“I can take a look at what you have, but I don’t think I have anything serious enough to warrant your leftovers,” I chuckle, watching him stand. But he’s not smiling. Instead, he looks…Well, I can’t really read the look passing across his stormy eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take Tylenol if you have any. I doubt I have a concussion.”
“You don’t need to be in pain, Soph,” he says, voice low. “It’s not worth it, and I don’t think I can sit here and watch you hurt.”
There it is again. That warm, fluttery feeling. This time, it makes its way to my chest, making my heart skip a beat.
“Noah—” He storms off towards the bathroom before I finish what I want to say. Well then. I listen to him rustling around inside the medicine cabinet for a few moments until he returns with a handful of pill bottles.
The nurse in me feels uncomfortable doing this.
The patient part of me is getting a little desperate. Potential concussion be damned.
I hurt.
I press my lips together as he joins me at the smalltable again and sets the bottles down. “It’s not much,” he starts, pushing them towards me, “but there are a couple there for pain.”
Once again, the nurse in me is telling me not to do it. To push them back and look for the Tylenol I know he has somewhere in the cabin. I just have to keep a better eye on myself and my injuries, since I doubt Noah has been recertified in first aid. Though, then again, it also wouldn’t surprise me if he was.
But with shaky, sore hands I read the labels of each bottle. There are five in total to cover the extent of the injuries he has. “How is your pain, by the way?” I ask slowly, glancing at his handsome, rugged face. “The burns?”
Noah stiffens for only a moment, his hand clenching into a fist on the table. “It could be worse,” he replies without looking at me. “Some days are better than others. The burns don’t hurt as much as they used to, but some mornings I wake up expecting them to be gone. Then I move around, and they remind me painfully they aren’t.”
Tears burn my eyes, a lump rising in my throat. “Have you ever thought about going to see that specialist?”
“What specialist?”
I push a bottle of pills I know won’t help aside,barely glancing at him. “The one I know your doctor gave you the card for.”
In my periphery, I watch him lean in, something shifting in his dark eyes. “And how would you know that, Angel? You checking in on me at the hospital?”
It’s my turn to stiffen, eyes going wide. My cheeks immediately warm. “Oh, uh, I—” Stuttering, I smack my hand—painfully—into my face.
To my shock and horror, Noah just laughs. It’s a nice laugh. The kind of laugh I used to want to hear all the time when I was at the firehouse. It’s warm and low and it makes my heart skip a beat.
“Don’t laugh,” I mutter, lowering my hand to stare at him. Even his smile takes my breath away. It’s the first real smile I’ve caught inyears. Even before the fire, he reserved those for those closest to him.
Noah crosses his arms, biceps bulging. Even though he was burned so badly he couldn’t move for ayear,he’s somehow in better shape than when he used to be at the station. It’s insane. Shouldn’t even be possible.
But he’s always found ways to defy the odds.
“You think I should talk to a specialist?” he asks, cocking his head.
The heat in my cheeks refuses to die down, evenwhen I shake my head. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
“I know,” he murmurs, capturing my hand on the table, suddenly making all the pain disappear with just that simple touch. “I was teasing you.”
“Oh.” I swallow hard, unable to respond. This is definitely not the man I used to sneak looks at when with my brother. Since when does Noah Grey tease?
It’s so unlike him and the vision of him I’ve built up over the years, that I have no idea how to respond.
“You find anything in there that might help with your pain?” he asks, voice low.
I take that as my opportunity to change the subject entirely. Because howdoI admit that I had, in fact, been keeping an eye on him? Not in a violating kind of way that would end up with me losing my job. Just in a way that I know his doctor personally because the man has hit on me and all the other nurses several times andIsuggested to him he should definitely recommend this specialist in Denver to Noah.
I don’t know how well he would take my meddling.
Slowly, I shake my head. “A lot of these are probably way too strong for me. Even if I halved the dosage, we don’t know if there’s anything else wrong, andsome of these could have adverse effects that could put me at risk. I’ll just stick to regular old pain killers.”
Noah sighs, sounding almost disappointed. “You sure?”
