“No—I’m fine.” A necessary bluff…
He motions me out into the hallway, where he says, “You should have told me. Stuck up for yourself.”
I smile sadly, shaking my head. “I hesitate to say this out loud, but…I wanted to watch him. Over him,” I clarify. “I couldn’t have stood not being in there. I would rather have to cut than not be there.”
He nods, and then he winks. “That’s a surgeon for you. We’re a different breed. I would do the same for my wife, no doubt. Still, though, I’m impressed you did it. Well done.”
“I don’t really feel that way,” I answer honestly.
He claps my shoulder. “Sometimes you don’t.”
Twelve
Landon
“Yeah…so tell me all about that. If you want to.”
Evie’s fingertips stroke my forearm, and it feels so good, it’s a struggle to think straight enough to answer her.
It’s the middle of the night, five-days-going-on-six after the wreck, and she’s sitting on the edge of my hospital bed, tracing circles on the inside of my arm after washing my hair with dry shampoo. I’m pretty sure it didn’t work, but her hands in my hair—good stuff.
I flex my wrist to wrap my fingers around Ev’s arm. She understands my wordless request; her hand clasps mine in response, and our fingers lace together.
I lean my head back against the top of the bed and shut my eyes. I do want to tell her.
“Almost two years ago,” I say, with my eyes still closed, “I hired a PI.” My lungs start into a fortifying breath, the way I’ve done for my whole life, but pain stops me short. I freeze, clenching my jaw.
Evie’s hand squeezes mine. I squeeze back. I take a few more shallow breaths and try to think around the pain.
“The PI…he traced her by my name.” I look at Evie, who is listening with wide eyes. “He checked around the time of my estimated birth for a baby born in the Asheville area with the name James Landon. Turns out, I was born near Fairview. My real birthday is March 5. And my mother’s name is Laura Stern.”
“Wow…”
“She’s a high school physics teacher. When she…left,” I whisper, “she was twenty.” I swallow hard, then let my eyes find Evie’s. “Came from poverty,” I say in an impassive tone. “She was arrested once for trying to buy drugs from an undercover officer. PI said she told a woman at her church back then that she had let me go live with my dad.”
Evie’s eyes widen, and I shake my head to shut down her excitement. “Nothing on him. PI thought she didn’t know.
“When I was six,” I go on, “she remarried…to another teacher. And they applied to foster children.” I inhale deep enough to ache, and shake my head. “They got rejected. Couldn’t pass the background check. The drug arrest, I’m thinking. Perfect, right?”
My body hurts so fucking much. Telling this story hurts. But I want Ev to know. I want to hear her thoughts. Despite what happened between us—what she didn’t tell me—I still love her just the same. I need her just the same.
So I continue, even though I hate to talk about it. “Not long after that, they started having kids. Three girls and a boy. They live in Charlotte now.” I bite the inside of my cheek and shake my head. “You know…I almost dislike that the most. That she left Asheville. Isn’t that illogical?”
Ev strokes my hand and leans in closer. “I don’t think so.” I’m wearing a back brace, and I’m leaning back in the bed, so I can’t really move closer to her. “I can understand that,” she says softly.
After a quiet moment, Evie lets go of my hand and shifts to sit beside me in the bed, hip to hip with our backs against the raised mattress. She takes my hand gently in hers again, and rests her head against my upper arm.
“You’ve never met her,” she surmises.
“No. I want to, though. In my head…I have these fantasies where I say all this shit to her. Where I tell her that she’s a fucked up bitch—and where I tell her I’m a surgeon, and she’s thrilled and cooks me dinner.” I laugh darkly.
“Do you want to, really?” she asks. “You want to meet her?”
“Of course. But I think we know how that ends.”
“No we don’t. And listen—I think anyone would feel this way. You want to have some clue of where you came from. That’s just normal.”
“Ashtyn’s lucky that she knows you.” I can barely say the words without my damn throat knotting up.
I can’t turn my torso to see Evie’s face, but I can feel her chest expand. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you. God, I’m sorry. When we were younger, when you showed back up that time and Emmaline talked to you you—” her voice cracks. “I had gone off to this…camp thing. Kind of like a rehab almost.”
My chest tightens. “What?”
“For depression,” she says, looking up at me. “Even though I thought I did the right thing, it still bothered me a lot back then. And—” her voice catches— “I missed you. Lots.”
I grit my teeth. I fucking hate to hear that. I hate that I left her when she needed me, when Ashtyn needed me. Evie’s come to terms with it, but I still have my share of guilt.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs. “We were both just doing things the only way we could.” She blows her breath out. “When I found out you’d been by, though… It was not a good time.” She curls her legs up to her chest and leans her cheek against my arm. “I thought you’d hate me—and be heartbroken for her. I questioned that a few times, but I always figured what you didn’t know wasn’t hurting you.”
I feel her shoulders shake as her voice cracks, and Evie’s crying. Fuck. I lift my arm up slowly, bringing it around her even though it makes my torso light up. I tighten my bicep, urging her to scoot in closer.
“If she got curious,” Ev says through her tears, “I figured we could look you up. I didn’t think that you would want her wondering. I thought you’d be okay to find out then. Truthfully, I was so young, I didn’t know. Nothing seemed right. I knew it would break your heart.”
“Just not my back.” The words slip out, and Evie stiffens. I chuckle, and then stifle a groan as my ribs ache. “Supposed to…be a joke,” I hiss.
I feel like an old man as her hand strokes my shoulder. “You want anything right now?”
I shut my eyes and shake my head.
“You could get more Toradol.”
“Saving up,” I whisper-hiss. In the dim light of my room, I see her chew her lip. “Just rub my arm,” I tell her.
It feels good, of course, but more importantly, it makes Ev feel less helpless.
She stretches my arm out in her lap and starts to stroke it like she has the last few days.
“Anyway,” she sighs, “I screwed up. I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I would never have…”
But I was gone when she gave birth. Evie doesn’t have to tell me she might have chosen differently had I been there.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Damn it, Evie. Is she happy? Really?”
“You saw her. She seemed like a normal kid, right?”
“I don’t know.” My voice shakes, which surprises me. As do my words when I say, “I don’t even know what that is.”
Evie cuddles up to me. Her hand sifts through my hair, stroking gently even though I know it must be sweaty and unclean.
“Let me tell you, then,” she murmurs. “I think she has a really nice life. Happy.”
“Is it fucked up that she didn’t feel like…ours, that time I saw her?” My words are rough and quiet.
“I’d argue that, I think, though. You knew her at first glance. Landon…she does look like me, but not that much.”
“You don’t think?” I ask, surprised.
“Not really.”
I blink a few times. My damn eyes keep leaking every time I think about this—or my mother. It’s the goddamn hospital. Being a patient here.
“You know what’s awful?” she whispers.
“What?”
“I want kids,” she tells m
e quietly. “I want more kids…later. I still have this…hole there, you know?”
“It’s not the same.” I reach my arm around her, even though it hurts my torso. I cup Evie’s shoulder, rubbing through the T-shirt that she’s sleeping in. “It’s not the same, Ev. You did right.”
“Maybe your mother did right too, though. Please don’t hate me for saying that.”
“For having an opinion?” I squeeze her gently. “I would have hated you a long time ago for the blasphemy of plain avocados.”
“They’re not plain. That’s just misinformation. They’re salted and peppered and they’re very flavorful, I’ll have you know.” I can hear the smile in her voice. She leans against me again, and I can feel her wanting to hug me. It’s almost amusing how much Evie’s having to hold back. She’s a hugger, and she wants to plaster herself on me, I think. Hug it out and shit.
I move my arm from around her shoulders, and I twine my fingers through hers. Then I pull our joined hands onto my lap…over my thigh…until they’re resting where I really want to feel her. I can tell the moment that she notices, because she stops breathing.
“Landon.” She giggles in the dark. Her voice goes high as she says, “Are you serious?”
I don’t dare flex my hips, so I can’t rub my dick against her. I rub our hands against myself and groan, because goddamn, I fucking need this.
“All day,” I confess. Spines go into shock after a vertebral fracture. In my case, my lower half was tingling painfully, like an irritated funny bone, until this morning. “When I stood up early today, I realized the tingling was gone. And I guess with the big cutback on the morphine…” Her hand rubs against me, gentle, tentative, as if she wants to be sure that my dick really is hard as fuck and wanting her attention.
I groan. “I want to move my hips… You make me fucking crazy…”
“Oh my God, you’re crazy.” She laughs softly.
I take her hand and make it cup me. “Feel this? A miracle,” I rasp. “Think of what could have happened to him.”
She giggles as she rubs me. I’m panting and groaning—throbbing. “Ev…you’ve gotta make me come.”
“Oh, you poor thing.” She giggles.
“I am. I need relief…and only one woman can help.” I twist her nipple. She yelps. “Landon…I am shocked.”
“Don’t be shocked. Just help me out, and then I’ll help you.”
She laughs, as if I must be joking. “How can you do that?”
I would twist her nipple again, just to show her who’s in charge, except she’s bending down, moving my blankets. Her hand finds me, skin-to-skin, and it takes all my effort not to jerk my hips as Evie pumps my cock and, with her free hand, starts to roll my balls. I grit my teeth and try to keep my faster breathing shallow.
“Ahhhh fuck. Evie…” I grab her arm and squeeze it as her fingers play with my balls. “Fuckkk. That’s good… A little faster on the…yeah.” She gets the pace of her stroking just right, and I give in and let myself breathe deeply, even though it hurts…it also feels good.
“Ahhhhhh—my Evie.” My voice shakes on her name.
“Am I?”
“You know…you are.” I grunt, and for a moment, I’m afraid to come, but then she does this thing where she lifts both my balls and kinda grips them, as her stroking hand grazes the rim of my head just right. I suck a big breath back, and pain shoots through my ribs—right as she grips me hard and strokes me faster. Her hand comes over my head, then strokes back down. And up, then down…and up. Oh fuck, I’m leaking precum. God. Her finger tweaks me right there on the tip. I’m panting harder. “God…I think I’m…gonna…”
“Come?” she whispers.
Evie’s finger traces down the seam of my taut, aching balls, and that’s it. I unload in her hand, in a railed bed—on the third floor, no less.
I should be embarrassed, but instead, I’m energized.
We play a game where we measure how fast I can make her come with just my fingers. I score 3:55 the first time and 2:48 the second.
Winning.
Really winning.
I know better than to question it.
Thirteen
Evie
November 2017
Charlotte, South Carolina
We walk off the airplane with our hands intertwined. As we emerge from the jet bridge, swathed in thick, warm, Southern air, an airline attendant smiles and waves.
“You two have a happy Friday.”
“You too.” I smile back, and, to his credit, so does Landon. It’s his polite smile. The one I’ve seen him use so many times on patients when he’s having a bad day. They never know—but I do.
I squeeze his fingers. They squeeze mine back.
“Good?” I whisper.
He nods—and I assess him as we walk toward baggage claim.
He looks gorgeous in his charcoal suit, with an unbuttoned white dress shirt underneath. In the late morning light that’s streaming through the airport windows, his hair shines, more red than brown. The just-more-than-stubble beard he’s sporting ups the hotness factor even further.
“You look good,” I murmur.
He gives me a small, tight smile, and squeezes my hand. “You do.”
I look down at my blouse, leggings, and boots. “It’s kinda weird to be without the white coat.”
“Right?”
I nod. We have the weekend off: a rarity these last few months.
Right after Landon’s accident and surgery, we figured that he’d be out up to six months—or at least, that’s how Eilert and the program budgeted his recovery time. Instead, he surprised everyone by healing not just fast, but super fast.
He was determined not to fall into the class behind ours, not because of me, but because, as he put it, “I didn’t work this hard to spend the whole damn year reading the newspaper.”
When he asked to make a slow return to work just six weeks after surgery, using a walker, working fewer hours, and helping on the floor, with no OR time, Eilert said “yes” without much trouble.
“But no kissing in the donut room,” she warned.
They had to bend the rules for us. Even now, with Landon fully healed and having been at work fulltime again for going on eight weeks, we’re rarely scheduled in the OR at the same time, and Landon doesn’t report to Eilert anymore for his official evaluations. He reports to Kraft.
After we finish the program, we likely wouldn’t both be able to work as neurosurgeons at Alpine University Hospital. But that’s fine, because Landon is firmly interested in pediatrics, and planning to do the extra residency time required for peds.
“The air is so thick here.” I wipe my forehead as we step onto one of those nifty human conveyer belts.
“It’s like the Southern United States or something.”
Landon smirks, and I give him a mock glare. “Smart ass.”
Over time I’ve found that underneath his smooth surgeon’s veneer, he’s still sarcastic like he’s always been, and more so when he’s nervous.
“Did you get the rental car receipt?” he asks as we step off the belt, beside the baggage claim.
“I did.” I drop his hand.
“Sorry,” he breathes. “Wound up.”
“If you weren’t, I’d suspect an alien body-snatching.”
That makes him chuckle. “You’re so weird.”
“That’s what you love about me.”
“So it is.”
We walk to our flight’s carousel, and I start looking for our suitcases: both black, and marked with hot pink teacup luggage tags. Landon spots one and steps around a crowd of teenagers to lift it off the belt.
I shadow him. “Good?” I ask after he lifts it.
He arches his brows.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
Asking about his back is a habit I’m having kind of a tough time breaking. In our bed the other day, I got a spanking for excessive back-related commentary.
“I want to forget about it,” he said
then. “Let it be over.”
And it’s true: he has healed flawlessly—owning, in part, I’m sure, to doing everything “right,” from therapeutic Pilates to aggressive PT right down to supplements for bone and muscle health. Yep—I’m married to a doctor.
Did I mention that we’re married?
After Landon got out of the hospital, eleven days post-surgery, I moved into his apartment: partially because he needed my help, but also because I couldn’t stand to be away from him.
I took a whopping three days off of work, and as we watched movies and napped and talked, and I pulled all my butt and thigh muscles bouncing on his lap, we realized more and more that nothing had changed.
Ten years apart, and our dynamic felt the very same as it always had. Domesticity was the most natural thing on earth for both of us, maybe because it’s how we started—living under the same roof.
Emmaline took off from her job as a voice actress in Los Angeles to come reacquaint herself with Landon and keep him company when I returned to work. My parents showed up on the last day of Em’s visit. They arrived while I was at the hospital, and surprised even my sister, asking to see Landon.
Em says they spent hours talking about what happened years ago—apologizing not because they did something so horrible, but because they both truly felt sad about how it worked out. In retrospect, they regretted spiriting Landon away like they did, especially knowing how it all panned out.
The night after Mom and Dad and Em left, Landon and I were in bed, drinking chamomile, with me curled up carefully against him, when he said, “I want to do this forever.”
“Cuddle?”
His voice dropped an octave when he said, “No—be with you.” I widened my eyes at him, and his mouth tightened. “Too soon?”
“No,” I whispered. I kissed his hand, and then his cheek…and then his mouth. “Never too soon. You know that was my first choice, right?” I whispered.
“What was?”
“Getting married.”
He stopped breathing. “What do you mean?”