“It doesn’t matter. He would’ve gotten to you one way or another, and maybe it was better you got it done with.”
“Tell me what you want from me.”
Her eyes stared into mine, pleading for something—but it had nothing to do with our problem, with the hospital, with any Tippett.
It had to do with me and her.
I leaned forward and brushed my lips against hers. She sucked in a little breath, and I heard a small growl in her throat. I felt my stomach flip as I moved closer, body against hers, my right hand moving to her hip, my left on her chin, before I kissed her, deep and slow.
She pushed herself against me and returned that kiss, sucking in a breath through her nose.
Her taste sent a trail of fireworks along my lips. Her hip bone was smooth and hard against my palm, her skin gorgeous, dimpled and downy. I tightened my grip, slid my tongue along hers—tasted cherries, and blossoms, and old paperback pages—and held that kiss as my left hand moved up her top. I teased her breasts, as a dizzying sensation hit my head, her firm, round breasts, and I could feel her nipples through the fabric. She moaned into my kiss, moving her hips, and I got a flash of her naked, sitting on my legs, legs spread, sliding down my hard—
And another flash, of getting caught.
I broke off the kiss suddenly, my hand still up her top, my other hand on her hip. I leaned my forehead against hers and breathed for a second, trying to get myself together, and she didn’t move.
“Should we stop?” she asked, whispering, and that tone nearly killed me.
That tone, that pleading tone, like she wanted the answer to be no.
“I don’t want to.”
“I don’t either.”
I slid my hand away from her breast and released her hip. “But we should.”
She exhaled, like she’d been holding it for hours. “You’re probably right. It only complicates things, right?” Her smile was almost bitter.
“I don’t want you to get dragged down with me.”
“You might not have a choice in that.”
I knew she was right, and that nearly killed me. “I’ll still try.”
She shook her head, turned, opened the door, and left. Her coffee cup was left behind, still sitting on the cabinet.
I returned to my desk and stared at the papers.
15
Lori
Sometimes, at the end of the day, my feet hurt so badly that all I wanted to do was sit down and dunk my toes in ice. Especially after multiple different procedures: my knees, my lower back, everything aches after twelve hours on my feet, moving around in short bursts, then stuck in one spot staring over Piers’s shoulder.
He never seemed to get tired. We’d do endless procedures, then move from patient room to patient room, and he’d never once show his exhaustion. I knew he felt it, but he was better at hiding it than I was, or maybe he was just built in an entirely different way. He drank coffee after coffee and never once complained.
I learned to keep my discomfort to myself early on. He didn’t want to hear it, and I couldn’t blame him. “Whatever you feel right now, picture how your patients feel,” he said to me one evening as we went into yet another long surgery. “Imagine how they come into this place, hoping to get out again. Some of them can barely function, and we need to be strong for them, stronger than other people.”
“I know you’re right,” I said. “But I’m just a person, you know?”
“Then be more than just a person.”
That stuck with me. I wanted to be more, and strived toward it, but sometimes I worried I wasn’t enough.
Uncertainty played through my mind as I walked toward my apartment after a particularly long shift. I was feeling down, not from anything in particular, but more from the grind of it all. My life was simple: wake up, go to the hospital, do hospital stuff, go home, get a few hours of sleep, repeat. Day in, day out. The work was interesting and exciting, and I was getting better and better studying with Piers every day, but even still. The monotony was starting to get to me.
Maybe I wasn’t cut out for it. As I stopped near the corner of Broad and Market, a dark town car pulled over nearby, and the window rolled down. I turned to cross the street, but I heard someone nearby call my name. It took me a second to realize that voice was coming from the car.
My cousin pushed open the back door and beckoned me toward him. I hesitated, since the last thing in the world I wanted was to talk to someone right now, especially not him, but I knew there was no escape. He looked different from what I remember: older, of course, but more refined, his beard closely trimmed, his clothes well-tailored and neat. He looked at me like he’d rather jump off a cliff, but his hard eyes didn’t look away.
I got into the car and shut the door.
“Hello, Lori,” Rees said. He leaned up against the window and looked at me with an appraising eye.
“Hi, Rees,” I said. “Been a while. I didn’t know you were in town.”
“Oh, I’m always in town,” he said, frowning deeper. “Need a lift home?”
“That’d be good,” I said, and felt a pit of dread. Rees wouldn’t have bothered picking me up if this weren’t important, and I got the strong feeling that I wasn’t going to enjoy whatever he had to say.
I didn’t know much about Rees. He was an odd man, the black sheep of the family, but he was also incredibly rich and successful. His cloud computing startup went public at just the right time and for a few weeks, his name was all over the news. That faded away, but apparently his company still made tons of money.
Apparently, he sat on the boards of a bunch
