Colin
The coffee in the clinic smelled and tasted a little off, but it wasn’t awful. Not as good as the stuff they had at the main building, but I needed more time after having heard the roar of a motorcycle shortly after waking up on my makeshift cot on the floor.
She had stayed the night.
That…well, I suppose I couldn’t exactly act surprised.
From the moment I realized who she was, I figured she was here for one reason only.
Of course, there wasn’t much I could do about that.
Xander was Xander and nothing I said or did was going to change that, or change anything when he had made up his mind.
All I could do was burn a little more of my morning and see what awaited me.
I needed to be ready, of course, braced for what could have been.
For as much as there was antagonism and anger between them, they’d got married for a reason.
Maybe those reasons were still valid, but only time would tell.
It was honestly better that I had taken the time to brace for that possibility.
I had promised Xander I would not make a whole ordeal out of what we were doing, and that meant not showing the sting if he and Mona were going to work things out.
Still, I’d wasted enough time. I had promised everyone I was just going to be on my own for the night and would be back to business as usual come morning.
It was still morning, but I knew my absence at breakfast would have been noticed.
Which would just make everyone nervous and worry about me, and that would get them talking and probably looking for me.
That counted as making a fuss, so it was time I sucked it up and went about my day.
After changing into the last set of spare clothes, I checked myself in the mirror. I looked like…well, like I’d only managed a handful of hours of broken sleep the night before. There wasn’t much I could do about that though, so I left the clinic, walking toward whatever awaited me.
It felt criminal to walk out into a bright morning that carried the wet earth smell after a dew-heavy dawn. Birds were singing, squirrels chased themselves in branches above a rabbit that watched me curiously. The whole thing felt like a Disney movie; meanwhile, I was bracing myself for heartache.
And wasn’t that the funniest thing? To find out I’d been catching feelings for a man who barely understood his own sexuality and was still going through an ugly divorce.
A man I had told to just take things as they came, only to find out I wasn’t taking my own advice.
I had fallen for the guy, and it had taken his ex-wife showing up for me to realize it.
“It’s always the last second, isn’t it?” I asked as I opened the back door and stepped through.
The smell of bacon still lingered in the air, and I found a fresh pot of coffee and a few of the team.
Carter glanced my way, shooting me a wink and a small smile before throwing a crust at Maverick, who batted it away without looking up from the book he was reading.
Reno was sitting on the counter, something he wouldn’t have done if Xander was around.
Jake leaned beside him, grinning widely at something he’d said that was making Reno roll his eyes.
“Morning, Doc,” Jake said brightly. “There’s leftovers in case you’re hungry.”
“A little food would do me some good,” I said as I plucked a couple of cold pieces of bacon off a covered plate. “But decent coffee sounds a lot better right now.”
“Just made a new pot,” Reno said, and I glanced over to see Jake lean close and say something I couldn’t catch. “Shut up.”
Jake snickered, and I watched them, seeing the way Reno’s face colored. When he met my eyes, the pink darkened. When I raised my brow at him, he rolled his eyes and shoved Jake away again. “He thinks he’s funny.”
“I’m kinda funny,” Jake said with a shrug. “I didn’t know you were so easily embarrassed.”
“Do I want to know?” I asked, not of them, but of Maverick and Carter.
Maverick looked up, over at the other two, and shook his head at me. “Not right now. You don’t want to know.”
“Noted and believed,” I said, eyeing the other two suspiciously. “Whatever it is you two are doing, remember I’m the one who still controls the size of the needles you get stuck with, alright?”
Reno glared at Jake, who actually looked nervous, and I wondered if they were talking about me…and Xander. If that was the case, I definitely didn’t want to know, and Jake was going to be on a shit list.
“Leaving so soon?” I asked as Reno hopped off the counter.
“Well, I have things I need to do,” Reno said and glanced at Jake. “So do you, remember?”
Jake sighed. “Man, Big Boss and Doc sleep like shit and I’m the one who has to pay the price? It’s not fair.”
“No, you’re paying the price because your mouth gets there an hour ahead of your brain,” Reno said, shoving him toward the door.
“Xander slept like shit?” I asked lightly.
“Yeah, well, your bunk is too small for him,” Reno said and frowned. “So if you guys could like…make up or whatever, that would be great. I really don’t want to share a room with him again.”
I stared after him and then turned to the other two. “He slept…in my bunk?”
“That’s all Reno has been bitching about since we came in,” Carter said with a snort. “So, apparently.”
“And his, uh…what about Mona? I thought I heard her this morning.”
“Guess she slept in his cabin and he slept with the rest of the guys.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought—”
“That I stayed with my ex-wife all night?” a deep rumble asked in disbelief.
I turned and saw Xander standing there, as big as ever, as grumpy as ever but…more tired than I remembered seeing before. He was also holding a mug of coffee, which was unusual for him. He almost never drank coffee.
“Ow, ow!” Carter complained. “Fuck, I get it! I’m going, Mav, just…ow! Quit fucking…ow!”
I turned, and although it looked like nothing was going on and Carter was making a fuss out of nothing; I thought I saw Maverick’s hand dart back to his side of the table as he and Carter both got to their feet.
Carter flashed me a double thumbs up, which I didn’t know what to do about, and then they were both squeezing past Xander.
“I’m going to need…” Xander began, but Mav waved him off.
“We’re not going far, just, uh…not sitting around in here,” Carter said, knocking on Cait’s door. “They’re gonna talk in the kitchen!”
The music was turned up, and I sighed. “No one said anything about…idiots.”
I was shocked when Xander let out a bark of laughter. “Keep saying you don’t sound like me when you’re saying shit like that.”
I huffed. “Didn’t know you could manage an actual laugh.”
“I have my moments,” he said and shrugged. I pretended not to realize I’d never seen him do that before.
“So…” I began because I didn’t know what the fuck else to say. “Didn’t sleep well, huh?”
“Doesn’t look like you got a whole lot of sleep either,” he said. “Clinic?”
“They told you, huh?” I asked with a sigh.
“No,” he said, stepping into the room and going for the coffee. “They were your loyal little minions and didn’t tell on you. Cait would have skinned them alive if they had.”
“I knew I loved her for a reason,” I said with a shake of my head. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“I mean…disappearing, then making sure no one told you what I was doing and—”
He held the pot out, and I slipped a cup under it so he could fill it. “Don’t be. Last night was…a lot. A whole lot, actually. Still trying to wrap my head around—”
“Talking dirty to me on the other side of the door while our coworkers heard everything we said and then making out with me as we went through the door…oh, and your wife was there. That?”
“Ex-wife,” he corrected, but smiled. “But yes, all of that.”
“It is a lot,” I said, leaning back against the counter. I looked him over. “You smell like your body wash. You showered in your cabin?”
He watched me for a moment and sighed. “After she left, yes.”
“She, uh…say anything?”
“No. We said what needed to be said last night, and she left saying nothing else,” he said with a snort. “And she even stripped the bed for me, how nice of her. Probably the nicest thing she’s done for me in ages.”
I squinted at him. “It’s kind of sad that that’s the nicest thing she’s done in a long time.”
“I know,” he said with a sigh, and then looked at me. “Did you really think I slept with her last night?”
When he said it like that, I felt like an idiot. “Your wife—”
“Ex-wife,” he growled. “Jesus, fuck. You were the one who told me to skip the between steps and call her that, so you do it too.”
“Barely partway into this conversation and you’re already mad at me,” I said, but there was a flicker of warmth in my chest at his insistence. “But yeah, your ex-wife showed up on your birthday, a surprise visit even though I guess it wasn’t supposed to be.”
“It wasn’t,” he muttered, rubbing his forehead. “I checked. She did tell me…three times. Even texted me, but you know, our phones were here.”
“Ugh, I love technology, but sometimes I miss the days when you could just…not have a goddamn phone in your pocket and the expectations of being constantly available didn’t exist,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Same,” he grunted.
“It was obvious what she wanted,” I finished with a halfhearted shrug.
He frowned, then blinked. “Oh. That’s what she…Jesus, she’s not kidding. I am dense.”
“The way you guys were talking, I’m surprised that’s the worst she said about you,” I muttered.
“No, not Mona. The less I say about that conversation, the better,” he said with a sigh. “I meant Cait. She…well, we didn’t really talk. She talked to me, and then we sat there in silence.”
“One of your favorite ways to spend time with someone,” I chuckled.