by Naima Simone
She tilts her head and studies me in that analytical way she has that makes me feel like I need sutures to stitch myself close after she’s done with me.
“You wouldn’t mind, though, would you, Axel?” she asks softly. “You’d probably dig through my haul and see what you could use.”
She huffs out a laugh and shakes her head, turning away from me, not expecting an answer. Which is good. Because I’m not capable of giving one to her. Not when an image of us sitting together on the floor of my cottage, her cradled between my legs as we burrow through her shopping finds, blink and waver in my mind.
The mental picture rocks me.
Scares me.
Stirs me.
“I— Never mind.” She laughs, and for the first time since I’ve known her—all forty-eight hours—it strikes me as nervous.
And it doesn’t sit right.
Not on this warrior queen.
“What?” I demand, crossing my arms over my chest.
“I don’t pretend to compare my hobbies to what you do for a living.” She snatches another paper towel off the roll and proceeds to wipe down the counter. I don’t know if the wine or the nerves has her cleaning as if I have a shiv directed at her back, but she’s definitely going at it and avoiding looking at me. “Art is your passion, and I do this for fun. So, I’m not minimizing your process or projects in anyway—”
“Zenobia.”
“Yeah?”
“Stop with the scrubbing.”
Instead of bristling at my command, she exhales a heavy, loud breath, tosses the paper in the rubbish bin, and faces me.
“What are you trying to say?”
She wrinkles her nose and props a shapely hip against the counter, her fingers curling around the edge. “Fine, give me a minute, okay?”
Since silence is what I do, I remain quiet, granting her all the time she needs.
“I love my job, but there’s no room for creativity. It’s high stakes, pressure, and the wrong decisions, mistakes, mean life and death consequences. So, when I want to unwind, to relax, it’s with something that’s the complete opposite of where I spend a good part of my life. Some people would call it using the other side of my brain. I call it using the other side of my soul. My spirit. I’m so dramatic,” she scoffs.
Her self-deprecation is thick, and the order, “Don’t do that,” sits heavy on my tongue. Her feelings and her needs are valid, and she shouldn’t depreciate them. Or allow anyone else to. Because something tells me that others have done exactly that. And it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes-level deduction skills to figure out who one of those “others” were. Fucking James again.
“For me, working on my projects is a solitary process, and I prefer it that way, because all day or night, I’m part of a team. But when I’m attempting to figure out how to make plant hangers out of old spoons, I can get lost in my head. I can experiment, try new things knowing that if I fuck up, the worst thing that could happen is I’ll have to throw away a spoon and no one might be seriously injured. And then”—she shifts her weight, her hands twisting in front of her, her face and golden-brown eyes lighting up with a soft, delighted smile—“there’s something so, so magical about birthing an idea from my mind into reality. It’s like returning to that carefree time in kindergarten when your sole job was being creative and having fun. Y’know, before they killed it for us with good grades, popularity, ambition, and winning at any cost. But when I’m working on these projects, I’m that kindergartner again.”
She lets out another of those self-effacing little laughs that I want to ban from ever escaping her lips. They should be a crime coming from her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say all of that. Must be the wine talking.”
“Don’t ever apologize to me.”
She blinks, and I grind my teeth together. Hard.
This is why I don’t talk. Too much. Sometimes I feel too fucking much, and the words come out intense, inappropriate. But I don’t take it back. She shouldn’t ever apologize for expressing how she’s feeling. Not to me. Especially when it mirrors how I feel every time I weld, bend, buff, or polish metal. In a way, through my art, I return to the time before Blake died—I return to that carefree boy again.
I’ve said it before that Zenobia sees me.
But it’s more. Zenobia knows me.
And goddammit, that terrifies me.
If I was smart, I’d turn tail and head for my flat. I’d close the door and hide behind it until morning when Nate showed up to aid me in my escape to the workshop. But the caution I usually exercise in my life has gone to take a piss as I approach her. Simon’s warning takes a backseat to my need to inhale her warm, spiced cider and fresh earth scent directly from her silken skin. Common sense waves the white flag of surrender to my hunger to touch that petite yet strong body.
Every primal instinct engrafted on my DNA roars at me to grasp the brazen curves of her hips. To dig my fingers into the flesh until the ridges of my prints brand the mahogany skin like tattoos. Ground my cock against her softly rounded belly and watch those light brown and gold eyes darken into amber flames. Watch those pretty, drag-a-person-to-confession lips part on a groan, a rough, needy whimper.
Burrow a hand into those gorgeous curls that remind me of restrained freedom and drag her head back. Catch that whimper with my mouth. Fall on it like the feral beast lust for her makes me.
Yeah, my every intention is to follow through on those urges. But as she tilts her head back and stares up at me, I abruptly pull up short. And instead of grabbing her and hauling her into my body, I enfold my fingers around hers, studying the differences of her smaller, more delicate but just as sturdy digits against mine. I’m humbled by the power in them. The dexterity, the talent. And now the creativity.
Closing my eyes, I lift them.
Brush my lips against them.
Her hushed gasp reaches my ears, and I tense, wait for her to stiffen. At the slightest hint of any resistance, I’ll let her go. My intention isn’t to invade her space or encroach where I’m not wanted. No, I want to… honor her. In the only way I know how.
With touch.
When she doesn’t snatch her hands away or order me to stop, I exhale in—relief, gratefulness, resignation? All three, maybe. Lifting my lashes, I meet the astonishment in her eyes and graze my lips over all ten of the toughened pads and tips. And then the shorter, no-nonsense nails. Lastly, the uglier but still adorable knuckles.
Finally, I lower her hands. Step back. Step back again. And again. Until my next breath doesn’t contain her scent.
But I can’t escape the temptation of her eyes.
Or the quiet but simmering need that has replaced the surprise.
“Why?” she breathes. Stops. Slicks the tip of her tongue over her lips. “Why did you do that?”
I almost shrug, give her an abbreviated answer that won’t betray how I’ve become more visible, more transparent with her in forty-eight hours than I’ve been with anyone in eighteen years.
Almost.
“Someone should tell you that you’re beautiful.”
Emotion flashes in her gaze, but I don’t stick around to decipher its meaning. Retreating from her seems to be my go-to action. Belatedly, Simon’s warning rises up out of the ashes of my conscience, and the caution I didn’t heed moments ago blares like an emergency siren in my head, in my chest.
Zenobia’s fresh out of a relationship with a man who betrayed and then left her for another woman. Despite the tough exterior, she possesses a vulnerable heart that doesn’t deserved to be battered or toyed with again.
I won’t be the man to do that to her. Because I’m not just a bad bet… I’m the worst. She’s learning what I’ve already been well educated in over the years—letting anyone close means they will eventually leave. Whether by choice, or by death. Whether physically, mentally, or emotionally. Doesn’t matter. Everyone leaves.
Since Blake’s death, I’ve been chasing this ideal of perfection,
trying to live up to who and what he was. And have always failed. Fuck strangulation or stabbing, death by comparison is the most painful way to die. Everyone loved Blake and people like him. People like Simon and Calliope. Charming, gregarious, beautiful, and brilliant. Not lumbering, reclusive, chronically grumpy artists who prefer metal to people. Blake, my parents, Simon, my ex… None of them stuck. None of them stayed.
No. Being alone is better than constantly watching people walk away as if you’re defective. Broken. Not good enough.
Me leaving Zenobia now—placing much-needed distance between us now—is preferable to her getting attached to a person who will eventually leave her.
And that’s a thing I’ve become really good at.
Chapter Eight
Zenobia
A couple of days later, I start another workday with Axel’s voice and words echoing in my head. Is this going to be a thing? He says random, heartbreaking statements that send me mentally reeling, and I just have to deal with it? That doesn’t seem fair. At. All.
Especially if it means I’ll have to spend hours, freaking days trying to recover. Case in point, the night before last. Of course, in my twenty-eight years, someone has told me I’m beautiful. Even James has during our relationship. But no one—and I mean no one—has ever told me while basically worshipping my hands with their lips as if they were God-given gifts. Leaving me shaken, awed, and hot as fuck.
Thank God I didn’t have to come in the day after girls’ night with Calliope. Because I’d been a mess, vacillating between avoiding Axel and convincing myself that a fling with gorgeous, sexy almost-stranger was a time-honored tradition.
Jesus. I shake my head, finishing up charting a patient’s medical history and updating his record. I don’t know if I’m going or coming with this man. Well… That isn’t exactly true. Since that night in the garage when he offered to let me use him, I’ve been doing a lot of coming…
Why, yes, I have become a depraved, horny heffa.
“Hester. Dr. Lowry.” Charge nurse Brenda Shannon strides over to the desk I’m sitting behind, a tablet in her hand. Immediately, I stand and round it, meeting her and Dr. Adam Lowry, the physician on call, on the other side. “Trauma room twelve. We have a rig coming in. Five minutes out. They’re faxing over the demographics now, Hester.”
I nod, waiting on her to deliver more instructions and information.
“Twelve-year-old female with trauma and obvious deformity to right lower arm following a fall at school. pulse, 100 bpm. Respiration, 18 bpm. Blood pressure, 135 over 85. Temperature, 98.7. She’s alert. One of morphine on board for pain.”
The facts running through my head, I move toward the fax machine to grab the sheet from the ambulance containing the patient’s information. It would contain everything from the little girl’s biographical data, to her parents’ contact info so we can call and request verbal permission to treat their child, to known allergies and anything else the parents included when they completed the school paperwork.
As soon as I stop in front of machine, I grab several papers off the receiving tray, shuffling through until I spot the one I need. Dropping the other sheets, I head back to the desk, scanning the top. The fall occurred at a middle school about fifteen minutes from us. Accident during gym. Patient name Bethany Ma…vis.
I stumble then slam to a halt. Shock plows the air out of my lungs in a frigid blast that leaves deep, icy furrows. I’m too numb to bleed. Yet. But once the freeze thaws, I know, I fucking know, the bloodletting will be relentless, merciless.
Sooner than I want, than I can hand, the shock starts to melt and the pain creeps in, an insidious, gleeful intruder. The paper trembles in my grip, and I’m not sure, but I think the wounded animal sound that reaches my ears isn’t from one of the bays in the ER. If I’m not mistaken, it’s from me. From my throat, scraped raw from holding back a horrible, grief-stricken scream.
“Hester,” Brenda snaps, and that no-nonsense voice prevents my headfirst, downward spiral into anguish. “Zenobia.”
Long fingers circle my wrist in a hard grip.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t—” I rasp, then shake my head. Get it together. You have to get it together. Giving my head another abrupt shake, I scan the immediate area, but no one seems to have noticed my skirmish with a breakdown. I can’t afford to do that here. No, I just can’t to do that, period. I did that once. At sixteen. Not again. Especially not now. Not when…
“Zenobia, what’s going on?” Brenda demands impatiently. “Do you have the demographics sheet? I need you in twelve after you make the call to the parents—”
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I interrupt. When Brenda narrows her eyes, her face hardening in displeasure, I force my throat muscles to work so I can rip myself open and expose my deepest secrets to my supervisor. “I can’t work on this patient. Because she’s my daughter.”
Hours later, I stare at the room where my biological daughter had lain, arm iced, pain meds administered after receiving permission from her parents, waiting for them to arrive. So they could offer her comfort. So she could cry on their shoulder. So they could ease her fear.
All the things I couldn’t because I had surrendered all rights to do that twelve years ago when I’d given her up for adoption.
Unbidden, tears sting my eyes, and I blink them away, battle them back.
I don’t have any rights to those either.
“What’re you still doing here? You’re not on shift.” Brenda walks past me with her ever-present tablet, and her brusque tone helps me grasp onto the scraps of control I’ve been struggling to maintain all shift. She glances at me, and it might be my imagination, but there’s a slight softening of her dark eyes. “Go home and get off my floor before I assume you being here means you want a double.”
“How is she?” I murmur.
Brenda doesn’t pretend to misunderstand my question. And in the same practical and straightforward manner that she took in my news about an until-then-unknown daughter, reassigned the room, and ruthlessly squelched any resultant whining from nurses and doctors due to the out-of-order rotation, she turned and faced me.
“We had the X-rays done and called in Dr. Taylor.” I nod, relief flowing through me, Dr. Rachel Taylor is one of the state’s best pediatric ortho surgeons. The X-rays showed an open radial fracture with wrist displacement. Which, as you know, requires more than Dr. Lowry or our ER doctors are comfortable performing. A fracture? No problem. But something like this? No. We arranged for her to be admitted to PEDs, and Dr. Taylor performed a C-Arm setting of the fracture under fluoro. They didn’t put her fully out for the procedure but administered Versed so she would be sleepy and Zofran for any nausea. They also had respiratory therapy there to monitor her. The procedure took about forty-five minutes, and she’s now recovering in her own hospital room. If no complications arise, she should be released the day after tomorrow.”
Okay, those tears? Eminent. Nothing I can do to hold them back now. To someone outside the medical field, all those technical details might not mean much or would be confusing jargon, but to me? They’re everything. They tell me Bethany was given excellent care, that she’s doing fine, and is on the mend. Brenda gave me a step-by-step walk-through of my daughter’s care because I couldn’t be there for her treatment.
Just another thing I couldn’t there for.
Stop it!
Giving Bethany up for adoption had been the best thing I could do for her. The best gift I could give her. Parents who could not only provide for her financially, but could offer her a stable home—a settled one without uncertainty and hardship. One a scared, unprepared sixteen-year-old couldn’t.
Logically, I know this. But sometimes, especially now when the guilt is like a hammer pounding at my heart, shattering it into so many pieces they resemble grains of sand, reason isn’t winning.
“Thank you,” I rasp. “For everything today.”
She waves off my thanks. “Get out of her
e.”
In spite of the emotional storm whipping me to shreds, I summon a smile and head for the exit. But as I clear the ER doors, I turn, my feet carrying me back toward the hospital before my mind catches up and agrees to the plan that’s already in forward motion.
Moments later, I’m on the PEDs floor and, after a quick chat with the nurse on duty, I find out Danielle Mavis has run home for a change of clothes for herself and her daughter since she will be spending the night at the hospital. Grabbing an apple juice and graham crackers, I offer to take them in to Bethany. Since it’s pretty busy, the nurse okays it.
My hearts floors it for my throat and lodges at the base of it. Breathing is a commodity that is above my pay grade as I near Bethany’s room. Yes, I’m violating her parents’ wishes. I’m breaking all manner of hospital rules. I have no legal or moral rights to be here.
And yet, my feet keep moving. And they don’t stop until I stand before the closed door and my hand is curled around the handle. Inhaling a shuddering breath, I press the bar down and enter. Suddenly, the apple juice and graham crackers weigh down my arm like a fifty-pound dumbbell. My heart is just as heavy, and only by sheer will do I keep my arm by my side instead of press my free hand to my chest and massage the ache.
Unlike the bland, functional layout of the ER rooms downstairs, the pediatrics rooms are designed with providing as much cheer for children as possible given the circumstances. Murals are painted on the walls, brighter-colored blankets cover the beds, stuffed animals and a couple of other toys are stored under the mounted television. The medical equipment and its muted beeping can’t hide what the room is or delude a child into forgetting where they are, but the hope is to offer them a little more comfort than the clinical rooms on the other floors do.
