For years, I had managed to survive without him just fine, and now, in less than five minutes, Reed had reduced me to a mess. How dare he show up in my carefully planned life?
I had a system in place, dammit. I woke up at the same time, showered at the same time—much to my roommate’s chagrin—ate the same breakfast daily, and followed my routine to a ‘T’.
Reed’s hand fell away from my face as he turned to answer one of the four men witnessing this great disaster unfolding on my own turf—my own clinic. The loss of his touch was immediate. I felt as though I had been plunged into the cold Antarctic waters.
I stole a glance at my friends. Yeah. It was bad, all right. They were all staring at me.
“What the fuck,” Viktor mouthed at me.
Sure, I wore a wedding band, but no one knew I was married to a man. In the deepest recesses of my heart, the one I had locked and thrown away the key to years ago, lived my unrequited and terribly inappropriate longing for a man I had no business thinking about.
“You are married to a man? You have a husband? A man husband?” Viktor was still asking me inane questions. He was losing his mind. “Looking like that?”
Reed laughed at Viktor’s babbling. Uh, God. The way he laughed—the sound of it seemed to reverberate through the very spaces inside my ribcage. His annoying habit of whispering in my ear, warm breath against my face, always gave me goosebumps. So stupid of me.
Worst of all were his hands—those large hands on me had been my undoing. Everything about him was raw and magnetic. And I hated it so much.
I’d always been a calm and level-headed man. The surgeon people depended on. The station doctor everyone confided in. The friendly colleague everyone liked, yet no one truly knew.
Reed, though? He had zero respect for systems. He seemed to think life was a runway and, if he just ran fast enough, he would take off just like the planes he flew. The problem was that, a long, long time ago, I had been swept away by this ludicrous man and his indomitable spirit. He had shown me highs that I would never reach again.
I had once felt loved—no, no, no, it was no use going there. It was all a different life. A different era. That had been four years and four months ago. Since then, we had not talked. And now he was here. Surely, a man was allowed to freak out under these circumstances?
“Doc?” Viktor’s newly affirmed boyfriend, Sam, walked up to me.
Like me, he was a quiet man. He seldom expressed his feelings. And also like me, he had been caught up in the hurricane that was his longtime friend, now boyfriend—Viktor. Perhaps I should conduct a new study on this pattern.
“Doc?” he repeated.
“Yeah?” I replied. It came out as a croak. How embarrassing.
Sam glanced at me, then at Reed, and back at me. “I have only one question for you. Do you feel safe with this guy?”
“Oh. Umm. Yes, I do.”
I didn’t need safety from anything or anyone. I wasn’t a man easily scared, but did I feel safe with Reed Harmon? Yes. The safest I had ever felt, which was ironic given how many times we had both been in life-and-death situations together.
Sam turned around and gestured to the other three men. “Let’s give Dr. Park privacy.” He ushered a protesting Viktor out of my clinic, who was still yelling, “What do you mean you have a husband?”
I watched Grant and Adrien leave with a smile and a nod, and then the clinic door closed with a thud, leaving me alone in the sudden silence.
With my husband.
Whoever said time stands still knew what they were talking about. Technically, time was, of course, not something that could stop. But the human brain did register time differently—I could attest to that now. So many new data points.
Time had sometimes slowed down for me—during dangerous missions, while serving in war, when I had come close to death numerous times—but never had time come to a standstill until now.
“What are you mumbling about?” Reed looked at me with that rakish smile that always turned me into a bumbling fool.
I couldn’t meet his eyes. I looked down at my tightly clutched iPad, at the screen, seeing nothing, and praying for the universe to swallow me. “Einstein’s general theory of relativity,” I muttered. “Time is a constant.”
A low laugh rumbled out of him. “Oh, Daniel, you haven’t changed a bit.”
I shook my head. No, I hadn’t. I was still a fool for him.
“What about time being constant?” He stepped right into my personal space.
I took a step back and bumped into the counter behind me. “Only black holes have been known to make time stop.” Not husbands.
