I eye him as I put a spoonful of veggies in my mouth. “Yes. I thought it would be okay since they were about to go bad.”
He nods, picking at the steak.
I glance over at Kai, who now has a smirk on his face. He’s enjoying this. Whatever this is. I don’t even know.
“What have you guys been up to?” Liam asks.
“We played hooky,” Amari says.
"Oh, you did?” He looks over at Amari. “All three of you?”
“Yup. Mom wouldn’t wake up, so I called Dad, and he came over. We watched movies all day!”
Liam drops his utensils and looks over at me. “What does she mean you wouldn’t wake up?”
I shrug my shoulders. “She says she tried to wake me up a few times, and I wouldn’t wake up. I woke up by the time Kai got here.”
“Why didn’t you call me? Are you okay?” he asks, reaching for my hand.
I place my hand in his. “Yeah. I’m fine. I must have been exhausted and was sleeping pretty hard.” I look up and notice Kai is staring at our hands.
"Well, thanks for coming, man,” Liam says to Kai.
“Of course. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my girls,” Kai says with a smirk.
My mouth drops open slightly, stunned at Kai’s response.My girls. What the hell is he doing? Either it doesn’t faze Liam, or he’s trying to keep things cordial.
Kai is back at this again. But why now? Why is he trying to get me back when he sees how good of a man Liam is? How good I have it? Liam has been everything I need and more. Finding someone who would treat Amari as their own was so hard. I finally found that, and now that Kai is starting this again. It makes no sense.
After dinner, Kai stayed and helped clean up, even though both Liam and I insisted we would handle it. He argued it was only fair since he’s the one who made the mess. At that point, I could see what he was doing so I let him be, and I served ice cream to Amari, Liam, and myself. He wants to play his games. Well, I have some of my own. All three of us sat around the table while he cleaned. I did feel a little bad when I caught him looking at the three of us, but Liam doesn’t deserve to hear the comments he was making.
“How was your day?”I ask Liam as he gets into bed. I don’t want to bring up anything from today unless he does. If he does, it’ll clue me in on if it bugged him or not. He knows where I stand with Kai and knows Kai will always be part of my life. But he’s never walked in on us laughing at the table while eating dinner. I don’t know how I would feel if I walked in on a moment like that. It would feel too intimate for me, as if I were the odd one out.
He sighs and says, “Stressful.”
I turn to my side and rest my head on my hand. “Why? Did something happen?”
“I had a patient not follow her pre-op instructions when she said she did. We started prepping for the surgery and realized she didn’t comply, so we had to stop everything. It was a big waste of time for everyone. Including her.”
“Oh, wow. What did she say when you told her?”
“That she didn’t think emptying her bowels before surgery really mattered. She thought that’s just what doctors told their patients to be on the safe side.” He runs his fingers through his hair.
The smell of spicy, sweet tobacco hits my nose. I love when he showers and uses the bourbon bodywash I buy for him at Bath and Body Works. When I was a teenager, I used to only shop at Victoria’s Secret. That’s where all the girls my age shopped for perfume and lotion. Love Spell was such a staple in my teen years. Now that I’m older, I like Bath and Body Works better.
“Does she not know that’s why it’s calleddoctor’s orders?”
“After she noticed how upset everyone was, I think it finally set in for her.”
Liam always has crazy stories to tell me. He doesn’t tell me the patient’s personal information, because that’s a violation of HIPAA. I hear a lot of crazy stories, but the majority include men going to the emergency room because they’ve shoved something up their ass and can’t get it out. The men typically don’t fess up to putting things in there. They say they fell. How the hell are you going to fall in the shower and have a shampoo bottle just so happen to slip up your ass? People are strange, that’s for sure.
“Do I have anything to worry about?” Liam asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
“What do you mean?”
“Today seemed a little weird with your ex.”
“How so?”
