AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I mean it, I really did.”
Fuck, he’s so charming. It’s not easy to resist. How the hell do you think I got involved with a guy four years younger than me after swearing off men altogether? He’d have to be charming.
And boy was he.
Still is.
“You’ve got a few minutes?” Rex asks. “Let’s catch up. Before Blaise comes back.”
I chew on my lower lip. “My shift starts in like five minutes, I just came by because Amina mentioned you wanted to see me and I thought I should stop by.”
His smile falters. “Of course. Yeah. I’m glad she told you.”
I press my lips together. I could cry. I really could. This was never supposed to happen. Not just me walking into his hospital room. He never should have been in my hospital to begin with.
“You look good,” he says softly. So soft it transports me back in time. I can practically feel his teeth dragging down the edge of my ear.
I try to laugh. All that comes out is a breathy, “Ha.”
“I mean it, Isabella, you look good. Really good.”
I shake my head. “Well, I don’t… it’s…” Take the compliment. “You’ve looked better.”
Rex grins. “Right about that. Would have looked worse in a casket, though.”
“Rex, please, don’t –“
“I’m joking, it’s supposed to be funny,” he says.
“Well, not everyone walks out of the ER to make jokes like that,” I say, not trying to be bitchy but failing miserably. It’s easy, though, when you’re just a patient and don’t have to interact with death every day.
Rex rubs his hand across his chest, the fabric of his gown wrinkling. “Yeah, sorry, poor taste.”
“It’s fine. Um, listen, I should go –”
“Wait.” Rex extends his hand toward me. “Let me say thank you.”
Don’t touch him, everything screams inside me.
But again, my feet are in control.
The gravitational pull.
I go toward him, lay my hand in his and the second we touch, I’m transported to the woman I was five years ago. Motivated and focused, yet still bawdy and reckless from the tail end of my twenties. He definitely brought it out of me.
And I feel it again, the electricity thrumming up my arm, threatening to weaken my every muscle so I will fall into him again.
How? After all these years. How?
“Your hands are still so soft,” he says, so boyish it reminds me of Leo.
I try to smile. “Part of the job.”
His calluses on the tips of his fingers, alternatively, scrape the inside of my wrist.
“Isabella.” Hearing him say my name pulls me further into the past.
I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to remember how beautiful it was.
