Chapter 20
Erin stands in front of Mia's door with one hand flat against the wood and the other braced on the wall.
On her way up from the restaurant, she ran through a thousand versions of what she'd say when she walked in, because—much as she'd like to—she can't forget what happened earlier or pretend it didn't. It happened, and they need to talk about it.
The problem is that if she was already confused before, she's completely lost now.
Everything tangles together in a mind too numb to sort through it all: what they did, what she felt, the reasons it shouldn't have happened, the consequences she imagines it will have, what she thinks she knows Mia wants from her—and on top of all that, the external factors, the age gap, the gulf between their lives.
Every time she entertains the possibility of giving this a chance, if that's even what Mia wants, so many reasons against it crowd in that, for the first time in her life, she doesn't know what to do.
And for someone as structured as Erin, that's deeply destabilizing.
It shuts down her logic, and she can't afford that right now.
She decides to knock twice before someone walks down the hall and finds her standing there like she's lost. She hears no footsteps on the other side, no voice telling her to come in, and when almost a minute has passed she considers using the key card the hotel always gives her at check-in—but just as she's reaching into her pocket, the door opens and the singer appears on the other side.
Erin takes a step back on pure instinct, overwhelmed, because she is absolutely not ready for this. Her mind hasn't had time to process what happened between them, and now there's a knot in her throat and a throbbing between her legs that she knows she can't let herself act on.
"Hey," Mia's voice is soft, almost timid.
Erin nods and walks inside when Mia steps aside to let her pass. The click of the door closing behind her stops her cold, a knot of anxiety in her stomach eating her alive from the inside.
"How are you feeling? Is the pain gone?" she asks, emptying her lungs in one slow breath, trying to focus on anything other than the way Mia is watching her with those wide blue eyes.
"Yeah." The singer touches the back of her neck and shifts her weight from foot to foot, nervous.
They've stalled in the entryway. Erin doesn't dare take another step, and Mia doesn't know whether to ask her to come sit on the couch or open the door again and let her run, because that seems to be what the doctor needs right now.
"Good. I'll check your vitals now and come back to see you after—"
"Don't do that," Mia cuts her off.
Erin feels every muscle in her body tighten beyond her control.
Of course she doesn't want to do this—she wants to sit down and talk like the adult she is, but she doesn't know how to do that right now, and she doesn't know how to tell Mia it can't happen again without sounding harsh.
Because that is what she wants, isn't it?
"Do what?" she asks, holding steady under the beam of those two blue eyes burning into her skin.
"Pretend this didn't happen. If you don't want to talk about it, say so—but don't act like it wasn't real," Mia says.
"I'm not pretending anything." Erin slips into survival mode, protecting herself the only way she knows how. "It happened and it was a mistake and—"
"Why was it a mistake?" the singer asks.
Erin exhales sharply. This is hard enough, and Mia interrupting her is making her more anxious by the second.
"For a lot of reasons, but let's start with the most important one: I'm your doctor. The only thing that can exist between us is a professional relationship, so I can do my job properly."
"I'm not asking you for a relationship, Dooley. Actually, I haven't asked you for anything."
Mia stops and digs her hands into her hair, pulling it back into something between a ponytail and a messy bun. She hasn't asked for anything—but she wants to, and the frustration is palpable.
"You and I have a major communication problem," Erin says.
"We can't talk about anything without it turning into a fight over something stupid, and I'm not going to make this another one.
Let's put it to rest right here. I know I'm the one who started it and I'm sorry—I promise it won't happen again. "
A sharp, sarcastic breath escapes Mia, who lifts her gaze and bites her lips, furious.
"Why do we have to put it to rest?" she asks, frustrated. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way you were gasping and moving against me—I think you wanted what happened just as much as I did."
Erin feels dizzy. Her legs have started to tremble, desire pooling low in her belly, and there's a desperate throbbing between her thighs that she can neither stand nor explain.
She doesn't want this, doesn't want a relationship with a singer who picks women out of a crowd after a show and sleeps with them because she can't sleep—she doesn't want to become another one, a distraction for Mia while she's on tour, a body she can reach for whenever she feels like it and grow tired of the moment someone more interesting catches her eye.
That's always been her perception of Mia: a singer with magnetic stage presence who doesn't commit to anyone and uses her fame to hook up.
Erin can't be another notch, doesn't want to turn into that, especially now that she's starting to feel things she shouldn't—and she doesn't want to fly home to New York with a broken heart when the tour is over.
"I like you, goddammit." Mia decides to play the honesty card and put herself out there to convince Erin she means it—but the doctor isn't having it. "We can have both: a professional relationship and a personal one that starts slow, at your pace. I can—"
"That's not what I want."
Erin's sharp answer hits Mia like a wall. She stops talking instantly and goes very still, staring at her.
"We're in different places, Mia." Mia's chest tightens when she hears her name, because she's longed every day for Erin to say it again—just not like this. "You're very young and you live a life that doesn't fit mine."
Erin doesn't recognize herself when she speaks; she doesn't even know what the hell she's saying, because it sounds like a half-baked excuse even to her own ears—but she can't stop.
She needs to protect herself from this, from what she'll feel when her contract ends if she doesn't get her desire under control now.
"And what does fit your life?" Mia's eyes are bright, and Erin feels her throat close.
"I don't know," she hears herself say—and realizes it's the only honest thing she's said so far.
She doesn't know what she wants, because nothing in her past has ever given her a template for what a relationship should or shouldn't look like.
Her romantic life can only be measured by how much she didn't feel during the few dates she had with women who never became anything more.
This is new, and unfamiliar, and she's so frightened that she doesn't know how to navigate it without getting hurt.
The fact that the first woman to make her feel this intensely is a singer who travels the country for months at a time doesn't help; it fills her with insecurity and an irrational fear that makes her act against herself, turning away from what she wants because she doesn't know what to expect if she tries to build something with someone like Mia Wilder—a girl covered in tattoos with a lonely past that looks a lot like her own.
The singer crosses her arms over her chest for a few seconds and drops her head, staring at her bare feet while she tries to put her thoughts in order.
She doesn't understand any of it. She knows the doctor is attracted to her, because nobody who doesn't feel something for you kisses you the way Erin kissed her a few hours ago.
Erin was gone—she let go of control for a few seconds, and the result was that they almost ended up against the wall of the bus.
Mia can't figure out what part of her Erin is rejecting, but it's clear there's something she doesn't like or won't accept, and thinking about it hurts so much she just wants to rip her own heart out and stomp on it until it stops beating and stops hurting.
"Okay," she whispers, still looking at the floor. "I guess you can't fight a wall. I want this and you don't, and there's nothing I can do about that."
Mia goes quiet, as if she hasn't quite finished but can't find the words—or doesn't even know how to say what she's feeling.
What Erin sees is that she's in pain, that her rejection is genuinely hurting her, and that realization is so distressing that Erin seriously starts to wonder whether she should leave the tour.
"I don't want this, Mia," she starts, taking a step toward her as the singer looks up with her hands tucked under her arms. "I don't want you to suffer. I don't want either of us to."
"Very noble of you, but I don't think you can stop it."
Erin blinks and starts to wonder which of them is actually the more mature one—and realizes she's been judging Mia from the beginning without ever really knowing her.
She decided early on that this girl only thinks about women and having a good time.
She's spent a month on tour with her and never once tried to have a conversation that had nothing to do with her medical chart or the schedule.
She's the one who kept her at arm's length from the start, protecting herself from she doesn't even know what, because that's what she's always done: put up walls, because she's never had anyone to protect her or care about her.
"You're right, I can't." She goes still, looking at Mia as if she's seeing her clearly for the first time—and right now, Mia looks nothing like a girl who only wants to take her to bed.
"Grab your notebook." Mia holds out her right arm, and Erin takes a moment to understand she's asking her to do what she came to do and then go.
She reaches out and wraps her fingers around Mia's wrist to take her pulse.
Her skin is warm and impossibly soft, and Erin feels thrown.
She feels like she's just opened her eyes and is seeing Mia—not the singer, but the woman.
She starts counting, and the act of focusing on that clears her head a little.
She lets go, pulls out her notebook, jots down the vitals, and tucks it back in her pocket.
"Give me a little breathing room, Mia," Erin says suddenly, in that quiet tone that always disarms the singer.
"Breathing room for what?" she asks, confused.
"I don't know," the doctor admits. "To figure myself out, maybe."
Mia watches her for a few seconds. There are a couple of loose strands falling across the right side of Erin's face that Mia doesn't want to brush away, because that careless look doubles her attractiveness and contrasts sharply with a woman who apparently overthinks everything.
What Mia wants is to put a hand on the back of her neck and press her mouth to hers the way they did this morning, but more than anything, what she needs is for Erin Dooley to make up her mind and stop blowing hot and cold.
"And what am I supposed to do during that time? Wait for you to figure things out? Wait for you to decide I'm not worth it? That I'm not enough, or not what you want?"
"I don't know, Wilder," the doctor says, overwhelmed.
"Back to Wilder?" Mia lets out an exasperated breath, and Erin gets it—she'd lose patience with someone as uncertain as herself too.
"You'll always be Wilder to me, even if you're also Mia."
The singer isn't quite sure how to take that, but her body seems to know exactly what to do with it, because her heart just lurched, and she's certain that if Erin took her pulse right now, it would be double what it was before.
"I can give you that breathing room. Do whatever you need to do—but I'm not putting my life on hold, Erin. Not for someone who kisses me and then shuts me out."
"I'm not asking you to put anything on hold." Erin touches her bun and pulls out a loose strand of hair, then lets it go before she can tug it. "I would never ask you to stop being yourself. Just let me figure out who the hell I am, because I don't think I know."
It's the most honest thing she's ever said out loud, and hearing it in her own voice sends a jolt of anxiety straight to her gut.
She knew who she was when she was taking care of her sister.
She knew when she was taking care of her mother.
She knows it in the hospital, caring for her patients, and she knows it when she's caring for Mia—but without any of those four things, she feels completely lost, because she has spent her entire life playing the same role for different people.
Now that Mia is offering her something else—her time, her attention, her warmth, without asking for anything in return—Erin doesn't know how to act.
"Okay," Mia whispers, her throat tight, because she has never stood in front of anyone who seemed as vulnerable to her as Erin does right now—not even her friend Danny when he used to fall asleep on the couch in Noah's garage and curl up like even in his sleep he was still afraid. "Do what you need to."
The ease in Mia's voice settles something in Erin, because she's exhausted by always being the one who creates the tension between them.
"Thank you. I'll see you at the meeting this afternoon. If the pain comes back—"
"I'll call you, don't worry," Mia says, and Erin turns and walks out.
The doctor enters her room with her eyes stinging, sinking into her own dread as it hits her that she's about to turn thirty-eight and not only hasn't she really lived—she doesn't even know who Erin Dooley is.
She picks up her phone with trembling fingers and calls Barry, because she needs to talk to someone who won't look her in the eyes and see the panic she's feeling.
But it goes to voicemail, so she wipes her eyes, drinks two glasses of water, and steps back out into the hall with a small, wondering smile on her lips—because since she joined this tour, she no longer only has Barry.
She also has Helen Casterley, or Nell to her friends.