Idris gives me a wider smile. “You’ll meet him soon enough.”
Then he’s gone, following after his brother, leaving me alone in this haunted-ass hallway.
Here I am, with a duffel bag full of unresolved trauma. I stay standing for a few seconds, trying not to feel like I just stepped onto a ride with no seatbelt.
Well, ships don’t come with seatbelts. They come with life vests.
Taking a deep breath, I’m about to walk further down the hall whensheappears. Tablet in hand. Head down.
Suddenly, the last twenty-two years of my life? Irrelevant. Unthinkable. What evenarenumbers when this smokin’ hot babe’s right in front of me?
She’s showing a little bit of skin. It’s a shade of sun-warmed cream. A face that might’ve looked sweet if it weren’t for the lethal glare behind her glasses.
Her hair’s short, inky black, cut into a bob with short bangs that frame her face perfectly. And her mouth in a little frown tops the perfection off. She looks like she’s allergic to expression. And it’s doing terrible things to me.
She’s drowning in her lab coat. But all it does is make me wanna know what she’s hiding underneath.
She looks up. Andfuck me sideways, those eyes? Undeniably dark, dissecting every inch of me, and devastating in a way I’ve never felt before.
My soul leaves my body. My dick offers itself up as tribute.
“You must be Stanley,” she says, all flat and direct.
She’s so clinical-looking and straight to the point. And now that I know Em exists looking likethis, all I want is to rip her layers off.
Oh, shit, I think I just met my dream girl.
I blink. Open my mouth. Forget howwordswork.
Me, speechless? No, this isn’tpossible.
“You’re late,” she says, scribbling something on her tablet.
Does she not realize that she’s the final boss of my entire nervous system?
It feels like I have to pick my jaw up from the floor when she adds, “But not the last to come.”
Stanley Song-Smith, that is a low-hanging fruit for a vulgar joke.Fucking say something!
“Uh…” I manage, dragging the syllable out of my dry-ass throat. When her eyes pierce into mine, I swallow and force myself to speak. “You must be the other doc. Do you give out prostate exams?”
I inwardly cringe at my absolute flop of a joke.
I don’t get a reaction from her. She just turns and starts walking. I follow her, the tails of her long lab coat sways with the way she walks. Her existence feels like a sedative. I want to chug her like strong cough syrup at the end of a really bad week.
While she gives me a rundown, I catch everything. The swing of her short, silky black hair. Her fingers sliding her glasses back up her cute nose before they tap at her tablet. The sounds she makes when she’s reading something too fast for any normal human to track.
Every detail punches me right in the sternum.Andbelow the belt.
For the first time in a long time, I’m not looking at someone that reminds me of what could’ve been. I’m looking at someone who makes me want to start again.
So I follow her, hard enough to bend steel. Dazed and trailing after her like the lost idiot I am, all I can think isyeah, Idefinitelyshould’ve jerked off before boarding this damn ship.
3
Em
Stanley Song-Smith is too loud, in volume, presence, and proximity.
