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“To help people.”
“That’s the easy answer. I think there’s a deeper one. Every damn doctor knows this shit can happen. Why did you think you’d be the exception? Ask yourself that, Les.”
Why did it matter? Why was Brick asking her things that threw the snarl of her emotions into a worse tangle?
Still holding her with one arm, Brick reached across the floor and picked up the washcloth. He pressed it to her forehead. She felt the wetness of the blood. “You need to trim your nails,” he said.
“I didn’t do that. I mean, the original cut. Mrs. DaCosta was hitting me. She was wearing a sharp ring.”
“She shouldn’t have done that,” he said tightly.
“I shouldn’t have let her child die. But hey, I get to go to a kinky sex party tonight in a kickass dress, so there’s that.”
“Les.”
She closed her eyes and turned her face away, toward his shoulder. “You act like me freaking out didn’t surprise you.”
“I know how hard you’ve been working on managing your emotions. Even in your lighter moments today, it shows. Tell me what happened to set this off.”
She couldn’t look at him yet, but she could answer the question. “Just a reminder of the M&M time, and that I’m meeting Dr. Portland and Legal that morning. Stuff I already knew. Just seeing the text…I don’t know. Please, I need to get up. I’m okay.”
He helped her rise on shaky legs, but guided her to the bed so she could sink down on the edge of the mattress. She stared at the floor. “I agree with Rufus, the way he went with it instead of how Bobbi did. But…there are a lot of ways to help others in the world. Maybe I chose the wrong way. The thought that I might do it again…”
She paused. “No. Like you said. I will do it again. Medicine has too much guesswork, too many variables, to believe otherwise. I’m not sure if I can accept that. And if I can’t handle that pressure, then it’s three years of med school down the toilet. But better to wash out now than to become the kind of doctor who’s too hesitant, that second guesses herself at the wrong moment.”
She took a breath. “I have enough science credits. I could become a science teacher.”
Throwing the idea out there should bring a sense of relief, but all she felt was dull, throbbing pain. “I know,” she said, as he sat down next to her, braced an arm behind her. “I need to stop pushing myself to make big decisions when my head’s so fucked up on all of this, when it’s all just happened. But I can’t figure out what the answer is, and the lack of it is unbearable.”
Her fingers felt stiff, barely able to move, but he curved them over his palm, his other one on top. “That mother is grieving, Les, but so are you. I’m not putting your pain on the same level as hers, but it’s not a competition. When someone dies, especially a kid, everyone who had a part to play asks themselves these questions, feels the loss.”
He lifted her chin, not letting her escape his gaze any longer. He wasn’t above being a bully, proving he still knew when not to be nice to her.
“I’m taking you to this party. As far as kinky sex being in your future tonight, I can almost guarantee that. It doesn’t say you don’t care, or that you’re not hurting. It says your very overbearing Dom is making sure you keep moving forward, and balancing that out with other things, so the right answers will eventually come.”
“There is no right answer. I was paralyzed that day. She was screaming at me, Brick. I wanted to at least say I’m sorry—no matter how less than nothing that was—and I couldn’t even get that out. Now Legal says I can’t talk to her.”
“When you learned your dad had died, do you remember anything about those first few hours, anything anyone said to you?”
The shock and loss had been overwhelming, dulling every other detail. Brick saw the answer in her face and nodded. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
He crossed the hall to his room, returning with a straight-backed chair and his wooden brush.
Her stomach quaked, and she felt her eyes widen. His lips twisted with grim humor. “Tempting. Particularly when I can tell, as much as it worries you, you won’t safeword over it. The right part of you centers and gets off on it. But I have something else in mind.”
He set the chair down, and pushed the guest room door partly closed, revealing a full-length mirror on the back that framed the chair in its reflection. “Take off your shirt and come sit on the chair.”
With the volatility of the past few moments, it took her off guard. Her hands worked in her lap. She’d been naked with him, and had told him things more intimate than she’d talked about with anyone in her life. Even so, as he stood waiting, fully dressed in black jeans, boots and a gray dress shirt that enhanced the color of his eyes—wow, she’d just noticed how he’d dressed for tonight, and it made her oblivious libido skip in place—she was too self-conscious and way more vulnerable.
“It’s all right, Les.” He gentled his voice and held out his hand. She let herself be drawn to her feet and guided to the chair, but once there, she couldn’t figure out what to do.
He lifted the hem of her shirt over her head. He considered the bra she’d put back on in the fitting room while he paid for the dress and underwear. It was the satin one she’d donned this morning, a lifetime ago. “Damn, girl.”
“Thanks. Beulah picked it out.”
“The bra’s nice. But I was talking about how you look standing in it and your jeans, your breasts quivering because you’re nervous and worked up.”
He slid a fingertip under the cup edge, making her eyes half close. He pushed the straps off her shoulders, one then the other, taking a beat to enjoy the effect before he slipped the button of the jeans. “You have a nice ass, doc. I like these jeans on it, but take them off.”
