by Vivian Lux
“I’m definitely feeling warm,” he said. Again with the innocent smile.
I pressed my hand to his forehead. He closed his eyes. “You look flushed,” I said, noting the heat rising from his skin. I swallowed. “Have you taken your ibuprofen?”
He opened his eyes. “You look a little flushed too, Everly.”
“I’m fine.” I was decidedly not fine. Because helping him bathe was definitely on my list of tasks I was expected to do. Unbidden my mind forced me to relive the moments of seeing him sprawled naked on the ground. His…his… I blushed furiously and turned away. “I’ll run you a bath.”
I practically fled from his room. Once in the bathroom, I ran the tap for a second, then splashed the cold water on my face. I was cracking up. The pressure of the boards. I had only kissed Gabe that night because he was Jonah’s brother. It was the closest I could get to the man I’d been yearning for half my life. And when he hadn’t remembered, hadn’t said anything, I thought I was safe. Just a bad decision chalked up to one too many rum and Cokes. Wasn’t that something all normal girls had in their past? A rum-and-Coke fueled mistake? I’d kissed the wrong guy at a bar and then disappeared. Surely that wasn’t a crime? No one was hurt. It should just be something I put behind me.
So why was I thinking about doing it again?
It wasn’t because I’d seen him naked. No. I wasn’t that type of girl. I didn’t go to pieces at the thought of a hot guy.
I stared at myself in the mirror, wide-eyed. Since when had I ever thought of Gabe as hot?
I turned and purposefully cranked the faucet in the bathtub. Then I closed my eyes and tried not to remember the way he had looked. I wasn’t remembering those muscles and scars and tattoos and, oh, god, did he want me to wash him? Why did this feel like something I shouldn’t be asked to do? Why did this feel like something I really wanted to do?
When the tub was near to full, I turned it off and tested the temperature with my elbow. I would assist him in getting into the tub. And then…and then I’d supervise. He’d regained enough mobility in his arm to wash himself. There was no need for me to run a cloth over his naked torso or let the cloth dip lower and…
Now I was fleeing the bathroom too. At least I was getting my cardio in today.
When I returned to his bedroom, I saw that he was sitting up on his own.
Clad only in his boxers.
The long scar on the left side of his ribcage still made me wince to see it, but it was completely closed now, a deep purple river winding its way around his chest. For a single moment, I could envision how it would feel under my lips, the knotted skin warm and alive as I traced it with my tongue. It was so clear and detailed that I startled back from him before I realized I hadn’t moved at all.
“You all right there, Nurse?”
“You need to be wearing your boots,” I barked.
He grinned as if my hardass-nurse routine didn’t fool him at all. “Kristyn said I can have them off as much as I can stand these days.” This time his eyes lingered on my lips for much longer than a heartbeat. “And if you’re there to make sure I don’t fall then I think I’m okay.”
Slowly he stood up. When he winced, I caught my breath, but then he smiled again. “I’m okay.” He stretched out his arm to me. “Gonna need you right here though.”
If it was obvious how quickly I moved to his side, he at least had the good grace not to say anything about it. His arm settled as a heavy, pleasant weight over my shoulders. Without thinking, I inhaled deeply. “I wouldn’t do that,” he chuckled.
“You smell good,” I said automatically, then paused when I realized what I’d said. With his arm across my shoulder, I was supposed to be supporting him, but I felt very much like he was in control. Like he was the one who was holding on to me.
“Okay,” he said. “Here we go.”
He stepped slowly and carefully, not rushing or overdoing it for once. But we still reached the bathroom far too soon. When his arm was off me I sighed a little.
“Hope the water’s nice and hot,” he said.
“I mean, it was. It’s probably cooled down by now.” There was something about being so close to him in this tiny space that was making my breath come faster.
“Can you heat things up for me?”
I blinked when I realized I was staring at how green his eyes looked instead of answering his question. “What?” Then I realized what his question actually was. “What?” I repeated, a little more loudly now.
He ran his tongue along his top teeth, making his smile look almost predatory. “I mean, I can’t bend over and turn on the hot water. I’m afraid I’ll lose my balance.” He paused. “So can you heat it up for me?”
“Oh.” I hoped the steam was a good enough excuse for why I was flushed.
“What did you think I meant?” he prodded.
“Nothing.” I bent over, let some of the now-cooled water out, and ran the hot water again. As I was bent over, I was acutely aware of the position I was in, how the two of us were aligned. I scooted all the way against the wall and straightened back up again. I stepped behind him without looking him in the eye. Doing so felt very dangerous.
“Thanks,” he said.
And then he pulled down his boxers.
Goddamn this man and his complete nonchalance about nudity. I looked away from him and then, remembering that this was my job and nothing more, I forced myself to stare straight ahead. But even with my eyes trained at a point on the wall, I still caught a glimpse of his smooth, muscled back and the strong, round heft of his ass. I’d never been one to ogle men’s butts but I was suddenly a devout ass-woman.
“Kettlebell,” Gabe said out of nowhere.
“Huh?” I continued staring straight ahead.
“You’re wondering how to get an ass like mine, I can tell. I’ll tell you the secret. A big mean guy named Carlos yelled at me until I could do squats with a kettlebell.”
“I wasn’t wondering anything of the sort.”
“Why else were you staring at my ass, Nurse?”
“Checking your balance,” I said, sounding almost convincing. “His name is Carlos, huh? And he was mean to you?”
“Not as mean as you, but close.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed aloud. The biggest, freest laugh I had laughed all day long. Gabe grinned at me as I shook my head.
“You think I’m mean, huh?”
“Nah. I think you’re pretty sweet, actually.”
I swallowed. A sharp retort sprang to my lips and then died there unsaid. No one had ever called me sweet before. No one had ever called me cute, or adorable, but Gabe sure acted like I was both. And I looked forward to it. I looked forward to the way he looked at me without getting distracted by anything else. It felt heady, almost addicting. I wanted his attention on me. Even though the rain had been pouring down for weeks, when I was with Gabe I felt like the sun was shining full on my face.
“Here,” I said, kneeling down and unstrapping his boot. “You need to get these off.” As I knelt I could feel the heat off his leg. I was very close to him. Very very close to his nakedness. I tugged at the Velcro. “Just step out of them now, I’ve got you,” I said as I straightened up. “Lean on me now, I’ve got you.”
“I know you do,” he murmured, barely audible. I wasn’t sure I was even supposed to hear it, but I had, and it made something strange and new swell in my chest.
Chapter Twelve
Everly
I dragged my hand across my notepaper and suddenly it was Gabe’s skin again.
For the fifteenth time since class started, warmth was spreading through my body, an insistent heat that pooled in my belly and made my nipples tighten. I sat up in my seat, crossed and recrossed my legs and tried like hell to pay attention to the last review before the boards tomorrow.
But the second my hand moved again, it was as if it was holding a washcloth and running against smooth, tanned skin, the texture of sparse golden hairs running like silk agai
nst my fingertips. The instructor’s voice faded to mere static in the background.
I licked my lips and stretched my fingers out. There had been nothing erotic about the bath. Nothing except his naked body, nothing except the way his eyes closed when he sank into the water. There had been nothing sensuous except the soft moan that fell from his lips when I let the cloth brush across his shoulder. He was my patient and I was providing a level of care that justified my high weekly rate. That was all. There was nothing forbidden about the way his eyes fluttered open and he looked at me with that grin playing about his lips and said, “Thanks Nurse.”
There was nothing strange about how he was wearing no clothes at all but I was the one who felt naked.
A sudden burst of noise around me jolted me out of my reverie. I looked around and to my horror everyone was packing up already.
Class was over and I had spent my entire review thinking about Gabe King’s naked body.
I’d missed my final review.
I stood up and started packing up my unused laptop, trying not to pay attention to the low thrum of panic that was now humming through my ears. But my fingers betrayed me, becoming useless and shaking with the tips nothing but pins and needles.
I held my breath. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, although it had been a while. My sister Abby had called this fun little party trick of mind “floppy hands.” It came on when I was stressed or not getting enough sleep.
I sat down and rested my traitorous hands on my knees while I waited for them to stop shaking. It would pass. It always passed. I breathed out and tried not to think about what the doc on my clinical had said when I’d nonchalantly asked him about it, pretending it was a question for the boards. “Oh, you mean like an essential tremor? Yeah, you’d definitely want to get that looked at.”
My hands had randomly shaken my whole life, but I only just learned it was a problem this semester.
As I sat in my desk chair, I watched Professor Dorrington scrolling across her laptop screen with a pursed-lip look of concentration on her face. “Nurse Foster?” she called out to me.
Startled, I tried to press my hands into my thighs, but they still flopped around in my lap like fish out of water. “Yes?” I said, wondering what on earth had led her to notice me on today of all days.
She glanced up, seemingly miffed that I was still in my seat. “I was just checking through my grading. Were you planning on handing in your unit test sometime soon?”
It was like someone had poured a bucket of icewater over my head. I froze to the spot, and then started shaking right along with my hands. An anxiety attack. I was seconds away from a full-blown anxiety attack.
I was a nurse. I knew what to do. But knowing what to do and being able to do it were two separate things. As Professor Dorrington looked over the top of her half-moon glasses to peer critically at me, I desperately tried to get air into my lungs, but it felt like someone was squeezing my chest too tight. “I…” I gulped. “Did?”
“I beg to differ,” she called from way down below me. This was ridiculous, the two of us shouting across the empty lecture hall, but I couldn’t move. I wasn’t sure I could put one foot in front of another without collapsing. And her pride wouldn’t allow her to come to me. She raised her voice a little louder. “Every day that it’s late it gets marked down twenty percent.”
Panic squirted a bright hot metallic taste in my mouth. It’d been a day already and I needed to keep my grade up as high as I could. “I sent it in,” I said as clearly as I could around the thickness of my tongue. In the bright hot glare of the impending panic attack, the harder she looked at me, the more I felt like I was lying. Shaking my head, I tore my eyes away from hers, and pulled out my phone, holding it tight in violently shaking hands. “I’m looking right here, in my sent folder,” I said. “The timestamp is 7:48 PM.”
A heavy silence fell over us as she turned back to her computer. I felt like I couldn’t move, pinned down by the weight of her implied accusation. My hands shook so hard that even sitting on them wasn’t enough. My whole body was slicked down in perspiration and I was gasping like a marathon runner as Professor Dorrington silently and judgmentally scrolled through her inbox. It was right then, in the middle of my silent breakdown, that the door to the lecture hall banged open and the same French-braided girl from before stood there with the heavy yellow cart.
And for some reason, I was able to catch my breath.
Maybe it was the expression on her face, the serene composure, the shy glance. Maybe it was the blessed distraction from my silent standoff with my professor. Or maybe it was the small play of a smile across her lips when she looked at me. Like the look of recognition you give to someone right before you open your mouth and reveal you don’t actually know their name.
She turned her heavy cart into the hall and then stopped short when she noticed that Professor Dorrington was still at her desk. “Oh!” she said and jerked her cart back in surprise. The force of it sent the mops that were on the front clattering to the floor.
Without thinking, I jumped to my feet. And to my surprise, my hand closed firmly on the fallen mop and didn’t show any signs of tremor at all. “Here,” I said, handing her the one, and then the other. “I got you,” I said. They were heavier than they looked.
At that moment, Professor Dorrington slapped her laptop closed and stood up. The custodian girl and I both startled and looked at her.
The expression on her face was one of studied boredom. “You’re all set, Nurse Foster,” she sniffed as she shrugged on her complicated wool coat.
I inhaled a deep, full breath. “You saw it then? My test?” For some reason I glanced at the custodian girl. She was watching us both with keen interest.
“Like I said, you’re all set.” Professor Dorrington grabbed her case and turned to stalk out the main entrance.
I let out that full breath and looked at the custodian again, and for some reason the urge to laugh overtook me. “Oh my god that was the scariest moment in my entire life,” I gasped, falling back to sit down on one of the empty chairs.
“She’s terrifying,” the custodian whispered with her eyes wide. “Thanks for your help.”
I glanced at her and she quickly looked down, avoiding my eyes. Her braid was so tight it pulled the sides of her face taut. I found myself wanting to know why she wore it that way. The only people I knew who braided their hair like that were little girls for dance recitals and the creepy cult ladies who moved in packs through town, not talking to anyone except themselves. “I’m Everly,” I said, holding out my hand. “You might have already heard my professor yelling my last name, but in case you missed it, it’s Foster.”
Then I looked at her again. The edges of her eyes were glittering. She dabbed angrily at them with her sleeve and then lifted her chin. “My name is Rachel.” She looked at my outstretched hand with an expression of grim concentration before taking it with hers. I was surprised by her strong, sure grip even more than I was surprised by the callouses on her palm. “Rachel Walker.”
She said her name like it should mean something, but I just smiled and nodded. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. And I really did mean it.
Chapter Thirteen
Gabe
Even though I didn’t want to, even though I wanted more than anything to stop, I still dragged my finger across the tablet, rewinding the video to the beginning again. The stupid blasting music, the white, italicized letters—how many of the millions of views this video had racked up were mine?
“I’m Gabe King and I’m the King of Pain!” the tiny, arrogant, unbroken version of me shouted into the camera. I hated his fucking guts, but the urge to punch the tablet screen had faded into a faint buzz in the back of my brain. I wasn’t watching out of self-hatred anymore. I wasn’t watching it punish myself. I was watching it out of…habit?
The thought made the corner of my mouth jerk into an unwanted smile, like someone had grabbed my lip with a fishhook. I coughed
and then laughed, a dry mirthless sound, aware that sitting alone in my bedroom and chuckling to myself didn’t exactly say much for my fraying, already suspect, sanity. Only I could make a habit of watching myself almost die. Only I could get bored of seeing my body broken and dashed against the rocks.
With a brand new wash of self-hatred, I nearly mustered the strength to turn it off. My finger hovered over the pause button, but I kept watching, transfixed right up to the moment the me on the screen leaped off that bridge.
“You’re watching that again?”
I looked up, feeling as guilty as if I’d been caught with my hand down my pants. “What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to slowly drop the tablet out of his sight.
Beau shook his head as he walked into my bedroom. “The video. You’ve been watching it a lot.”
“Stalker much?”
“Obvious much?” he countered. “You were always terrible at hiding things.” A shadow crossed his face. “Hey, don’t look at it anymore, okay?”
I hated the look of concern on his face because it was the same one he wore when he, Finn, and Claire had confronted me about my pill-addiction after the King Brothers imploded. The same wary sort of caution that you’d wear around a madman with a gun, or possibly a beloved family dog gone rabid. I never thought I’d make him have that look again, and I didn’t want to think about what it meant he was thinking. So I tried for a lame attempt at humor. “Look at what?”
The concerned look stayed put. “You know what,” he said, his voice so level you could use it to hang a picture on the wall.
Of course I wanted to protest that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. Even though I could feel how wrong it was with every sweat-soaked, self-loathing viewing. I could feel it eating away at me. It was like climbing out of quicksand and then belly-flopping back in again for a second go-round. Willingly letting it suck me under. I glanced down at the tablet again. The video had ended, the white, italicized words scrolling by, letting the voyeuristic viewer know that Gabriel King survived his brush with death with two broken ankles, seven broken ribs, and a laceration on his side requiring twenty-two stitches to close and that filming of “King of Pain” was on hiatus, its fate uncertain. I sucked in a huge lungful of breath…
