Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
ATLAS
Me:
Are you having a good time at work, Nurse Hayes?
Calvin:
Please tell me you don’t have my name saved as Nurse Hayes in your phone?
Me:
Would that bother you?
Calvin:
(eye roll Emoji)
Me:
Should you be answering texts when you’re working?
Calvin:
I’m on break.
I grin and sit back, punching the call button. I expect Calvin to answer right away, so I’m surprised when it rings once, twice, three times before he finally picks up.
“Why’d you have to ruin a perfectly good thing, Mr. Sinclair?”
My eyes widen. “I… what?” I’m not completely sure what I did. I thought we were having a good time flirting, but maybe he’s looking too hard into what I almost told him earlier. Or maybe he thinks the fact that I didn’t sleep with him when he invited me to is a red flag. Or maybe—
“I don’t understand why anyone feels the need to call a person when text messages work just fine. I thought we were on the same page.”
“Oh.” The relief blossoming through my chest is chased with warmth as he lets out a soft laugh. “I thought I was in trouble.”
“I mean, if you don’t hang up this phone and go back to texting me…
” he drawls, and I let out a soft chuckle, pulling the phone back.
Before I can hit the button to end the call, I hear him add on.
“I have to admit, though, it’s nice to hear your voice.
” There’s something so soft about the way he says it, holding that nearly shy quality I heard in the car when I was taking him home.
There’s something about Calvin—something warm, something deep.
I’ve only talked to him a few times, but I’m itching to delve deeper and see who he really is inside.
I want…
“It’s nice to hear your voice too.”
There’s a beat of silence as I bring the phone to my ear again and lean back, closing my eyes. It’s easy to relax and imagine Calvin… probably in his dark blue scrubs with an adorable, if slightly disgruntled, expression on his face.
He’s so soft looking, so sweet. And…
“Did you call just to listen to me breathe?” Calvin asks in a teasing tone, and I let out an abrupt laugh.
“No, but I was thinking of how good you probably look right now.”
He lets out a sound between a laugh and a snort, and his words are just a little warmer than they were. “I look like I’ve been working for hours.”
“I’m sure you look good.” Before he can argue, I continue. “Tell me about your day.”
I spend the next fifteen minutes listening to Calvin tell me about his patients while he rustles some plastic and has a snack.
I don’t care that I don’t understand half the things he says.
I listen, and I feel… warm… happy. The more he talks, the more animated he gets.
It’s like he wants this too, someone to talk to about his day, someone who cares.
After he tells me a story about a patient who tried to leave with their IV line still in, he pauses.
“This is probably boring, isn’t it?” I can hear it there, the faintest hint of worry—not exactly shame, but like someone has told him before that hearing little details about his day-to-day wasn’t interesting.
I have to hold back the irritation in my voice, that and the vague thought to tell him I’d happily kill whoever made him feel that way. Instead, I laugh. “Listening to you talk about your day has been the highlight of mine.”
This time, I swear I can hear him blush through the phone when he answers.
“Mr. Sinclair, you’re ridiculous. And…” he sighs.
“I have to get back to work. Still… even though I’m not usually a fan of talking on the phone, you could always call me again.
I usually take my break at the same time every day. ”
The invitation is there, sweet and hopeful, and I jump on it.
“I definitely will.”
“Okay.” He sounds a little breathless, a little excited. It’s strange that we barely know each other, that we’re going through the motions of learning all the little things like schedules… and I still have so many secrets just beneath my surface that are heavy enough to drown us both.
“Okay then.” I have to force myself to say it. “We’ll talk soon, hm?” My words are a promise, though—one I’m happy to make.
“I’m… oddly looking forward to it, Mr. Sinclair.”
I hang up, and immediately hold my phone at arms length. I look as put together as ever, and I snap a photo with a warm, inviting smile and send it to him.
Me:
So you’ll have a photo to save under your Mr. Sinclair contact.
There’s a beat, and then Calvin sends me a string of emojis with flushed cheeks and sweat. I think that’s a good thing. Shit. I’ve been out of the dating game for so long, I really have no idea what I’m doing.
We go on that way for a week. As much as I want to see Calvin again, I really do want it to be when he’s a little less exhausted from work.
That doesn’t mean we don’t spend hours texting every day—it’s actually nice.
There’s something about getting to know someone one sentence at a time that feels almost intimate.
The few times I manage to get him on the phone, he sounds a little breathless, a little annoyed… and like he’s happy to hear my voice.
I want to show up at his doorstep again with another cup of coffee, but the truth is… I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to hold myself back if I kiss him again. The amount of self-control I’m showing is honestly admirable, even if he doesn’t understand why.
It’s the right thing to do, though. In the week we’ve been carefully revealing little bits and pieces of ourselves through text, I’ve learned one thing about Calvin.
He values honesty. I can tell that he wants to—that he’s willing to—build what could be an actual relationship with me one little fact at a time.
There’s just one problem.
I’ve told him my favorite color and what I like to eat. I told him all about Wylder and North and how much I love them. I even told him about Julia and how happy we were together.
But I only gave him a surface-level answer when he asked me how she died.
I only gave him a surface-level answer when he asked what Wylder does for a living.
There’s a million half-truths I could tell him, but how many times can you build with a fractured stone before the foundation crumbles?
That’s not what I want.
But I’m stuck with the same issue as before—telling him about me involves more than just myself. It’s North and Wylder and everything I’ve fought my entire life to keep safe.
It’s…
A lot.
And as good a judge of people as I am, I don’t know if my thinking is a little muddled because I haven’t felt drawn to someone like this in so long… or because I’m lonely.
Fuck, it would be a real mistake to bring my life and everything I care about crashing down around my ears because I was lonely.
I could call North, but he’d probably tell me to kidnap Calvin until I was sure he was the one… or, I don’t know, move into his house without telling him.
Just because reverse kidnapping worked for him didn’t mean it would work for anyone else. Honestly, I was certain it had everything to do with how perfect he and Ranen were for each other and nothing to do with his actual grasp on his ability to express affection.
Speaking of… that probably meant Ranen was off the table as well. He might give good advice, but he’s a little biased with how well things went with North… and also, if he mentioned it to my son, there was every chance he’d end up kidnapping Calvin anyway just to make me happy.
His heart was in the right place.
Which meant… there was really only one option left. I wasn’t sure when I’d gotten to the point where I needed to turn to my children for advice, but at least Wylder is a few states away on some job he’d only vaguely told me about that included a CEO who needed to disappear.
He still answers when I call him.
“Hey, Dad.” There’s only the slightest bit of curiosity in his voice.
It’s not because I’m calling him—I keep in contact with my kids pretty often.
It’s probably that it’s so late. I’d slightly shifted my schedule to match up with Calvin’s while I was recovering.
I usually called early in the morning. And…
Shit, I wasn’t even sure how to go about this.
“Hey, kiddo,” I say, but even I can hear the slight strain in my voice.
And if Wylder was anything, he was very, very observant.
“What’s wrong? Do I need to come home?” And then, after a pause, “Did North kill someone he shouldn’t have again?”
The question forces a laugh from my chest, a little burst of relief that lets me take a breath again.
Wylder is a good kid—a good man. I can talk to him about this. And… out of everyone, he might understand. He was old enough to remember his mother, old enough to remember how devastated I was after she was gone.
Hell, he’d helped me send a message to Keegan a few times. I was precise and neat, North was messy, and Wylder knew how to take someone apart one inch at a time while keeping them breathing.
We were a multi-talented family.
“Dad?” The concern is still in his voice, and I take a deep breath. I need to figure this out… and Wylder is level-headed enough that I know he can help.
It still doesn’t stop me from blurting out my next words before I can think. “I met someone.”
There’s a pause, and I worry for a second that he disconnected, but then he lets out a grunt. “Okay? And… do you need my help taking them out?” he offers, though I can hear a slight tease in his voice. “Or is this more of a meet the parents, but weirdly reversed kind of thing?”
He sounds so accepting of the situation, maybe like he’s happy for me. It loosens some of the tension in my chest.
“It’s more of a… I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to hide who I am, what I’ve done, but I don’t know if I can just tell someone I’m a killer kind of thing.” Just saying the words aloud sounds ridiculous. You didn’t just tell someone that.
“I mean, you definitely could keep it to yourself.” He hedges his words carefully. “But… you don’t want that, huh?”