That was what feelings did. They cherry-picked and lovingly rested a pair of rose-tinted glasses over your eyes. They made it easy to look past the bad when the good was so much more fun to focus on. They made hope possible.
Hope was such a fragile thing, anyway. Precarious. It came with the possibility of failure and rejection. Of ruining something good I wasn’t even sure I deserved in the first place, let alone asking for more.
Scenes blurred past me as I drove by them, my mind racing along with them.
Each and every scenario ahead of me played out in vivid detail, each one worse than the last. The fear was suffocating, clawing at my chest and making it hard to breathe. But beneath it, buried deep, was something else. Something insistent.
Want.
Need.
Because for every worst-case scenario my mind conjured, there was a small flicker of what could be. A glimpse of a future where he fit so seamlessly into my life that it was like he’d always belonged there to begin with.
No matter how unrelenting my doubts were, none of it stopped me from pulling through the gates heading into my neighborhood and up to my house where I knew he’d be waiting for me. Two hours had passed since I’d left; yet, for some reason, it felt like a lifetime since I’d seen him.
Today marked the second day of me calling off from work, tomorrow potentially ending up being a third, depending on how this conversation went. Though, if I was being honest with myself, there was no universe in which I’d be able to perform on a patient if tonight I ended up going to bed alone.
I could pretend all I wanted that I’d be able to compartmentalize and check my personal life at the doors once I stepped into the hospital. It would be easy to try and fool myself into believing that when I damn well knew this was my one exception.
He’d nearly killed me once before worrying about him on that call, to the point where I’d hardly been able to concentrate on anything outside of getting my rounds done and rushing to him.
I wouldn’t be able to do it a second time.
Killing the engine as soon as parked, I let my head fall back onto the headrest and breathed for a moment. In and out. Forcing my heart to keep time with my breaths instead of racing off on its own accord.
To think that I was crumbling under the weight of emotions and my soft feelings for a man when I’d spent my entire life turning my nose up at it like I was somehow above it.
Karma at its finest, really.
My car chimed as I got out and shut the door behind me, heading to the garage door with slow and steady footsteps. The warmth of my house wrapped around me as I pushed the door open, an inviting smell piquing curiosity within me as I toed off my shoes and headed for the kitchen.
Terran was facing the stove with two burners on low, his hips swaying to some song playing from his phone’s speaker as he hummed along to it. A surprisingly more chipper atmosphere than the one I’d left him in earlier after his call.
Good news, maybe?
When he spotted me, he smiled, holding up a wooden spoon. “How was brunch?”
“Fine.” At the very least my voice didn’t shake.
He glanced down at my empty hands, frowning. “No leftovers? Don’t tell me everything they plated was the size of a quarter.”
Amusement began to break through my nerves. “I’m beginning to grow concerned about your obsession with doggy bags. If you need help at home filling your fridge, just tell me. I’ll send over a meal service.”
He mouthed something before turning back to the stove, a healthy-sized omelet still sizzling as he flipped it over.
“What was that?” I asked, my voice low as I wandered closer, my steps deliberately slow. I came up behind him, close enough that I could feel the faint heat radiating from his body. Close enough that I could speak directly into his ear.
He was wearing my robe again, the tie hanging loosely around his waist, the fabric parted just enough to offer a tantalizing glimpse of his chest. Practically an invitation to slip my hand between the folds of it and slide it down his chest. He cursed at me when I did, shoving back from the stove and into my body, wiggling while my cold hand pressed harder against his warm skin.
“You’re such a vampire!”
“I think you mean lizard,” I replied, widening my fingers to cover more ground, relishing in the sharp gasp he pulled into his lungs.
“Silas!”
The tension that had been coiled tight inside me melted away, replaced by the irresistible urge to bury my face in his neck and trap him against me. Torturing him like this was quickly becoming my favorite pastime—though, I had to admit, it was only slightly being overshadowed by the euphoria of fucking him senseless.
“You’re such an asshole,” he grumbled, the end of his words tinging up into a whine.
