John released a weak laugh, “I have no idea. Just born this way, I guess.”
He searched his face, seeing the vulnerability and unease from sharing so much of himself so that he could ease Wyatt’s suffering.
“Thank you for telling me,” Wyatt whispered. “About your brother.”
“I’m glad you told me about what happened. If you need anything…” his voice was a thready, wonderful rasp that reached into his soul and continued to soothe his wrecked, aching heart. “I’m here. I wanna take care of you too, you know.”
He hummed, kissing away John’s tears. “I wanna spend the day with you.”
John smiled, lines crinkling around his eyes. “And how would you like to spend it, baby?”
“I have a few ideas.”
“Please tell me it doesn’t involve leaving this room?”
Wyatt grinned and they kissed, sinking into one another and saying with their bodies what they couldn’t yet say with their hearts.
Chapter 17
John
“I’ve said thisbefore, and I will keep saying it until you hear me: we need more nurses,” John leveled at Tanya with an uncompromising gaze. “My team is working with a skeleton crew. With the nursing shortage and increasing demands from higher-ups, we’re losing good people. People who want to help, but are shackled by the politics of this place, and insurance companies dictating what can and can’t be done.”
John leaned forward, snapping his reading glasses off and tossing the digital tablet filled with her charts and areas of ‘improvement’ onto the table between them.
Tanya’s lips flattened. “That is not the point of this meeting, John.”
“Then what is the point? If you want me and the people still willing to do this job to keep giving you more, I don’t see how that’s feasible. Especially not at the rate we’re going. I can’t remember if Dr. Walsh has actually taken any time off. He practically lives here because he doesn’t have a consistent alternate for the night shift. Mendez, our security officer, is underwater most days, and we need at least two security officers at the door with another in the lobby. You wanna see our performance times go up, you gotta actually participate, not walk around and critique us at every turn. We don’t need that. We need a full staff.”
Tanya’s shoulders straightened under her dull brown blazer. “I understand your concerns, John. I really do.” Her placating tone was not helping John’s mood.
The fact that he had to sit and endure this meeting first thing Monday morning was bad enough. But the real reason for his shitty mood was Wyatt.
John woke Sunday morning to an empty bed, after they had spent a glorious, mostly naked day in bed on Saturday, talking, making love, and napping. It was the best day he had had in recent memory and he had hoped Wyatt would stay the whole weekend. Maybe he should’ve just asked, but instead, he woke to an empty house. Not a trace of Wyatt was left, as if he hadn’t even been there at all. And that hurt more than being left.
John immediately got dressed and went for a run. He had to get out of the house, to let the storm of the weekend’s intensity wash over him. Sex with Wyatt was changing his fucking brain chemistry—hell, Wyatt was changing him, and he had admitted it to him.
John took to the dirt trail behind his home, winding up through the LA hills, absorbed in his thoughts. The pounding of his footsteps vibrated up his legs, reminding him of all the incredible things Wyatt had done to his body. He was sore from sex alone, and yet it thrummed with something else, too—something energetic that sparkled inside his chest and burned to be released.
He sucked in the chilly, misty air, letting the run clear his mind.
When he returned home and checked his phone, sweat dripping down his neck, he heaved a disappointed sigh at the empty screen. Wyatt hadn’t reached out. And he feared he wouldn’t until he saw him at work on Monday.
John stepped into the same shower Wyatt had so carefully tended to his shaking, shivering muscles. He sighed, dropping his temple onto the cool tile, a painful constriction forming around his heart. He dug his fingers into his collarbone and down over his upper chest, attempting to release the tightness, but it didn’t work. The band around his chest was unshakable.
Had he asked too much of him? Had he given too much? Had he scared him away? Fear and insecurity washed over him, leaving him unsure of what to do. John didn’t let people in for this very reason. The pain of losing them was too much. He cared too much.
John had always struggled with his emotional sensitivity throughout his life. He was shamed for it a few times, both at school and at work. He was told to bottle and suppress it. Doctors don’t cry, they contain. They’re stoic, not vulnerable. They hold back their emotions, no matter how painful it is for them.
And yet Wyatt wanted to see it—feel it—hold him during it.
He wasn’t afraid of his big emotions. He was fearless.
John, feeling achingly pathetic, played the commercial of Wyatt on the screen in his living room about a dozen times that lonely Sunday, watching and re-watching him charge ahead, boldly stopping a breath away from the edge of the cliff, and feeling even more ridiculous the more he watched.
Maybe he needed to be more fearless again. John pushed his fingers into his eyes, fighting back a headache.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Hope flaring in his limbs, John reached for the phone and saw it was his sister. He released his breath and answered it.
