I sit against my headboard, clutching my phone as she types her response. My heart pounds.
Kendall
Only if you’re good.
This girl. I drop my head back and blow out a long breath.
She’s going to drive me out of my mind.
14
KENDALL
Grant cannot stop looking at me, and I’m basking in his discomfort. I want to drink it down like a smoothie, to take his fixation and absorb it into my body like a nutrient.
We’ve been texting a little, and seeing each other at work, but that’s it. It’s the middle of September, halfway into his rotation, so our time is limited, but I’m not sure how I want to proceed. I can’t kiss him again.
Icannotkiss him again.
He’s been on the ortho floor of the hospital doing rounds. Now he’s back in the clinic pretending to study an x-ray even though I can feel his gaze burning a path up my thighs when I pass him.
I room his next patient, an unfortunate case of a young woman with avascular necrosis who needs a hip replacement. She’s chipper, though, and doesn’t seem devastated, so I chat with her a little as I take her vitals and get her history.
The door opens, and I startle. Grant’s there, looming in the doorway with his blue scrubs and his white coat, looking like someone in a hot doctor Halloween costume. The patientglances at him, and her mouths drops into a little round “O.” A few flutters skip through my abdomen.
I turn my attention back to her and pull the pulse ox off her finger. We are better than this, I want to say to her.
“I’m obsessed with those bracelets,” I tell her instead, nodding to her wrist.
She turns back to me, seemingly surprised that I’m still in the room.
“That Maple brand, I mean,” I explain, determinedly not looking at Grant. “The gold one.”
She smiles and touches her wrist. “Yeah, it’s my favorite.”
When I turn to leave the room, Grant’s hot stare threatens to melt me on the spot. I almost admonish him for looking at me like that in front of a patient, but I can’t find the words. Instead, I walk out the door with a muttered, “Nice to meet you.”
Later in the day, Grant finds me in the break room. We’re almost done with our patients. I lean against a counter and eat a pack of trail mix while he rips into a protein bar. My gaze snags on his long fingers, and I do not imagine them skimming along the skin of my torso, because that would be obscene.
“First thing you’ve eaten today?” I nod to his snack.
“Since breakfast, yeah.” He takes a swig of water and steps toward me. “Kendall.”
“What?” I glance around the room. “If you’re looking for a heart to heart I don’t think this is the place for it.”
He’s close to me now. His Adams’s apple slides up and down his throat with his swallow, and I watch it, noting the little kick my heart issues at his nearness.
“I do want to talk.” He ducks his head to look at me even though I’m not much shorter than him.
“If I’m still here when you leave, you can walk me to my car.”
He nods. Dr. Planck steps through the door, and we joltapart. The older doctor barely raises a brow, but I feel like he just caught us naked in here.
“You on call tonight?” Dr. Planck pushes a mug under the one-cup coffee maker. Not all doctor stereotypes are true, but orthopedic doctors do drink enough caffeine to kill a regular person.
Grant leans against the counter and crosses one ankle over the other. “Yeah,” he says. “Hopefully it’s a little smoother than my last one.”
“I don’t know how you guys manage nights on call after working all day,” I say.
