She flashes me a quick, proud smile, and my heart catches. It’s been years since I met Evie, but it still feels like the first day sometimes. I remember when she followed me up to the school’s front doors and watched me punch the wall. I didn’t know, of course, that I should kick the fucking thing, and spare my hands. I couldn’t fathom that I’d be a surgeon one day. But I think Evie always could. She looked at me, and she saw something no one else did. Even I don’t know what.
It amazes me sometimes to think the boy who sneaked into the family room to watch the girl sleep on the couch grew up and went to med school, tracked her down and married her. I feel weirdly proud of younger Landon. And Evie—fuck. She had a baby, gave her to a better life, and went on living. Thriving. There’s no one stronger than Evie. My wife.
We shoot the shit a little longer, and then we both head to the annual meeting to discuss new patient safety objectives. I kiss her right behind the door before we step into the hallway and walk past the nurse’s desk to Conference Room 2. It’s packed with all the residents and attendings who signed up at this hour. We have to stagger these meetings, but still—there’s lots of us.
Evie stands beside me in her sneakers, paired with dress pants, and her coat. She pulls her hair back up as Peterson gives the lecture. As he drones on, she touches her mouth, rubs her neck, adjusts her coat. And I watch her. I admire her freckles, watch the way her coat falls over her breasts. I think of opening the coat, pulling her sweater up, and freeing her breasts from her bra. I’d cup them…nip them. Annnd—I’m getting hard. Fuck.
Evie catches my eye, noting my strange look, but she doesn’t know why. Not until the meeting ends. We all file out. That’s when I ask her for a piece of gum. Her eyes hold mine for just a second too long. “Yeah—sure.” She reaches into her coat pocket. I unwrap the gum and chew. “Thanks.”
“Sure. Not a problem, Dr. Jones.”
I arch a brow. “Well, thank you, Dr. Rutherford.” I give her my polite smile. “Until we meet again.”
We part ways by the nurses’ station—and I go straight down to floor two. Half the time, we’re paged, and have to finish in five seconds, or don’t get to start at all. But the other half…
Evie bursts into the door a minute after I do. I pull her coat off. She goes for my pants, her skilled hands pushing them down in record time. Her fingers find my dick and start to stroke, before I even get her pants unbuttoned.
“Evie—fuck.”
“I’ve been wanting this.” She squeezes…tugs and strokes. With heavy eyelids, I smile and peel her pants down, finding her warm pussy with my hand. We end up on a stretcher, going at each other with our hands and mouths until that’s not enough, and I’ve got the defiant doctor bent over the table, getting pounded with a stiff, hard dose of Vitamin D.
Evie gasps and groans and grips the table as my knees go weak, I start to pant…and, fuck, I’m so hard.
“Evie—”
“Yes!”
A few more rough strokes, and she cries out, taking me over the ledge with her. I lean down over her as I pant, and Ev’s hands reach back, stroking my chest.
“Oh God,” she breathes, still panting. She laughs. “That was good.”
“It’s always good.”
I dress her carefully and slowly—still no page for either one of us—and when there’s still no page—the world has ended—I push her pants back down, hook a finger through the crotch of her thong, and bathe her slick clit with my hungry tongue. She comes with a sharp cry. I’m hard as marble when my pager vibrates, but that’s okay. It’s worth it. Every day. All this is worth it.
All the shit we had to go through to get here—right here on floor two, in this dusty storage room where we have at each other: worth it. Every time I stalked her online throughout college, looking painfully at her new profile pictures, at her changing hair and different poses, at those pictures that I wasn’t in—until I was again: worth it.
Running from the group home: worth it.
Tracking down my mother: worth it.
Missing Ashtyn’s birth and ten years with her: worth it.
Not because it’s easy now. It’s not easy. This shit is the opposite of easy.
Evie’s off at nine. I’m not finished till ten, and so I wait—eating a donut—which, by now, is stale. On the drive home, we try to talk about the weirdest shit we saw that day so that whoever’s driving—six blocks—doesn’t fall asleep behind the wheel.
Worth it.
In one month, we share one single off day.
Worth it.
Because it has to be. There’s only two choices: it’s either worth it, or it’s not. So I choose blindly. Desperately. I choose Evie. And our love—our fractured, splinted, restored love—is fucking worth it.
—THE END—
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The Boy Next Door
Did you enjoy Fractured Love? Check out the first chapter of The Boy Next Door. It is available on Amazon and free in Kindle Unlimited.
Prologue
Amelia
Summer 2016
What would an aspiring writer wear? I never know. I’m kind of always tempted to go with a black pants suit, designer heels, and a sharp black handbag, but that’s too boring. I’m not a regular writer. I write children’s stories. Not books—films.
Bits of dialogue I write end up getting delivered by animated frogs and, on occasion, dancing rainbows. At the summer internship after my freshman year of college, I worked for Nickelodeon. I was sitting at the writers’ table on a show that hadn’t launched yet, helping make the pilot. Late one night, one of the animators needed someone to wear a long, stick-on tail and pretend to fall into a toilet—so he could train the camera on the person and then use it as a model for his animated monkey.
Yep, you guessed it. I was volunteered. I had to put on a giant rain boot and stick my foot into a toilet for about two hours, between the hours of two and four a.m.
I thought about that experience today—two years later—as I picked out the outfit for the first day of my summer internship at Imagine Luxe. I ended up going with a funky, sky blue, designer skirt suit, peep-toe heels, and a headband with a unicorn horn.
As I extend my hand to shake with a pretty, slightly older blonde girl, I wonder if the horn was too much.
“Hi Amelia, I’m Carrie.” She nods slightly, showing me the pointed ends of her pixie cut.
“Hi.” I give her my best I’m-not-insane smile, and she returns it.
“Great to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too.” I get dumb and super unfunny when I’m nervous.
“I’m one of the writers—er, story artists—” she says, doing air quotes— “on your team this summer. Our team lead asked me to come meet you and give you a quick tour.”