I want to sink into the floor with embarrassment, but Matt just laughs.
“Come on now,” he says, giving the doctor a winning smile. “Don’t I get time off for good behavior?”
“What do you say, sweetheart?” Dr. Holloway asks me, eyes twinkling. “Would you say he’s earned that?”
“Not today,” I say, smiling at Matt sweetly.
He grumbles adorably, and the doctor laughs.
“Looks like you picked a good one here, Matt. Best hold onto her.”
“Could do that better if I had two of these,” Matt quips, holding up his good hand.
“Your bones aren’t completely set the way they need to be in the healing process,” I blurt out, suddenly needing to refocus this appointment on Matt’s injury instead of on us. I know the doctor is just trying to be nice, but any talk of something longer term, of us lasting… I just can’t.
I’m starting to want it too bad.
Dr. Holloway is nodding. “She’s right. You could risk deformity that would put you out to pasture for good if you jostle that thing around before it sets properly,” he tells Matt. Then, to me, “You ever think of going into a medical field? I can tell you know what you’re doing with this one.”
“It’s because she’s a CNA,” Matt says before I can answer.
“A CNA?” Holloway replies. “Interesting. I don’t normally see many CNAs with the depth of medical knowledge you’ve displayed during this guy’s appointments, young lady. Nursing school might be a good fit, or if you don’t mind putting in the time, go for your MD.” He winks again. “I know it might seem like a lot of years, but you’re young. You still have your whole life ahead of you.”
I nibble on my lip, trying to ignore the way the doctor’s compliments and friendly suggestion twists my stomach up inside. Before I have to admit how much I’d love to go to nursing school, or why I can’t, Matt—bless him—shifts the conversation off me.
He reads me so well, both in and out of the bedroom, and for a second I tear up, thankful that the doctor’s back is to me. I’ve accepted my fate for so long, and it seems absurdly unfair somehow to suddenly want so much right at the end.
Matt throws me a concerned look over Holloway’s shoulder, and I get myself together, pulling up a smile for him. I’m being silly. Besides, if I really did still have my whole life ahead of me, I’d be faced with an even worse choice, wouldn’t I?
Johnny or Matt?
The thought of giving either one of them up makes me want to have a tantrum, and even though I’ve never thought of myself as either selfish or greedy, I guess coming face to face with my own mortality has brought it out in me.
Matt’s appointment wraps up and it isn’t until we’re in the car again that I realize he hasn’t let it go.
He takes my hand as I pull out of the hospital’s parking lot, lacing our fingers together. “You ever think of becoming a doctor, like Doc Holloway was saying?”
“No,” I answer, because it’s true.
“Nurse?”
I huff out a breath, not sure if I love or hate that he does this. He’s the same way in the bedroom. Somehow, he can always tell what I really want, and I already know him well enough to realize he won’t let up until I admit it.
“I’d like that,” I admit, hoping that will satisfy him.
“You’d be good at it,” he says, so sincerely that it warms places in me I’ve always protected from getting too attached to other people. “The way you keep me in line? I’m a fan of your bedside manner.”
I laugh, shaking my head as I glance over at him for a second. It’s not safe to drive without watching the road, of course, but I can’t resist… and sure enough, he’s giving me those innocent puppy eyes that are so misleading.
“Stop, you,” I say, grinning at him.
He laughs, but doesn’t let it go. “Seriously, you should apply to nursing school, yeah? There’s some good ones around here, and you really do know your stuff. And that bedside manner?” This time he doesn’t make it sound dirty. “You really are good with people, Eden. You ever thought about doing it?”
My throat closes up. “I can’t,” I manage anyway.
“Sure you can,” he says confidently, squeezing my hand. “Even if you gotta do some pre-reqs first, you can… hey now, what is it?”
Oh, Lord. I’m tearing up, and he reaches over to wipe the moisture off my cheeks so gently that I can’t stand it. We’re at a stoplight, and he grips my chin, turning me to face him.
“Eden, what’s going on?” he asks, his liquid chocolate eyes filled with all sorts of things that suddenly make it impossible for me to stop crying. “Pull over, yeah?”
“I… I’ve got to drop you off and get to work.”
“What you need to do is pull the car over and tell me what’s going on,” he says in a voice I don’t even pretend to want to argue with.
He pulls me across the center console and right into his lap once we’re stopped, and I’m such a mess that I don’t even worry about whether or not he should be doing that with his cast.
He wipes my cheeks again. “What did I say to trigger these? Was it about going to nursing school?”
I nod, because even though I’d rather avoid the subject completely, there’s no part of me that wants to lie to him.
“What happened? You applied and got rejected? Because if they need someone to go knock some sense into their heads—”
“No,” I say, laughing despite myself. I kiss his cheek, trying to ignore how much he warms my heart. “I… I’ve never applied.”
“Why not?” he asks, brow crinkling in confusion. Then his eyes suddenly widen. “What you said the other night… Eden, you don’t really believe you’re not gonna make it to twenty-five, do you?”
“No one in my family has, Matt,” I say, my throat so tight this time that it actually hurts to force the words out. “Not for generations.”
I half expect him to tell me I’m crazy, because I know how it sounds… but I also know it’s true. Instead, though, his arms tighten around me and he just looks at me for a long minute, then shakes his head.
“That’s not going to happen,” he finally says flatly. “Your birthday’s in what, a couple of months?”
“Seven weeks.”
Fifty-two days.
Less than two months.
He wipes my cheeks again. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Eden,” he says quietly. “You think me and Johnny would let it? By the time we get to your birthday, you’re—”
“Please don’t mention my birthday,” I interrupt, panic squeezing my chest so hard I can barely breathe. “I know it sounds irrational, Matt. I do. But I just… I can’t… you don’t understand, I—”
“Okay, okay,” he says, giving me a small smile as he starts rubbing my back in slow circles. “Shhhh.”
“I just… I don’t want to talk about it, is that all right? I don’t even want to think about it. I just want to enjoy whatever time I have left.”
For a moment, he looks like he’s going to argue, but then he just smiles, shaking his head, and pulls me in for a kiss. It’s not even remotely hot. Instead, the way he’s kissing me makes me feel precious.
Cared for.
Safe.
“Okay, beautiful,” he finally says. “We’ll do it your way for now, but I reserve the right to bring it up again after the big two-five, yeah?” Before I can panic about that, he asks, “How’s that bucket list coming? Me and Johnny promised to help you finish it, and if I’m remembering it right, you only had three things left to do before your birthday.”
I nod, and he starts ticking them off his fingers.
“We got learning to cook crossed off and tu español está mejorando.”
“Gracias,” I say, even though I’m not entirely sure whether he just told me that my Spanish is getting better or getting older.
His eyes light up. “So that just leaves—”
“No,” I say, pressing a finger against his lips wit
h a laugh. “Matt, honestly, I’ve had number fourteen on my list for nine years, but even if I do finally manage to get the guts up to do it, you are not helping with that one.”
“Always wanted to go skydiving,” he says, grinning.
“Your arm is broken,” I point out, laughing. “Broken, Matt. You can’t skydive with a broken arm.”
“Doc says just another week or so.”
“I’m pretty sure he said he would check it then, but not to count on getting the cast off for another three weeks,” I remind him, laughing.
The man is stubborn as hell, isn’t he?
“That’s still before your birthday, beautiful,” he says, pushing a strand of hair out of my face with a soft look that makes me feel… oh, Lord.
No. I’m not going to let myself go there.
“Dr. Holloway isn’t going to approve you skydiving right after you get your cast off, either,” I say instead, my heart as light as air. Although how this man has me smiling not two minutes after I felt like I couldn’t even breathe, I just don’t know.
For a second, I think he’s going to keep arguing, but then he gets a truly evil grin on his face and says, “Guess that means Johnny’s up, yeah?”
“You’re volunteering him to go skydiving with me?” I ask, pretty sure I remember Santiago saying something about Johnny having a fear of heights.
“Absolutely,” he says. “It’ll be good for him.”
I shake my head. “He went a little green when your dad was telling some of those stories.”
“We all gotta face our fears sometime, yeah?” Matt says, cupping my face. “He’ll do it for you, beautiful. Either one of us would.”
The look he’s giving me is too much. Too close to what I know I don’t have time to have and wouldn’t want to have to choose, even if I did. Still, I can’t help asking—
“How do you, um, feel about that? About Johnny and me, I mean?”
I hold my breath. The first time the three of us got together, I know Matt was a little drunk, but so far, even sober, I haven’t seen any sign of jealousy or the kind of problems between him and Johnny I was scared of causing. I wasn’t expecting them from Johnny, of course, not after… after what I know, but with Matt—well, he just hasn’t said anything.
“Johnny likes you,” he says now, eyes sparkling. “Can’t say I blame him. Pretty sure you know I feel the same.”
I bite my lip. Oh, Lord. I like the two of them, too—understatement of the century—and Matt makes it sound so simple. Easy. But life doesn’t work like that, does it?
“Yes,” I say cautiously. “But… that’s not… not a problem?”
“I don’t think it has to be,” Matt says after a minute. “Sure, I know what you’re saying, but… I don’t know, Eden. It’s Johnny. Can’t really imagine anything important I’d want to do in life without him being a part of it, too. You think it’s going to be a problem for you?”
“No,” I say, not even having to think. My two firefighters? They’re the opposite of a problem. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
“Good,” Matt says, smiling slow and sexy, and then he kisses me again.
And you know what? Maybe sometimes life can be this easy.
At least for this last piece of it.
15
Matt
I’m still thinking about my conversation with Eden after she drops me off at the house. And do I hate having to rely on her to drive me everywhere when I should be the one taking care of her? Bet your ass I do. And yeah, yeah, that’s sexist as hell… but it’s still the truth. Sue me, but I can’t do anything about how I feel, right? Just like I can’t do anything about how she feels with this crazy notion that she’s gonna die before her birthday.
Which… just no. Like I told her, that’s not going to happen.
Still, I get it. Irrational fears can still be very real roadblocks—look at Johnny’s fear of heights, yeah?—so I figure I’m not gonna be able to argue her out of it. The only way to prove it to her that she’ll be okay is to get to the other side.
And to do that? Might as well focus on that list of hers.
I pause at the door for a second before opening it. Johnny knows me too well—if he sees the evil grin I can feel on my face right now he’ll probably run the other way before I can have any fun. Because yep, that’s my plan for afternoon entertainment: talking Johnny into skydiving with Eden.
Pretty sure he has a shift today, but his truck is parked out front, so I know he’s still home, and once I finally manage to school my face, I head inside to get busy making my case for the whole “facing your fears” thing.
And am I planning on using sexual favors as a carrot when it comes to that? Hell yeah I am.
Eden’s sexual favors, of course.
Problem is, when I walk in the front door something goes sideways in my brain, and suddenly I’m feeling all confused about just whose sexual favors need to be on the line here.
It’s Johnny’s fault.
Oh, he’s home all right. Guess he just got out of the shower, because he’s walking down the hall straight for me, water still clinging to him. He’s got a towel slung low around his hips and nothing else, and his physique is showing the kind of extra definition in the arms, shoulders, and chest that tells me he just finished an upper-body workout.
Which should matter exactly zero to me, amirite?
Except fuuuuuuuuuuuuuccckkkkkkkk. All of a sudden it feels like it matters a hell of a lot more than that.
I sort of trip over nothing, right there in the doorway, and my brain freezes completely while my body goes into a state that it really shouldn’t be in around my best friend. At least, not without Eden there between us.
Thank Christ Johnny doesn’t seem to notice.
“Hey, Matty,” he greets me, rubbing his short hair with another towel. “You got Gatorade?”
“No,” I croak out. Him mentioning Gatorade makes me kinda desperate for some myself all of a sudden, what with how dry my mouth just got.
Don’t know what he sees on my face, but I finally kick it into gear before things get weird and turn away to hang my house key on the hook by the door.
I toe my shoes off.
I open the coat closet and line them up on the shoe rack inside.
I’m thankful as fuck for the closet door open between us, blocking my view, because truth? I need a minute to try and get a fucking grip. To settle my randy cock down. To make sure my heart doesn’t beat its way out of my chest, the way it’s pounding in there.
Seriously, what the fuck just happened to me?
“What the fuck just happened to you?” Johnny asks, plucking those words right out of my skull as he suddenly appears next to me with a shit-eating grin. He latches on to the top of the doorjamb with both hands, leaning forward between his arms so every one of his oversized muscles stands out in sharp relief.
Oshit.
“What—” I clear my throat, trying again. “What do you mean?”
Playing dumb is really the only strategy that comes to mind here.
Johnny widens his eyes to comical proportions. “You?” He gasps dramatically. “Forgetting a basic necessity in life like replenishing the Gatorade? Who are you and where’s my Matty?”
Relief floods through me. That’s right, he’d asked me to bring some home, hadn’t he? I’d gotten distracted by that conversation with Eden and totally forgot.
“For real, bro,” he’s going on, shaking his head in an exaggerated show of disappointment. “Do you know how hard I just pushed it?” He flexes, grinning, and adds, “Got a new PR on the bench press.”
I stare hard as he goes through some jokey bodybuilding poses, then catch myself and mumble an automatic, “Congrats.”
Johnny throws his hands up in the air, shaking his head in mock-exasperation. “Congrats, he says. And how’s that going to help with no Gatorade? You think I would’ve pushed so hard if I’d known you were going to flake? Y
ou never let me down, Matty, and now this? I’ve got a shift later, you know. What am I supposed to do if my electrolytes get outta whack?”
“Salt, OJ, honey, and water,” I rattle off, not doing so great on getting that grip.
I know he’s just hamming it up, giving me shit that I usually toss right back at him, just like he’s been doing all my life, but right now? It’s like I’ve never seen Johnny before… which has gotta be hands down the dumbest thing I’ve ever thought, because hello, pretty sure I’ve seen him just about every day of my life since… what? First grade? Kindergarten? Whenever it was we met.
Johnny makes a face at the electrolyte drink recipe. “Lame,” he says, followed immediately by a big-ass grin and… “Make some for me?”
Like I’m his fucking mother or something.
I’m pretty sure the correct response is “fuck off,” but since I’m obviously having a surreal moment, that slips my mind and I just nod and brush past him, heading toward the kitchen while I continue my efforts to stop noticing things about him that I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to when I don’t have some kind of, you know, inebriation justification to fall back on.
Is that it?
Did Doc Holloway slip me something?
Johnny follows me to the kitchen, and after I pull the ingredients I need out of the fridge and close it, he’s right there, giving me an odd look.
“Hey, for real, buddy, what’s up?” he asks, losing the joking tone from earlier. “You okay? Doc give you some bad news? You look a little off.”
“No, I’m good,” I lie. And since when have I ever lied to Johnny?
But I for damn sure can’t let on that I’m suddenly noticing him.
I get a pitcher out and measure some orange juice into it, then the salt, then add the honey. Then my brain kicks into gear and I remember my original plan about convincing him to skydive with Eden. Perfect. He’ll get distracted by that and forget whatever this was.
“Eden and I were talking about her bucket list in the car,” I tell him, grabbing a wooden spoon and mixing the stuff in the pitcher.
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