After Hours (InterMix)

chapter Seventeen


I slept until noon, nearly, waking with a leaden gutful of fear as the previous night��s memories cleared away the initial confusion.

Two missed calls from Dennis sank the dread deeper. But the first was from around seven, just him telling me to play things by ear, the second left a little before ten, saying an extra tech had been called in and to not worry about work, just do what I had to do, let him know if I thought I’d be in tomorrow when I had a minute.

I spent the rest of the day at the hospital, long enough for Amber and I to complete a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, and for me to leave on various errands—to fetch drops for her tear-pickled eyes, a pillow, better sandwiches than the hospital’s café offered. A stack of glossy magazines, always her balm when she’d been stuck home with a flu herself. We weren’t allowed in the ICU for more than twenty minutes every couple hours, and it was killing her. But doctors and nurses came into the waiting room with updates now and then, Jack’s prognosis getting brighter and brighter as the day went on, unclenching my heart one puckered cell at a time.

After a yawn-filled dinner in the hospital café, Amber ordered me to go home.

“Only if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. I’m so sleepy, I barely know what I’m even saying. Jack’s stable, and you’ve got work in the morning.”

“I’ll call in, if you need me.”

“No, you go. I can handle this.”

I smiled, knowing she was right—she could handle this herself—and realizing it was high time we both started accepting that.

“Plus if Marco shows up . . .” She tossed up her hands and blew a raspberry. “I’ve got enough of an earful to give him, without you getting him even more wound up, just being here. No offense. Not your fault or anything. Just . . .”

“I know.” I reached across the table and took her hand. “You know you can do way, way better than him, right?”

She pursed her lips, then nodded. “Yeah, I do. Sometimes I doubt it, but after all this . . . I met your boyfriend exactly once before this, and it wasn’t such a hot time. But he still showed up last night. I know he came for you, but he came. Marco didn’t come, not for me or his son. You’ve got a good man, Erin. I wish I could say the same.”

I wished I could, too. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

She sighed. “So you keep saying. But he must be something special, to spend the night at the ER with us.”

“Yeah, I guess he is.” I knew he was.

“It’s better to not have anybody, than somebody who sucks,” Amber concluded, a fat tear slipping down her cheek. I held her hand tighter and another fell, as though I’d squeezed it out of her.

“But it’s scary having no one,” she said. “And lonely. And . . .” She laughed, looking sheepish. “And boring. But maybe I ought to get better at being bored. Before I wake up and realize I’m Mom.”

I nodded. “And you don’t have ‘no one.’ You have me and Jack.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Boring as we are.”

She laughed, and let my hand go to blow her nose. “Go home, Erin. Get some sleep. I’ll call if there’s any news.”

“Including good news.”

“Sure.”

“Especially good news,” I added, standing and organizing my purse. “No matter how trivial.”

“I promise.”

I leaned in and kissed the crown of her head. “Get some rest, yourself.”

On my way out I bought a shot of espresso in a tiny takeaway cup, just to make sure I didn’t nod off during the drive home. Coupled with my weariness, it made me feel high and weird, the streets of Darren and the fields en route to Larkhaven slipping past like painted movie backdrops.

The world looked so organic after the clinical white order of the ICU. There was disorder everywhere, in the twisted tree branches, the bits of litter on the highway shoulder, chaos rippling through the wavery V of geese passing overhead and broadcast in their arrhythmic honks. I draped an arm out my window to feel the wind on my skin.

I got home at six thirty, just in time to jog across campus and slip in before the end of the day shift, letting Dennis know I’d be in the next morning and apologizing in person for my absence. I think we talked, maybe even hugged. I was so pooped, I didn’t even register walking back to my apartment until I was flopped facedown across my covers.

I didn’t sleep, just lay there, grateful for horizontality and stillness. For a respite from being strong or alert or anything at all. I was a lump of flesh tossed across a bed and left alone, and it felt amazing.

After perhaps a half hour’s Zen, a rapping at the door killed the peace. Lifting my chin, I eyed the clock. Seven sixteen, as if I needed any more reason to suspect who it’d be. I rolled off my mattress and shuffled to the door.

Flip of the lock, tug on the handle, and there he was, that big old wall of calm, still dressed in gray.

“Hi, Kel.”

“How is he?”

I smiled. “He’s doing well. He’s going to be back to normal in a week or two, they think. The syndrome he’s got has five stages, and he was just reaching stage two. It could have been way worse.”

Kelly blew out a long breath, sagging with relief against the door frame.

“And it’s a really rare thing to happen these days. We’re lucky the doctors diagnosed him as quick as they did . . . You want a beer?”

His brows rose for a moment’s deliberation. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Come on in.”

Kelly took a seat on my desk chair and I locked the door, then fetched the last two beers from my minifridge. It had grown dark, and I turned on the reading lamp before sitting cross-legged on my bed. Kelly leaned forward to accept his can and we cracked them in unison.

I fiddled with the tab, back and forth and back and forth, until it snapped off. “I want to thank you again, for hanging out. Today must have been the longest shift ever, on no sleep.”

He shrugged. “I was with Don most of the day, and he was pretty calm. Took everything I had not to nod off in the rec room during the soaps.”

“And still another shift to get through tomorrow.” I’d have thought the idea of going back to work would beat me down even more, but I was actually looking forward to it. I could use the routine, some familiarity and focus.

Funny to think the ward and its faces could be called familiar, so soon. But I wanted to see Jenny and Dennis, and the friendlier residents. See if Lee was still as clearheaded as the last time I’d spoken to him, and ask how he felt about transitioning to an outpatient program. Strangest of all, I even looked forward to seeing Lonnie.

Funny how the people who are forced on you—family, colleagues, dependents—can be forgiven their faults, in light of the commitment. The inevitability of being stuck with them. Caring was all about surrender, in the end. The opposite of control. The difference between strangling someone and embracing them.

We sipped our beers for a few minutes, then Kelly reached for my can, setting both of them on the desk, half-drunk.

“Lie down.” It wasn’t an order, not like it might’ve been one of those first nights we spent together.

I stretched out on my back and Kelly joined me, resting his hands on his stomach.

“Have we wrecked all this?” I asked the ceiling. “Whatever we had between us before?”

He replied after a long pause. “What we have between us is strong and stupid.”

I laughed, surprised by his answer, and struck by an image of a small-skulled, club-wielding ogre.

“What we got,” Kelly said, “we’re stuck with it, even if our stubborn, rational brains might decide we’re through. It’ll always be there, whether we like it or not.”

“Can I be honest?”

He kept his eyes on the ceiling. “Sure.”

“I do like it. Whatever it is. It’s just that some angry part of me doesn’t, because I feel like it’s out of my control, maybe.”

“I like when things feel out of my control.”

I blinked. “Really?”

“Sometimes, yeah. I don’t want to enflame your angry part or anything, but being in control comes easy for me. It has ever since I hit my growth spurt and lost my fear. But shit like what we got between us . . . it’s interesting. Because I can’t do anything about it. I’ve just gotta give in and let it have its way. Which is f*cking refreshing, when you’re used to having to be on top of everything all the time.”

“Huh.”

We stared up at the spackle, not saying a word. Whatever force kept us wanting each other—I could feel it, as real and physical as a cat curled on the comforter between us. It was docile now, a warm and reassuring presence. But it had sharp teeth and claws. We both knew that.

I sighed. “I really am my mother’s daughter, in some ways. I like to tell myself that Amber inherited all her impulses, but it’s in me, too. And I hate it.”

He coaxed me onto my side and cradled my head. “You’re not your mom. Not any more than I’m any man who’s ever considered himself my father.”

“Sometimes I . . .”

“What?”

“She comes through. Some ugly, angry fragments of her get the better of me.”

“Those aren’t hers. Those are yours.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“We’ve all got ugly stuff in us. Get most anybody mad enough or drunk enough or backed into a small enough corner, and you find it. You saw mine, that night you started us talking, about what had happened to land my biological dad in the pen.”

I winced, not wanting to think about that fight.

“I’m real good at keeping my shit under control, but you hit my trigger.” He paused, lips tight like he was trying to suck a fleck of food from between his teeth. “I’m sorry about that night. About losing my rag on you.”

“It was my fault. I shouldn’t have known to begin with, unless you’d decided to tell me. Even after I snooped, I should’ve let you be the one to bring it up.”

“You knew what you knew, whether you should’ve or not. I get that that shit’s not easy to carry around. And I know . . .”

I waited almost half a minute for him to finish the thought.

“I know I don’t let people in too deeply. What you found out, that was like a crowbar. Something that stood a chance at prying me open deeper than the sex even could. It’s just that you jammed it right in there, right between my ribs and cranked it, without any warning.”

I cracked a sad smile at that. “Subtlety’s not really my strong suit.”

“And I’m not good at feeling caught off guard by things.”

“A good instinct, in our line of work.”

“But not good, if I’m trying to keep things together between me and a woman.”

All at once my heart felt thick, beating with hard, muscular thumps. “Were you thinking that way, about me? About trying to keep things together?”

“You really just thought it was about sex for me, didn’t you? Was that how it felt when we were getting into it? Just sex?”

My face burned hotter. “No. But I told myself that’s how it was supposed to be, and not to get it in my head that it might turn into something more. I didn’t think that was on the table.”

“What’d it feel like though?” His expression changed, a smirk twisting his lips, and though the word didn’t fit him, he snuggled closer. “Stroke my male ego. What stuff did you feel, that you didn’t want to?”

“I just felt like . . . Like, shit, this sex is insane. And if I don’t remind myself constantly that it’s just sex, I’ll start trying to make it mean something more. It’s hard to not get attached to someone, when they can make you feel that good. And you’re so attracted to them. Plus a part of me didn’t want to like you, that way. You make me feel weaker than I’m comfortable feeling . . .”

I trailed off, but it didn’t matter. His lips were there to take the place of words. Our kiss was tender and slow, excruciatingly personal. It took all my will to pull away after a couple minutes. I cleared my throat.

He stared at me with something like awe lighting his gaze. When he kissed me, he seemed so, so close, I felt a tingle behind my nose. But I wouldn’t cry. This was too nice to mess up with crying, and Kelly and I communicated best with our bodies.

His mouth explored mine, and in no hurry. He’d kissed me this way before, for a moment here, a moment there, little glimpses of tender passion. But this time it stretched out for glorious minutes, a kiss erotic and romantic enough for the movies. He held my face in one hand, fingertips stoking the vulnerable hollow behind my ear.

I wriggled closer and found him hard, but for once he seemed immune to the demands of his cock. All this was different. I could feel it. And it felt better than the sex, almost. And way better than resisting this thing between us.

The kiss seemed to strip me bare, past my clothes, through my skin, until Kelly held my heart in his hands, held my hope. I felt more naked and quivering and helpless than I ever had, faced with violence or danger. Was this love, turning me inside out? It felt as wonderful as it did scary.

After five minutes of possibly the best human contact I’d ever experienced, I pulled away. I took a deep breath of the warm silence hovering between our mouths, then another.

Kelly stroked my hair. “You look like you’ve got something to say.”

“Why do you like me?”

His smile was pure surprise, and it crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes in a way that made my loins melt. “Why do I like you?”

I shuffled back a little and put my hand on his arm. “At the risk of sounding like a presumptuous jerk, I got the impression you . . . I don’t know. That you weren’t really after something . . . you know. Serious.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “at the risk of sounding like a dick, I wasn’t. I never am. It happens, from time to time, usually because a woman sees something in me that she decides needs saving. Or thawing, maybe. And I’m not just a walking cock, despite how I advertise. I want more than just sex, if the woman seems special. But like I told you when we first talked, my domineering shtick doesn’t usually fly, past a couple weeks. Not once a woman realizes getting bossed around isn’t hot, in the long run. It’s not a sustainable way for two people to relate. Especially with the kind of girls I like. You scrappy types. It might work a date or two or five, sure. Not much longer.”

“You only bossed me around for a night, really. Like, properly.”

“Yeah.” Kelly nodded, averting his eyes. “I dunno quite why that was. Why I liked you better, speaking your mind.”

I smiled, a bit cocky. “Maybe you like my mind.”

He tugged me closer. “I think you know I do. But back to your original question, about why I like you?”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe because like me, you grew up with nobody really fighting for you. Right?”

I nodded.

“Surrounded by people who were too beat down to give a shit, even if it wasn’t their fault. Nobody showed you how it felt, to be cared about. Or wanted. But I know if anybody got between you and your sister or your nephew, you’d kick and scratch and bite to defend your own.”

“Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t . . . But yeah, it’s in there.”

“You grew up into a better person than the ones that raised you,” Kelly said. “And that’s unusual, with people like us. Me, I’m an okay guy, brought up by a violent drunk and a passive shell of a mom. I’m better than they raised me to be. That’s gotta be rare.” Kelly smiled and stroked my hair. “So that’s why. Because you’ve got something special in you, something that won’t stay buried, no matter how many times experience tries to say it’s fighting a losing battle. That’s what made both of us take these jobs, I bet. Believing maybe we could fix something ugly in the world, try to be of use to the people everybody else has given up on.”

The first tear escaped, rolling hot down my cheek. I’d never thought about it that way. I’d taken my job because I needed to be near my sister, but what he said was right, too. I didn’t want to give up on those people, no matter how nasty and ungrateful they sometimes were. I wanted to believe they were like Kelly, if you just dug deep enough—a hard exterior hiding a vulnerable core.

“I got that same streak in me,” he said, “and I want it in my life. In a woman. I want to fill in the gaps, fight all the battles you can’t, because of whatever—your size or your gender. Maybe that’s sexist, but it’s what I want. I just want to feel needed by somebody who deserves whatever I got to offer.”

I laughed, looking down to hide my reddening face. Kelly tipped my chin back up with a crooked finger. “I’m not afraid of your tears.”

“I am, maybe.”

“Don’t be.”

My lips felt swollen, nostrils stinging. I cleared my throat. “When this all started, I thought you saw me as some little woodland creature, one who’d give you a good chase before you eventually brought me down and tore me to pieces. Sex-wise.”

Kelly laughed.

“Maybe we were two dogs all along, and all you wanted was to get in the pit with me.”

“Maybe. Even if I wasn’t, that’s what I got.”

I slid my hand down his arm to stroke his knuckles. I paused, one of his fingers feeling odd. I rubbed the spot—a strange, smooth divot—and pulled back to examine it. “You got your ring off.”

“I bit the bullet and took a pair of clippers to it when I got home from the hospital.”

“Oh, what a shame.” Such a personal inheritance, marred forever.

He shrugged. “I’ll get some jeweler to weld it back together someday, should the need arise.”

“I guess it’ll wind up with a scar,” I mused, tracing my fingertip along the mark on his neck. “Why’d you bother?”

“It just felt like something I ought to get around to. Like maybe it was keeping me from considering myself fully . . . I dunno. Open to stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“You know. Letting somebody in or whatever.”

I took a deep breath and asked, “Do you think there’s enough of this ‘something’ between us to actually be, you know . . . something more? For us to be a couple?”

“Would you like us to be?”

I pursed my lips and nodded.

“Okay then.”

“Jeez, that was easy. What about work? We don’t work in some office where we can afford to be distracted.”

“You really think I give a f*ck about some HR clause?”

I smiled.

He kissed my forehead, a gesture fast becoming my favorite thing. “We’ll keep our mouths shut about it. But someday, if somebody catches us speaking too closely in the parking lot or the break room, f*ck what they think. By then they’ll have seen us both doing our jobs perfectly well for who knows how many weeks or months. No one’s really going to fire us, not if us dating isn’t threatening the residents’ care. Certainly not Dennis or your number-one fan, Dr. Morris.”

After a pause, he said, “When you asked before, why it is I like you, I left something out.”

“Oh?”

He grinned down at me, eyes narrowed and sinister. “You are f*cking attractive.”

I blushed. “I’m okay, I guess.”

“I think you’re sexy. Real sexy.”

“Usually if I get called anything nice, it’s ‘cute.’”

“Nah. You got this way of pursing your lips at work, when you’re thinking about shit . . .” Kelly fake-shuddered with arousal, eyes rolling up. “All that you got going on with the big eyes and the pink cheeks, I can see through that act. You’re a raccoon underneath that bunny costume. I like your claws as much as your whiskers.”

I laughed.

He flopped down beside me with a sigh. “Can I crash here? I’m f*cking exhausted.”

“Of course.”

Settling in, he pulled me tighter against him.

“You’re not even going to try to take advantage of me?” I asked. “You really must be wrecked.”

Eyes shut, he smirked.

“Here,” I said, turning in his arms. “Let me guarantee you a good, deep sleep.”

His eyes opened just as my fingers found the waist of his pants, and his lips parted. I thought for a second he’d stop me, but the hand he reached out merely stroked my arm, making all its tiny hairs rise. When I got his button open he did the rest, lowering his fly and wrestling his pants away. For a minute or more I fondled him through his shorts, until he was stiff and thick and his breaths had grown sharp and hungry. He pushed his waistband down, releasing his bare length into my palm. He felt just like he should, big and powerful. Only this time I got to wield it. I got to be the one doing.

It was nothing like the things we’d done before. The angle was awkward, the eye contact intense and intimate and humbling. He let me watch every stage of his arousal as it transformed his expression from intrigued to dirty to desperate. As he neared orgasm, he cupped my ear, fingers fidgeting in my hair. No orders this time, just a series of near-silent grunts as I stroked him closer to the edge. Then—

“Please.”

He needn’t have begged. Just now, watching him was as hot as f*cking him, and I was as antsy for his release as he was.

“Yes. Please.” Again his eyes shut, expression pure and perfect agony. His twitching arm and hips told me he was a goner.

He came with the softest, sweetest moan, filling my cupped hand in three long spurts.

“Good.” I left him panting, slipping away to tidy my palm with a tissue. He moved so I could free the covers and we kicked our way between the sheets. I hadn’t even realized how chilly the room had grown until we were enveloped by all that warmth.

“You need something?” he asked.

I kissed his temple. “No, I’m perfect.” Perfectly satisfied, and perfectly exhausted, same as him.

“I’ll get you back,” he mumbled, already fading. “Don’t you worry.”

“I’m sure you will. Thanks for making it sound like a threat.”

“Mmm,” he hummed with a smile, and rolled over. I switched off the reading lamp and draped my arm around his waist.

“I’m gonna fall in love with you,” Kelly said. His words hung in the darkness, bright as candle flames.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. And I don’t think I’ve ever been in love with anybody. Not beyond that dumb kind you feel when you’re young.”

For a long moment I just nibbled my lip, dumbstruck. When I did speak, all that came out was a soft, “Wow.”

“I’ve never loved anybody, for the right reasons,” he said quietly. “I love my mom, but I don’t respect her. I loved my grandfather, but I also never really felt like I knew him. A part of me might even love Don, but I can’t ever tell him that . . .

“If I fall in love with you, it’ll be because I know you inside and out, and because you’re somebody I want to be a better person for—instead of in spite of.”

What he said gave me chills. It felt like he’d opened some secret door and let me come inside and handle the softest parts of him, off-limits to the rest of the world. It meant far more than the bones of any dusty secrets I might exhume on my own.

“There’s nothing I can say that’ll be anywhere as nice as what you just said.”

“Just let me say it first.”

I smiled, unseen. “As you command.”

After a pause he added, “You know, it’s not so bad, needing someone. And not even needing someone . . . Letting someone help you.”

“Are you saying this to me, or yourself?”

“You . . . And maybe me.”

“I’d rather want someone than need them,” I decided. “But you’re right. It’s nice to have someone to fall back on, when things suddenly go to shit.” I’d had that in Kelly, that night at the ER. I just hadn’t known it until he strode into the waiting room.

“Someone to rely on,” Kelly murmured. “Some man who’d bust his ass so you could work through your RN, full-time. Or something more. If you wanted that.”

I blinked in the darkness. “He’d have to be an awfully rich man, if I tricked myself into thinking I was cut out for medical school.”

“Nah. Just some loner with his house already paid off and inexpensive tastes.”

These were thoughts for another time. For another year. I had plenty to learn as I found my feet at Larkhaven in the coming months. Just as much to learn as I fumbled my way into a romance with this strange and startling man.

I squeezed his fingers. “I don’t know what I want yet, for the future. I just know I want . . . I want you to need me back,” I whispered. “For more than just sex.”

“Sweetheart, I already do. I need you for what you let me be for you last night.”

“Oh.”

“I’m nothing without people relying on me. You ever feel tempted to offer me a foot rub, save your energy and ask me to fix something instead.”

“If it makes you so happy, I’ll break stuff on purpose.”

“No.” He turned around and kissed my forehead, then coaxed me to flip so he could do the spooning, hugging me tight. “There’s always something broken. No need to make trouble when there’s plenty already waiting. Just lemme fix what I can, when you can’t do the job yourself.”

“I will,” I promised. He already was. Fixing that ache in my chest, just being here, holding me. Chiseling a few bricks out of his cold gray tower, just enough for me to slip inside and feel shielded from the wind and rain.

With a shallow, yielding noise, he went slack, muscles surrendering their duties, his arm a warm weight against my waist.

“Goodnight, Kel.”

Gently, I turned enough to kiss his jaw and feel his stubble against my lips, its usual rasp softened by an extra day’s growth. From the rest and routine he’d sacrificed, to come and be with me, to let us see each other for the helpless, frightened humans we were.

We got a little something between us.

So little. No thicker than a layer of cotton now. The thinnest membrane of latex when I’d next welcome his body inside mine. Barely anything at all, with those stubborn barriers demolished, just us two, lying here as the dust settled.

Just us two, stripped and spent, hearts beating together in the dark.



With the most heartfelt thanks to my dear friends and talented peers—Ruthie Knox, Charlotte Stein, Edie Harris, Serena Bell, Del Dryden, and Shelley Ann Clark—for their energy, time, and input.

Thanks also to my editor, Jesse Feldman, for seeking me out and inviting me to New York, and to my agent, Laura Bradford, for pushing me there in her wheelbarrow.

And with extra big thanks to my kick-ass mom and to Mary Ann Rivers (and unwitting colleagues), for their expertise. If I bungled any clinical details in this book, may the blame lay firmly on my own shoulders.