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This had been a wonderful day, and I was thankful for it. It wasn’t hectic or chaotic. It was normal and with enough distractions to keep my mind focused on things other than the lightning-fast love and relationship I’d found myself in with John.
I decided to let go of my misgivings and stop obsessing about feeling like I was losing myself. I figured the best course of action was to let things unfold naturally, as they’d done since the beginning. There was no point in ruining everything by trying to dissect and control it. That sounded like the opposite of a good time and not a way I wanted to enter into a relationship in the first place.
“Hey, Mickie,” Brandon, one of the RNs working on-call tonight, said, “John’s here and looking for you. Not to pry, but are you two okay?”
“Last I checked, it was fine. He called a bit ago wanting to see me, but I didn’t think anything was wrong,” I smiled, realizing I was talking to an RN I hardly knew, and that was only because he floated up to this floor now and then when we were short-staffed. “I think the bigger question is, how did you know John and I are together?”
The last thing I wanted was a hospital soap opera work environment. I guess more people were watching us than I had expected. Either that or people were just really bored in their downtime.
“Well, word travels quickly at Saint John’s?” Brandon shrugged. “Besides, everyone is surprised that Dr. Aster is actually interested in someone who works here since he always goes on and on about never settling?—”
“Brandon, I’m so sorry,” I interjected. I didn’t want to be rude, but I’d had enough of the general shock and awe that the uncatchable John Aster had been caught. “I don’t mean to cut you off, but I have two patients who were five centimeters dilated about thirty minutes ago. I imagine I’ll have to deliver back-to-back within the next hour, so I should probably catch John and see what he needs.”
“Yeah, of course. Go, he seems pretty upset,” Brandon confirmed.
I rushed down the hall to find John and set my mind at ease. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t think much about him showing up and wanting to see me, but the look on Brandon’s face made me wonder if something bad had happened. I only hoped that maybe Brandon was just terrible at giving people news and everything was fine.
“John’s waiting for you in the vending room,” Allison said as she passed me, chewing on a Snickers bar she’d gotten from a vending machine.
Why the hell is he in there? I thought, remembering all the rants he’d gone on about processed food.
“Hey?” I said, walking into the room. He sat on a bench, staring at the paper cup he held with crappy coffee from the day-old coffee pot sitting in the corner. “Good God, man. You look like I did a couple of days ago.”
John never looked up. He stared blankly into his cup of coffee as if waiting for it to reveal answers to his life-long questions.
“John?” I questioned softly.
Something was off. I could feel the weird vibe coming from him and his silence as if it were a black, ominous cloud waiting to burst open and rain buckets of water onto the two of us.
“Do you ever fear your future?” he finally questioned.
“Fear my future?” I said, confused by the question and his grave tone. “I think everyone fears their future.” I kept my distance because I honestly didn’t know what to expect.
“I understand that,” he answered, still staring into the cup, “but do you ever really fear it?” He looked up at me. His bright hazel eyes, usually filled with cheer and excitement, were clouded with bleakness.
“I try not to get too far ahead of myself in fearing anything if I’m honest. When it comes to the future—or my future—I might get a little fearful if I don’t see things turning out the way I expect them to or that I worked hard for.”
“That’s the thing,” he said, frowning and staring back into his coffee cup. “I do fear my future.”
“I would’ve never guessed that,” I answered him honestly. “You always seem to take life by the balls and do whatever makes you happy.”
He flashed a smile of disgust, “That’s usually how I feel about things, but my future—what should be my life—is an entirely different story.”
“Is this about us?” I thought I’d just come out and ask it instead of dancing around the topic.
“Yes,” he answered, and I felt a pang of dread in my abdomen.
I figured this would happen the moment I let myself get comfortable, I thought. I should’ve known better, but I wasn’t going to crumble.
“John, I understand?—”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I won’t let you go,” he said, interrupting me. He looked up at me, set his cup on the counter next to the microwave, and stood. His tall, commanding frame walked with purpose across the room in three strides, and before I could blink or question anything, his lips were on mine.
I nearly melted at the delicious taste of bourbon notes coming from his kiss, and instead of trying to figure out what the hell was going on with this man, I embraced it wholly. Here and now, this was the most comfortable place on Earth, being in his arms, feeling his lips on mine, all of it. And by the soft groan from him, I could tell that John was feeling the same comfort as I.
How could I question John or this relationship because it didn’t follow the unwritten book of relationship rules?
I did, however, have to pull back and end this kiss because if I didn’t, there would be no one to deliver the two babies that were on deck.
