Page 26 of Bloom: Part 1

No longer able to resist, I pulled out the couch and collapsed onto it. A wave of exhaustion hit me. I didn’t bother to turn off the lights. Didn’t have the energy. I barely managed to set my phone alarm to wake me up in an hour before I was out.

Why hadn’t he stayed? Maybe he wasn’t that serious after all.

#

“Dr. Collier can’t come to the door right now.”

“Is he inside his office or not?”

“He’s sleeping, and if you wake him up, it’ll make me unhappy. You don’t want to do that.”

The voices of two people arguing stirred me from my sleep. For a few seconds, I stared at the ceiling. What was going on?

“Who the hell are you?” The familiar demanding voice of Andrews was filled with irritation even more than usual.

I closed my eyes. Dammit, I was still pissed off that he’d not only denied my request for more funding for the trauma unit but had also cut our budget. I had no desire to speak with him.

“Listen up, sir.” My eyes flew open.That voice.“I’m the one who’ll hang you by your toes if you insist on barging your way in. Read my lips, sir asshole. Dr. Collier is not accepting visitors at the moment. Please come again. Thank you.”

The door clicked shut, and I winced. A part of me was outraged that Bloom had once again asserted himself into my business after I’d made it clear I had no interest in him. He was barely out of his teens, for crying out loud. But the other part of me had to stifle back a laugh from imagining the look of outrage that must be on Andrews’s face.

I didn’t know anyone else at the hospital who dared to contradict him. Had a staff member talked to Andrews this way I would have bought them dinner, but this was Bloom. If I showed him the least bit of affection, he would become even more obnoxious than he already was.

I fixed my face into a disapproving scowl and sat up on the couch. Bloom stood at the door, favoring his left foot, still dressed in the shirt I’d given him. Hadn’t he left the hospital earlier? Why was he still wearing the same clothes?

I had to get this boy to leave me alone. Only then could I return to my routine I’d perfected for over a decade. As a creature of habit, I didn’t have the time for distractions. Should I choose to entertain a man in my life, it would definitely not be one this peculiar and bordering on unhinged. And not one this intoxicating. A boy like Bloom would consume me and take way more from me than I was willing to give anyone.

Bloom’s gaze collided with mine, and his lips turned down in a frown. “Fuck. I’ll gut the bastard. I really will,” he muttered.

“You’re not going to do anything.” I climbed to my feet and stretched. His gaze followed my movements without so much as a blink. I rocked back on my heels. There were days I wished I’d never argued with him that first day we met. If not, I wouldn’t have drawn his attention to me.

The way he watched me might have made another man feel ten feet tall, but I wasn’t an ordinary man. I knew damn well I did nothing to deserve that look. If anything, I’d been rude to him on purpose, but it hadn’t dissuaded his obsessive behavior toward me.

Bloom stuck his bottom lip out. “But he woke you up after I went to so much trouble to disable your alarm and pager so you could sleep longer.”

“You did what?” I patted my pockets.

“I put them on your desk.”

I checked my phone. My heart stuttered. I hadn’t slept for an hour like I’d planned, butfourhours. Next to my phone, my pager sat useless.

“Now before you get mad, let me explain.”

I glared at him. “There's no explanation that can excuse what you did. What if there was an emergency, and they needed me?”

“Then other doctors will see those cases.”

“And if they can’t handle those cases?”

He shrugged. “The patients die.”

He’d said it earlier, but not until hearing it again did I realize he meant it. He was comfortable talking about a loss of life because he’d taken his fair share. As young as he was, he was like the other bikers. Maybe even worse for someone so young to be a cold-blooded enforcer. While I had to be the opposite, the person who worked to save lives whether or not they deserved a second chance.

Did it even make sense to argue with him about this?

“How did you get inside my office? I locked the door when I came in. Did you get your hands on my keys?”

He grinned. “I promised the janitor a blow job if he opened the door for me.”

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