“Yes.” I let the word hang between us, knowing that I don’t want to lie to her.
“But you stopped yourself.”
“Yes,” I say again.
“So instead of handling it like the grown man you claim to be, you came here, hoping to find a random bar slut to occupy you for the night?”
Her voice cracks with the last few words, and I reach my arm across the center console for her hand, desperate to ease the strained look on her face.
As soon as my hand covers hers, she pulls it away and brings it protectively to her chest. “Is it because we’re coworkers? Because I’m a resident and you’re an attending, and people would gossip?”
It’s my turn to shake my head. “No.”
“Is it because of my age?”
I nod, wanting to give her a reason to build up the wall between us.
She watches me, her gaze unwavering. “Bullshit.”
“You calling my bluff, Keeton?”
“I am. Because you’re forty-two, not ninety-two, and I’m a twenty-eight-year-old woman with a fully developed frontal cortex. This isn’t some teenage drama, Colt. We’re consenting adults, and most days I think we want the same thing.”
We do. But wanting and acting are two very different subjects.
“Do you want to kiss me?”
I exhale heavily, falling back into my seat to rub both hands over my face. “You don’t need to even ask me that. I think it’s pretty fucking clear what I want.”
“Is it, though?” she pushes. “Because sometimes, it is clear what you want. Some days I think you want me almost as much as I want you. Some days you buy my favorite candy and let me listen to 80s music in the OR. Some days you listen to me vent about my daddy issues and fears about being a surgeon. You held my hair back and rubbed my back while I barfed in your very fancy bathroom. But then I arrived at the bar tonight and saw that bimbo with her claws wrapped around your forearm and I wanted to rip the hot pink wedge right off her foot and beat you to a pulp with it.”
Her unexpected rant pulls a laugh from me, and I double over across the steering wheel. “That would have been hilarious.”
She leans her back against the window, drawing in a heavy inhale that pushes her chest out, and my eyes fall to her cleavage again.
“Sometimes I think you want me, and sometimes I think you’re almost going to let yourself have me, but every time we’re almost there, you pull back.”
I rub my lips together, running my tongue over my teeth as I nod. She’s not wrong. I’m the older one here, the one that should be mature about this and I’m acting like a fucking teenager in heat. She’s too good for this. She’s too good for this push and pull between us and she deserves a hell of a lot more man than me.
I reach a hand over to grab her knee, and this time she doesn’t shy away. She covers her hand with mine and squeezes.
“You’re right.” I exhale heavily, ready to lay it all out there. “I want you, Annailese. I like you in a way that I haven’t liked another woman before, in ways that I didn’t truly believe were possible. I haven’t even kissed you. I don’t know what it’s like to feel your lips against mine, your body underneath me as I do everything in my power to make you scream, yet somehow I’ve become obsessed with you.” I’ve imagined just that–hundreds, if not thousands, of times since the moment I laid eyes on her–and I still can’t get her out of my head.
Her pouty bottom lip falls open in surprise, and before I give in and capture her mouth with mine, I continue, “But I owe everything I have to your father. He’s the reason I am where I am today and he’s the reason I’ll likely be Chief within the next few years. Doing what I want, with you…” I trail off, letting my eyes rake over her body. “It would destroy him.” Even if their relationship is strained, he’s still a father wanting what he feels is the best for his daughter, and I doubt that’s being with a man like me. And in turn, it would destroy my career, which, until I met her, was the only thing I had ever cared about in my life. If she were to leave me, hell,whenshe does leave me in just a few short months to return to her residency overseas, my career will be the only thing left in my life to fight for.
Her hand slowly pulls off of mine and retreats to her lap, but I reach over, taking it back. “Believe me. God, youhaveto believe me, Annie. In another world, another life, I’d do things very,verydifferently.”
She raises her right hand to trace a line through the fog that’s gathered on the side windows. Thick rivulets of snow run down the glass, and she zigzags her finger in between the rows before turning toward me. “Do you want to come upstairs, Colter?”
I let my head fall back into my seat at her suggestion. “Fuck, don’t ask me that. You and I both know I want to come upstairs.”
“But you won’t,” she states. “And I don’t get it. You can say it’s my dad until you are blue in the face, but my dad isn’t in the car with us right now. The only person that seems to be holding yourself back is you.”
“I’m still bound by my history with him. What I want to have, and what I can have, are two very, very different things, Annie. How can I make you see that?”
She pulls her hand from my reach again, and uses both hands to angrily rake her fingers through her hair. “Ugh, you are so infuriating!” She slaps her hands down to her thighs and falls back in the seat before looking at me. “You want to know what I think?”
“Even if I didn’t, I’m sure you will tell me anyway.”
