Give Me What You Can’t (Give Me What You Can’t/Will/Won’t #1)

Chapter 1

John

The tension pressing against his skull seemed unrelentingly endless.

He knew perfectly well that nothing he did would make it go away, either. No amount of medicine, massage, whiskey, dark rooms, or a complete eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Nothing would help.

Not this damn headache.

This was his stress, manifesting into a big ball of fuck-you pain that rested right behind the eyelids. Not to mention the throbbing ache in his shoulder. His self-diagnosis was a frozen shoulder. Which, at least for the moment, wasn’t as noticeable as the headache.

“Do you think your body is trying to tell you something, John?” the therapist asked, referring to the headache John had complained about before taking a seat on his couch.

John had chosen this therapist specifically because he worked with first-responders—doctors. He needed someone who understood, not just sympathized.

John’s issues with trusting others to help him were limited, if non-existent.

“Oh, probably,” John had replied with a forced tug of his lips, not bothering with an actual attempt at a smile.

“What do you think it’s trying to tell you?” the therapist asked.

John sucked in an impatient breath, his chest expanding, leaning back into the cream white couch. “Probably a lot, if I chose to listen.”

The therapist, an older man with light brown skin, graying stubble on his cheeks, and direct dark eyes beneath simple black glasses, shifted in his seat, seeming to contemplate before saying, “I’m getting the impression you don’t want to be here.”

John actually smiled this time, shaking his head, “No. I don’t.”

The therapist didn’t look the least bit offended. “Then why are you?”

John let out a reluctant sigh. “My charge nurse threatened to have the nurses ignore me for the rest of the month if I didn’t talk to someone.”

The therapist, Miles something, chuckled. “A serious threat, then.”

“Very serious,” John replied coolly. Any doctor worth their salt knew they couldn’t do their job without the nurses, especially in his department.

“What type of medicine do you practice?” Miles asked.

“Emergency. Trauma medicine.”

“An expertise and a trauma, in and of itself.”

John swallowed, giving a short nod. “Yeah, sure. But the rewards are there, too.”

Right, the rewards, he thought bitterly, and what are they, John?

When was the last time you actually felt something for a patient? For anything?

“Tell me about them,” Miles said.

John’s throat tightened. His patience had quickly zeroed out for this conversation. He leaned forward on his elbows, rubbing his forehead. “Look, I came here because a friend suggested it… and honestly, I’m questioning my decision. No disrespect for you, I just don’t think this is what I need.”

Miles nodded, “What do you think you need?”

He paused, wondering when the last time he asked himself that question was—outside the basics such as food, sleep, and coffee. Usually in that order.

“I dunno,” John replied. “I used to think it was family, playing house…” he hesitated, working the muscles at the back of his neck and shoulder. “But when all that ended, I realized I was…”

Lost.

So fucking lost.

Guilt washed over him, followed quickly by anger.

He should’ve wanted the same things Melissa had wanted.

His ex-wife. He should’ve wanted the life she offered him, and yet…

he didn’t. No matter how many times he tried to convince himself otherwise, and how much easier his life might’ve been if he had.

Or worse, his mind whispered.

“My ex and I separated a while ago,” John explained. “It was best for both of us. We recognized we couldn’t give each other what we wanted. She’s now happily remarried, adopting her second kid.”

John felt a wave of shame as he thought about how much Melissa had accomplished once she had finally left him.

Maybe if he slowed down with work? Maybe if he listened…?

He shook his head, refusing to get sucked back into that spiral.

What was done was done. He couldn’t go back and fix their marriage. And if he were honest with himself, he didn’t want to.

He had been so focused on meeting his family's expectations: college, relationship, career, family, that one day he woke up, five years married and drifting through his relationship with his wife and with himself. He’d lost touch with what he wanted, and then Melissa began to push for a baby and everything in his world came crashing down.

Love was not what he thought it was.

Love eventually led to something he couldn’t give.

So, he ran to the only place that felt familiar.

His job.

And he worked a lot. He was the type of doctor who valued staying up to date with the latest medical journals and research papers.

He thrived on knowledge and learning, which made him a better leader and a better attendant to his residents-in-training.

The problem was that the politics of the hospital environment were becoming more convoluted under the constant pressure from higher-ups and insurance companies, who seemed to be more in charge of his job than he was half the time.

His job was hard enough without the constant red tape, making it difficult to find it a refuge from his mind lately.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Miles asked curiously, patiently coaxing John to peel back the layers of his life.

John’s throat closed, his stiff shoulder inching closer to his ear, and he rolled it, attempting to make it settle.

Do I really want this?

To purge myself on someone’s couch?

Is this really going to help me?

John opened his mouth to reply when his phone dinged.

“Excuse me,” he murmured, pulling it out from his back pocket. He was about to turn it off when he glimpsed the number and quickly opened it.

We still on?

A flutter of excitement rushed over him. Feeling the unexpected tremble in his hands, John texted back quickly.

Yes.

He clicked off his phone and leaned back. Relief swirled at the base of his spine, all the way up to his shitty headache, which surprised him. All because Ben had texted him.

The young man had been sucking his dick for the past couple of months, and he, in return, had gotten to do the same.

And it had been exhilarating, if not fundamentally life altering.

Not for Ben himself, but for the sex. It had been fucking bliss, and exactly what he’d been missing in his forty-plus years of life on this spinning globe in the vast universe.

John’s awakening to his sexuality had been painfully slow.

It wasn’t until Melissa had left him and he had crawled long enough out of his pain that he began to recognize certain things about others…

specifically men. He noticed he looked a little longer at attractive men, far more often than he did at attractive women.

It was merely a suspicion at first that seemed to grow louder every day, making it impossible for him to continue to ignore.

He explored gay porn first, in the privacy and comfort of his home, and watched it only a handful of times.

He was unable to look away at certain men in those videos—the handsome, virile, and strong young men, who were so confident, so claiming of their desires that it left him breathless and harder than a damn sledgehammer.

He felt ashamed the first few times he watched. But the release and the relief he experienced afterward washed away some of the shame, leaving behind only faint traces.

It wasn’t until he met Ben, a young, handsome paramedic who liked to brush shoulders with John a little too often and hold his gaze for a little too long. One night, Ben made a direct pass at him, right outside the med bay with no one else around, and John, terrified, said yes.

And thank God he had.

The last few weeks had confirmed the theory that he desired men, even though he was initially awkward and nervous with Ben, feeling like a teenager all over again in that vulnerable phase of self-discovery.

John wasn’t interested in Ben beyond sexual exploration, and Ben wasn’t interested in commitment either, so it worked out well for them.

The problem was their schedules, which were getting busier and harder to pin down for the night of mutual relief.

Ben missed the last one, and John was growing restless.

God, I am so fucking ready.

He nearly smiled. His stomach tingled in anticipation and his cock twitched eagerly to life at the mere thought of having sex with a man.

Because this would be his first time taking that next step beyond foreplay.

Ben would pop his gay cherry, and John couldn’t fucking wait.

“I appreciate you taking the time to see me, Miles,” John said, deciding in that instant that he’d rather go home and get ready for his hook-up later tonight than spend another twenty minutes talking about nothing important.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for therapy yet,” he said, and stood. “Bill me for the full hour, please.”

Miles also got to his feet, a cool understanding in his gaze.

Every good physician knows, just like a therapist, you can’t force treatment onto an unwilling patient.

Miles paused, hand on the doorknob of his office door. “Can I say something, just an observation…?”John stiffened, chin lifting, and nodded.

“Our professions, that of healers and givers, can be demanding work. We’re not supermen, nor are we perfect by any means.

I can only imagine the truly incredible burden you feel with literal lives on the line.

The pressure from others to perform and to give.

I suppose I simply want to say, we are not limitless creatures, we’re not supposed to be.

It is okay to stop every once in a while. ”

John nodded politely. “I’ll take that under consideration. Thank you again for your time.”

“Another?”

“Yeah, but only if you make it as good as the last one.”

The bartender, a handsome twenty-something man with a pretty smile, gave him a flippant smirk, “I’ll do my best.”

John paused, thinking about those words and how often he said them to his own patients.