“Thank you.” She turns and places it inside the patient’s file. I grab my stainless steel binder, walking back out of the hospital and toward the rig.
“You driving?” I ask Roman, and he nods, heading toward the driver’s side.
Roman and I have been partners for the past five years. What I really wanted to do was become a nurse, but as soon as I turned eighteen, my parents told me that I had to start helping with the bills. They told me it was my duty as their child to go out there and get a full-time job. School was not needed, at least to them it wasn’t. The minute I graduated from high school, they wanted me to take an office job at one of those small insurance companies, answering the phone and doing some light office work, such as filing claims. Which I did to please them.
My parents have never been parents, and since before I could remember, they used me to their advantage. I remember being about eight, maybe younger, and my mother taking me to the supermarket to panhandle and ask people to donate so she could put me in dance classes. Spoiler alert: I did not attend dance classes a single day in my life. Then, when I was a teenager, she set up a table at the park to help pay for me to go to prom. I never went to that either.
But the worst thing they ever did to me was when they’d visit me at work. Or that is what they called it. I should have known something was off. I only found out about it a month later when I overheard a couple of my coworkers complaining that their identities had been stolen, and there were credit cards opened in their names. I secretly knew in my bones that they did it. Well, it was my father who did it, and my mother went along with it. I confronted him, and he did what any good parent would do. He kicked me out of the house and told me to fend for myself.
I stayed in a shelter for a week before I got my next check and then rented a room in what could only be described as a step above poverty. I thought for sure my father would let me be, but when the check from my job didn’t arrive in his account, he showed up at my workplace and made a scene, which promptly got me fired. They didn’t want to fire me, but they also didn’t want the hassle. I got a job waitressing two counties over and didn’t tell anyone. I should have also moved at that point, but this was my home. I worked the night shift while I went to school during the day to get my paramedic training degree. It took two years and, by the end, I was running on fumes.
Now, five years later, I am the best paramedic they have, and I’m not saying it because I think that. I’ve gotten enough merits over the years to back it up. When new recruits come in, they usually train with me. Roman hates it, but he also hates training anyone, so he sits back for the month and pretty much lets me do the training, and he does all the paperwork. It works for both of us. Though if it were possible and I had the opportunity to do nursing school on the side, I would have jumped on that chance.
“It’s homemade mac and cheese day, with garlic knots,” he announces. “They better have made a fuckton.”
I laugh as he pulls up to the big brick building that houses both the fire station and the paramedics. The building has three garage doors, two are for the fire trucks, and the one all the way at the end is for the two ambulances we have. Roman drives into the garage, parking behind the other rig. “I can smell the garlic,” he says, getting out of the rig and slamming the door. I smell it also, but unlike him, the smell makes me a bit queasy.
I follow him to the side, where he pulls open the brown metal door that leads to a staircase, which takes you upstairs to the kitchen and sleep area. The downstairs hallway goes to the offices, where the fire chief, Scooter, has his office. I walk up the steps behind Roman. They are just taking the food out of the oven.
“If I get thirty minutes uninterrupted,” Hudson, one of the firefighters, says, “I’m going to play the lottery.”
“Chew fast,” Ricky, another firefighter, teases, making everyone laugh.
I walk over to the fridge and open it to see if there is something else I can have. Knowing the heaviness of the food, along with the way my body is reacting to the smell, it might not be a good night for me.
“You aren’t having pasta?” Roman asks me with a plate in his hand. I shake my head.
“I had pasta yesterday,” I lie, pulling out things to make a grilled cheese. As soon as I finish my last bite, we get a call that someone fainted at the football field.
The time flies by, and finally, at 3:00 a.m., I’m getting behind the wheel of my Civic and making my way home.
I open the window, feeling the cool night breeze on my face. The minute I go down the road where I met Theo, my mind automatically goes back to that night.
He stood at my sink washing his hands, and I walked over to the stove to grab one of the hand towels that hung there. He turned off the faucet and shook the excess water off his hands in the sink before I lifted my hand to give him the towel.
“Thank you,” he said, his hand reaching for the towel.
“It’s the least I could do.” I laugh nervously. “You did pull over at the side of the road in the middle of the night to help a damsel in distress.” I fold my arms over my chest. “If you think about it, it wasn’t the smartest thing you could have done.”
“How so?”
“I could have been a serial killer. I could have been luring you out to murder you. Keeping body parts in jars in my basement.” I grin. “So thanks for pulling over.”
“Thank you for not being a serial killer and collecting body parts. You looked like you had a handle on things.” His eyes stare into mine, dancing with lightness.
“Yes, I was one step away from rewatching my second video on how to change a tire.” I hold up my pointer finger.
He held out the hand towel, and when my hand gripped it, he pulled it and me to him. My hand landed on his pec as he looked down at me. “You’re fucking gorgeous,” he said right before his lips smashed onto mine. His tongue slid into my mouth, and my body melted into his, the towel now on the floor by our feet. His hand went into my hair that had been up all day long, gently massaging my scalp as he took out the ponytail. One of my hands went from his pec to the back of his neck, while the other went to the back of his head. He moved one hand from my hair to grip my ass, pulling me even harder into him. I could feel his hardness through his pants, and we both let out a moan.
I moved my head from one side to the other frantically. I had never thrown caution to the wind like that, but I was practically climbing this stranger like a tree. He moved his hand from my ass to my waist and lifted me up with one arm. My legs wrapped around him as if we’d done this before. He turned around in my small kitchen, trying to find my bedroom. I let go of his lips. “Over there.” I pointed to the dark hallway at the back. My mouth smashed down on his as soon as he started walking toward my bedroom.
Once he carried me into the room, it was more frantic than I could even describe. His hands were on my shirt, mine were under his, feeling his warm stomach under my hands. In the darkness, his fingers touched almost every single part of me, like he’d already had me memorized.
He kissed me deeply as he laid me down in the middle of my bed. A condom was on his cock, and he pushed inside me, swift and hard. My back arched up, and we moved together, our bodies intertwined. It was the best sex I ever had. Okay, fine, I hadn’t had it a lot, but it was still the best. My only regret from that night is that it happened with the lights off.
I pull into the driveway of the little house I’m renting and put my hand on my stomach. “Tomorrow,” I say softly, “I’m going to tell your daddy about you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
