I’m going to woo Simon Blackwood.
Yes. I’m going to woo the ice king. Me, the snow princess.
I smile, staring at the ceiling in the early hours of the morning. Who said only kings can woo? A princess can woo a king, too.
I’m going to woo my king. Well, because he won’t do it himself. Something is holding him hostage. A demon or a dragon. Something that runs in his veins right alongside his blood, like my illness runs in mine. Only his demon isn’t a diagnosis.
So I’m going to slay it, whatever it is. I’m determined.
And happy.
The thing is that I hardly ever wake up with this much energy. This will to smile.
Knock, knock, knock.
I stop smiling and look at the wall. Flimsy and thin. The wall that carries all the sounds across.
“Hey,” I say, turning on my side, watching the white plaster with apprehension.
“Hey.” Renn’s voice floats through.
Okay, so I know that what happened last night was risky as hell. I know that. Those fifty-six minutes between hourly checks weren’t foolproof. Anyone could’ve walked in. Anyone could have walked down the hallway, taken a peek through the small window of my room and would’ve found Simon and me, rubbing up against each other.
I know that. I know we got lucky.
I also know that the wall separating me from my neighbor is thin, wooden. As in, so thin and wooden that even whispers carry across. Thank God I’ve got the corner room with the stairs on the other side, so I only have one neighbor to contend with. And even though it was raining and storming last night, there’s every chance Renn has heard something.
But she would never say anything. I’ve only known her for thirty-five days and still, I know it. I know she’s my BFF. And when I leave here in seven days, I’ll take all these memories and friendships with me.
“Sleep well last night?” she asks casually.
Even so, I’m a little apprehensive. Not of the fact that she might tell someone but of the fact that she might think less of me.
I clear my throat. “Yes. You?”
“Pretty amazing.” She turns on her side, as evident by the rustling. “So it was crazy last night, wasn’t it? With the rain.”
My heart’s racing now. God, I can’t tell from her voice what she’s thinking.
Please don’t let her judge me.
“Yes. Super crazy.” I grimace in the quiet.
“So?”
“So…”
“Are you really gonna make me say it?”
“Say what?”
“Willow.”
“Renn.”
She growls. “Jesus. I know, okay? I heard. And if you think that I didn’t, then you’re stupider than I thought.”
“Hey, there’s no need to be rude.”
I hear a huff. “Fine. I’m sorry. But what the hell were you thinking, Willow?”
“I… don’t… I wasn’t planning on it.”
“I can’t believe it happened. Anyone, and I mean any of the night shift nurses, could’ve walked in on you.”
“I know.” I clutch the blanket and hide my face under it before mumbling, “I can’t believe it happened, either.”
“How did it even happen? Like, what? How… I don’t…”
I lower the blanket. “Actually, I kind of asked him out on a date a few days ago.”
“What?”
“Lower your voice, you idiot!”
“Oh, I’m the idiot between the two of us? Me? And you’re so fucking smart asking him out, right?”
“Fine. Be that way. I’m not telling you anything.” I flop down on my back and cross my arms across my chest, hoping she doesn’t call my bluff.
Because I’m dying to tell someone.
This talking thing is very addictive. Now I know why girls at my school always traveled in packs. They wanted to gossip. Not that what happened last night is an inconsequential topic or gossip, but still. I need a friend right now.
Renn sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes. But you can’t blame me for reacting pretty strongly to this piece of information. You never told me.” More rustling. “How come you never told me?”
I sigh too and turn to face the wall again. “I didn’t know what to say. He obviously said no. He told me he didn’t have feelings for me. So that was that.”
“But then, how was he here last night?”
Something flips in my stomach as I remember all the things he said to me. All the things he’s been thinking about. I thought he didn’t even look at me. I thought nothing about me appealed to him. I thought he was objective, cold, impersonal.
He wasn’t.
He watched me. He’s been watching me. He wants me too.
Isn’t that the most miraculous thing in the world? It’s more miraculous than magic. Who needs magic if you have that?
Him. Wanting me like I want him.
“But then, he told me that he wanted me too. But he didn’t want to give in because of what we are.”
“What changed?”
I try to remember what happened leading up to the kiss. I talked in group, and then he called me into his office, and I asked him if he knew someone who’d given up.
Yes.
That’s what he said in such a heartbreaking voice that I felt my own heart break.
“I-I’m not sure. There’s something. Something in his life that’s bothering him. But I don’t know what.”
“Do you think it’s his previous job?”
I sigh. “Maybe. I can’t say. But it feels personal. Maybe it’s both.”
“Do you want me to find out?”
“What do you mean?”
“So you know my dad is on the board of directors, right? My dad’s assistant is pretty resourceful. He’s the one who calls every week to check up on me. I can’t promise the personal details, but I can tell him to ask around and maybe we’ll find out something about his job.”
It’s tempting. So fucking tempting. I can find out what’s holding him back, and then I can tell him that it doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters because I want him. I want him more than I’ve wanted anything in this world.
But then, I know a thing or two about secrets. I had a few of my own, and I can’t do that to him. I’ll wait. I’ll wait for him to tell me. Wait for him to trust me like I trust him.
“No. It’s an invasion of privacy. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.”
Renn protests but lets it go when I insist.
“Was it good?” she asks a few moments later.
I chuckle. Only Renn would ask that.
It doesn’t feel like it happened to me. It doesn’t feel like my lips were the ones he kissed, and my skin was the one he touched. It doesn’t feel like he made me come on his cock and in turn, he came on me. His cum splattering all over my stomach and pussy. It feels surreal, like a dark, lust-filled dream.
But it wasn’t a dream because I can still feel him. Still feel the weight of his hot dick, slicing up and down my slit. It’s throbbing, you see. My clit, my tight channel. And it’s so wet. Still.
“Yeah. It was pretty fucking good,” I reply.
“Oh man. I knew it. I knew he’d be good in the sack. He just has that look, you know.” Her sigh is one of longing.
Mine is, too.
I fold my hands beneath my cheek. “Tristan has that look, too, actually.”
Renn goes all quiet.
I poke my finger at the wooden wall, as if she’ll be able to feel it. “Why don’t you like him?”
No answer.
“Renn.”
“Willow.”
“Tell me.”
She huffs softly. “Because I think he’s dangerous.”
I’m instantly on alert. “What? You mean, like, dangerous dangerous?”
“Dangerous to me,” she clarifies. “Guys like him, they pretend to be all charming and irreverent and, you know, harmless. But he’s not. He’s fucking dangerous to girls like me.”
Finally, I understand. I get it.
“You like him,” I say in an awed voice. “You’re just afraid he’ll break your heart.”
“I’m always afraid of that, Willow. I don’t believe in love. I know I can love but I also know that love’s mostly just bullshit. It’s a shot of dopamine. And trust me, I like getting high but dopamine ain’t the way to do it. I’d take crystal meth over fucking hormones, any day.”
“Okay, so, there’s a lot of objectionable content in there that I’m not going to address right now.” I smile sadly. “You sound like Penny.”
“Well, I know my chemistry, so.”
I nod, thinking about what to say. I finally settle on, “I don’t think you should be afraid. To fall, I mean.”
“Yeah? Based on what? Your midnight visitor?”
I think about her question, drawing random shapes on the wall.
Oh, who am I kidding?
I’m writing his name in invisible ink. Good thing they don’t give us pens without supervision – sharp object. I’d be writing his name all over the walls. I’d fill this entire fucking hospital with his name, on every wall, in every corner.
“I’ve never been afraid to fall. In fact, that’s what I do. I fall. But I always wanted to do it because my illness made me do it. I don’t really know myself sometimes, you know. My thoughts aren’t my own. They are so overpowered by my illness. By what I have. Sometimes I don’t know if dying is what I want, or if it’s something my depression is making me want.” I swallow. “But this time I want to fall because I want it. I want him. It’s me. It’s completely me. It’s like I know myself. He makes me know myself. He made me realize that I’m strong. I’m a fighter. He sees me, somehow. Beyond everything. I feel like we’re so buried under our issues, Renn. We’ve got so much baggage and a lot of it is not in our control. But he sees beyond that. I can’t hide from him. He sees the real me.”
I hear sniffling and I realize Renn’s crying. I’m crying, too.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” I whisper.
“Too late.”
I chuckle sadly. “I’m sorry. Don’t cry.”
“How can I not cry, Willow? This is a disaster.”
“What is?”
“Me. You. Him. But, you and him more than me. Oh my God, Willow. You love him.”
“I don’t,” I say but I know I’m lying.
I know my heart’s racing in my chest and my skin has broken out in goose bumps. There’s a weird sensation in my stomach, a buzz. An electric buzz.
I mean, I know it looks stupid. Falling in love with a man I don’t know much about. We’ve been together once and it wasn’t even sex.
Maybe I’m being completely naïve and young and immature but what I feel for him, the way he has affected me since the beginning, even before I saw his face, the way I spilled all my secrets to him… Maybe I was always heading this way.
I was always going to be lovesick. Heartsick. Just sick.
“You so do, Willow,” Renn says. “Do you know how crazy it is? I don’t even know what to say right now. What if he’s not what you think he is? Do you really know him?”
“I think I do. Where it counts.”
“What if you guys get caught? What then?”
“I… I hope we don’t.”
That’s such a lame answer. But the truth is I really hope that we don’t. I only have seven more days here. Once I’m out, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing, right?
Who cares?
We only have to be careful for the next seven days.
“Willow, I have a bad feeling about this, okay? He could lose his job. You could, I don’t know, undo all the progress you’ve made. You said it yourself. We’re buried under our issues. You don’t need this. You don’t need another issue in your life. Please, tell me you’ll be careful. Just please.”
“I promise,” I reply, blinking back my tears, love rushing for my BFF.
Who knew I’d find my Best Friend Forever on the Inside?
“Do you judge me?” I can’t resist asking.
“What? No,” Renn insists. “I just want you to be careful. And I don’t mean be careful around the hospital. Be careful with him. Because people like him and people like us… we’ve got a line between us, Willow. There’s a big, huge divide. There’s a reason why they wear lab coats and navy-blue scrubs and diagnose us. And there’s a reason why we’re here, away from the real world, our lives interrupted. It’s not something to be ashamed of but it’s also not something to be taken lightly.”
He said the same thing to me, when he made me promise that I won’t let anything come between me and my treatment.
And I won’t.
My feelings for him have nothing to do with my illness. They are independent, separate. They are mine. They are not a result of a deficiency or a faulty gene.
My feelings for him are me.
Not a lot of people will get it, in fact.
They’ll think I’m crazy to fall for a man like him. My psychiatrist. The cold and distant ice king. They’ll think it’s anything but love. They’ll think I’m a statistic. An insane girl falling for the man who’s trying to save her. It’s a doomed love. A love born to die.
A broken girl falling for her fixer.
But what they don’t know is that my fixer might be a little bit broken too. There’s something haunting him and it’s more than the fact that I’m his patient and he’s my psychiatrist.
And I have seven days to convince him that it doesn’t matter who we are or what we are, we’re made for each other.
***
Thirty minutes later, I climb down the stairs to go to breakfast and find him in the hallway. We look at each other across the space, his eyes pinned on me in a way that I now understand.
I begin walking toward him and he does the same. A few patients flutter past me. A tech carrying a file throws me a nod. A few nurses greet him. We do what we’re required to do. We smile, nod back, all the while gravitating toward each other.
Or at least, it feels like gravitating. Because in this moment, there’s nowhere I’d rather be going than toward him.
We come to stop in front of each other, a little further down the dining room.
“Dr. Blackwood.” I nod at him.
“Willow.” He doesn’t nod back; he simply eyes me, my face, and my t-shirt.
My nipples wake up, as if he’s touching them, not with his eyes but with his hands.
Oh God, his hands.
He shoves them in his pockets as he stares, and I have to ask, “Why do you always have your hands in your pockets?”
“To control myself,” he rumbles, his voice thick and syrupy, like his eyes.
My heartbeat jacks up. “From what?”
He looks up, his gaze dark, as dark as last night. “From doing the things they shouldn’t be doing.”
I swallow, my heart in my throat, preventing me from saying anything to that. Although I want to say things. So many things.
“Interesting shirt,” he murmurs.
My nipples become engorged, painful. So fucking painful. And so do my breasts. There’s a tingling in them that only ever comes when I’m on the verge of losing myself to an orgasm. Too bad I’m standing in the middle of a hallway, with the morning bustle of a hospital.
“Thank you. It’s, uh, Harry Potter,” I say lamely, like I did the first time I chatted with him in the hallway. As if I want to talk about fiction and magic, instead of begging him to ease the pain in my tits.
He knows what I’m thinking. He has to. Something flashes on his face. Something carnal, and I have to cross my arms at my back so I don’t touch him. I wish I had pockets too.
“I know.”
I bite my lip. “I slept well. Last night, I mean. Like a baby.”
“I’m glad meds are doing their job. Besides, you are a baby.” His voice is filled with barely leashed frustration.
I’m not a baby. Or a little child. Or his responsibility. Though weirdly, it makes me all horny that he thinks so. What he doesn’t know is that this baby is really a snow princess who’s going to slay his dragons.
Deciding to let it go, I narrow my eyes at him. “Last night was risky.”
His nostrils flare. “That’s why it won’t happen again.”
Boom, boom, boom.
That’s my heart, matching the thunder last night.
“It shouldn’t,” I agree with him. “There’s a line between us.”
“There is.”
“I’m… kind of defective and you’re kind of not.”
He takes a step closer to me and it’s very hard for me to simply stand there and not take a step closer to him. He leans his head toward me and I become hyperaware of the surroundings. Is it intimate-looking, the way he’s paying me all this attention?
But for the life of me, I can’t move away from him. I can’t bear to sever this connection, even if it’s in the light of day and people surround us on all sides.
“Let’s get one thing very clear,” he says in a low but intense voice. “There’s a line between us, Willow. But it has nothing to do with your supposed defectiveness. You got that? There is nothing defective about you. Am I clear?”
My legs tremble, shake.
They shake like I’m in the middle of an earthquake. Like the one I had last night in his arms. I feel a flood of emotions, so many jumbled emotions that I don’t know what to do with.
The only thing that makes sense to me right now is the fact that I love him.
I love this man.
I look at the sculpted line of his jaw, wanting to kiss his stubble, but knowing that I can’t. “Yes.”
“Good.” He takes a step back. “I want you to focus on your treatment and nothing else.”
“And will you focus on treating me?”
“That’s my job, yes.”
“I don’t want you to lose it. If...” I trail off, since we’re out here and I can’t really say what I want to say.
His face becomes blank. “Why don’t you let me worry about it? Besides, there’s no if. Because as I said, it won’t happen again.”
I stare into his eyes, trying to read if he means it. Logically, rationally, he should mean it. If we get caught, things could end very badly. For him. I don’t want him to lose something he’s so passionate about.
It could end badly for me, too. Although I don’t care about myself as much. I wouldn’t care if they locked me up and put me in chains, for wanting something I shouldn’t want.
It’s startling, that revelation.
I’ve hated being sent here. Hated. And now, I wouldn’t mind living here, in captivity, as long as he wants me back.
Nodding, I say, “Okay.”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
We are. His eyes say so. But why does it feel like the page we’re on is not the page we’re supposed to be on?
I should go have breakfast now. I see everyone going into the room, throwing us glances. But I can’t make myself move. Not when he’s watching me like this. Like he’ll stand here for as long as I will.
Like what happened last night is going to happen again.
“It’s a good day, don’t you think?” I murmur.
He looks at me suspiciously. “A good day for what?”
I can’t stop myself from smiling then. “Poker.”
The look he gives me is scorching. I see him tightening his fists inside his pockets. “Poker.”
“Uh-huh.” I nod, tightening my own arms at my back because I so want to ruffle his hair right now. Or maybe crease his neatly-pressed shirt. “You should come play with us, Dr. Blackwood.”
“Who’s us?”
Sometime last night, I dreamed of Simon being jealous of every other man I come in contact with. It was weird and exaggerated. I mean, he won’t be jealous of every man, will he?
Looking at him, I can’t say for sure. “Uh, a bunch of people. Renn and the girls. Tristan.”
“Right.” His mouth tips up in a hard, lopsided smile. “You know, I’d be very careful about who you play with.”
“Why’s that?”
“It might piss me off.”
“Then come play with us. Or you know, just watch.”
His eyes flare dangerously, and my breath hiccups. I still can’t believe that he’s been watching me. Like a beast roaming inside the castle. My lonely ice king.
“You shouldn’t be so uptight, you know. And perfect. In fact,” I say, my voice all breathy and my chest almost heaving with all the sensations. “I think you’ll like how free the people are on the other side.”
“What side is that?” he asks at last, in a soft voice and awareness in his eyes.
“The side where craziness lives. And I’m not talking about the useless kind.”
Simon studies me with a clamped jaw before nodding and stepping back. “Well, you have a good day, and for your sake, I hope you don’t play poker.”