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I leaned in. “Keep your voice down!” I hissed. I started to walk past him, but he reached out, grabbing my arm.
I looked around to see if anyone noticed, and then back at him. “Let me go before someone sees.”
“Are you still in love with him?”
My mouth fell open. “I was never in love with him. He’s married. What kind of person do you think I am?”
Josh’s brows pulled together. “C’mon, baby, open your eyes. He wants you.”
I looked around. “So what if he does? Am I a robot? Just because the beautiful doctor all the nurses want is interested in me, I have to fall on my back with my legs spread? Give me a little more credit than that, Josh. Just because I fell for you doesn’t mean I’m naïve.”
Josh blinked, unsure whether to be flattered or insulted. “I don’t know how to take that.”
“Take it any way you want. My break’s over.”
“Let me walk you down.”
“Dr. Rosenberg is likely down there. It’s probably best you stay away from him,” I said.
“Oh, he’d fucking love it if I stayed out of his way.”
“Like it or not, I work with him. You’re going to have to trust me.”
“It’s him I don’t trust.”
“Josh,” I warned. “I love my job. If you can’t be professional, stay away from Dr. Rosenberg. Don’t ruin this.”
He was clearly unconvinced, so I shouldered past him to the elevators.
“Avery,” he called over his shoulder. He turned around, but the elevator doors were already closing.
I made my way to work, unable to ignore the stress and tension crawling through my muscles. What I needed was to hit the gym and empty my mind, but I didn’t have time. I couldn’t miss work, and any free time spent without Avery felt wasted, even if the late nights and early shifts would eventually make me crash and burn.
I’d scrubbed the back of the meat wagon after our last patient until my knuckles felt raw, but there was still a residual discontent rumbling just under the surface. The conversation we’d had about my sister still haunted me. Avery hadn’t run away screaming, but I’d seen the pain in her eyes when I’d told her it was all my fault. I don’t know why she’d stuck around after that. Maybe it was the alcohol. I worried that she would come to her senses any minute.
It was a relief that Avery hadn’t insisted that I go into detail about each stripe tattooed on my ribs. If she had, I’d be even more of a fucking mess. Women usually just assumed the tattoos didn’t have any meaning, so I’d never had to explain what it meant—not that I would tell them the truth anyway.
I was caught off guard that Avery not only asked, but cared enough to listen.
“Earth to Josh.” Quinn waved his hand in front of my face and I slapped it away. He chuckled. “That girl has you sprung.”
I shook my head as I rounded the back of the ambulance, stopping mid-step when I saw Doc Rose. He was checking his phone as he walked across the parking lot toward the ambulance bay doors, but when he recognized me, he dropped his phone into his pocket, staring right at me with a smug smile.
I nodded back to him, whispering a string of expletives under my breath.
“You really don’t like that guy, do you? He still trying to put the moves on Avery?” Quinn asked, closing the back of the ambulance.
I wiped my hands on my pants, fantasizing about using the shears hanging from one of the loops in my cargos. Doc Rose was a cocky fucker now, but that fake smile would disappear if he was stabbed in the face. I shook the violent thought away. “Whoa.”
“What?”
“Feeling stabby. Is this what it’s like to be jealous?”
“Want to kill him?”
“Yeah.”
“Yep. You’re jealous. Is he bothering her?”
“She doesn’t see it that way, not that she’d tell me if he were.”
“Can’t blame her there. Get your hand off your shears.”
I pointed my whole hand in the doctor’s general direction. “How does a guy like him, who has everything, just throw it all away? He’s married, with kids. He has the whole American dream waiting for him at home.”
“Pussy is a powerful thing, man. Look how it has you twisted.”
“Don’t talk about Avery like that,” I warned.
Quinn held up his hands. “Who said it’s the American dream to have kids? I don’t want no little Quinns runnin’ around here.”
“No one does, brother,” I agreed.
Quinn shot me a look, and then something in the parking lot caught his eye. “Speak of the Devil.”
Avery was making her way across the lot, smiling brightly, a paper bag in her hand. My stomach growled as the red symbol on the side came into view, but my attention quickly returned to the skintight jeans she wore with a simple white tank top. I’ve never known another woman to look so fucking good with no effort.
“She’s off today?” Quinn asked.
I kept my gaze on Avery. “Yeah.”
“Did you know she would be here? Is that why you spent so much time cleaning out the back?”
“Maybe.” I wiped the ridiculous grin off my face, crossing my arms and leaning against the fender of the ambulance, trying not to look too eager.
“I thought you could use some lunch,” Avery said, stopping a few feet from me. She held out the bag from JayWok.
I walked toward her, looping my arms around her waist, lifting her feet from the ground and planting a kiss on her lips. She let hers part, granting me deeper access. I groaned, reluctant to pull away. Needing her had become worse, not better, and I wondered if it was normal to feel so desperate for her, a deep-seated worry that we didn’t have much time left.
