Page 14 of Don't Take the Girl
"Wait, I thought she took a full-time offer at St. Anthony's. Doesn't that mean her traveling nurse days are over?" He closes the distance between us and hands me a pair of shorts. "Put those on," he says before giving me his back.
"Why?"
"Laney…" he draws out my name. "Please. Can't you see this isn't easy for me?"
"I didn't ask you to stay," comes out before I can think it through.
He turns around, his eyes wild as they snap to mine. "But I want to," he says intensely before closing them and pulling air through his nose. "I need to make sure you're okay."
I can see he's worked up. I just wish I knew the roots. Is he worked up because he wants a chance at us, or does he feel obligated to protect me? It could be both, but one of those reasons weighs more than the other.
I pull off my damp underwear and hide them under one ofmy extra pillows before pulling on the shorts and saying, "You can open your eyes now."
He opens his eyes cautiously, keeping them keenly trained on mine, ensuring he doesn't see a trick before dropping to his knees to remove the Ace bandage he put around my knee at the party. His hand barely touches my calf, and my whole body begins to tingle from the contact. It's not until my chest starts to tighten that I realize I've been holding my breath, waiting for this moment to become a figment of my imagination because there is no way London Hale is on his knees for me, in my room, while I'm swallowed up in his hoodie wrapped in his scent. This has to be some kind of alternate universe. The slight tremble in his hand as he unwraps the bandage is the only sure way I know this is real because, in my dreams, I don't make him nervous. He makes me nervous.
"Why do you think your mom will make you leave?"
"If I answer one of your questions, you have to answer one of mine," I counter.
Those midnight eyes flash up to mine. "Deal."
"A few months ago, she left her computer open, and one of the tabs was for jobs, but not just any jobs—the traveling kind. The ones she used to take before we settled down here. I think she's considering leaving again, and I don't want to give her any reasons to pull the trigger." He's quiet, and when I draw my eyes away from his face, I see it's because my knee is exposed. "Oh my god, I think I'm going to be sick."
"Lie down. I'm going to clean it up," he says, getting to his feet and quickly crossing the hallway to the bathroom. Blood has always made me queasy, but it isn't that so much as it is the small indention from where the nail head broke the skin. He rushes back in with supplies. "I think it looks worse than it is. Once I clean it up, I'll know if we need to go to the ER." I throw my arm over my eyes. That's the last thing I need. "If it comes to that, you tripped and fell on the porch."
"Okay," I agree with a grimace.
"This might sting a little, so I will talk through it. Your mom's job search…is that why you've holed yourself up in your room?" he asks as I feel the cold liquid drip down my leg before the sting settles into the open wound.
"Yes," I answer with a wince as I roll my lips and pull a lungful of air through my nose. "But it's my turn to ask a question." A towel starts to trail up my leg, catching the excess liquid, and I ask, "Why the shorts?"
"Of all the questions you could have asked, that's the one you chose?"
Maybe it sounds out of place, but it's the most direct-indirect question I can ask to find out what side of the fence we fall on after all that happened tonight. The question hovers between us, deceptively simple after everything we've confessed. The answer to this one feels the lightest on what's already been a heavy night. Yet somehow, this seemingly innocent question carries the power to define whatever fragile thing exists between us now.
"Because being on my knees in front of you wearing nothing but my hoodie is difficult enough; the shorts make this bearable."
I throw my arm off my eyes and push myself back into a seated position to see him. The honesty and vulnerability I just heard was unexpected, however, if those words mean half of what they mean to me, you wouldn't know it by looking at him. I'm sure he can feel my eyes boring into the top of his head as he tends to my knee, but he doesn't acknowledge it. I give it a few more seconds, waiting to see if he'll say something, anything, that tells me that admission was a loaded one, and when he doesn't, I ask my next burning question. It doesn't mean he'll answer, but at least I won't lose sleep over the regret of not asking. "So we're not going to talk about it?"
"Talk about what?"
"Us," I answer boldly. He doesn't get to act like he hasn't said a lot of things tonight that weren't cloaked in admissions, ones that echo the same sentiments I've had since the first day I saw him.
"There isn't an us," he says flatly, and I stifle my desire toaudibly growl my frustration with his dismissiveness. He's strung me along all night, only to shut me down the second I ask for the slightest clarification.
"I get that, but what if I had said I still wanted to marry you that night?" I ask, going in for the kill.
"You didn't." He uses a cotton swab to wipe away the dried blood. "I don't think we need to go to the ER."
"I know what I said, London, but?—"
"No buts, Laney." His eyes find mine for the first time since I sat up; I see the plea in them before he adds, "We're not doing this tonight."
Those eyes that cause my heart to stumble every time they fall upon mine stay pinned for moments. I wish I could hold onto them a little longer before they're focused on my knee once more. He starts covering the wound, and I consider his silent petition to let it go for tonight, but I can't. I've played the passive hand, but not now. I can't play it safe after I've come this far.
"I don't understand. Why not?"
"Because you almost died," he states loudly as his hands slam onto the bed beside me, and I startle. "I almost lost you, and I'm struggling to work through what almost was while staying grounded in what is."
