Chapter 12
D ropping onto the couch, I turn on the game and take a sip of my scotch.
I have to be at work tomorrow at seven, but I’m still too restless to attempt sleep.
Especially after the day—after the night—I’ve had.
I could go down the hall to the media room, but it seems a bit much just for catching the end of the Sox game, and for now, I’m relieved by the quiet.
I started to read a medical journal, but my mind wandered too far too fast, whereas baseball is the universal antidote to sex.
I couldn’t stand it. Watching her with that guy.
The way he stalked over to her, intent clear on his face.
The way he touched her, talked to her. I was never like that with Alanna, never felt a tenth of that rage.
I knew Alanna dated, I even saw her with some of the guys, and it never hit me like that. Not once.
But tonight, I was ready to rip that insignificant, nothing of a man apart. In that moment I knew. No one could have Grace but me.
But I can’t even have her. What the fuck do I do with that?
I honestly don’t know.
Sit and have a drink while watching the Sox. That’s what I do.
She’s so fresh out of a bad relationship I can’t even attempt to try anything. It’s far too soon for any of that. Her mind is a mess, her heart all over the place, and I will not be her rebound or revenge. She’s here in my home because she trusts me, yet I can’t stop the way I crave her.
So yeah…
Alcohol. Sox.
I need to decompress before I spend the next twenty-four hours with her on a shift.
If I’m having this much trouble already, I shudder to think what the next, however long she’s staying here, will bring.
Maybe I should alter our schedules. Move things around so we spend less time together at work.
Move her to another attending—the right thing to do considering she’s now staying at my place.
Except I love seeing her at work.
I love watching her with patients. I love teaching her in the OR.
That’s become my drug. My fix. It’s what I’ve thrived on for a year and now that I’m addicted, I have no idea how to quit without going through severe withdrawal.
I sigh, leaning back and shifting my position, tossing one ankle onto the opposite knee.
I’m eternally screwed.
As if conjuring the woman directly from my thoughts, a flicker of movement catches my eye. Grace is ambling toward the dark kitchen, wearing my way beyond big T-shirt and sweatpants that I gave her last weekend when she mistakenly showed up on my doorstep.
That has me smiling stupidly big. She looks good in my clothes.
“Can’t sleep?” I call out and she startles a little, clearly having been lost in her own introspection and didn’t notice me sitting only twenty feet from her.
“Christmas carols you scared me,” she mutters, as she brings a hand up to her chest, confirming my thoughts. She lets out a small, bemused laugh and then shakes her head. “No. I was just coming to get some water. What about you?”
I hitch up a shoulder, unwilling to tell her my reasoning for still being awake when I should be asleep.
She abandons her search for water, instead crossing the room and sliding onto the sofa directly beside me, her knees bend as she tucks herself into my side.
I know this isn’t anything. I know this is her just being comfortable with me.
Like she is with Oliver. Like a brother.
But having her pressed against me like this, feeling her close, smelling her skin, brotherly is the last thing I feel about her.
“Can I have a taste of that?” she asks, and I hand her my drink, watching as she brings the crystal to her lips and sips the liquid into her mouth. “Wooh,” she exclaims, smacking her lips and handing it back to me. “That’s good stuff for a quiet Friday night in front of the Red Sox.”
“After a day and evening spent entirely with you, I needed it.”
“Lord Jesus, yes. If I could drink, living with you would certainly drive me to it.”
I chuckle, forcing my eyes to stay on the large television though I’m not watching any of it now.
She wiggles around beside me, stirring as if she’s searching for a comfortable position, but I can tell that’s not what this is. “What’s on your mind, Grace?”
She stills and I can practically hear the smile in her voice when she says, “What makes you think there’s something on my mind?”
Because I know you . “Wild guess. What is it?”
“What would you be doing tonight if you hadn’t been forced to spend the day with me? If I weren’t living here?”
I’m not sure what I thought she was going to say, but it’s not that. My neck twists and I catch her eye. Hers are now laser focused on the screen like whatever the Sox are doing has life and death consequences for her.
I cup her jaw, forcing her eyes to mine. “What are you asking me?”
She works her bottom lip with her teeth.
“I watched you tonight. I saw the way women stared. They took pictures of you. Of all of you, but I already found a picture of us dancing online. It was on Twitter and Instagram and there were already a ton of comments about it. They were all about you being seen dancing with a woman and the speculation around that. Thankfully my face wasn’t in it, it was the back of my head, but I don’t know. It just got me thinking.”
It feels like there is something else she’s not saying. Something she’s holding back with that. I see it in her eyes, in their shift. In their reluctance to hold mine.
“You want to know if I would have brought the woman I was dancing with home if it had been a different woman and a different situation?”
“I guess. You’re sitting here tonight, drinking expensive as hell scotch, and watching the Red Sox in your pajama pants because I’m here. You just seem… I don’t know…”
“I would have brought her home,” I tell her, staring into those goddamn blue eyes that never fail to rob me of my better sense.
“If I were lucky enough for her to say yes. If I had gone up to the beautiful blonde and danced with her tonight, and she wasn’t you and I didn’t know her, and we didn’t have all this other bullshit surrounding us.
Yeah, I would have tried like hell to take her home with me. ”
Her breath catches and her cheeks flush. “But I was that woman.”
“You were, so here I am, watching the Sox in my pajamas and drinking expensive scotch.” Because I can’t bring you to my bed instead .
She pulls her face out of my grasp, staring down at her hands and then up at the television. The Sox get a double play, and the inning ends, going to a commercial for pet food and who cares. I want her eyes back on me. I always want her eyes on me.
“You just seem lonely. Sad maybe. That’s all I was asking.”
Oh. Well… fuck me. My insides tumble, the perpetual ache in my chest flaring up to a slow burn. “I am sometimes. But isn’t everyone?”
Because the reality is, I’m not sure what I have anymore.
I work and I come home, and I date random, meaningless women, and I hang out with my brothers and Rina, and I work some more. In truth, I loved that life. I love my brothers and Rina and I didn’t mind the random women and I absolutely love what I do. But yeah, I could have more of a life.
I just haven’t wanted to pursue it.
I choose to work more than I have to because for the last year, the woman I’ve been obsessed with has to work a crazy ton of hours and being with her is the goddamn highlight of my life.
I don’t have hobbies because who has time for that.
I don’t have a lot of friends outside of my family and a few extended others because I learned a long time ago—all my family has—that people angle for you when you have money and are an Abbot-Fritz.
It’s why we choose our people carefully and keep things mostly just us.
My mom is sick. Fighting for her life against recurrent cancer and until she’s in remission that sad, and scared son will remain.
Things were different for me in Virginia Beach. I was more carefree. Less stiff. Alanna and our friend Billie were part of that, but there is also freedom for an Abbot-Fritz outside of Boston. Or maybe it was more the small, protective bubble my residency provided. Who knows?
I never thought about it as being lonely or sad until Grace came around and showed me just what I’ve been missing… what my world could be like…
“Yes,” she says after a contemplative moment. “I think we are all like that sometimes. I just worry my being here is doing that.”
“It’s not and I don’t regret having you move in here, Grace.
I’m glad you have a place you can come and go and make your own.
A place you feel safe in. Oliver and Amelia would be all over you if you stayed with them and while it would come from a place of love, who wants all that attention on them all the time when they’re trying to move past something? ”
“I know they would be like that and as much as I love them with all my heart, it is a relief having my own space. My privacy. I just wonder what you’re getting out of it.”
You. I get you out of it even when I know better and most of the time I’m just torturing myself.
“You worried about me, Hammond?” I quip, trying to lighten the heavy mood she set.
“Worried I’m not living up to my Fritz bachelor status?
I can change that you know. Pull out my phone and start dialing up some women.
I could have a harem here within the next thirty minutes for an orgy if you’d like. I’ll even let you watch.”
“I was trying to look out for you, asshole.”
She slaps my chest and I laugh, catching her hand and using her weakened position to tickle her.
Grace lets out a squeal as I hit a particular spot and before I know what I’m doing, my glass is on the coffee table and I’ve got her pinned down on the couch, her hands over her head, my body hovering over hers.
I lock her wrists with one hand and continue to tickle her with the other, her body writhing, fighting mine. We’re both laughing and smiling, our eyes bright with excitement. But in an instant, our playful vibe evaporates when we both simultaneously realize our position.
I look down at her just as she looks up at me, both of us falling quiet as our laughter dies out, the soft sound of the television the only thing to break this new tense silence.
My eyes flicker to her lips. Linger there for a beat before they glide across the smooth skin of her creamy, now flushed cheeks back up to her eyes. Blue fire and… heated?
For me? I don’t know. I don’t trust my own eyes.
They’ve misled me before.
Our breathing morphs from lightly winded to heavy and rough.
The urge to drop down, to cover her with my body, with my mouth, and obliterate this small space between us squeezes me like a vise.
She blinks at me, but she doesn’t move, and she doesn’t speak.
Her eyes stay fixed on mine and mine on hers because they can’t go back to her lips.
If they do, I’ll kiss her…
I’ll kiss her and then I’ll touch her. And then I’ll do more than touch her. I’ll pleasure her. I’ll make her come. I’ll show her over and over again that she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And then…
Then I lose everything.
I’ll lose her before I even get her because she’s brokenhearted over Tony. Because she’s sad and vulnerable and doesn’t need me—her attending, the man she’s staying with—taking advantage of her.
Fuck. What am I doing?
The only thing I can do. I climb off her, stand, and extend my hand to help her up. She takes it with a smile. A regular Grace smile that shows no indication that I had her body pinned beneath mine, ready to kiss her. To take her. To claim her.
But we both know the truth, right? She has to know. She had to have seen my desire for her. Hell, I did a shit job of hiding it all day. In the bathroom this afternoon and then again on the dance floor.
What the fuck is wrong with me? How could I betray her trust like this?
She came here when she had nowhere else to go. When she needed to feel safe. When she needed someone to take care of her.
I’m an asshole.
But I can fix it. I can give her the confidence she feels she’s lost back without taking her into my bed. I can be the good guy in her story because right now, she needs one.
“Do you want to run into work tomorrow?” I ask, knowing that’s what she used to do and hasn’t all week while living here with me.
Her face lights up. “Yes. I’d love that. Thank you.”
“Okay. We’ll need to leave here early then.”
“Right. Five-thirty?”
I swallow and nod, taking a step back and picking up my drink, suddenly so very done with baseball and alcohol. “Five-thirty works.”
“We should get to bed then.” She licks her lips. “You know. Get some sleep before our long shift and early morning.”
I don’t say anything, I just turn off the television, bathing us in a muted darkness, in a silence only made heavier by the beat of my heart and pulse of my semi-hard cock. I need to get control. I’m all fucking control, so why am I having so much trouble with her now?
“Good night, Carter.”
“Good night, Grace.”
She lingers, waits a beat, and when she realizes I’m not going to say anything more, she saunters off, back to her room.
I fall back onto the couch, scrubbing my face with my hand.
She has to move out. She has to leave. But I can’t stomach that either.
I want her to stay, and I need her to go.
Never in my life have I been this conflicted.
This tied up in knots. She’s wreaking havoc on my life, more so now than she ever has before.
The ultimate pleasure pain.
One that’s hurting me, but I can’t seem to stop poking at, needing it because without that sharp draw of pain, I think I’d feel more lost than ever.
She was right with what she said tonight.
All of it. I don’t remember the last time I let loose.
The last time I relaxed and had fun. Sure, I go out with friends and my brothers. We have a good time.
But it’s different. It’s simply me going through the motions.
It’s a relic of the life I want. The life I should be living.
Standing, I walk into the kitchen, taking a final sip of my scotch and then pouring the rest down the drain, leaving the glass in the sink because I don’t feel like washing it. Then I head for my room, brush my teeth, and get myself ready for bed. Ready to start another day.
Because I don’t have a choice.
And pretty soon, she’ll be gone. Just a few more weeks, tops.
One day it’ll be easier than it is now. Eventually I’ll get over her. I just hope I can make it until then before I snap.