Reed smiles at them again, and if he doesn’t stop flashing that thing around, it’s going to get real obvious how I—and my dick—feel about the good-looking doctor.
“Of course we’ve met before,” my brother, Mason, says with a grin. Reaching out to shake Reed’s hand, he turns to the rest of the family. “Don’t you guys remember? Reed patched me up the morning I fell off the ladder.” He turns back to Reed. “I guess you’re this family’s ER doctor of choice.”
They both grin, and I have to conceal a smile as Jackson leans in closer to Mason, slipping an arm around his waist.Territorial much?
I let the group chat amongst themselves for a minute while I slide back into the room, where Grace is sitting up in the bed, holding the baby and looking almost back to normal.
Her eyes are glassy as she reaches for my hand with a smile. “Dyl, thank you so much.” She looks down at the little human in her arms. He’s wrapped up in a soft-looking hospital blanket with a teeny little cap on his teeny little head.
“Do you want to hold him?” she asks, and I swallow.
“Um, no, that’s okay, thanks.” I know that’s not the expected answer, but I’m so overwhelmed right now I can’t fucking imagine doing one more thing—including holding my new nephew.
She looks me squarely in the eye, and I know she gets it. “No problem, Dyl. This is alot. You’re probably pretty antsy.” She’s smiling as she looks down at the baby in her arms, gently running the back of her fingers across his little cheek, and I feel my own eyes start to fill. When she looks up at me, it’s like she realizes the emotions in here are starting to get to be way too much, so she shoots me a wink and gives me a cheesy grin. “Now that everyone’s here, why don’t you take off, and I’ll see you later once things have calmed down?”
God, I love my sister.
I nod, but I have the strong feeling that I need to say or do something else. I know my sister understands me, and she won’t be offended if I simply take off without another word, but instead, I lean over and plant an awkward kiss on her cheek. “Thanks, Gracie,” I whisper. “Congratulations. I love you, little sis.”
Even though I’m totally overwhelmed and the noise in my head is threatening to overtake me, I know how much that will mean to her. When I get down to her level, she surprises me by wrapping an arm around my neck and holding on tightly for a few seconds. “I love you too, big brother,” she whispers, letting me go quickly.
I can’t meet her eyes, but I force a smile. “Okay. Um. Bye,” I say, back into full awkward mode, and in my peripheral vision, I see her mouth curve up in a smile.
“Bye, Dyl. Go home and go back to bed if you can. You can let the rest of those yahoos in here on your way out.” Her eyes are sparkling, and I’m so relieved to see that my sister is mostly back to herself. I guess even the traumatic experience of nearly delivering her first kid in my work pickup doesn’t keep her down for long.
Turning to walk through the curtain at the foot of her bed, I breathe a quiet sigh of relief. Thank fuck I can get the hell out of here for a while. This whole thing has been so unexpected I’m still reeling, and I’m starting to feel the telltale signs of being overstimulated. My skin feels tight, and I have the irresistible urge to move. I need to get outside and go for a run right now before things take a turn for the worse.
I’m walking out the door when Mason catches up to me. “Hey, Dyl. You doing okay? This was a lot, huh?”
I don’t know how I ended up with siblings who are so understanding about the fact that I’m wired differently than they are, but I lucked out. At the moment though, I’m pretty close to the end of my rope, and I’ve got nothing left to give Mason. “Yeah,” I say stiffly. “I’m gonna head out.”
“Okay, man. I’ll text you later.”
I know he’s aware that I’m fresh out of mental bandwidth right now, and I don’t even have the energy to talk to him. He gets it.
Walking out of the hospital, I realize I never made it back outside to move the truck from where I left it, squeezed in beside an ambulance. I throw out a little thank-you to the universe that the damn thing didn’t get towed because I am in no place to handle that right now. I decide to move the truck to a better spot and then go for a run around the hospital grounds to try and settle my frayed nerves before heading home.
Heat and tension creep up my spine, oozing over my skin as I work to push against the vicious black cloud of anxiety in the back of my brain. Too much has happened already today, too many disruptions in my comfortably structured life, and it chips away at me. It crowds out rational thought, making me feel unprotected and vulnerable.
Despite the cool morning and the damp mist hanging in the air, I ditch my jacket in the truck, grab my keys, and take off running. The hospital grounds are extensive, beautiful in the gray light as it filters through the clouds as if to showcase the lush greenery around me. Even with the comforting scenery and the familiarity of my own feet tattooing a soft rhythm on the damp path, a half hour passes before my mind settles, before I can hear more than white noise, before the impending overload is shut down and my body and brain start working together again. At least, as much as they ever do. With my heart pounding for another—better—reason and the sense of fear and “too much, too fast, too wrong” retreating, I finally let myself slow down. I’ll give myself a few minutes before heading back to the truck and heading home.
In a clearing just across the path under an enormous fir tree sits a bench that’s too inviting to pass up, so I use the excuse of doing some stretches to cool down and take a few minutes to relax there. Given how early in the day it is, I might be able to get my schedule back on track. If that happens, there’s a chance I might, hopefully, be able to sleep tonight.
I get to the bench and start doing a few stretches that don’t involve having to sit on the ground when I notice a figure walking toward me.Fucking hell.It’s the hot doctor.I knew who he was the second I saw him earlier, but I don’t think he recognized me, at least until I told him Grace is my sister, not my wife. I’m kind of embarrassed about sending the ER staff that big gift basket after Mason’s ER visit last fall. I never do stuff like that, but this man does something weird to me. I feel like he’s seeing right inside my head when he looks at me. It’s unsettling, but strangely, I like it. I went out on a limb and sent that gift basket, but I signed the card from our whole family, so he couldn’t have known it was me. And while he had given me his number if I had any questions for him about Mason, I couldn’t think of any plausible reason to use it, so I just let it go. But I didn’t forget about him. In fact, he still appears in certain fantasies of mine when I choose to indulge.
Shit, shit, shit. I’m going to have to make small talk, at least for a few minutes so he doesn’t think I’m a total asshole. Taking a second to gauge my mental state, it turns out I’m feeling a lot less agitated than I was before my run, so I should be fine.
He walks over to the bench, startling when he sees me like he hasn’t noticed me standing there in plain sight while he’s been walking right toward me.
I plaster a smile on my face, steeling myself for small talk.Awkward stranger modeengaged.
Chapter 5
REED
Oh,forgod’ssake,how did I not see Dylan Campbell standing right there? He looks like he’s doing a post-run stretch beside the little bench where I like to hide out when I steal away from the ER for a quick smoke.
I know, I know. I’m a doctor, and smoking is gross, and I should know better and all that. It’s true, smokingisgross, and Idoknow better. But I justify it by telling myself I don’t smoke as much as I used to, and given that I’m prone to other more dangerous and destructive vices, smoking is the least harmful. Which should tell you a little bit about my choice in vices.