Chapter 30
REID RATHE
FIVE MONTHS LATER
I walk out of my parents’ house and pull my coat tighter around me as I head to my car.
The spring’s cold wind just won’t relent today, but at least my visit with my parents went well.
They congratulated me on my achieved internship at Joseph Children’s Hospital.
I don’t necessarily want to work with just children, but their program is the best on this side of the country.
It’s a big achievement, getting accepted, and I walk with my head held up higher than I have in months.
My phone rings, and I dig it out of my back pocket, answering it without even looking at the screen. “Hello?”
“Hey, man,” Dustin says. In the background, I can hear people talking, but it’s muted as though he’s in another room.
“Hey, what’s up?”
Dustin’s been at his parents’ for a few days now, helping them remodel the kitchen, so it’s just been me at the apartment.
It’s been lonely, but I’ve found things to do.
I’ve taken up knitting. I’m terrible at it, and the guys spend every minute they’re with me making fun of me, but they won’t be joking when they wear the socks I’ve been making. Warm socks save toes.
“Nothing much.”
“How’s the painting?”
“Good, actually. Though the color of the kitchen is weird. Who paints a kitchen yellow?”
I chuckle under my breath as I hop into my car and start it. “I’m assuming your mom picked it out?”
“Yeah,” he grumps. “My dad isn’t too thrilled. He won’t say anything, but it’s written all over his face. Kind of comical, actually. I’m just glad I don’t live here anymore and have to stare at it for hours on end.”
“Small victories.”
“Damn right.”
We’re silent for a moment before I ask, “So, did you call just to check in or…?”
The phone rustles before I hear a deep exhale. “No, actually. I-I don’t even know how to start this conversation.”
“Uh-oh, am I in trouble?”
He snorts. “Not this time, no.”
“Then just let it out. I’m freezing my ass off here.”
“I feel guilty,” he spits out.
I frown and rest my hand on my cold steering wheel. “About what?”
“My sister,” he breathes. “She’s not doing well, man.”
My face pales as I fear the worst. If something happened to her, I don’t know what I’d do. We may not be together anymore, and I may not be texting her anymore either, but she still means the world to me. “Did something happen to her?”
“No, no, nothing like that. She—uh—there’s no way she’s over you. That’s my only explanation for the shitshow she’s become.”
That should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. “Did she say something?”
“No, she refuses to talk about it, but she looks like shit. Barely eating. Barely talking. The laughs are limited. She’s just not her ever since…well, you know.”
“Since we broke up?”
“Yeah.”
Well, that makes two of us. I rake a hand down my face. “I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
“Text her or something, make her feel better.”
“I tried that for months. She doesn’t answer them. She doesn’t want me to talk to her, Dustin.”
There’s a long pause, and I almost think he hung up, but he blurts, “Ask her out again.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Date my sister.”
I shake my head. “It’s too late for that, and you know it.
The damage is done. Look, I have to go.” I don’t give him a moment to respond before I hang up, my chest heaving.
I could try to ask her back out, but she’ll probably say no, and I can’t take the heartache all over again.
I won’t give myself an inch when it comes to hope. I can’t. This is me…letting her go.
SIX MONTHS LATER
Jacob
How’s the internship going?
I’ve been following around the anesthesiologist all day and haven’t had a moment to answer the text that came in this morning. Now that it’s lunch, though, and I’m on my way to the cafeteria, the time belongs to me.
Me
It’s going good. How’s campus without everyone in it?
He decided to stay back and take some summer classes this summer.
Secretly, I think his new girlfriend is the reason.
He didn’t want to leave her. Yeah, he finally started dating the girl he met at the beginning of the school year.
It took him long enough, and I still haven’t met her, but I’m happy for him.
Jacob
It sucks. The parties suck. Classes suck.
Me
But the sex is good.
Jacob
Damn right.
Me
Gym when I get off?
Jacob
Yeah, dude. See ya then.
Smiling, I pocket my phone and glance up but then stop in my tracks.
Standing in the hallway is the most beautiful woman I know.
Shock takes over for seeing Avery here. She’s dressed in green scrubs and hasn’t seen me yet, busy talking with another nurse.
Did she get an internship at the same hospital as me?
Last I heard, she was having a hard time finding one, but here? What are the chances?
I raise my phone and snap a picture of her. There’s no way I can’t address this. There’s no way I can ignore the fast beat of my heart, the way my blood pumps and thumps the inside of my veins.
I glance back up at her and swallow thickly. She laughs at something the other nurse said, but I know her real laugh, and that isn’t it.
Gathering the picture into a text message, I send it, along with:
Stunning.
From where I stand, I can hear her phone beep.
She picks it up off the counter next to her and opens it up.
Her eyes go wide before she starts swiveling around, looking for me.
And when she finds me, we just stand there, staring.
The nurse beside her starts engaging in a conversation with someone on the other side of the desk, but that doesn’t stop Avery from holding my gaze.
God, she’s beautiful. Maybe a little tired looking, maybe a little thinner, but she’s just as gorgeous as I remember. I can practically smell her unique scent from here, practically hear her silky voice.
I start to walk toward her, my feet moving of their own accord.
For a moment, she doesn’t move, but then she blinks and bolts.
Walking quickly, she heads down the hall, but I’m hot on her heels.
I may have given her space, but she’s here, and I…
I just need to hear her voice. I just need a conversation with her. Anything. I’ll take anything.
She practically rips open a door and steps inside. I know what that room is. It’s a storage room, and I frown as I approach it. Without thinking, I open the door and step inside. That unique scent swirls around me, and when my eyes land on hers, a weight is lifted off my shoulders.
Tears are streaming down her face before she covers them with shaky fingers and backs up into a stack of totes that come to my waist.
“Avery,” I whisper, standing still but wanting to move toward her.
“Don’t,” she whispers back.
I stand there with her, listening to her sob into her fingers, but I can’t stand there long. I’d do anything for this girl, and if she needs comforting, that’s exactly what I’m going to give.
Taking the last few steps toward her, I gently grab her wrists and pull them away from her face. Thankfully, she doesn’t fight me. Her cheeks are red and shiny from her tears, and her eyelashes are wet.
“Avery, look at me.”
“I can’t,” she groans.
“Why did you run?” I ask after a second.
She shakes her head. “If I would have known you got an internship here, I wouldn’t have taken it.”
I flex my jaw, her words stinging a bit. “Why?”
“Because!” She throws up her hands, and they slap back at her thighs. “Being around you in last semester’s Spanish was torture, Reid. And now you’re here…”
“And so are you,” I whisper.
“We can’t do this.”
“We can have this conversation, Avery. We need to have this conversation. It’s long overdue.”
She closes her eyes tight. “I’ll quit. I’ll tell them I’m not a good fit and try to make something else work. Maybe another program-”
“You’re not quitting,” I say firmly.
Her eyes snap open. “I can’t, Reid. I can’t be around you and…”
“And what?” I press quietly.
“And…not touch you. Breathe you in. Share space with you. I can’t…I just can’t.” She sobs once, and fresh tears fall. “You have no idea how hard this is.”
“Oh, trust me, I know how hard this is.”
“You being here, right now, in the same hospital as me…my heart is breaking all over again. I don’t know if I’ll survive. I don’t even know how to breathe right.” She isn’t wrong, her breathing is close to hyperventilating.
But despite her current state, my heart sings to the fact that she still wants me. That being here is going to be hard on her because she misses me. “So all those unanswered text messages?”
She crosses her arms and looks away from me again, trying to breathe slowly through her nose. “I didn’t want to give us hope. I thought a clean break was important for my brother’s-”
“Your brother gave me his blessing a month ago.”
Her head whips back to face me. “What?”
I nod and step into her space. Our chests are nearly touching. “I thought you didn’t want me, so I didn’t tell you.”
“I- I-We-I can’t—”
I watch as her expression changes, and I try to read every one of her emotions but fail.
“There’s nothing standing between us anymore,” I add, licking my lips.
Her eyes zoom to the action. “If you want to…we don’t have to be apart anymore, Avery.
If that’s what you want. Is that what you want, baby girl? ”
She tucks her bottom lip in between her teeth as she thinks it over. “We can’t just erase the breakup. It’s not that simple. We can’t just pick up where we left off.”
I take a chance and run my knuckles over her cheek, swiping away tears. “Says who?”
She leans into the touch. “I don’t know,” she answers, and there’s so much honesty in the words that it makes me smile a little. “Society?”
“Screw society. We can do whatever we want. Tell me, Avery. What do you want?”
I watch as her throat bobs on a thick swallow.
Her voice is so small when she says, “I want to be me again. You made me feel like me when I was so lost and confused. You brought me back from a dark place in my life and showed me what true happiness could be like. I want that back. I want you, Reid. That’s all I want, everything I’ve wanted for months, and if my brother said -”
It takes everything in me to hold still during her entire speech, but now that she said she wants me back, I take her face in my hands and crush my lips down on hers.
I give her all of me. Every last drop, through one kiss.
My head spins as I drink her in, inhaling deeply before running my tongue along the seam of her lips, asking for permission.
She opens immediately, and I sweep my tongue inside, groaning at the taste of her.
A taste I didn’t realize I missed until this very moment.
We kiss for what feels like forever, the rest of the world forgotten.
There’s only us, the equipment surrounding us, and the murmurs of people walking by in the hallway outside the storage room.
Her hands around my neck tug at my hair, and my hands move from her face, down her body, and to her hips where I squeeze and pull her tighter against me.
She moans when my erection presses against her core, and I just can’t contain myself any longer. Kissing isn’t enough. I need more of her, the deepest connection we can have.
“Take off your pants.”
“What?” She blinks at me, confused.
“Take them off, Avery,” I whisper my command.
Without another word, she does as I ask, and then I’m lifting her onto the edge of the totes and settling between her thighs. I pull out my cock, rest my forehead against hers, and slide inside of her. She sucks in a breath at the same time that I groan her name.
That familiar tug of her walls sucks on my cock before I start moving. I find her lips again, kissing her more sensually, more lovingly, more meaningful. I swallow every soft mewl she makes and rock my hips against her, picking up my pace until she starts gripping me harder.
“God, I missed you,” I murmur against her lips. I grab her shirt and pull it off her body then pull on the hem of mine, slide it off, and fling it to the side.
“I missed you so much, Reid.” Her hands start roaming my body, her trailing fingers feeling heavenly on my skin.
I rest my forehead against hers and fuck her with everything I have, slamming into her and knocking the totes into the wall with every pump of my hips. Her breathing picks up pace, and I know she’s close. I’m close too—a tingle down the base of my spine—but I won’t finish until she does.
“Tell me this is forever,” she begs in between pants.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I shake my head a little. “I won’t let you get away from me again, I can promise you that.”
My words do something to her, my promise striking something within her, and then she’s tipping her head back, mouth open, as she comes.
Her pussy clamps so hard around me that I curse.
A few more pumps and I’m following right after her, hands falling beside her as I bend forward a little, my legs weak from the intense orgasm.
Our breathing is in time with each other, but she starts to hiccup a sob. I bend down to capture her gaze, tipping her chin up to meet my eyes. “Sad tears or happy ones?” I ask after a moment.
“Happy,” she croaks out.
I smile and press a kiss to her lips before I slide out and go in search of something to clean her up.
Once that’s done, I toss the cloth in the trash and help her off the totes.
We’re silent as I hold her hand while she pulls her clothes back on.
When we’re both finished, she looks up at me, sniffling.
“He really said we could be together?”
I nod. “I can call him and put him on speaker if you want.”
She places a hand on my chest. “I believe you. So what do we do now? We just pick up where we left off?”
I gather her in my arms and kiss the top of her head.
“Yes. We go back to being Avery and Reid without all the forbidden stuff. We get to kiss out in the open. I get to hold your hand in front of everyone we love. And I get to wrap you in my arms and call you mine for everyone to hear. I love you, Avery. I want a life with you. I want my future to be surrounded by you. I’m not looking to start over.
I just want to pretend the last six months, five days, and twelve hours didn’t exist.”
She snuggles into my chest, gripping my scrubs tightly. “I love you too.”
And that’s all I need as confirmation. I didn’t start out this day—hell, this month—thinking I’d ever get her back, but here she is, in my arms and telling me she loves me.
Agreeing to be my girl again. Saying yes to a future with me.
I don’t know what I did to deserve her, but I’m never, never letting her go. Never.