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“Yeah,” he says then, his back to the bed and me. “Okay. Yes, sir. I’ll be there.”
I close my eyes tight and burrow my face into my pillow. I have the urge to shed some tears, somewhat inexplicably given the very baby-like length of this relationship, but I quiet them with a deep breath and pretend sleep.
I don’t want to be a complication. I don’t want to make him feel guilty for doing a heroic service to our community and countless others. I mean, he’s going to save literal lives. I’m a doctor. I understand that drive on an intrinsic level, and it wasn’t that long ago that I was the person working a crazy-demanding, unpredictable schedule that changed on a whim.
I get it.
I get it.
I just have to make my emotions understand what my brain already does.
He hangs up the phone and kneels into the bed behind my back. A gentle, warm hand settles at my hip and runs up the length of my side until it comes to rest right below my breast.
“You have to go?” I ask then, giving up the ghost on pretending to be asleep. We’re both too old for that shit, no matter how much I want to use it as a coping mechanism.
It is what it is, and frank, open conversations are the only thing that gives us even a modicum of a chance of making it past relationship puberty.
He leans down and kisses the back of my neck, nodding against the skin there.
“Stay. Please. Sleep in. Don’t get out of bed on my account. It’s just a local call, and since there were two call-offs, they really need the help. But yeah, I have to go right now.”
I nod quickly, awareness cracking at the back of my head despite what I thought was a stranglehold of sleepiness.
“You’re…you’re going now?”
He nods, softening the news with a gentle smile. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”
Finally, it hits me that he’s waiting for me—for my approval—to feel like he can leave and go save people’s lives. Something is actually on fire—and not the figurative dumpster we all refer to these days—and he’s waiting to know I’m emotionally stable before saying goodbye.
Get it together and release him, Lauren!
“Oh my gosh, no, don’t be sorry! Are you kidding? Go ahead, I’ll be fine.”
“Good,” he says, jumping up with the urgency I know he’s been feeling all along. They don’t build the heroic types any other way. “Sleep. Get some rest. I’ll get in touch as soon as I can.”
I nod as he heads for the door and give it my best effort to smile supportively. The last thing I want is to distract him from his own personal safety or that of the people he’s supposed to be saving.
I lie back on the pillow and listen closely, and it’s less than fifteen seconds—no joke—before I hear the door close behind him and his Suburban fire up.
I roll over to my back and pull his sheets up to my face. They smell like him—like us, really—and for some reason, it brings me some small token of comfort.
It’s the scent of him, vibrant and sexy and orgasm-inducing. And he chose to spend that little free time with me.
I mean, I know he would have spent it with his kids if he’d been given the choice, but his ex apparently isn’t willing to budge on their set schedule, even if work makes him forfeit a portion of his regularly scheduled days.
I want to be mad about it—I think he’d like to be too—but in the end, I also kind of understand. She has a life too. A schedule and planning and things to account for. She can’t just switch at the drop of a hat all the time. She’d never be able to plan anything if she didn’t keep her times accordingly.
Hell, I can’t even entirely blame her for failing in a marriage with Garrett.
It’s a hard life. It’s not for everyone.
I’m not even one-hundred percent sure it’s a life for me.
All I know is that I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet.
I sigh. I’m wide awake now, without the possibility of drifting back off to sleep. I have to be at work in a couple hours anyway.
I’m better off getting up and jumping in the shower before heading home at this point.
Decided, I toss the sheets and comforter off to the side and shuffle to the end of the bed.
Garrett’s carpet is soft on my toes as I pick through the room, collecting all the articles of clothing I shed last night, and flip on the light in the bathroom.
His shower is big and expansive, with two heads and a glass wall, with black metal grid throughout. I bet Garrett looks magnificent in that thing.
Then again, he looks pretty dang magnificent in any setting at all.
