Chapter 18
Wyatt
Jin pushed the dry turkey meat on his plate, a grim line tugging down his mouth. “You’re really doing this…?”Wyatt glanced up from his dinner plate and finished the bite of mashed potatoes in his mouth. “Yeah.”
“What can I do to make you stay?”
Surprised, Wyatt tilted his chin back. “You care that much?”
“Of course. I may have avoidant attachment tendencies that make it look like I don’t care, but I do. According to my therapist, anyway.”
Wyatt snorted a laugh. It was the first genuine laugh he had all week since the incident. “Flight’s already booked.”
“You don’t owe them anything.”
“It’s my decision.”
“It’s not. It’s heartbreak deciding for you. And it's stupid.”
“I’ll come back,” Wyatt reassured, knowing it was true.
After the attack at the hospital, he realized two things.
One, he couldn’t keep ignoring his father.
He needed to confront his past, or else he would never be free from it.
And he needed to be, because he felt contentment, peace even, whenever he was with John.
Which then led him to the next epiphany, when John had come to his rescue.
His capable, calm captain, ready to protect and defend, had without hesitation been willing to take on the knife-wielding maniac for him.
Wyatt, in that instant, realized that his love was fiercely fucking protective.
Seeing John put himself in just as much danger terrified him because he couldn’t imagine a world where John didn’t exist. So, Wyatt had done the only thing he could to keep the attention on him.
He showed the man with the knife pressed against his throat his fear, and that was enough to snap him, just like he probably snapped with his elderly mother when she showed fear toward him.
Predators always responded to fear. But Wyatt hadn’t been fast enough and had felt the blade knick his throat as he jumped out of the way.
The next thing he had seen was John on top of the man, holding the blade, his expression almost unrecognizable.
He knew John didn’t have a violent bone in his body, and yet, he should’ve. The most sensitive people, the most loving and loyal, could also be the most violent. Their empathy made them understand and feel everything so intensely. It was the reason Wyatt had fallen so fast and hard for him.
Wyatt had breathed a sigh of relief when John tossed the blade aside.
No one had ever come to his defense like that.
No one had ever bothered. Not even Mateo, when his father kicked him out.
Everything happened so quickly that Wyatt didn’t remember passing out, only that when he came to, Samuels and John were standing over him.
And seeing the emotion beautifully strained on John’s handsome face, all Wyatt could feel was love.
He had become pure love, motivated and propelled on a single, clear emotion: need.
A needy urgency to wrap his arms around the man that he loved, hold him close, and be utterly engulfed by him.
Nothing else mattered.
No one else in the room mattered.
What he hadn’t expected was John’s reaction…
But maybe he should have. He should’ve known he’d run. He should’ve fucking known…
His throat tightened with anger, and he cleared it, refusing to stew in the rejection again.
“Which is code for never,” Jin grumbled. “Oh my god, you are the worst version of a Taylor Swift song right now.”
The buzzer to their apartment pinged and Jin rolled his eyes, “For Christ's sake, . Don’t you ever stop?”
He pushed the button, answering it, “Yes?”
“Oh, hi—I’m hoping that Lawson is home—Wyatt Lawson.”
His eyebrows arched, recognizing the voice over the intercom. “Steph?”
Jin glanced back at him, “Do you want me to let her in?”
He nervously sprang to his feet, hand grazing over his overly whiskered jawline and unkempt hair, wondering if he had time to change his two-day-old shirt.
“Yeah,” he finally said with a resigned sigh.
Jin hit the button, letting her in. A few minutes later, there was a knock on their apartment door. Wyatt answered, greeted with a kind, warm smile from the day-shift nurse.
“Hey, kid,” Steph said, looking genuinely pleased to see him. “Sorry to burst in on ya, but I heard you're leavin’, and I wanted to talk before you left.”
The only person he had told was Reyes. And knowing Reyes, he probably told…
“Ava tell you?” he asked irritably.
Ava knew about John and him, which was entirely Wyatt’s fault.
He blamed it on the rush of adrenaline and crazed-induced love coursing through his veins, polluting his brain.
He’d been idiotically careless. But so far, Ava had kept her lips firmly sealed.
He only hoped it would stay that way. He didn’t care what happened to him. He cared about what happened to John.
“Our talented gossip queen of the ED?” Steph drawled knowingly. “No, not this time.”
If Steph had known he was leaving, John might have found out, too.
He had submitted a time-off request with an unknown return date, mostly because he wasn’t sure what his father and aunts might need from him once he went back home.
“Come in,” Wyatt stepped back, waving her inside. “This is my roommate, Jin.”
“Hi,” Jin smiled, pushing his sparkling blue glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Steph’s smile broadened, “How come I haven’t met you sooner? Lawson, you could’ve brought him to the Hot Dog Palace with us!”
“Oh, I’m also a gossip queen,” Jin said with a dismissive wave. “Wyatt doesn’t trust me to keep his secrets, especially when liquor is involved.”
“Well, we don’t have that many secrets in the ED,” Steph declared.
“Because of Ava,” Wyatt countered.
“Because we’re a family. We watch out for each other.”
“How did you know where I live?” he asked, realizing he had never told anyone where he lived, not even John.
Steph shrugged off her coat and hung it on the vintage coat stand Jin had picked out on one of his many antique-thrifting adventures. “Oh, honey, when you’ve been around confidential files long enough, you discover all kinds of things. Just don’t tell HIPAA I'm here.”
“I like you,” Jin remarked. “Drink? We have beer, wine, and pre-made cocktails in a can.”
“Huh, that sounds lovely. What do ya got, bartender?”
After several minutes of informing Steph of the value of margaritas in a can, she sat at the dining table with Wyatt while Jin gave them some privacy and sauntered off to his room.
Steph leaned back into the small wooden chair, sipping her canned margarita. “You look… like shit.”
He frowned, nodding. He knew exactly how great he looked because Jin mentioned it daily. He hadn’t shaved or slept much this week. By day three, he had finally stopped calling and texting John. He was a certified mess, strung out with a broken heart.
He declared his love to the literal man of his dreams and was met with silence.
He wasn’t sure what was worse—a Nazi wielding a knife at him or John’s refusal to pick up his phone.
“How’s the arm?” she asked.
He pulled back the white sleeve of his shirt, revealing the healing wound with the fresh bandage. “Good.”
“Good,” she nodded. “So, you’re leaving us?”
“Yeah. But I’ll be back.”
She hummed, scrutinizing him. “This doesn’t have anything to do with what happened, does it?
Cause right after, Tanya and John talked.
We now have more security and hired three more nurses.
Workin’ on a few more doctors, too. Walsh will finally have another consistent night-shift doctor on rotation, and Samuels can put in for vacation, if he ever leaves. ”
“That’s great,” he said, attempting to sound enthusiastic.
“So, if it ain’t from what happened, how come your paperwork didn’t have a return date? You’re a good doctor, Lawson. We need you.”
Wyatt’s heart sank, and then once more, the anger that had been so easily at the surface lately rose in his chest and he glared at her.
He had submitted his FMLA paperwork to the hospital through Steph, who insisted on doing it for him when he asked where to submit it.
He knew he was running. But he didn’t know what else to do.
His Aunts were calling daily, and his father probably wouldn’t make it to Christmas.
He couldn’t control John. He couldn’t control his anger these days, either.
But he could control his decision to go home.
Wyatt leaned back, arms folded over his chest. “I just need some time.”
She nodded, “Yeah, I get it. The job's intense, but I didn’t take you for someone scared of a bit of pain, Lawson.”
“I don’t think I was scared enough,” he admitted, thinking of John.
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head, refusing to elaborate. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Oh, honey, yes, I do. That’s what good pseudo mamas do. We notice when things happen to our kids. And I know something's happened. In fact, I know that the day you left the hospital, Dr. Donnelly’s good mood also left us.”
“Sorry to hear that,” he muttered.
“Yeah, me too. Johnny’s a good man. Sensitive,” her dark brown eyes impaled him from across the table, as though looking for something. “I bet if you asked him, he could tell you the number of lives he’s lost, but not the ones he saved.”
Wyatt rubbed his temple, fighting the burn in his belly. Steph didn’t have to give him more reasons to love John.
“He’s never risked getting close to anyone.
Even his ex-wife said so the last time I saw her.
Johnny pushes people away because he’s scared.
He sees the suffering, the grief of his patients and their families, and denies it to himself.
But the job can’t love him back, no matter how much he pours into it. ”
“It’s never enough,” Wyatt said softly.
She nodded. “You are, though.”
He stilled.
“I know,” Steph said simply. “I blame it entirely on old age that I didn’t figure it out sooner.”
Jin’s voice rang out from the other room, clearly eavesdropping. “Queen, you’re gorgeous, and don’t look a day over 40!”
She laughed, “Thanks, honey.”
“How?” Wyatt asked.
“Johnny told me.”
Stunned, he sat back.
“It took about half a bottle of whiskey and Samuels and me berating him, but eventually he folded like laundry and couldn’t stop talkin’ about ya. I’ve never heard him talk like that about anyone. Not even Melissa.”
“Melissa?”
“His ex-wife.”
John never really talked about that past life—the one where he was married to a woman. And yet, he had. He told him that he had buried himself and all that he was after his brother’s death, trying to cope and be something that he wasn’t.
“I shouldn’t have been surprised Samuels already knew,” Steph chuckled, “That man was a bit too excited to hear that Johnny and his favorite cowboy were an item. Samuels likes you—so do I. So does Johnny.”
Wyatt didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. His throat had all but clammed up, and his bleeding heart was hemorrhaging in his chest. John had told his friends about them—whatever they were, he still didn’t know because they hadn’t talked since the attack at the hospital.
He gritted his teeth, jaw flexing.
Steph took a long sip from her canned cocktail. “You know, I’m a bit disappointed in you, Lawson. I thought you were more of a fighter than this.”
He tilted his head back as though she sucker punched him.
“What happened to the fearless cowboy running that horse like the devil was chasing him?”
He exhaled. “He grew up.”
“Or, maybe he got cold feet. We all do. But that doesn’t mean we don’t step back into that arena.
You do it every day when you walk into the emergency department.
Gladiators is what we are. Johnny gave up for a while there.
And every single one of us in that department felt the change in him when you took notice.
You’re a tough son of a bitch. You took on a knife-wielding asshole and made it out alive. ”
He leaned forward, baring his soul. “He doesn’t want me.”
Steph didn’t even blink. “Bullshit.”
“Doesn’t make it any less true.”
Steph shook her head, disappointed, eyes flickering to the window over Wyatt’s shoulder.
“Melissa really did a number on him,” she raked her fingers through her thick dark hair, sighing.
“They tried for years to have a kid. Painted a nursery and everything. Their therapist told them to create the space as though the baby were coming. And it never did. It devastated them both, but especially him. He couldn’t give her what she wanted.
And I think…” Steph’s eyes watered, but the tears never fell.
“I think Johnny lost himself during that. I think he believed that if he gave Melissa a baby, it would be enough. It would be enough to make up for the lack of love in their marriage. Because he didn’t love her.
If he truly loved that woman, he wouldn’t have been working sixty, sometimes eighty hours a week. ”
Steph drummed her fingers on her can. “The divorce was messy. It took another couple of years for Johnny to come out to me. But he still chose the safety of his job over finding a partner. I don’t blame him for it. Any one of us would’ve done the same thing…”
The swift pang of grief filled him, imagining the pain John must have endured. The loneliness of it.
“I love him,” Steph breathed, emotion tightening around her lips. “But he’s a fuckin’ idiot if he thinks that this job is better than the people around him who care. And maybe, I was hoping, a fearless kid like you would help remind him of that fact.”
She abruptly stood and pulled out a piece of paper from her purse, tossing it on the table.
“Sorry, not sorry, Lawson.”
He opened it and saw it was his FMLA paperwork, meant for Tanya.
“I gave Johnny—and you—another day. Figure this out, and you'd better be back to work on Monday, or I swear to God, I will drive to Arizona myself and finish what that truck started and drive you off a cliff. Now go save my best friend from his self-destructive bullshit.”