having sex. What I regret is getting caught and the fallout.
Maybe things would have been different if we had stayed in Boston like I wanted to for my residency, instead of moving to New York. I had dreamed of going to Harvard since I was ten, and I fell in love with everything Cambridge and Boston had to offer.
But Michelle wanted New York. She wanted the culture and the prestige that came with the city. Even though I didn’t want to move, I didn’t care enough to fight her about it. When it came down to it, my success was the most important thing. I didn’t care if it was in Boston or New York. As long as I had a thriving practice and plenty of money in the bank, I was happy.
And I was. Until I wasn’t. Michelle made sure of that.
“What the fuck was that?” Trevor asks.
“What are you talking about?”
“That sound you just made. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted to punch me in the throat.”
“Sorry. Was just thinking about New York.”
“Thinking about New York causes you to sound like an animal about to attack?”
“No. Thinking about Michelle does.”
We let the silence hang a little longer before I ask the question that’s really been on my mind.
“Would my life have been different if I hadn’t ended up in New York? Would things have not gone down the way they did?”
Trevor doesn’t answer right away, and I almost forget that I asked it. “Unless you found a hospital with an entire staff of male nurses, I’m pretty sure your ass would still be here next to me right now, no matter where you went.”
Trevor is right. I would be here. We could have gone anywhere in the world, and I still would have spent all my time working and fucking nurses. Michelle still would have divorced me. I still would have reached out to Mark to help me get back on my feet. I’d still be running on this beach.
“We are doing pretty well for ourselves, aren’t we?” I ask out loud, not really expecting an answer.
“We are. We have a client list a mile long, have made a good chunk of change, and have hot women on our arms. Well, you have Annika and I have whomever I want. What more could we ask for?”
“Not a damn thing, brother. Not a damn thing.”
He’s right. What more could we want? This is exactly what I wanted when I came here to start over.
Money. Success. Notoriety.
“We have it all, my friend. We have it all.”
But as the last word comes out of my mouth, I feel it fall short on my tongue. My feet stop. My body bends in half so fast it’s like I was snapped into the position. The ground is spinning. Am I spinning?
What the fuck…
My breathing is short. I can’t… I can’t breathe.
And the pain… oh, fuck, the pain.
“Garrett!”
It’s the last thing I hear as I fall to the ground and the once warm Virginia air goes cold.
Chapter Eight
Garrett
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The steady cadence of the hospital monitor stirs me awake. Which is strange. Usually, if I’m catching a power nap in the on-call room, I can barely hear the monitors. After years of pulling multiple shifts back to back, after a while they became white noise in the sea of constant commotion that is a hospital.
Today they are not. They are loud and annoying and all I can hear.
Come to think of it, I haven’t needed to sleep in an on-call room since I moved to Virginia.
The beeps, they are close. Right over my shoulder, if I had to guess. I could look, but I can’t muster the energy to open my eyes.
Why does everything hurt? Why can’t I wake up?
“Garrett?”
Mom? What is she doing here?
“Garrett… sweetie… can you open your eyes?”
I try. God, do I try. I might be a bastard in most aspects of my life, but when it comes to the commands of Julie Dixon, I do all I can to be a good son.
Opening my eyes shouldn’t be this hard of a request. I just… can’t.
I try a few more times to no avail. It’s no use. Before I know it, the beeps that stirred me awake just seconds ago start to fade into the distance.
“He’s been out since the surgery.”
“Is that… OK? Mom, is he OK?”
I can hear everything Mom and Mark are saying despite the beeping that once again pulled me into a state of semi-consciousness, but it sounds like they are a million miles away.
“The doctors aren’t worried. At least, not yet. His body has been through quite the trauma in the past forty-eight hours. They say the sleep will do him good.”
I let my mom and Mark’s words process as I do my best to get my bearings. I vaguely remember hearing Mom’s voice before. I have no clue how long ago that was. Apparently, I’ve been asleep for two days?
How did I get here?
“Thank God Trevor was with him,” Mark says, a worried tone to his voice. “I can’t imagine how long he would have been on that beach had he not been there.”
And just like that, it all comes back to me.
The beach.
Running with Trevor.
The pain. Fuck, there was so much pain.
And then darkness.
“I—”
I mean to ask for more, to ask more questions, but the single letter is all I can get out. I slowly open my eyes and am immediately blinded by the light in the hospital room. By the time I open them again, Mark and my mom are perched at either side of my bed.
“Oh, sweetie,” my mom begins, grasping my hand in hers. “You scared the ever loving hell out of me. And if I wasn’t so happy that you were alive, I’d whip your ass for scaring me like that.”
Leave it to my mom for the warm and comforting words.
“Water.”
My request comes out strained, but before I know it, I feel the plastic straw at my lips. The cool liquid tastes like heaven against my parched throat.
Before I can ask the thousand questions that are forming in my mind, a man I vaguely recognize comes into my room, iPad in hand.
“I see our patient is awake? How are you feeling, Dr. Dixon?”
“Dog shit.” No sense in pulling punches, even if I can only speak a few words at a time.
The doctor chuckles. “I’m not surprised. You’ve been through a lot the last few days. Do you remember anything that happened?”
I take a bigger sip of water, giving myself a second as I try to put the fragmented pieces of my memory together.
“Running with Trevor. Sharp pain. That’s it.”
“Yes, Dr. Stewart brought you in. He called me on the way to the hospital.”
Now it hits me. This is Jesse Corbin. He’s a med school buddy of Trevor’s. And if my memory serves me correctly, he’s the best cardiothoracic surgeon in Virginia.
“Well, if you’re here, I’m guessing that nothing good happened to me.” I take a breath, saying a silent thank you that I can put together a full sentence. “Spill it. Why did it feel like I was being stabbed with a thousand knives?”
Mark takes a step back from the bed, but my mom grips my hand a bit tighter. Both motions tell me they already know what’s coming. And that it’s nothing good.
“You suffered a pulmonary embolism. If Trevor hadn’t been at the beach with you, there’s a good possibility you would have died.”
I let Jesse’s words sink in, though none of it seems possible.
This can’t be happening again. I had to have heard him wrong. It had to be something else.
“How could I? Are you sure that’s what it was? I’m healthy, Jesse. I exercise regularly. I don’t smoke. I eat as well as a doctor who works eighty hours a week can. No way could I have suffered a pulmonary embolism.”
Jesse looks down at the tablet, though I’m guessing it’s a stall tactic before he gives me the business. I know this because I’ve done the same thing probably fifty times over in my care
er.
“Have you been sitting more than normal?”
“A little. Trevor and I started a nonprofit clinic last year. The paperwork is overwhelming. So, I mean, compared to when I was doing my residency, yeah.”
“And is there a history of clotting in your family?”
“Yes,” my mom says abruptly. “His father.”
I’m glad my mother spoke up, because I don’t know if I could have said the words. This is how Dad died. He was a stubborn man who refused to acknowledge that he had pain in his leg for weeks. By the time he finally agreed to go see a doctor, it was too late.
“The good thing is that we caught it,” Jesse continues. “We had to do surgery, but everything went fine. We’ll have to monitor you, and you’ll be on blood thinners. You are fine, Garrett. You’re going to live. You are one of the lucky ones.”
Jesse types something into the tablet before putting it at his side. “Everything looks good. I’m going to let you process this all and I’ll check back on you in a few hours.”
He leaves, and for the first time in my life, my family is speechless. Which I’m glad for. My mind is running in a thousand directions and I don’t need comments from the peanut gallery right now.
“You guys don’t have to stay here,” I say.
My mom shakes her head, giving my hand another squeeze. “Nonsense. You need family around you at times like these. Until you are up and moving, I’ll be right here.”
“I will too,” Mark adds. “Charlie has the kids and I have time off work. We’re here for you, brother.”
I shake my head, trying to sit up a bit more in my hospital bed. Though, that doesn’t go well. “Guys. I’m fine. I’ll likely be sleeping a lot. Plus, I’m sure Annika will be by shortly to relieve you both.”
My mom and Mark exchange a look, and before either of them say anything, I already know what’s coming.