Page 46 of Wild

Her throat tightens and she takes a sip from her water bottle, holding back the urge to walk over and ask how it went, whether she enjoyed it, whether Lexie gave her what she was looking for and that's why she's not so sharp-edged today. She wants to say so many things to the doctor that she feels frustrated, because none of them matter if Erin doesn't feel the same way. She sets the bottle down and walks over, unable to stop her own feet.

Erin is finishing her last rep. She lowers the bar onto the rack and lies still for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, at the decorative plasterwork above her, and when she sits up, her heart lurches — Mia is on the bench with her knees nearly touching Erin's and those deeply blue eyes fixed on her. She's so close that Erin's mind betrays her, her first instinct to lean forward, wrap a hand around the back of Mia's neck, and pull her mouth in. She exhales hard, trying to shake the fierce rush coursing through her, until she gets herself back under control.

"What are you doing, Wilder?" she asks, and her voice comes out completely rough.

Mia takes a moment to respond, because Erin's chest is rising and falling from the effort and her skin is damp with sweat.

"You just answered my question, Dooley." She almost savors the last word, as if reminding Erin that this habit of calling her by her last name gets under her skin.

"What?" Erin is completely thrown, unable to figure out what she's referring to.

"I asked if you slept with women. Now I know you do."

A sharp ringing tears through Erin's ears, and she feels like if she moves she'll end up coughing her heart right out of her chest. Her mind kicks into overdrive, trying to work out whether Mia knows because Noah told her he saw her leave with Lexie, or because she saw the journalist coming out of her room. Eitherway, she lands on the same conclusion — it doesn't matter. The point is that Mia knows, and what washes over Erin is a tide of anxiety she doesn't understand. The singer sleeps with women whenever she gets the chance, so Erin shouldn't feel like she's cheated on her, like having sex with someone else is a betrayal that hurt her — but she sees that flash of pain in Mia's eyes, and the doctor can't make sense of herself.

She made it clear to Mia that she doesn't want anything to happen between them, and the singer tries to respect that, but sometimes she brings it back up, and Erin is starting to suspect she does it because she senses something in Erin that makes her think she's more interested than she lets on.

She opens her mouth, but for the first time she doesn't know what to say. If she tells Mia it's none of her business — and Erin believes it isn't — she can feel that it will hurt her. And if she says nothing, she has the sense that she's hurting her just the same.

"Lexie's great — she's beautiful, kind, and funny." Mia's shoulders lift in a small shrug while Erin watches her, completely rattled. "And a very lucky woman. I'll let you get back to it."

Mia stands up, grabs her water bottle and the towel she'd left on the floor beside the bench, and walks out of the gym without looking back once. Erin needs several minutes before she can move. Her arms are trembling from the effort of the bar, but the rest of her body shouldn't be shaking the way it is — leaving her dizzy — and yet she's trembling from head to toe.

"You done with the bench, doc?" asks one of the guys who'd been in the gym.

Erin runs both hands through her hair, pulls out the clip holding it up, and twists a strand hard between her fingers while the guy stares at her, unsure whether to stay or go. After a few seconds, she takes a slow, deep breath, gathers her hair back up with the clip, and stands.

"All yours," she says, giving his arm a quick pat before grabbing her things and heading out.

Chapter 18

"Where are you going, Doctor?" Nell calls from her seat.

Erin stops short at the entrance to the bus aisle—the one that'll take them to Philadelphia. She just boarded and was about to find a seat on the lower level, but apparently Nell, settled into the first row as always, has no interest in starting the trip alone. The tour's production director lifts her bag off the seat beside her, hangs it on the side hook—exactly what it's there for—and pats the cushion twice.

"Sit down," she says, and Erin smiles and settles in next to her. "You're not going to make any friends this way, honey. You need to put yourself out there and socialize."

The doctor runs a hand through her hair and says nothing. Her head has been aching since she got up, and all she wanted was to sit down and close her eyes until after breakfast, when she'd head upstairs to check Mia's vitals—but they've got five hours ahead of them, and talking with Nell is something she genuinely enjoys. With Nell, she always has the feeling that the woman understands her without needing an explanation, as if she can read her thoughts and emotions before Erin even voices them.

"You're right," the doctor admits, crossing her right foot over her left knee.

"It doesn't do much good to agree with me if you're not going to do anything about it." Nell doesn't look up from her phone, where she's typing a message while she answers.

"You're right about that too," Erin says, with a hint of amusement that makes Nell look up and set her phone down.

The bus starts moving, and a fleeting thought crosses the doctor's mind—she wonders what Mia is doing.

"Have you talked to your sister?" Nell asks.

"Yeah, I called her a couple days ago to see what she wanted."

"And what did she want?" she presses, without missing a beat.

"Money." Erin leans her head back against the headrest. "She wants to take a mixology course that, according to her, will be really useful for her bartending job."

Nell makes a noise somewhere between a scoff and a raspberry that makes Erin laugh.

"Shouldn't her boss pay for that? Or at the very least, her?" the woman asks.