Chapter 5 #2
I scoff at that. Hard. “I don’t think you’re evil , Joe.
I think you’re morally and emotionally apathetic.
Possibly sociopathic, but psychiatry isn’t my field of expertise.
I’m about 99.8 percent positive you don’t have a heart, and I’m not exaggerating with that assessment.
” I force myself to turn and look at him, only to find his gaze on the field and not on me.
That should be no surprise, and it shouldn’t hurt, but I still feel the twinge.
“I don’t know why I’m here. I sent the films to Limbick last night, and he agreed with me.
It can be done, but it'll be tough and without any guarantees of outcome given how bad things look. He’d do the surgery. He told me he would.”
“He’s not who I want.”
I roll my eyes. “Why? Because having a newbie attending operating on your star quarterback is in his best interest? Or is this some misplaced nostalgia you got from a Hallmark film where you think this will somehow reunite father and daughter? Because I can tell you, that won’t happen.
I’ve gone twenty-six years without you, and I sure as hell don’t want you in my life now. ”
Or in my son’s life.
“I could explain—”
“Don’t make me throat punch you in front of your players,” I sharply interject.
“The idiotic notion that you could try and explain away abandoning your five-year-old child makes me go postal. There is no excuse for you, Joe. None. I don’t know why I’m here or what made you reach out now, but I’m not interested. I owe you nothing.”
He releases a heavy breath. “Did it ever occur to you, Wyn, that I’m doing this because I’m the one who owes you?”
With that, he walks off, back onto the field, blowing his whistle and yelling at two of the players who missed a route or something inconsequential.
“Dickface.”
“Tough morning?”
I groan. Asher’s short, reddish-brown hair is wet, sticking up all over the place. His face is flushed, and his body is covered in sweat. Sweat that’s rolling down his sculpted arms. He smiles, and something hits me. Something… strange. A memory almost, but it’s fuzzy, and I can’t make sense of it.
“You men are like cockroaches. Just when you get rid of one, another shows up.” I spin to Asher.
“If women ruled this world instead of men, everything would be efficient, clean, and smell good. There would be no sexual assault or wars. We’d handle everything over cocktails and dinner and actually talk things out instead of blowing shit up because that’s how we get things done.
You men are the bane of our existence. Once we learn how to synthetically engineer your sperm, we can render you obsolete. ”
“You know I’m a lover, not a fighter, right?
” He quips, smirking at me in a way that should be infuriating but somehow flips the tables on me and reluctantly makes me laugh.
“Ah, there it is. That smile. That sound.” He’s way too pleased with himself.
“I can die a happy man now. But don’t get any ideas when I’m on your table.
Euthanizing me won’t save you because I’ll come back and haunt you for eternity. ”
“You are going to be on my table,” I tell him, growing serious.
“I know,” he says simply, wiping at the back of his neck with a towel. “I just don’t like it, and I work better with denial and humor as my defense mechanisms. Want to go get a sports drink with me so we can talk a bit more?”
“A sports drink?” I snort. “That’s a hell of an invitation.”
“I’d invite you to dinner if I thought you’d accept.”
“You’re my patient, and I don’t—”
“Date football players. I know. I just want you to get to know me away from the field, so you realize I’m not the monster of your preconceived notions.”
He looks so earnest when he says that, and I realize I have been rough on him. I mean, he’s pushed boundaries and done things he shouldn’t, but I’m not sure I ever gave him a fair shot before that.
“Is there coffee where you keep your sports drinks?”
“I’m sure there is, but I don’t drink coffee during the season, so I don’t know if it’s any good.”
I squint up at him, shielding my eyes with my hand to block the sun as I do. “Why don’t you drink coffee during the season?”
“It’s a diuretic, and I don’t want to dehydrate. No caffeine, no junk food, very little sugar and alcohol.”
“Sounds like a great time.”
He reaches out and tugs on a piece of my hair before tucking it behind my ear and dragging his thumb along the shell. “I am if you give me the chance.”
“Stop flirting, player.”
His hand moves away, and his expression grows sincere.
“I’m sorry. I am. It’s just that you’re easily the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
You have the kind of beauty that fucks with a man’s head and self-control.
My natural instinct is to flirt, so I can try to win your attention.
But you’re right. I’m being inappropriate and likely making you uncomfortable. I’ll behave.”
I blink up at him, my mouth agape as my heart flutters in my chest. “You’re serious? That wasn’t a line?”
He looks surprised by my shock. “No. I meant every word.”
“Uh.” I have no idea what to do with that. All I know is that it’s making me flustered and feels like I have ants crawling on my skin. I’m itchy, and my body simultaneously tickles and burns like it’s on fire.
“Coffee?” he offers, and I nod numbly. He waves his hand over his shoulder as he starts to head toward the tunnel, and I follow after him. “I told Coach I was going to talk to you more, so it should just be us for a while since the rest of the team has another forty minutes or so of practice.”
“Okay.” I’m still stuck on that most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen thing.
He leads me into the locker room that, well, smells like a locker room. Like men and sweat and rubber and gym equipment.
“Sit tight.”
He points to the bench and asks me how I take my coffee. I tell him, and he walks off only to return a few minutes later with a steaming cup for me and a sports drink for himself.
He removes his cleats one by one, and then my face scrunches up when he starts pulling off his red jersey and pads, tossing them toward a dirty laundry hamper.
“What are you doing?” I screech.
“Going to shower while we talk,” he says simply as if he isn’t stripping in front of me and will be naked and wet and smelling like soap in another minute.
I stand. “Um, no. We can talk on Monday when I do your pre-op.”
“This isn’t sexual,” he promises in earnest. “You won’t see anything you don’t want to see.”
Except I’m already seeing things I, unfortunately, do want to see. Like his incredible chest and abs, and hell, his shoulders. I have a thing for shoulders, and I’m not simply talking about the mechanics inside of them. His are perfect.
“Give me five minutes, please, and then we’ll talk. Drink your coffee, just stay. Don’t go.”
Stay. Don’t go.
I’m getting another flash of a memory and I close my eyes, trying to capture it, but it’s gone just as quickly as it was there.
He turns and heads toward the showers in the next room, unlacing the strings on his pants as he goes.
I spin around, my hand over my racing heart. What the hell? I can’t be in here while he’s showering. Only I don’t want to seem like that woman. The one who is skittish and immature. He isn’t bothered by it, and he already said it isn’t sexual, so why am I making a thing out of this?
Because a hot man who thinks you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen is naked not even twenty feet from you.
Just because attraction is there doesn’t mean we act.
I sit back down and cross my legs, my knee jumpy as I take my first sip, and of course, I burn my tongue because that’s how everything is going for me lately.
Five minutes later, as promised, he returns wearing nothing but a towel.
Water runs down every inch of him, over every muscular ridge and valley before getting absorbed in the white cotton.
I’m staring. I know I am. But it can’t be helped. My face is flushed, and it’s like watching live-action porn, only better because this man is chiseled from stone and built with more muscles than I remember learning about in med school.
He goes for his locker and starts digging through it, and I take in the lines of his back with equal fascination and appreciation as I did the front of him.
The man is a work of art. Sculpted and muscular—I might have already mentioned that, but damn —yet still somehow long and lean.
He’s not overly bulky, but I doubt there’s an inch of fat on him.
He has those twin indents right above his ass that mimic the twin indents on the other side of him, and I swear, I never cared or noticed any such thing on any other athlete I’ve worked with in the past, but I’m a living, breathing, drooling, pathetic mess of a woman right now.
“Are you with me, Doctor?” he questions, and my gaze snaps away from his back and up to his face that’s turned over his shoulder and angled right at me. He’s been talking to me this entire time, and I was too busy drooling over his body to notice any of it.
He gives me his favorite cocky smirk when he realizes this. “Should I start again?”
I open my mouth to say something when my phone rings in my bag. Setting down the coffee, I pull it out and see it’s my mother, and she never calls unless it’s a big deal.
I hold up my hand to Asher and immediately answer. “Mom?”
“He said, Mama!” She cries into the phone, and instantly tears spring to my eyes.
“He did?!” My hand covers my mouth. “When?”
“Just now, Wyn. He was looking at a picture of you on my phone and said, Mama. Clear as day. He’s only ten months old. Such a smart baby. Just like you were. What did those doctors know when they said his speech might be delayed.”
I hiccup out a sob. I missed my son’s first word. A first word that is especially epic given his slight hearing impairment. “I’m on my way home now.”
I stand up, shoving my phone back in my bag. “I have to go,” I tell Asher.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, concern all over his face as he reaches for me, almost as if he wants to comfort me.
“It’s… fine. Good. Amazing almost, but also…
” Not. Because I wasn’t there to hear it.
“I’m sorry. We’ll talk on Monday.” With that, I fly out of the room, away from Asher Reyes, and back toward the man in my life.
The only one who deserves my attention. Certainly not the hot quarterback who seems to effortlessly steal it every chance he gets.