Epilogue #2
He was leaning against that wall like the wall owed him money.
He filled the room without moving, and I was suddenly aware of the coffee stain on my hip.
The bun that had given up. The probable oats in my teeth from a granola bar an hour ago.
The uniform was designed to withstand bodily fluids, not attract men.
"So." I snapped on gloves. Steady voice. Steady hands. Do not look at him again. "What happened?"
The patient lifted the rag. "Angle grinder. Moment of stupidity."
"Cal said I didn't need gloves for a quick job." The patient. Nodding at the wall.
Great. He had a name. A short, punchy one-syllable name that suited his jaw and his forearms, and — stop thinking about his forearms.
"Cal was wrong," I said, my eyes on the wound and my voice pleasant and professional, the voice of a woman who was absolutely not having a crisis six feet from a man leaning against a wall.
A laugh came out of him, low and short and dropped somewhere into the base of my spine. The heat of it spread out across my shoulders and ran down my arms in a slow, warm rush that had no business being in a treatment room at eleven o'clock at night.
Oh, this was going to be a problem.
"I told him to wear gloves," Cal said.
His voice was the kind of voice that had no business existing in a county hospital at this hour.
It was low and rough and warm at the edges, with a drawl running underneath it that wasn't from this part of Texas — somewhere further south, somewhere with the long slow vowels of a man who had been raised to take his time with a sentence — and the sound of it brushed the back of my neck the way a hand might have, and I coughed to cover the fact that I had forgotten how to breathe.
I cleaned the wound. Threaded the needle.
The first suture went through and my hands stayed steady because I was a professional in a professional building doing a professional job, and the man against the wall was a man against a wall, and he was going to remain a man against a wall until I had finished and I had washed my hands and I had walked out of this room and back to my desk and into the rest of my life.
His boot came off the linoleum.
Two steps. His shoulder settled in beside mine, six inches between us, and the smell of him came over the distance — motor oil and soap and something warm and male underneath that my lungs pulled in without asking my permission.
My fingers hovered over the wound. Six years of nursing were about to be undone by a pair of forearms and a cologne situation in exam three.
Get it together, Sophia.
I pulled the suture through. His breathing was slow and even at my shoulder. I could hear every quiet inhale he took beside me, and the skin from my elbow down to my wrist was humming with it.
"Nice work.” He had said it in my ear. Whispered it almost.
His breath was on the side of my neck, and my stomach clenched, my thighs tightened on the metal stool, and somewhere in the back of my head, a small, clear voice that hadn't spoken up in six years remarked, with mild academic interest, that this is not the time to discover you have a jawline problem.
"Almost done." My voice came out thin. Breezy. The voice of a woman in complete control and not a woman whose left ear could fry an egg.
He leaned closer. The heat of his chest against my shoulder. My body pulled toward him.
The patient winced. Cal shifted forward — his hand lifting toward his friend's arm, catching himself. Protective. My stomach dipped.
He stepped back. The air went cold. My body followed the warmth — my shoulder drifting left — before I caught it. I straightened, and finished the stitch. Tied off. Snipped. Dressed the wound. My hands steady. My face on fire the entire time.
"Keep it dry for forty-eight hours. Come back in ten days." I peeled off the gloves. “And wear gloves next time."
Cal grinned, slow and crooked. His eyes crinkling.
The grin hit me under my ribs and behind my sternum, and my breath stopped.
I had blushed more in the last ten minutes than in the previous calendar year.
My body had decided professional composure was optional tonight, and the program was mortify Sophia in front of the hot man.
I busied myself with the sharps bin, the wound care tray. Anything that wasn't his face.
They stood. The patient shook my hand. "Thanks, doc."
"Nurse."
Cal stepped toward the door. Stopped. Turned back. Held out his hand.
"Caleb," he said.
I took it. Like a professional. Like someone whose circulatory system hadn't just rerouted to her right palm. His fingers closed around mine — warm, firm, calluses pressing into my skin. Too long. His thumb shifted against my knuckle. Small. Deliberate. I swallowed so hard he probably heard it.
His eyes dropped to my name badge. "Sophia." Low. So-phi-a. Three syllables I'd heard ten thousand times that had never sounded like that. Like he was tucking it somewhere safe.
I pulled my hand back. Pressed it against my hip to hold the warmth, and hoped he didn't notice.
His friend leaned back through the door. "Come on, Casanova. Fuck, I can't take you anywhere."
I laughed — bright, surprised. Cal watched me laugh. His eyes on my mouth. Not embarrassed. Enjoying it.
He turned in the doorway. The side grin.
"I'll see you soon, Sophia."
My stomach pulled tight. My mouth opened. Any word. A human word. Something indicating I had been speaking English for thirty years.
"That's — okay."
That's okay. That's. Okay. As if he'd asked permission. As if I had a vocabulary. As if my brain hadn't been replaced with static the moment he said my name in that voice.
His grin widened. One more second — warm, amused, knowing. Then his boots in the hallway. Gone.
I stood with the chart against my chest. My pulse hammering. My face hot. The smell of motor oil was still in the room. Still in my lungs because I was holding the last breath of him.
I let it go.
Caleb. Black Iron Customs. Beautiful. That jaw. That grin. The way he said So-phi-a like he was keeping it. The way his thumb moved on my knuckle as if he was writing something on my skin.
Beautiful. And a Casanova. Can't take you anywhere. Which meant he did this — the grin, the handshake, the name spoken like a love letter — to every woman within six feet. I bet they all said, Okay too.
I wouldn't be seeing him soon.
THE END
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