The fact that he doesn’t know and still doesn’t see it is scary. “I need to finish getting my room ready for my patient. My orders are a mess, and I have to sort them out.”
“Okay. I’ll let you do that. But you know how I feel and what I want. I’ll let you think about it, and then we’ll talk again later this week.”
He leaves me here, and I dutifully go and get ready for my patient and do my job. For eight hours, that’s exactly what I do. And I don’t think about either of the sharks swimming in my ocean. Even if I know they’re still there lurking.
7
ASTON
There’s no reason I should be edgy right now. Zoey loved the preschool and her new teacher. She starts tomorrow and is excited about it. I spent two hours unpacking and doing laundry and getting us organized and even boxing up some of Micha’s things he said I could, so we’d have more room. Tomorrow is my first full and real day at the hospital.
It’s all good things. I’m insanely happy about it.
But that hasn’t stopped me from stupidly and annoyingly watching the door or wondering what that douche Josh wanted with Skylar. I heard the buzz about him as I walked past the nurse’s station. He’s her ex. They were whispering about secret notes he leaves in her locker and how they can’t understand how someone like her could dump someone like him.
Someone like her.
I didn’t comprehend their meaning at first. Skylar is a billionaire. A Fritz. Despite being a total ballbuster, she’s a sweet and kind human. She’s also seriously fucking beautiful. Her hair and eyes are the stuff of fantasies, and don’t even get me started on her curves. So, I didn’t get it. I was almosttempted to ask. Until I thought back to what she said about what others have called her in the past.
My swan was called an ugly duckling.
I wanted to tell each of those nurses that a guy like Josh was lucky he ever had a shot with a girl like her, but I kept walking. Kept fuming. Hating myself for all of it. Because if I hadn’t already been feeling protective over her after what she told me, I sure as fuck was after that. Even if her battles aren’t mine to fight.
Zoey is drawing at the kitchen table while I finish cooking for us. Pasta with zucchini and meat sauce because she’ll eat it, and I know how to make it.
“Zo-Zo, finish up. Dinner’s almost ready.”
She doesn’t spare me a glance, just moves faster with her tongue tucked off to the side between her teeth. The pasta is done, and after I drain it, I add it to the meat sauce and toss it all together. Zoey is the worst with veggies, but this sauce has tiny pieces of zucchini hidden and spinach masked as torn-up basil. Thus far, she hasn’t noticed and always eats it.
“Drawing away,” I tell her as I put the pasta into a bowl.
“Ugh.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Really?”
She gives me a glare she’s about ten years too young for. “I’m in my art era. I need to decorate my walls with my feels.”
I try to contain my smirk. “You can reenter your art era and feels after dinner. And since when are you so into art?”
She shrugs. “You’re bossing my space.”
“Where are you learning these things? You’re five.”
“YouTube.”
I make a mental note to increase the parental controls on her iPad.
“I used to do art with Mommy,” she continues.
Oh. Shit. And I suck because I didn’t know that.
She falls quiet, and I place her food in front of her alongwith a glass of milk and one of water. I sit beside her, twirling my noodles without bringing the fork to my mouth as I watch her.
“I was never very good at art,” I start. “I have a science brain. But your mom used to paint a lot, and it seems you got your art talent from her and thankfully not from me. Would you like that? If I bought you some paints and gave you a space to do that or got you into an art class?”
I get another shrug with a downward glum face as she starts to twirl her pasta, same as I am.
“Will you make me a picture? It can be anything you want.”
