Maverick #2
Grabbing her chart as she was laid in Trauma Room 3, her breathing steadier now, but her chest still rose and fell with the shaky rhythm of the aftermath.
Panic attack. Severe. Her heart rate was like a drumline when they brought her in, fingers clenched into tight fists, eyes wide with a fear that didn’t belong on someone so striking.
I cared for every patient who came through my ER, but the look on her face awakened the protector in me, and I had no idea why.
I remember standing at the nurses' station pretending to read over her chart when I felt it again—that pull. Not just empathy. Not just a clinical concern. Something else. Something unfamiliar and intrusive.
“I know that face,” muttered Dani, one of my favorite nurses, nudging him. “You look like you see something you want.”
I scoffed under my breath, “I’m just trynna finish this shift and take my black ass home,” I gruffed out, causing Dani to laugh.
But she was right, I did see something I wanted, but confusion settled in my chest about wanting it, wanting her.
Ajaih had asked for me, softly, after the Ativan started working. Her voice had been low, hoarse, but her eyes were sharp.
“You’re the one who touched my hand,” she said.
“You grounded me.”
It’d been instinct; I always tried to bring people back with something simple: voice, warmth, pressure. But with her, her fingers had laced into mine, as if she needed me, as if she knew me.
And that damn moment wouldn’t leave me.
Once her vitals were stabilized and paperwork filed, I should’ve gone home, but my feet moved toward the curtain anyway. I needed to be sure she was okay and had a loved one to take care of her.
Pulling the curtain aside quietly, I was completely caught off guard by the scene in front of me as I watched Dr. Layanna Black softly kissing her lips while scolding her gently.
Clearing my throat softly, Ajaih sat upright now, eyes still on Dr. Black, curls loose around her face before her gaze met mine, steady.
“You came back,” she said softly.
I cleared my throat. “Just checking in before I clock out.”
She tilted her head, eyes narrowing slightly. “You always check in after your shift ends?”
A smirk graced Dr. Black’s beautiful face.
I hesitated, “No.”
“It’s always good to see your handsome face, Nurse Carter,” Dr. Black said, making me blush.
This woman was insanely fine and thick, but seeing her married ass kissing all over my future wife had me intrigued and aroused.
Future wife? Yeah, I was tripping.
“The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Black,” I replied, biting my bottom lip, my thoughts running wild.
“Call me Yanna. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing more of you,” she winked, looking between Ajaih and me as she headed out of the room.
Silence stretched between us like the air before a summer storm. Then she smiled, small but not coy, yet genuine and Honest. “You’ve got this calm energy, you know. I don’t get that a lot.”
“You scared the hell out of me,” I admitted before I could stop myself. “I’ve seen panic attacks before, but… yours hit different.”
Ajaih nodded, “It was a bad one.”
Taking a step closer. Then another. And then we were face-to-face, barely a breath between us. I could smell her, and what was once fear was morphing into arousal and adrenaline, a scent that had lodged itself deep in my brain and my dick.
“I’m not supposed to feel like this,” I said, half to myself and half to her.
Ajaih’s brow furrowed. “Like what?”
Shaking my head, eyes dropping to her lips before I could stop myself from looking at them, “Attracted.”
Her breath caught, but she didn’t move away. “Why not?”
Running a hand down my face, my voice a rough whisper, “Because I’m gay.”
Ajaih looked at him, really looked, and something in her expression softened, before mischief and intrigue flashed in her eyes. “And yet here you are.” Her gaze worked its way down my body, settling at the evidence of my attraction to her.
My heart thundered, “I don’t understand it.”
“You don’t have to.” Her fingers brushed the back of my hand, featherlight. “Attraction isn’t math.”
I should’ve pulled back, though I didn’t. The heat of her skin seeping into mine. I felt it spread through my chest, my stomach, moving lower.
“I don’t want to be a complication for you,” she said, her voice trembling now, “But you make me feel… safe. Seen.”
I took another breath, then reached out to slowly tuck a curl behind her ear.
Ajaih leaned in so close that I could feel the softness of her lips without them touching.
And finally, our mouths met, not with urgency, but exploration.
A hesitant crash of opposites: my doubt and her fire, my confusion and her certainty.
Her hands found my waist as my fingers tangled in her hair.
This kiss had opened the door for a moment where there were no labels, no identities to reconcile, just heat and a kiss that made the world outside the curtain disappear. A code white was called, interrupting the kiss that was growing more erotic by the second.
The kiss we shared had been seared into my memory, and I’d thought of it since.
Internally, I was trying to understand what was going on with me.
It’d been more than 20 years since I’d done anything with a woman or even had the desire to, but there was something about her that I needed to know more about.
I wanted to be her safe space, her man. There was a familiar feeling that until now I’d only felt with Knox, passion—possession.
She was the kind of woman who made silence feel loud.
At forty-two, she wore her years like a luxury, her beauty seasoned, deliberate, and carved by both the sky and the scars beneath it.
When she arrived in the ER, she was wearing her work ID badge, identifying her as the lead flight instructor.
She’d commanded cockpits and cadets with a voice smooth as jet fuel and twice as potent, but beneath that cockpit-calm exterior, something deeper stirred, something I needed to know.
Her skin held the glow of sunrises caught at 30,000 feet, kissed golden-brown by years above the clouds.
Her honey-blonde curls, wild and free, defying the rigidity of her profession, a quiet rebellion she never explained.
The tattoo on her collarbone was the only visible fragment of the private woman beneath the polished uniform, a symbol of a promise or a past she didn’t often share.
The ink down her arm was louder, a vivid story scrawled in symbols of survival, strength, and perhaps a hint of sin.
Ajaih was in control until lately, and in a world full of turbulence, Ajaih was starting to realize she might be ready to fly without a flight plan, and I’d accompany her.