No one had ever bothered. Not even Mateo, when his father kicked him out.
Everything happened so quickly that Wyatt didn’t remember passing out, only that when he came to, Samuels and John were standing over him. And seeing the emotion beautifully strained on John’s handsome face, all Wyatt could feel was love. He had become pure love, motivated and propelled on a single, clear emotion: need. A needy urgency to wrap his arms around the man that he loved, hold him close, and be utterly engulfed by him.
Nothing else mattered.
No one else in the room mattered.
What he hadn’t expected was John’s reaction…
But maybe he should have. He should’ve known he’d run. He should’ve fucking known…
His throat tightened with anger, and he cleared it, refusing to stew in the rejection again.
“Which is code for never,” Jin grumbled. “Oh my god, you are the worst version of a Taylor Swift song right now.”
The buzzer to their apartment pinged and Jin rolled his eyes, “For Christ's sake, Amazon. Don’t you ever stop?”
He pushed the button, answering it, “Yes?”
“Oh, hi—I’m hoping that Lawson is home—Wyatt Lawson.”
His eyebrows arched, recognizing the voice over the intercom. “Steph?”
Jin glanced back at him, “Do you want me to let her in?”
He nervously sprang to his feet, hand grazing over his overly whiskered jawline and unkempt hair, wondering if he had time to change his two-day-old shirt.
“Yeah,” he finally said with a resigned sigh.
Jin hit the button, letting her in. A few minutes later, there was a knock on their apartment door. Wyatt answered, greeted with a kind, warm smile from the day-shift nurse.
“Hey, kid,” Steph said, looking genuinely pleased to see him. “Sorry to burst in on ya, but I heard you're leavin’, and I wanted to talk before you left.”
The only person he had told was Reyes. And knowing Reyes, he probably told…
“Ava tell you?” he asked irritably.
Ava knew about John and him, which was entirely Wyatt’s fault. He blamed it on the rush of adrenaline and crazed-induced love coursing through his veins, polluting his brain. He’d been idiotically careless. But so far, Ava had kept her lips firmly sealed. He only hoped it would stay that way. He didn’t care what happened to him. He cared about what happened to John.
“Our talented gossip queen of the ED?” Steph drawled knowingly. “No, not this time.”
If Steph had known he was leaving, John might have found out, too.
He had submitted a time-off request with an unknown return date, mostly because he wasn’t sure what his father and aunts might need from him once he went back home.
“Come in,” Wyatt stepped back, waving her inside. “This is my roommate, Jin.”
“Hi,” Jin smiled, pushing his sparkling blue glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Steph’s smile broadened, “How come I haven’t met you sooner? Lawson, you could’ve brought him to the Hot Dog Palace with us!”
“Oh, I’m also a gossip queen,” Jin said with a dismissive wave. “Wyatt doesn’t trust me to keep his secrets, especially when liquor is involved.”
“Well, we don’t have that many secrets in the ED,” Steph declared.
“Because of Ava,” Wyatt countered.
“Because we’re a family. We watch out for each other.”
