Chapter 17
Macie
"Are you sure you wanna do this?" Darren asks a couple days later as I'm getting ready for work, using makeup to cover the last of the bruises.
"I can't keep hiding forever. They have me working in the ER, just in case he comes into L&D looking for me.
Security will walk me to and from my car.
I love staying here with Nicole, but this isn't the reality of what my life is normally like, and if I keep hiding, it's going to be even harder for me to start back. "
"I know all of this," Darren says as he stands against the wall behind me, his arms crossed over his chest. "But I fucking don't like it."
He's hot as hell, wearing his uniform, gun already at his hip, badge shining, and a bullet proof vest pulled over his head, waiting to be secured. "It's going to be fine." I'm not sure who I'm trying to convince, him or me.
"If you need anything today, my phone is on, and I told Director Drake you're my number one priority."
That warms my chest and makes me want to stay here with him, celebrating the fact that he likes me this much. Our eyes meet in the mirror as I put my mascara on. When I'm done, I turn around, and walk over to him. "You're a sweet man, eight pack."
"I can be even sweeter if you wanna take those clothes off, we both call in, I get mom to pick up Nicole, and we stay in bed all day."
Those words go to my core, making it tingle as I think of his cock rubbing all the right spots. "I'm tempted, but I can't keep running."
"Alright," he sighs. "Whatever you decide to do, I'm standing behind you."
About thirty minutes later, I've killed as much time as I can. I get up from the table, my breakfast barely touched, and start getting my stuff ready for my day.
"I'm gonna miss you," Nicole whines, throwing her arms around my knees.
I bend down and pick her up, holding her to me. "I'm gonna miss you too, but you'll have fun with GiGi today. You can tell me all about it when I get home."
"And what am I?" Darren asks her. "Chopped liver? Come give me some sugar."
I set her down and she toddles over to her dad, sighing with contentment when he tucks her into his chest. Same girl, I wanna say, same.
The front door unlocks, and Kelsea comes sweeping in. "Good morning, y'all. Are we excited to get our work days going?"
I feel like a kid going to her first day of school. Darren and I look at each other, grinning with amusement as she gets our stuff together, and pushes us out the door. Once he and I are outside at our respective vehicles, I turn to him. "Have a good day, honey."
"You too, babe."
We laugh at how domestic all of this is, but I can't help but be appreciative when he kisses me, before directing me to the driver's seat and shuts my door. We pull out of the driveway, each turning separate directions, and I remind myself I'm as safe as I can be.
Gerald Simmons will not make me stop living my life, even if I can feel someone's eyes on me sometimes.
The first couple of hours of my shift go by with normal cases in the ER. I'm about to take my first break, when Molly shows up. "Hey!" I hurry over to her, wrapping my arms around her. "I missed you!"
"Missed you too, girl. This place wasn't the same without you. I just didn't want to bother you. Wanted to make sure you were getting the rest you needed. How are you doing?"
I would've probably done the same if this was the other way around. "Pretty good. It was a rough couple of days to begin with, but it's better than it was."
"I'm so glad to hear it. There's a hot dude with a strawberry lemonade from Whole Latte Love for you at the nurses station," she whispers. "Have you been staying with Darren since that night?"
"Yeah." I grin, raising my eyebrows up and down suggestively at her. "I've got so much to tell you."
"I want details later," Molly says, squeezing my hand before she heads back toward the labor and delivery wing. "All of them."
"I promise." I laugh, heading toward the nurses station where Molly said Darren's waiting, and sure enough, there he is, leaned against the counter in his uniform, another officer standing next to him that I don't recognize.
Darren straightens up the second he spots me, and the smile that spreads across his face makes my stomach do something ridiculous, even after everything we said to each other in the rain a couple nights ago.
He crosses the space between us without hesitation, one hand landing on my hip, and kisses me right there in front of God and the entire ER staff, slow enough that I hear someone at the desk behind us let out a low whistle.
"Hey." His voice comes out rough when he finally pulls back, forehead still resting against mine.
"Hey yourself." I glance around, catching a few amused looks from the nursing staff, and heat crawls up my neck, though I can't say I mind the claim he just made in front of everyone. "You couldn't have waited until I was off shift for that?"
"Nope." He grins, unapologetic, handing me the strawberry lemonade sitting on the counter. "Figured you needed the sugar boost around now."
"You figured right." I take a long sip, and it's perfect, just the right amount of tart. "How's your day going?"
"Quiet so far. Nothing exciting. How about yours?"
"Same. Normal stuff. A broken wrist, a couple of stomach bugs, nothing that's made my adrenaline spike." I lean into his side, and he wraps his arm around my shoulders like we’ve been doing this our entire lives. "I'll take boring any day at this point."
"Boring's good. Boring means nobody's trying anything." His arm tightens around me for a second, like just the thought of it puts him on edge, before he seems to catch himself and relaxes again. "Oh, right. This is Van. My new partner, remember I mentioned him the other night."
I turn toward the other officer, who's young, probably not much past his early twenties, standing there with straight-backed posture that says he’s not exactly comfortable in his position yet. "Nice to finally meet you. Darren's told me you're doing well so far."
"He's told me about you too." Van shakes my hand, polite, and there's something a little starstruck in the way he glances between the two of us, like he's still getting used to seeing his training officer be an actual person outside of the truck. "Sounds like you've had a rough go of it lately."
"You could say that." I don't really want to get into it standing at the nurses station, so I steer things elsewhere. "How's the first week treating you? Darren said you handled a truancy call pretty well."
"Yeah, that was different." Van laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. "Nobody warns you in the academy that half the job's just calling teenagers' parents."
"Better than the alternative," Darren says, taking a drink of the coffee he’s now holding. "Trust me."
"I believe it." Van glances at his watch, then over toward the ambulance bay doors like he's still getting used to waiting for something to happen instead of chasing it down. "This is kind of wild, actually, being in a hospital instead of behind a desk doing paperwork."
"Wait until your first trauma call comes through those doors." I nod toward the bay. "We have to call y’all for lots of things. It's a whole different kind of chaos in here."
"Can't wait." He says it with nervous enthusiasm that tells me he actually means it, eager in a way that reminds me of every new nurse I've trained over the years, wide-eyed and ready before they've seen what the job actually costs you mentally and physically.
"You'll do fine," Darren tells him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Long as you keep listening instead of assuming you already know everything."
"I promise I won’t be a pain in the ass."
We stand there a few more minutes, Darren's arm still slung around me, Van asking a couple more questions about the ER, genuinely curious in a way most people aren't when they're just making small talk. It's nice, this little slice of normal I wasn’t sure I’d ever have again, standing in my workplace with my boyfriend and his partner while my coworkers pretend not to watch us out of the corners of their eyes.
Darren's radio crackles at his hip, and both his and Van's postures change instantly, shoulders straightening, easy conversation dropping away like a switch flipped somewhere between them.
"Copy that," Darren says into his radio once the dispatcher finishes relaying whatever's coming through. He looks at Van. "You ready?"
"What's the call?" I ask, that same uneasy feeling settling low in my stomach that I've felt every time he's had to leave for something since we found my apartment torn apart.
"Somebody's out hunting on posted private land out past the county line.
Landowner's spitting mad about it, wants someone out there before things escalate.
" Darren straightens his belt, and just like that the guy who was just hanging out with me is now ready to go to work.
"Should be quick. Probably just some idiot who didn't read the signs. "
"Be careful." I don't love the idea of him walking into a situation with an armed stranger who's already broken one rule and might not care about breaking more, even if it sounds routine.
"Always am." He leans down, kissing me again, slower this time, less about claiming and more about reassurance, like he can feel the worry radiating off me and wants to smooth it over before he leaves. "I'll see you tonight. Save me some of whatever you're making for dinner."
"I make no promises. Depends on how hungry Nicole and I are."
"Fair enough." He laughs, and it eases some of the tension gathering in my chest. He glances at Van. "Let's roll."
"Nice meeting you, Macie," Van says, already following Darren toward the exit doors.
"You too. Stay safe out there."
Darren's a few steps away when he turns back around, walking backward toward the doors, that same easy grin still on his face. "I love you. See you at home."
He's already turning back around, already pushing through the exit doors with Van right behind him, by the time the words actually land, and I'm standing there frozen at the nurses station with my lemonade halfway to my mouth, heart pounding loud enough I swear the whole ER can hear it.
He said it like it was normal, like we say it to each other all the time. He said it like it was the kind of thing you only say without meaning to when it's already true and you just haven't caught up to saying it out loud yet.
"Girl." One of the nurses at the desk, an older woman named Patricia who's worked here longer than I have, looks at me over the top of her glasses with a knowing little smile. "You gonna go after him or just stand there?"
"I don't—" I laugh, pressing my hand to my chest like that's somehow going to slow my heart down. "He didn't even realize he said it."
"Oh, he realized." Patricia goes back to her charting. She’s acting like she didn't just upend my entire nervous system. "A man doesn't say something like that on accident. Might not have planned it, but he meant it."
I glance toward the doors he just disappeared through, still able to picture the easy way he said it, no hesitation, no second thought, just three words tossed over his shoulder on his way to a hunting call like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Three days ago I was terrified of what my life was turning into. Now I'm standing in the middle of my ER, lemonade in hand, replaying the moment a man told me he loved me for the first time, completely unprompted, in front of half my coworkers and his own rookie partner.
Molly reappears at my side, clearly having heard at least part of it from wherever she was hiding around the corner. "Did he just say what I think he said? I heard about that all the way up in L&D already.”
"Yeah." I can't stop the smile spreading across my face, wide and a little dazed. "Yeah, he did."
"Girl." She grabs my arm, practically bouncing. "You have got to tell me everything, right now, before my next patient buzzes me."
"Later. I promise. I need to actually process what just happened first." I take another sip of my lemonade, trying to steady myself before my break ends and I have to go back to acting like a functioning adult instead of someone floating three feet off the ground. "But yeah, he said it. Just like that."
"And? Are you gonna say it back?"
I think about it, about the rain-soaked porch two nights ago, about him telling me he didn't want me to leave once this was all over, about how easy it's felt living in his house, dancing with his daughter, falling asleep against his chest every single night since I showed up on his doorstep scared out of my mind.
"Yeah." The word comes out much more sure than I expect. "I think I am."
Molly squeals, quiet enough not to draw attention from the rest of the desk, and pulls me into another hug before her pager goes off and she has to disappear back into the chaos of the L&D.
I finish my lemonade slower than I probably should, savoring the last few minutes of my break, savoring the strange, warm feeling of a man saying he loves me on his way out the door to go deal with someone's hunting complaint, like loving me is just another normal part of his day now.
I head back to my own patients a few minutes later, but the whole rest of my shift, no matter how busy it gets, some part of me stays back at that nurses station, replaying those five words over and over, letting myself believe, for the first time in longer than I can remember, that something good might actually be happening.