How the hell was I supposed to wait another forty-eight hours and not bash my head in in the meantime?
Probably more, considering I was meeting him at the hospital where he would most likely be getting off his shift—whenever the hell that was.
Speaking of which...
Scrolling down to the bottom of the first page of personal information, I snagged his phone number and plugged it into my contacts, shooting him a quick ‘when do you get off work on Wednesday?’before immediately regretting it the instant the message was marked off as being delivered.
Fuck.
We’d never formally exchanged numbers. Now, I was going to look like some stalker. Or worse, neurotic.
I was starting to believe that having withdrawals from a person were the beginning stages to some kind of undiagnosed illness that had spontaneously manifested the second I’d gotten dropped off at the front of my house with the promise of Wednesday still ringing in my ears as his Alfa Romeo’s engine rumbled back down the road toward the opposite side of town. Leaving me to deal with dodging my sister’s incessant questions while my niece clung to my leg the second I got through the front door.
Keeping things vague, being relaxed and easygoing with our future plans, all in an effort to keep things as noncommittal as possible with both my sisterandmyself. Funny, that was how I’d viewed things not even two days ago, and now, I found myself doing the exact opposite.
One good lay was all it took for me to sneak into my job with the sole purpose of using my credentials to access the government’s database and make sure he wasn’t involved with someone else.
It had to be a sickness.
Or maybe I was always like this. Maybe I’d always been this insane and had yet to attach it to someone until Silas gave me a reason to trigger it in the first place.
My sister was always accusing me of having a lover boy’s heart.
Who knew it was, in fact, terminal.
My phone buzzed.
Abusing your powers to get my personal number? What a classic move for someone in your position.
I stared down at the screen in disbelief. Not one question as to who was texting him. He knew immediately.
My mind toggled between that being a good and bad sign. Good for the fact that there was no question as to who in the world would be asking him what his schedule was come Wednesday outside of me and bad because... well.
That meant my behavior wasn’t at all shocking.
My fingers flew over the screen.Would you rather I show up at your house to ask?
His answer was immediate.I figured you’d be more resourceful in finding a way to contact me.
I let the phone drop from my hands to cradle my face instead.
It was hard to tell if he was encouraging this behavior or calling me out for it in that odd, dry way of his. I wanted to believe he felt like none of this was weird, or at least not weird enough to be turned off by it. There was so much guesswork when I wasn’t facing him and seeing his genuine reaction to finding my text sitting in his inbox and realizing who it was from.
Was he happy to hear from me?
Displeased?
Or, fuck, worst of all: indifferent?
That last one would send me into a goddamn spiral. Especially, since the last day and a half I’d spent trying not to go off the deep end and finding myself doing the exact opposite by looking him up.
Lifting my phone up again, I typed out a slow,How so?
My heart hammered annoyingly in my chest when the text was read and not responded to.
Glancing at the clock, I decided he was either just clocking in for his shift, or was in the middle of a double and had taken a second to check his phone before diving back in to walk the floor and check on everyone who’d been assigned to him. Either way, pulled away from answering me for the next few hours.
Not that I’d memorized his rotation or anything while I’d been under his care. I was lucky to be getting some kind of response in the first place.
