by Sarah Fine
His jaw ridged with tension. “One moment, please.” He strode into his bedroom and emerged holding a crumpled mass of bloody sheets and clothes. He dropped them at her feet. “Am I imagining this? Do you think I’m stupid?”
His voice was harsh, both with anger and a hint of hurt. Cacy opened her mouth and closed it again. “N-no, of course not. I just—”
“Eli, I’m headed out . . . Oh.” Galena stood in the hall, staring with wide eyes at the pile of bloody laundry at Cacy’s feet. She cleared her throat and backed up unsteadily.
Eli cursed under his breath and rushed over to her. He wrapped his arms around her, gave her a tight hug, and escorted her past the kitchen, blocking her view of it with his body. As he guided her to the front door, he whispered reassurances Cacy strained to hear.
After kissing Galena on the forehead and telling her to have a good day, Eli stalked back into the kitchen and scooped the clothes and sheets from the floor. “Galena’s sensitive,” he muttered as he tossed the bundle into his bedroom.
“She’s afraid of blood? Isn’t she some sort of doctor?”
“She’s a researcher. She doesn’t work with people—I mean, patients. She works with test tubes and centrifuges and a computer she’s named Danny.” He stared at the floor for a few seconds, then lifted his eyes to Cacy’s and closed the distance between them. “Now. No more distractions. I have some questions.”
Cacy’s heartbeat kicked into a dangerous little rhythm as he towered over her, and she wasn’t sure whether it was her desperation to escape or her body’s reaction to being this close to him. She folded her arms over her chest. “I have trouble thinking when I’m not wearing pants.”
Eli laughed, a deep, husky sound, and took a few steps back. “I guess we have that in common. I also have trouble thinking when you’re not wearing pants.”
He retrieved a pair of sweats from Galena’s room and tossed them down the hallway. She caught them clumsily and stared at them. Had he just admitted he was attracted to her? Could she distract him and avoid his questions? She was well aware he wasn’t dumb. But he was a man. And . . . Cacy hadn’t touched one in three years. With her last boyfriend, she’d been young and naive. She hadn’t considered how fragile regular humans were, how easily their hearts could stop beating. She hadn’t even contemplated how it would feel if she had to guide his soul—until it happened. But since then, she hadn’t been willing to risk getting attached and having to push her love through a door she didn’t plan to walk through for a long time. She hadn’t met someone yet who was worth that risk.
Her fingers balled into fists around the sweatpants as she stared at Eli. This wasn’t about attachment. She wouldn’t let it be. It was about escape. Pure, mindless escape from things she couldn’t face right now.
She let the pants fall from her hands and walked slowly toward him. The friendly smile on his face faltered, and his eyes flickered with uncertainty.
Cacy stood in front of him and slid her hand up under his shirt, over the hard ridges of muscle on his belly and chest. He inhaled but didn’t stop her. She watched his pulse beat at his throat and pressed herself close, smiling as the thick length of his cock grew rigid against her.
“Maybe now’s not the time for thinking,” she murmured.
Eli’s fingers slid along her cheek and down her neck, sending shivers to all the right places. He nudged her chin up with his fingers so she was looking at him and lowered his head until their foreheads were touching. He closed his eyes and brushed his thumb across her mouth. Cacy put her arm around his waist and ground slowly against him, shaking with the desire building inside her, feeling his body respond, needing him to give up the fight, needing to feel his bare skin against hers.
Eli let out a slow breath through parted lips. Cacy tilted her head up, craving his kiss, hungry for a taste of him. Instead, he bent down and scooped her from the floor. Cacy wrapped her arms around his neck as he carried her through the living room. She buried her face in the heated skin of his throat, closing her eyes as her heart raced. This wasn’t about distracting him. This was about distracting herself. Right now, she didn’t want to think. She only wanted to feel. To forget everything else for a while.
Eli lowered her legs to the floor, the warmth of his touch sliding along her calves and thighs before disappearing. Cacy opened her eyes. They weren’t in his bedroom. They were at the front door. He took her face in his hands. She flinched at the diamond-hard glint in his eyes.
“I don’t know what kind of game this is,” he said. “Maybe you’re trying to get me fired, or maybe castrated by your brother and the rest of your paramedic buddies. Maybe you think I let my dick do the thinking for me, that I would give up my shot in this city for a fuck.” She winced at the harshness of his words and tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he leaned closer. “Maybe you think you can make me forget what I saw. Or maybe,” he said, his tone softening as he stroked her cheek with his thumb, “you’re messed up inside by what happened to your father, and you need to think about anything but him. But whatever you’re thinking, I know very well this means nothing to you.”
She looked away, unable to meet his eyes.
He sighed. “All right. I’m not playing.” His arms fell away from her, leaving her cold in the humid air of the apartment. A few seconds later, he pressed the sweatpants into her hands as she stared at the floor. His voice betrayed his exhaustion as he said, “Are you okay to get home by yourself? Can you call yourself a car?”
Cacy shook her head. No way would she call a company car. The driver would almost certainly run squealing to Rylan or Aislin that he’d picked up Cacy, wearing someone else’s clothes, in a low-rent part of town. She considered trying to use her Scope to get home, but that required a level of concentration she didn’t have right now.
“There’s a bus stop right at the curb.”
She nodded, focusing her attention on the chipped, peeling paint at the lower corner of the front door. With trembling hands, she yanked the sweatpants on as Eli walked back to the kitchen counter. In her entire life, she’d never felt so ashamed.
He returned to open the door. “Are you going to work tonight?”
“Yeah,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Good,” he said quietly. “Maybe we can get a fresh start.”
She raised her head and looked at him. He gave her a sad smile. Then he took her hand and pressed a bus token into her palm.
“Thanks, Eli. I-I’m sorry.”
He nodded, inscrutable. It was too much. Aislin was right. Cacy was a screwup. And today she’d outdone herself. She’d exposed the Ferrys’ secrets by losing her Scope, and now she’d hurt someone who had only been kind to her since the moment she’d met him. Cacy turned around and fled without a backward glance.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Eli watched Cacy jog down the hall. The front door to the building slammed shut behind her. He strode up the corridor and watched out the narrow window as she sat down on a bench, pulled her knees to her chest, and lowered her forehead to her knees. Her shoulders shook as she hugged her legs. Eli stared at her with clenched fists and a hollow feeling in his gut. But he didn’t move.
A few moments later, a municipal bus, its shrapnelproof plating rattling loud enough to wake the neighborhood, pulled up to the curb. Cacy pushed herself to her feet, wiped at her face, and disappeared through its open doors.
Eli returned to his apartment and collapsed onto the couch, his body aching all over. He should be furious at her, but the look on her face had told him she hadn’t been trying to hurt him. She hadn’t been trying to get him in trouble. She’d just been trying to take something she thought she needed. And, damn, for a minute there, he’d considered giving it to her. The way her lips had brushed the skin of his neck, the way her body had melted against his, the smooth curve of her thighs, how she’d touched him with shaking hands . . . h
e could have lost himself in her. He almost had. He’d almost thrown her down and taken her right there on the floor.
But there were many things wrong with that idea. Getting fired, for one. Not to mention taking advantage of a woman reeling from the grisly death of her father only hours before.
“Shit.” He shouldn’t have been that harsh. But he’d been so frustrated, and not just sexually. After everything they’d been through last night, she’d done nothing but evade him. He’d stumbled into another dimension, or whatever it was, with a piece of her jewelry, and he could almost swear he’d been there before. Then he’d found her there, too, and for a few horrible minutes, he’d been sure she was going to die in his arms. Instead, she’d healed miraculously, like nothing he’d ever seen before. She’d obviously been worried about that red-eyed creature peeking in his window, but not enough to tell him what it was. Her avoidance of his questions was maddening. She was hiding something—a big something.
The phone in his pocket buzzed. He pulled it out and looked at the screen. Galena.
Here safely. Will try to be back before you leave. Cacy???
Eli sighed as he typed. Gone. Sorry if she caught you by surprise.
Not what I meant. She’s pretty.
Eli groaned. And off-limits.
She likes you.
Eli stared at those three words. How could she? They’d met on the worst night of her life. And she’d just made herself vulnerable to him and he’d callously sent her out the door with a few cruel words, a bus token, and a borrowed pair of sweats. What a gentleman he was.
He punched at the tiny letter icons on the screen of his phone. Not anymore.
Her response brought a reluctant smile to his lips. 6 p.m. You. Me. Darts. I’ll kick your ass.
Unlikely. His fingers slowed as he looked around the room uneasily. Where’s the board?
They’d packed light for this move, and they’d sent their stuff ahead of them, courtesy of the university, so that it would be waiting for them when they arrived. But Galena had done most of the packing, because Eli worked so many extra shifts.
In the box marked “Essentials.” See you at 6.
He tucked the phone back in his pocket, nestled back into the couch cushion, and laid his arm over his eyes. He needed to get some rest or he would be slow at work tonight. And he needed to be fast. Smart. Better than he’d been last night, because now he had something to prove. But as he tried to lull himself to sleep by counting vials of self-perpetuating saline in his head, his thoughts kept wandering in Cacy’s direction. What would it be like for her to return to work? Would she be able to hold it together the next time they responded to a violent scene? Would being in the back of the ambulance bring back horrible memories for her? Would she let him in and answer some of his questions, or push him away?
Eli ground his teeth and turned over, laying a pillow over his head. Part of him was looking forward to getting back to work. He’d always loved, even craved, those moments of total focus, when everything dropped away except the patient in front of him. In that place of complete concentration, he didn’t have to think of his parents and how he hadn’t been there when they died. He didn’t have to think of the city crumbling around him. Of Galena, of her pain. Of the blood on his hands. Of anything but cardiac rhythm, oxygenation, and respiration. Saving someone else’s life had been the best excuse in the world to ignore his own problems. For the last two years, he’d relied on that excuse.
Work was his haven. He’d thought it would be no different here, that by putting his head down and working hard, he could get over uprooting his life in the West and coming to this strange, swampy place.
Now things were probably irreversibly screwed up. The low whispers from last night, the narrow-eyed, suspicious glances . . . All the other paramedics seemed to think he could have done more for Patrick Ferry. That he could have saved him.
Eli wondered if they were right.
He replayed the call over and over again in his mind, running through every choice he’d made. Had he been too aggressive with the chemical defib? Should he have pushed the saline earlier? Had he moved Patrick too roughly?
“Eli.”
Had he missed some sign? The guy had been talking before he coded, and his final word . . . had Eli gotten distracted when Patrick said Galena’s name?
“Eli. Wake up.”
Eli sat up with a jolt, sending the pillow flying to the floor. Galena stood next to him. She looked worried. “I just got in. You’d probably better get going. We’ll have to take a rain check on those darts.”
“What?” Eli asked, wiping sleep from his eyes and reaching for his phone. Holy hell, it was five minutes to seven. He was going to be late. “Shit!”
He jumped from the couch and ran to his room, shoved his feet in his boots, and tied the laces with impatient jerks. He grabbed Cacy’s bloody uniform and ran for the door, giving Galena a quick kiss on the cheek as he sprinted past her.
The bus ride to Chinatown took forever, and by the time Eli jumped onto the curb, he had convinced himself he’d probably only be there long enough for Dec to fire him and send him right back home. He punched the security code into the keypad and opened the door to the station.
Cacy was standing just inside. Her long hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and she was wearing a fresh uniform. Eli swallowed hard, trying to think of something to say. Without meeting his eyes, she snatched her bloody uniform from his hands and pushed a flat cardboard box at him. He grabbed hold of it to keep it from falling to the floor and watched, speechless, as she spun around and jogged toward the locker room.
Eli stood there for a few seconds, trying to figure out what had just transpired. Then the most amazing scent drifted to his nose. He flipped open the top of the box and peeked inside.
It was full of some sort of pastry. Tubes of fried dough filled with a white cream.
Still trying to figure out what the hell kind of game she was playing now, Eli strode into the locker room. The place was pretty full; he’d arrived only twenty minutes late, and a lot of the first-shift paramedics were still hanging out.
“Eli,” Cacy called cheerfully, pushing her way toward him as if she’d only just seen him come in. “You brought us cannoli!”
At the sound of the word “cannoli,” Eli was immediately surrounded by hungry paramedics. The box was lifted out of his arms. A few people slapped him on the back.
Trevor snatched a fat pastry from the box. “Nice, Eli.” He grinned and shoved the entire cannoli into his mouth as everyone else clamored for their own and called out their gratitude between bites.
“Aw! From Mike Junior’s! You went all the way to the North End?”
“Dude. Good call.”
“Thanks, man. We never get the good stuff.”
Eli smiled vaguely as most of the guys thanked him for something he’d had nothing to do with.
Cacy edged up to him, a paper-wrapped cannoli in her hand. “That was really sweet of you, Eli. Thanks for picking up my favorite comfort food. It was exactly what I needed tonight.” She said it loudly, like she wasn’t afraid for others to hear her.
The other paramedics looked at Cacy with care. They stood up straighter when they saw her smile. Their eyes drifted to Eli, and several of them nodded. His cheeks burned as he nodded back.
A small knot of guys in the corner appeared uninterested in the rapidly disappearing pastries. Len was among them. His mud-brown eyes stared hard at Eli.
“Hey,” Cacy said, patting Eli’s shoulder. His heart sped as his eyes met hers. “How about you change and meet me at the rig?”
Eli opened his mouth to speak, but “Thank you” was the only thing that came out.
She gave him a small smile and took a bite of cannoli, closing her eyes as she savored it. Most of the blood flow to Eli’s brain was choked off as he watched her lick cream from h
er lips. He turned and walked quickly away. He desperately needed a cold shower.
He was standing under a chilling spray, teeth gritted, thoughts racing, when he heard the squeak of boots outside his shower stall.
“If you think you can cover up your incompetence and tardiness with a few cannoli, you’re stupider than I thought.”
Len. Probably staring at Eli’s naked ass at this very second. Eli switched off the water and reached for his towel. He wrapped it tightly around his waist before turning around. “I . . . uh . . . thought it would be nice.”
Dressed in the uniform that accentuated his wide, muscular chest and gorilla arms, Len was leaning against the tiled frame of the stall. “Nice won’t cut it around here, hick. You actually have to be able to do the job.”
Eli raked a hand through his dripping hair. “With all due respect, Captain, you must have seen my record. You know I can do the job.”
Len gave him an ugly smile. “What I know is you let a great man die. So you’re on thin ice. And if you touch his daughter, you’re going to fall through. You get me?”
“I did my best with Mr. Ferry. And Cacy is my partner. I just got here last night, sir. Give me a chance to prove myself.”
It took every ounce of patience he had to get those words out. His fists balled at his sides. One quick jab, and Len would be on the floor, his blood flowing down the drain. One second of satisfaction for a whole lot of hassle. Not quite worth it.
Len frowned, like Eli’s thoughts were written across his forehead. “Prove yourself by showing up on time, ready to work. You’d better be in uniform and at your rig in three minutes.” Len pivoted on his heel and walked stiffly away.
Eli rushed to his locker, pulled on his uniform, and raced out to the garage. Cacy was in the back, cataloging supplies. She didn’t look up as he climbed in. A cannoli on a paper towel was sitting on the bench next to her.
“I saved one for you,” she said. “I thought maybe you’d never tried one.”
