by Max Monroe
Nick: Death by consumption of too many radiation waves while simultaneously reaching climax?
Me: Let’s just hope that fetishist follows the ten-second rule.
Nick: LOL. When are you coming to see me?
Me: When is your lunch hour?
Nick: NOW.
I grinned at his enthusiasm, but I still couldn’t stop myself from teasing him a bit.
Me: Perfect. I can’t make it, but I know someone who can. You’ll like him. He’s really good at eating Harry’s meat.
Nick: Very funny. Get your cute ass over here. And, if you’d drop by Mitch’s Deli on your way and pick me up a pastrami on rye and something equally delicious for yourself, I’d be forever grateful.
Me: Yes, sir. ;)
Nick: You’re the best, Char.
I glanced at the time. 11:00 a.m. I hopped off my couch and headed toward my bedroom as I typed another quick text and pressed send.
Me: I know you said now, but my body composition is nothing more than sweat and Cheetos dust right now. Can we make it 12:30?
Nick: Sounds tasty. A little salty, maybe, but overall more appealing than you’d think. But I guess I’ll allow time for a shower if you must.
Me: Careful how low you set your expectations, Dr. Raines. ;) I’ll see you at 12:30.
Freshly showered and carrying a bag from Mitch’s Deli, I strode into Nick’s office with a giddy smile on my face. He sat behind his desk, typing away on his laptop, and it took a few soft raps against his open door to grab his attention.
The instant his eyes left the computer screen, his face morphed into a welcoming grin.
Good Lord, I could get used to seeing that smile every damn day of the week. If that smile were a gym, I’d be signing up for the lifetime membership and willingly going to spin class seven times a week.
Taking into account my pathetic track record with gym memberships, that said a fucking lot.
Don’t tell me I’m the only one who signs up for a gym membership, ready and motivated to kick some fitness ass, only to last two weeks max.
My intentions are always good, but then life and laziness get in the way.
“But…but…I’ll start Monday. I’ll finally get my shit together Monday.”
I always have the same excuse and follow the same cycle of crazy.
“I hope you’re hungry,” I said by way of greeting as I closed the door behind me and dropped the bag of food onto his desk. “Because I ordered way too much food.”
“Starved,” he said and stood to his feet.
With three long strides, he closed the distance between us, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pulling me in close to his chest. I inhaled his delicious scent—clean laundry, his sexy cologne, and Nick. A true aphrodisiac to all of my senses.
He pressed his mouth to mine, and between one breath and the next, his tongue slipped past my lips.
I moaned. Goodness gracious, why did he always have to taste so good?
He turned me toward his desk and moved us backward until my ass bumped against the edge. Effortlessly, he lifted me up onto the mahogany wood and spread my legs, stepping between them and pressing himself between my thighs.
We stayed like that for a long moment, kissing and touching and grinding against one another, greedily increasing the sexual tension between us until it threatened to set the room on fire.
When he slid his hands up my thighs and pushed my jean skirt above my hips, my head fell back of its own accord.
Oh God, yes. Take me right here on your desk.
“I want you,” he whispered, and his lips painted kisses down my jaw, my neck, my chest. He yanked my t-shirt up and over my head with a quickness that urged a needy whimper from my lips, and the instant my breasts were bared for his heady gaze, I moaned—loud and guttural and without restraint.
“Yes, please,” I whispered and gripped his biceps with my hands, biting my fingernails into his skin. “I need you inside of me. So, so fucking bad.”
Hot and heavy, and with our lunch completely forgotten, we tore at each other’s clothes with reckless abandon. My panties were around my ankles, and his pants were unzipped with his hard, aroused cock in my hands in the span of a single breath.
Want. Need. Heady desire. Those were the only priorities.
“God, Char,” he groaned as he rubbed the tip of his cock between my arousal. “You’re so fucking wet.”
I moaned at his words. At his sounds. At the way his breath hitched when he pushed the first few inches of himself inside of me.
Yes. Yes. Yes. I wanted more.
But before he could fill me completely, three small knocks rapped against his closed office door.
We stopped, frozen in our positions, our bodies still intertwined like ivy, and our widened, surprised gazes locked with one another. Nothing but our heavy, panting breaths and pounding heartbeats filled the space between us.
I quirked a brow and whispered quietly, “Are you expecting someone?”
He shook his head, completely at a loss.
“Yo, Nick,” a male voice called from the other side of the door. “It’s Jorge,” he added. “The producer told me you’d be here for the afternoon so I could get a few live shots of you in your office for the promos and trailer.”
Both of our eyes went even wider.
Fuck. It was Jorge. The fucking cameraguy for the show.
“Oh, okay,” Nick responded. “Just a sec.”
“Cool,” Jorge responded from the other side of the door. “Shouldn’t take more than ten, fifteen minutes tops.”
Just a sec? Holy fucking hell. I’d love to meet the human beings who could achieve getting dressed and removing the scent of sex from the air in the matter of just a fucking sec.
I shoved Nick out of the way, hopped off the desk, yanked up my panties, and glanced around the room like a lunatic. I needed a place to hide. Anywhere. It didn’t matter. Just somewhere that I could hide and get myself back together while Jorge the cameraguy shot live footage of Nick at his desk.
I didn’t mind the reality docuseries, but I didn’t exactly want to be filmed mere minutes after engaging in sex. I mean, a girl had some fucking boundaries, ya know?
While Nick hurriedly zipped up his pants, tucked his shirt back in, and did his best to hide his giant sword of an aroused cock beneath his clothes, I stood frozen in my spot, halfway between the door and the desk. I felt like a caged animal that was ready to climb the walls any second.
Where could I hide without the cameraguy realizing that I’m here?
Fucking hell. I had zero clue. His office was spacious, but it wasn’t that spacious. My only options for hiding included his desk, his chair, and the stupid plant in the corner of the room.
“It’s fine, Char,” Nick whispered. “Just fix your clothes, sit down, and don’t worry about the cameraguy.”
“But this could look bad,” I whispered back.
He shook his head. “It’s fine. Promise.” But I wasn’t so sure I believed him as I witnessed the slight shake of his fingers as he handed me my discarded t-shirt and adjusted my skirt back into place.
After a soft kiss to my lips, he gently ushered me toward the leather sofa at the far corner of his office. “We have nothing to worry about, okay?”
I simply nodded for lack of anything better to do.
But the second he opened the office door and let Jorge into the room, I wasn’t all that sure everything was okay. The way the cameraguy’s gaze assessed the small space gave me an uneasy feeling inside my gut. It was heavy like a rock, weighing down my stomach with a persistence I couldn’t ignore.
Had he overheard us?
How long had he been standing outside of Nick’s office?
“Hey, Jorge,” Nick greeted. His easy smile and relaxed shoulders helped relieve some of the anxiety lurking inside of my chest. “I hope you don’t mind, but we were just getting ready to eat some lunch.”
Jorge set his camera gear on the floor and gestured
with a nonchalant hand in Nick’s direction. “No worries, dude. I can work on setting up the lighting while you enjoy your lunch.”
Wait…did he just insinuate something?
I glanced up to meet Jorge’s eyes, but he had already begun to busy himself with pulling his equipment out of his black travel bags. And when I moved my gaze to Nick’s, he appeared completely unaware of anything weird.
I’m just being crazy, I told myself. He probably didn’t overhear anything.
I wasn’t sure I actually believed it, but I reminded myself this was a docuseries about Nick’s medical career, not the hospital version of The Real World.
Arms swinging and a new tune on my lips, I hummed and whistled to the beat of Charlotte’s current jam, “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi featuring Justin Bieber.
As should have been obvious by my debut trivia night, I wasn’t much in the way of pop culture news. But Charlotte had been forcing me to study—and making me accompany her to the Cornerstone for the past three Wednesday nights to rub salt into our failure-prone wounds—and I knew enough to comprehend that I was walking around, humming something that had to do with Justin Bieber, and it was enough to produce fodder in the hospital for years to come.
Oh, shit. Especially since I still had a camera following me around.
I stopped humming immediately and looked back right into the lens—and then past it to Jorge. He was smiling.
Fucking bastard.
I’d been watching Will Cummings and Scott Shepard and their cameramen every time our paths crossed in the hospital since filming started, and their relationships were completely different. They talked and advised, offering questions that a viewer might have so that Will and Scott could better answer.
But not Jorge. He just watched and observed, smirking anytime I made an unsuspecting fool of myself and abstaining from offering anything helpful at all. I didn’t know if it was just his personality or a tactic the show specifically used for me, but it was playing a mind game with me. And these days, I made an unsuspecting fool of myself often. I hadn’t expected to get used to the camera so quickly, but it’d happened nonetheless.
I guess it was like a construction worker getting used to loud noises or a parent getting used to the constant chatter of their child. After a while, you just tuned it out.
Something I wasn’t yet used to, however, was narrating every play of my day to what felt like no one. “So we’re heading down to the recovery floor to make rounds,” I explained for the sake of the silent camera behind me, glancing back to the lens every few seconds as I walked. “The biggest challenge post-op is to watch for signs of altered brain state, while at the same time allowing a somewhat loosened parameter of normal. These people have literally been through brain surgery, and even at best, it can be a traumatic experience for the body. The brain is the hub, just like the motherboard of your computer. And the motherboard doesn’t even like a little water poured on it, even if it really is just a little, and even if you do your very best to dry it out.”
“Dr. Raines,” Carol greeted as I rounded the corner and pushed through the doors into the recovery wing.
I smiled and lifted a hand, giving her a little wave. “Hey, Carol. How are you?”
Her neck flexed slightly, her chin moving in closer to her throat as she looked from me to the camera and back again. “Uh… Good, Dr. Raines.”
“Anything interesting and new in your life?” I asked, leaning my elbows onto the counter in between us.
Her hairline inched higher as she searched for the answer. I thought at first she was just uncomfortable with the camera.
“Well…my son just left for college. Exciting but scary at the same time.”
Her answer made me realize I hadn’t even known she had a son. Suddenly, her surprise and discomfort seemed natural. I’d never fucking asked her about herself.
No wonder she looks like I’ve been swallowed by an alien.
“That’s completely understandable. I can’t imagine what it’ll feel like when my own kid goes off to college.”
A little like a gasping fish, her mouth opened and closed several times before she decided against words and nodded instead. I guessed that was enough of the new Nick for today.
I blamed Charlotte for my good mood. That woman had latched herself on to my brain, and I couldn’t seem to go a single ten minutes before something as simple as her smile would pop into my head.
“Anything I need to know about for rounds?” I asked, bringing us back to the comfortably neutral zone we normally lived in. The one where I was demanding and she was five steps ahead of me.
A stack of files appeared from seemingly nowhere, her hand firmly attached to the other side of them. “Mr. Fields in Room 517 showed signs of short-term amnesia, but Dr. Johnson checked him an hour later, and everything seemed to be back to normal. Sarah Clark in 519 is resting mostly, but her family says she’s been acting like herself. Probably best to do a quick cognitive assessment, given her history, though.”
I nodded. Sarah Clark’s tumor removal several weeks ago had gone seemingly as planned. Dr. Forrest had performed the procedure when my emergency blunt force trauma had gone long, but I’d checked up on her post-op myself and everything had seemed normal.
Unfortunately, two weeks ago, they’d brought her back in after a small seizure, and after multiple tests and scans, we’d found a small bleed.
I’d gone back in myself to repair it, and everything had been going smoothly, but we’d kept her a little longer given her history of post-op complications just to make sure.
“All right.” I took the stack of folders from Carol’s hand and smacked them lightly on the counter in front of me. “Thanks, Carol.”
Sarah, I should mention, was only twenty-five years old and had her entire life ahead of her. I was a medical professional and a realist, but I’d be lying if I said her case didn’t hit a personal note inside of me as I pictured what it must feel like to be going through this so young—and what it must feel like for her parents to watch her go through it.
I didn’t like to see Lexi with a paper cut, and I was a doctor. I could only imagine how they felt about a fucking brain tumor.
I went straight to her door, double-checking the chart outside to make sure Carol had given me the right room number, and then knocked on the door three sharp times before turning the knob.
Sarah’s parents turned from their spots at her bedside, their hands in hers, and Sarah’s vivid, almost violet eyes moved to mine and brightened.
“Hi, Sarah,” I greeted. “Mr. and Mrs. Clark.”
Sarah’s parents nodded, but Sarah said, “Hey, Dr. Raines.”
“Hey,” I returned with a smile. “How are you feeling today?”
“Good. Really good, actually.”
“Excellent!” I clasped my hands and rubbed them together. “What do you say to a little trivia night, then, huh?”
“Trivia night?” she asked.
“Yep. I’ve got to do a little cognitive assessment on you today, and what better way than with a few trivia questions, right?”
She shrugged nervously. “I guess.”
I moved closer to the bed, on the side her father had moved away from to take up a position of sentry by the window. I touched Sarah’s arm lightly in comradery. “Trust me, you’re actually doing me a favor. I do a weekly trivia night with my girlfriend, and to say I’m bad at it would be a comical understatement. If you’re any good, maybe it’ll help me next Wednesday.”
She smiled hugely then. It might have been at my expense, but I didn’t care. For one, I’d just publically acknowledged—hell, it’s my first private acknowledgment too—the true status of my relationship with Charlotte. We hadn’t discussed it ad nauseam, but I was trying my hand at being better with signals. The signals said she was my girlfriend. And secondly, I liked that I’d given Sarah purpose. From talking to some of my previous patients, feeling incapable and like a burden was one of the hardest parts of recovery when
it came to any kind of traumatic brain injury.
“Okay, let’s start with some easy ones. What hospital is this?”
“St. Luke’s,” she answered.
“And what city are we in?”
“New York. The Big Apple. Manhattan.”
“Wow,” I teased. “Overachiever.”
She laughed. “Oh yeah. I should win an award.”
“Hey.” I smiled. “Some days I don’t know where the hell I am.”
“Comforting words from my brain surgeon, ladies and gentlemen,” Sarah said over my shoulder and directly into the camera, I suspected.
I laughed at her theatrics.
“Okay, let’s try some tougher ones.” I gestured with one finger as I dug into my back pocket and pulled out my notepad with a wink. “But first, let me make sure I have something to take notes.”
I’d only made it up two out of three steps at the front of Winnie and Wes’s house when the door flew open and my daughter burst out to hug me. I went back a step and down as she hit me full force, wrapping her arms around my neck and squeezing, before jumping down like it’d never happened and running back into the house.
I watched as she ran down the hall toward the kitchen like a bat out of hell until Winnie stepped pointedly into my line of sight with a huge smirk on her face. “Your expression right now amuses me greatly.”
I lifted my eyebrows with an eye roll. “Thanks.”
Winnie laughed, long and melodic, and unwarranted, Charlotte’s completely off-key and off-rhythm one came to mind. It was weird to think about, but I imagined the two of them would get along quite well.
My stomach twisted, and my chest ached as I tried to make sense of the complicated way that made me feel. Awkward, for sure. But mostly, I think I just liked it. Winnie was the mother of my child, after all. And Charlotte? Well, she was my girlfriend, and she’d quickly become one of the most important people in my life.