Page 21 of Bloom: Part 1

I shake my head. “Where are your parents, little boy? They know the company you keep?”

Silence, thick and suspenseful, fills the room. I frown. Bay is clutching Gerald and has gone pale. Is it something I’d said?

A laugh peals out of the young man. His eyes are crinkled, and his lips curve into an amused grin. Sweet Mary, but when he smiles, his whole face lights up. He is the most stunning creature I’ve ever seen. He saunters over, circling me like a vulture, waving his index finger.

“I’ll tell you a little secret, Doc. They can’t know anything. Not after what I’ve done to them. Hacked them into small pieces. I was so hungry at the time I almost ate them.”

Despite the humor on his face, his eyes are fierce black holes that seem to dare me. Dare me to do what? The way the biker in the bed is reacting doesn’t help. Why am I even entertaining them? I’ve done my duty. Time to put distance between me and this boy.

“Ridiculous.” I grab the boy’s hand, shove it away from me, and march to the door. Dammit, I can still feel his gaze digging into my back, sending a shiver down my spine and making the hairs at my nape stand up.

“Is that a yes to our date?” he calls. “I’ll find you.”

Has he sensed the way I can’t keep my eyes off him? It means nothing. His sense of style just took me by surprise.

I slam the door closed on his preposterous offer. Me, date him? Not likely. A boy like that is nothing but trouble. I preferred more mature men who understood what it meant to have a one-night stand.

Bloom wriggled on my lap, pulling me out of my trance. I frowned. What were we talking about again? The conversation came back to me and, with it, the implication of his earlier statement.

“Wait a minute.” I rested my hand on the arm of the chair to avoid touching him. “What do you mean you didn’t show up here for a nurse to take care of you? It’s not like you stabbed yourself on purpose.”

For such a mouthy boy, he’d sure gone quiet fast. Stunned, I stared at his profile. No, he couldn’t have. How sick would he have to be to stab himself in the thigh so that I would take care of him?

“Bloom, please tell me you didn’t.”

“It was an accident at first. But when I saw the cut, I got the idea, so I made it bigger.”

Oh my god. He had to be kidding, but his matter-of-fact expression held no remorse, no understanding of the gravity of what he’d done. I wanted to throttle him and, at the same time, tie his hands together so he couldn’t hurt himself anymore. The boy was a menace to himself.

My pager went off. The sharp buzz of the device was like a bucket of ice water—shocking me back to reality. It was an emergency call from the ER. My stomach churned. How could I leave him knowing what he’d done? What if he did something more extreme?

“I have to go.”

“Do you?” He leaned into my chest and sighed. “I don’t know why, but I always feel comfortable with you. Do you feel it too?”

I swallowed. “Bloom, I need to tend to patients. It could be life or death.”

“Then let them die.”

I plucked him off my lap gently and set him on his feet. “Promise me you won’t hurt yourself anymore.”

He raised his chin and pouted. “Tell me you care about me first.”

“Bloom, I don’t have the time for this.”

He shrugged. “Okay, then. You just might come back to find my dead body on your desk.” He picked up my letter opener and ran the sharp edges along his thumb. “This would work, don’t you think?”

I sucked in a deep breath, the image his words evoked causing my heart to constrict painfully. He was going to drive me up the wall. I didn’t know when to take him seriously, but his death, especially by his own hands, could only be taken gravely.

I took the letter opener from him, but so what? He could find several things in the room to do it if he really meant it. Mybeeper went off again, but my feet remained rooted to the spot as ambivalence weighed heavily on my mind. If I left, I could save someone’s life, and if I did, he could lose his.

“Hey, I’m joking.” He grabbed a handful of my lab coat and tugged on it. “Would I die so easily when I haven’t made you fall in love with me yet?”

I let out a shaky breath. “Don’t go anywhere. Do not leave this office. Do you hear me? We need to finish this conversation before you do anything else rash.”

“Okay.”

“I am serious, Bloom.” I stopped at the door with my hand on the handle. “If you disobey me, I swear to you that you will have no chance with me.”

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