To anchor my mind, I drag my gaze up and down him, trying to give myself something to observe.
“You look very rested,” I observe. He’s wearing a gray T-shirt, khaki shorts, and beat-up sneakers. His hair has that just-washed look about it, and his gray eyes look brighter than I’ve seen them lately.
“Being pretty awesome brings out my good looks.”
I laugh, and sip more tea, and Landon looks me over. “You look tired.”
“I am.” I take another long sip of the tea and lean my butt against the donut room’s counter. “We had one bite it in a meningioma resection. Don’t know if you heard already. How long have you been around?”
“Just got here.” He moves his feet out of the chair and turns his full attention on me. “What happened?”
I describe the surgery, a resection of a meningioma tumor at T4, and the simple mistake Hamm made while narrating his technique to Eilert and me.
“Fuck. How’d Hamm take it?”
I shrug. “You know how the older surgeons are. I guess you have to be. I couldn’t even tell that he was upset. He had to go and tell the family, obviously.” I fold my hands around the warm cup, shaking my head. “I don’t know. But I guess that’s normal, that he kept things professional?” Losing a patient in the OR on a non-emergent surgery is somewhat uncommon, even in our field. I’ve only seen it happen one other time so far.
Landon looks down at his clasped hands, then back up. I love his gray eyes. Right now, they look thoughtful. “Probably. We lost a guy at Hopkins last year on a glioma resection. Attending was female. I saw her mouth do that little wobbly thing—you know, the little crying twitch—right when we were scrubbing out, but that was it. He had a young wife she went and told. Now I don’t know what she did that night,” he says, implying maybe the attending cried at home.
“So anyway…” I shake my head and bring the cup’s rim to my mouth. “I really need this.”
I feel a growing buoyancy as I peer down at him: freshly showered, rested Landon, here on his “off” day to bring me tea.
I cried half the night, and it was really therapeutic. Acknowledging what happened to us. Thinking about the time between then and now. Sometimes, it’s good to do that. When I woke up, though, I felt hollow, as if time was suspended until I saw which way this thing would go. I half figured he’d avoid me, considering he didn’t stay long after. I wondered if that was for the best. I knew for sure if he did dodge me, there’d be no way I could pursue him. Not in good conscience.
Landon stands up, hands going into pockets. “You finished?”
I nod, pulling my briefcase out of my locker. I slide my tablet inside and dare to look back at him. “Did you come just for me?” My stomach twists as I ask.
“Should have waited on your steps,” he says as he moves toward the hall door.
I take another sip of tea to stifle a giddy smile. We walk past the nurse’s station. I’m surprised when no one looks twice at us. Can’t they see the magnitude of this? Landon gets the stairwell door, and we start down the stairs, with him a step behind me.
“So,” I ask over my shoulder, “you still drink your chamomile?”
He smirks. “Ever since some bossy girl got me turned onto it.”
I feel my face go hot at the words “turned on.”
“Tell me you’re not blushing. From me saying turned onto it?” He gives a low laugh. “Oh, Evie. That’s not good.”
“It’s not?” I whisper.
Landon drags his palm down his lower abs...and over his pants. Where there’s a tent. It makes me giggle. “Landon…”
“Hey, it’s not my fault. How sheltered are you, Evie?” It’s half growled.
“I’m not sheltered. I think you noticed that last night.”
“Don’t mention last night.”
I turn around to face him. “Why?”
Alarm flickers over his features before they darken. “Do you want to get fucked in this stairwell, Evie?” His tone is quiet, controlled. It’s a tone I’ve never heard from him before.
My heart thunders. “Is that on the table?” I whisper.
“Do you want it to be?”
I swallow, holding his intense gaze. “I think I always would,” I answer honestly.
I’m going to pay for this…I almost know I am. But there it is: the truth of my heart, laid right at his feet. It feels so simple, this confession. How could I deny it? Loving Landon changed my life, and here he is again, and it feels fated. I’ll say yes as long as he’s asking.
It won’t be forever, a voice in my head says.
“Why do you make me feel like this?” The words are out before I get a chance to censor them.
“Like what?” He steps closer, close enough to touch a lock of my hair. When I fail to answer, he says, “Like what, Evie?” His face is gentle, even though his eyes are burning.
“We should leave the stairwell,” I say, glancing around. Someone could see us. That would really not be good.
“How do I make you feel, Evie?”
I exhale. “Like doing something stupid,” I say softly.
He gives me a funny, eyebrows-raised look, then leads me by my hand down to the second floor, into a hall, and to a door. He looks both ways down the hall, then, seeing no one, opens it, revealing…a storage room for stretchers?
As soon as he shuts the door behind us, he presses me against a wall and kisses me: my mouth, my cheek, my forehead, then my mouth again—a hard, rough kiss as he pushes his cock against my hip.
“You think,” he says, between kisses, “that this is stupid?” I answer with my mouth, and when we stop to pant, he murmurs, “Do you?”
“I…don’t know.”
He urges me down onto the nearest stretcher, stroking my hair as he kisses me more gently. “Does it scare you?”
“Yes.”
I grab his neck. We kiss the way that people drown—helpless and frantic: Landon’s body over mine, his fingers in my hair, his mouth forceful on mine.
In between our kisses, whispers.
“I missed you.”
“Landon—”
“Forgive me.”
“Why?”
“For leaving.”
We kiss until we can’t breathe, then we hold onto each other.
“Christ, Evie. Why can’t I stay away from you?”
“I’m irresistible?” I laugh.
“You’re right, this is reckless,” he says, leaning over me.
“I know.”
“We could lose our jobs.”
“I know.”
And so much more. Landon doesn’t even know how much we stand to lose. How much safer—how much smarter—it is for us to steer clear of each other. Especially me. I need to stay away from him, because at some point soon, I’ll have to tell him. I’ve only kept it from him this long because I thought he’d be better off not knowing. I haven’t been around Landon in ten years. Now that this is happening again, the weight of my secret make my heart feel like it’s breaking.