Chapter Twenty-One
Aaron
I couldn’t seem to get the email I’d received earlier out of my head.
Welcome to the Pediatric Emergency Medicine program at Oakford Children's Hospital. Please contact us by December 20th to finalize the details of your new position…
It was everything I’d been working for. Everything I’d wanted for the past five years. Everything I wanted… besides Finn.
And it was outside Grass Valley, California—about a four-hour drive from here. So I wasn’t going to take it. There was no way I was going to move away from Finn again. And his life was here, in Nevada. His family—Layla and Griffin—was here, his business was here. There was no way he could move with me, and it wasn’t even something I could ask of him, anyway. I couldn’t take him away from everything he loved just so I could take a new job. No way, no how.
But… I hadn’t sent my denial reply yet. I’d typed it up and when the time came to hit send, I’d hesitated. Then before I had a chance to go through with it, I’d been paged back to the floor and hadn’t had a chance to send it since.
I would send it, though. Because I wasn’t leaving him. Not again. Not ever again.
Even if Evelyn had told me to take it when I told her about it. Several of the nurses had overheard too, so everyone had been offering their opinions all damn day.
But I wasn’t going to take it. I couldn’t.
“I’m in the kitchen!” Finn’s voice yelled out as soon as I walked into his apartment. We’d traded keys almost immediately, since I was adamant about sleeping in the same bed every night.
I set my bag down, hung up my jacket and toed off my shoes before making my way to him. He was standing at the stove, cooking something that smelled divine, though I had no clue what it was. I walked up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist and kissed his cheek before resting my chin on his shoulder. I whispered, “Hi, hot stuff.”
He leaned back against me and smiled, ignoring my Hot Stuff comment. “How was your day?”
I tensed for a split second, thinking about the email, but I brushed it off. There was no reason to tell him about it. It’d only upset him and make him feel guilty for me not going. So I just said, “It was good. How was yours?”
He sighed as he added a few spices to some kind of rice concoction. “It was alright. We had an angry customer screaming at us earlier.” He walked out of my arms to get something out of the fridge, so I leaned against the counter beside the stove and crossed my ankles and arms.
“Really? What the hell did they have to be angry about?”
“Apparently her cake got knocked off the table and smashed to the ground last night at her party.”
“And that was your fault, how?” I asked, completely offended on his behalf.
He sighed again as he started cutting up some carrots. “She thought we should replace it for her for free, since her guests didn’t have any dessert.”
“Are you serious?”
He nodded and glanced at me—the eyeliner under his eyes making them look bright—before starting on an onion. “Yeah. She was completely mental. She was literally screaming at the top of her lungs, demanding a free cake.”
“Did you call the police?”
He smirked at me. “No, we sent her home with a cake.”
I gaped at him. “Why the hell did you give her a cake? She’s the one that knocked it off the table and was being ignorant to you.”
He huffed and blew out a breath. “The cake she’d ordered was over three hundred dollars, completely custom-made. If she would’ve told us what happened without screaming, we would’ve offered to make her a new one, but since she was screaming, we just sent her off with one of the forty-dollar cakes from the display.” He shrugged. “It was better than having her scare away customers.”
I eyed him. “You should’ve called me. I would’ve come and kicked her out for you.”
He smirked and rolled his eyes at the same time, throwing all the chopped vegetables into a pan. “Do you really think that you would’ve been able to get rid of her if Layla and Griffin had trouble?”
“Fair point.” I uncrossed my arms and hooked my arm around his middle, pulling him against me. I kissed his forehead and wrapped my arms around his waist, spreading my legs apart so he was standing between them. “I hate that someone was yelling at you.”
He put his arms over my shoulders, but didn’t touch me with his hands since they were covered with food. “You have a knight in shining armor complex, you know. You always have.” It sort of sounded like an insult, but Finn was smiling, so I couldn’t be too offended.
I shrugged. “I just don’t like to see you hurt or upset.”
He kissed my nose. “Right back at ya.” He leaned fully against me and kissed me, nibbling on my bottom lip. I loved it when he did that. It always made my cock perk up. He kissed along my jaw. “I missed you today.”
“Mmm.” I tilted my head back to allow better access. “Missed you too.” We said this almost every night, and I meant it every single time. If I could, I’d spend twenty-four seven with Finn. Probably even follow him around like a lost puppy.
“I really need to finish dinner,” he said, though he didn’t stop kissing and sucking on my skin.
“Mmm.” I slipped my hands under his shirt and rubbed the soft skin on his back.
He pushed his hips forward, making him rub against my growing hardness. “It’s going to burn.” But he still didn’t stop kissing my skin and rubbing against me. I couldn’t even respond because I didn’t want him to stop. “Shit, you taste good. Maybe I can just eat you for dinner.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Are you gonna freak out if dinner burns again?” It’d be the second time this week.
He groaned. “Yes. I wanted to make you something special.”
“As long as you’re with me, it is special.”
It was his turn to chuckle. He leaned back and looked at me with amusement in his eyes. “Were you always this corny?”
I snorted and shrugged. “Yeah?”
His grin grew and he laughed a little. “I really don’t remember you being this corny growing up. I have no idea what’s come over you lately, but you’re ridiculous.” The look of joy in his eyes took the sting out of his words.
I pouted. “I’m just telling it like it is.”
He pecked my lips. “You’re adorable when you’re all pouty.”
I frowned. “You gonna be making fun of me all night?”
He kissed my lips. “I wasn’t making fun.” He kissed my cheek. “I was complimenting you.” He kissed my other cheek.
“You said I was pouting.”
He snorted. “Because you were... still are.” He sucked my bottom lip between his teeth, then released it. “I didn’t say that was a bad thing. I happen to like when you pout because you’re cute.”
His phone chirped on the counter beside me, so Finn reached over and checked it. Had I not been staring at his face, I would’ve missed the moment it paled and his eyes glazed over because it was gone a second later. Finn set his phone back down without responding to the text.
“Who was that?” I asked, my arms still around him.
Finn looked into my eyes, then glanced around the kitchen. For a minute I was afraid he wasn’t going to tell me, but then he took a deep breath, seeming to steel himself, and he looked me in the eyes as he said, “My ex.”
For some reason, that wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I couldn’t fathom thinking of Finn with someone else, so I’d avoided the subject thus far. I cleared my throat. “Uh… what did he want?”
He sighed and looked away from me as he answered, “He texts me now and again, trying to get me to meet up with him. I think…” He glanced at me, then looked away and mumbled, “I think he’s just hoping for a booty call.”
I blanched uncontrollably and Finn pushed out of my arms, walking back over to the stove. When I regained some semblance of my brain functions, I asked as lightly as possible, “Is that… something you do regularly?” I must not have done a very good job of keeping my voice light because Finn glared at me.
Then he groaned a little in frustration. “No.” He looked tense.
When no more information was forthcoming, I asked, “What’s this guy’s name?”
“Dante.”
Again, he didn’t offer anything else, so I asked, “How long were you together?”
He seemed to tense even further. “Five years.”
My eyes practically bugged out of my head. “Five years?” I choked out.
He took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“What… what happened?”
Finn eyed me before returning his attention to the stove. “He was a grade-A asshole.”
“Yet, you stayed with him for five years.” My voice came out harsher than I’d meant it.
He turned around, spatula in hand, and glared at me. “Yeah, I did. Apparently I have a thing for assholes.” I flinched at that and Finn had the decency to look apologetic. He muttered, “I didn’t mean that.”
I nodded. “Me either,” I said, since I’d been shitty too.
He nodded and went back to cooking. After a minute, he spoke with a tight voice. “Look, Dante was… not a good guy. I didn’t see it at first, and even when I did, I tried to deny it. Our relationship was… not healthy. He… I… I have a restraining order against him. I save the texts he sends me… just in case. I don’t…” He trailed off. I’d never seen Finn so tense, so upset before.
So I walked over to him and hugged him from behind again, resting my chin on his shoulder. He didn’t even relax. At. All. But he didn’t pull away, either. I whispered, “I’m sorry I brought it up. We don’t have to talk about it right now.” I kissed his neck. “As long as you’re safe.”
“I’m fine,” he said, still not relaxing.
I held him tight and nuzzled into his neck. “We don’t have to talk about it until you’re ready, okay?”
He took a deep breath and blew it out. Then he nodded and finally started to release some of his tension. “Okay.”
We stayed that way for a while. I held him tight and kept kissing his neck and nuzzling into him until he calmed and leaned into me fully. He looked back and kissed my lips, then gave me a friendly little push and a smile. “I can’t cook with you there.”
“Okay,” I huffed out with a small laugh. Then I grinned, kissed his cheek and let go, moving back over to lean on the counter.
“What about you? How many guys’ and gals’ hearts did you break?”
I sighed. I hadn’t really wanted to get into this, but he deserved to know. “I dated three girls and four guys, though I, um, slept with two guys I wasn’t dating.” I crossed my arms over my chest, wishing they could shield me from Finn’s judgment that I knew was coming.
To my surprise all he did was nod.
“What about you?” I asked.
“How many guys?” he asked, though he didn’t seem to really need clarification. He set the spatula down and turned to lean against the counter perpendicular to me. “Three serious relationships.” He shrugged.
“That’s it?”
He shot me a glance and a little smirk. “Yeah. I mean, I went on some other dates, but they never went further than kissing, so I don’t think they count.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Way to make me sound like a slut.”
He huffed out a laugh. “You always were a slut.”
I pushed off the counter and walked over to him, leaning in close and boxing him in. “You never seemed to have a problem with my slutty ways before.”
He snorted. “You are such a dork,” he said with a big smile as he grabbed onto my hips.
“Yeah, but I’m your dork,” I said with my nose only a centimeter from his.
He chuckled. “Seriously? You and the corniness, man.”
I grinned at him. “You like it.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” He tried to scowl, but he just ended up smiling at me.
I leaned in and captured his mouth in a long, slow, sensual kiss.
Suddenly Finn pushed my chest back and yelled, “Fuck!” At first I didn’t know what the hell he was freaking out about, but then I smelled it at the same time he turned the burner off and yelled, “Dammit! Not again.”
He looked over at me, exasperated at yet another burned dinner, but then we both burst out laughing.