Page 66 of Fearlessly Us

When we’re wrung dry, Caitlin collapses against me, her head dropping to my shoulder as I fall backwards onto the bed, my arms tight around her. Our hearts are pounding and our chests rise and fall in tandem, and I feel both a little stunned by the enormity of what just happened and also settled in a way I haven’t been in a long, long time. Maybe ever.

“Don’t ask me if it was good,” Caitlin mumbles into my neck. “You’re still literally inside me and it’ll totally ruin my post-sex glow.”

I snort out a laugh, trying, and failing, to get my breathing under control. “Baby, you drenched my cock like a goddamn goddess. I don’t have to ask if it was good. I have the evidence of exactly how good it was all over my fucking lap.”

I expect her to say something snarky, but instead she lifts her head and surprises the shit out of me when she rolls us so I’m hovering over her, looking down as she beams up at me. “Fuck yeah, you do. You’re like some sort of sex god. Bless all those playboy one-night stands because I really got to reap the benefits just now.” Then her eyes turn serious and she runs her hands down my chest, settling them on my hips. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “That was…” She pauses, shaking her head. “Everything. It was everything. I’ve never felt comfortable giving myself to anyone like that, but it felt right, being with you.”

Undone, I drop my forehead to hers, stroking one of her cheeks with my thumb. “Catie.” Her name is all I can manage before I press my lips to hers. “It felt right being with you too. Bath,” I murmur.

“What?”

Lifting my head, I press up to my knees, bringing her with me and tugging her into my lap. “I’m going to go into the bathroom and fill up your bathtub, and then you’re going to get in it. You might be sore and this will help. Then we’re going to eat ice cream right in this bed, and if you’ll let me, I would really like to stay.”

Stay.

I’ve never stayed before. Never wanted to. Staying felt too permanent. A kind of commitment my fucked-up brain couldn’t conceive. But with her, it feels natural to ask. Like maybe permanent and commitment is something I can do, but only if I get to do it with her.

Caitlin studies me, fingers stroking over my chest. “You trying to take care of me, Pretty Boy?”

Dropping a kiss on the top of her head, I smile against her hair. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

When she leans in and presses a kiss to my jaw, my heart literally stutters. I’m gone for her. Entirely fucking gone, scary as it may be. “You going to get into the bathtub with me? Solo baths are boring.”

Laughing, I give her a long, lingering kiss, butterflies in my stomach when she sighs against me. “There is literally nothing else I would rather do.”

So I do. I run a bath and pick Caitlin up, carrying her to the bathroom and settling her in the hot water, sliding in behind her. I wash her hair and then try to shove my emotions down deep when she washes mine too. She tugs my shirt on, and we eat ice cream in bed, laughing and talking about everything and nothing, and it’s the best night I’ve ever had, with the best girl next to me.

And when it’s time to go to sleep, I flick off the lamp and settle into bed next to her, the darkness of night cradling us in its comforting stillness. The kind of darkness I usually hate, except when I’m with her. And then, with my arm tightly around her and her head on my shoulder like that spot was made for her and her alone, for just the second time in my memory, I drop directly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CAITLIN

“What do you mean I can’t leave?” I demand, struggling to sit up in the hospital bed and sucking in a breath as pain shoots through my abdomen.

The look the recovery room nurse gives me is a mix between I told you so and barely veiled impatience. “I’m sure the scheduler explained this to you on the phone when she called yesterday to confirm your laparoscopic excision, and I know the admitting nurse explained it to you again this morning. You just woke up from general anesthesia, which means you need someone to drive you home.” She looks pointedly at the empty visitor’s chair. “Do you have someone to drive you home?”

I roll my eyes, feeling my frustration rise along with the ache in my belly, but I ignore that in service of the greater good. The greater good being getting the fuck out of this hospital, preferably without any member of my family ever knowing I was here. “Of course I have someone to drive me home. Silicon Valley and a whole bunch of dickhead dude-bros using their billionaire status to compensate for the fact that they were the dorks who got shoved into lockers as kids have made it so everyone always has someone to drive them home. I have no fewer than three apps on my phone that can get me a ride with two clicks and in two minutes or less. If you hand me my phone, I’ll do that so I can get out of here.”

“It has to be someone you know.” The nurse speaks slowly, like she’s explaining this to a child. And yeah, I can kind of see how my attitude is giving less full-grown adult and more petulant toddler, but it’s almost noon and I haven’t have anything to eat or drink since ten last night and I just had a potentially life-altering surgery and right now all I have to show for it is a gnawing ache in my abdomen and Nurse Ratched holding me hostage in a bed with itchy sheets.

“You need someone you trust who can make sure you get home safely. When you were admitted this morning, you said…” She glances at the computer attached to the wall on some kind of mounted workstation thing and lets out an impatient huff. “Hannah Evans was coming to pick you up. I assume the admitting nurse isn’t a romance reader and wasn’t aware you were giving her the name of one of the most famous authors in the country as your ride home instead of an actual friend or family member. I’m sure Hannah Evans would be just delighted to drop all her very important authoring in Boston to come collect a fan from a Pittsburgh hospital.”

With the nurse’s voice dripping in sarcasm and the pain in my stomach moving from dull ache to sharp and searing, this probably isn’t the moment to tell her Hannah Evans actually is a family member and would definitely be delighted to drop everything to pick me up from the hospital if it wasn’t for the whole Boston to Pittsburgh thing. And also if I had told her. Or anyone, for that matter. I definitely should have bribed a rideshare driver.

But I didn’t, and that was poor planning on my part. Instead, I got myself up and to the hospital at five thirty in the morning and laid alone in this bed until they wheeled me into surgery. I talked to my doctor, who assured me everything would be fine and in a few weeks I would have the answers I’ve been waiting for, an anesthesiologist who asked me three separate times when I last ate or drank and, for some reason, whether I have any loose teeth, and a surgical nurse who looked at that empty chair and then at me with pity in her eyes, promising to stay with me the whole time.

If I was in the habit of admitting hard truths to myself, I would say it was the loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life. That I’ve regretted not telling my family about the surgery no fewer than ten times since my alarm went off long before the sun came up. Regretted not telling Drew.

Drew.

My abused stomach lurches as his face swims into my brain.

I definitely should have told Drew.

But with four stitched-up holes in my stomach, a mouth that feels like I’ve been walking in the desert for thirty years without a drop of water, orders not to shower until tomorrow morning at the earliest, and the ugliest gray socks imaginable on my feet, I’m not really in a truth telling mood.

“Listen…” I glance down at the nurse’s hospital badge. “Kelly,” I say, finally managing to sit up. I regret it immediately—the pain is way worse this way—but I manage to stay upright through sheer force of will. “I’m a grown-ass adult. A fucking lawyer, for god’s sake. I can handle getting myself into a rideshare and making sure that rideshare gets me to my house that is a mere four miles from this hospital. I’ll even share my location if it means that much to you. Call you when I get home. Besides, I just got some cameras stuck in my stomach for a while. It’s not like they hacked off my leg or something like that. I’m…”