Friends Without Benefits

He took an impatient breath. “Is this about earlier? What I said—”

“No! No, not at all.” I hoped he’d somehow read my thoughts and guess at the events of the morning. It was a completely ludicrous hope. I noted that we were being watched by the nurses. Fleetingly, I considered pulling him into an encounter room and filling him in on the details. Good judgment had me deciding against it. I didn’t need any of the hospital staff recording us or any hints, suggestions of inappropriate behavior. Instead I did my best to reassure him. “Really. I just . . . Listen, we’ll talk when I get off.”

“What time do you get off?”

“Three.”

“You mean in an hour?”

“No. Three in the morning.”

“Oh.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Can’t we talk now?”

My eyes flitted around the room, scanned the hovering nurses. I thought back to the pictures of Nico and me taken after our friends-without-benefits conversation. I didn’t want any more pictures; I didn’t want to add any more fuel to the fire by separating ourselves for a private conversation.

It could wait.

“We’ll talk later. I’ll . . . I’ll call you during my next break.”

His frown increased in severity, and he glanced at Angelica. “Let me get her a blanket.”

I nodded, stepped to the side so he could find what he needed on the shelf and only halfway succeeded in arranging a mask of calm over my features.

All through the rest of the visit I stole glances in his direction. He didn’t meet my eyes. Instead he held Angelica’s hand and kept his attention focused on the My Little Pony episode playing on her iPad.

When the visit was over I allowed an obliviously happy Rose to pull me into a brief hug. I walked the trio plus their guards to the staff elevator and boarded with them. On the way down, Rose made chitchat about a recent outing to the Natural History Museum and the impressively huge stuffed Lions she’d seen in the basement.

Just as the elevator reached our floor Nico threaded his fingers through mine and squeezed my hand. I met his big green eyes and found them devoid of twinkle. Again I tried to reassure him, returned his hand squeeze, but with my every attempt he seemed to grow more agitated. He held us in place as everyone else exited the elevator, and I didn’t realize his intent until it was too late.

I started to exit, but his hand pulled me back, his arm wrapped around my middle and I—confused, caught, stunned—watched as the doors closed. Rose, Angelica, and all our guards on one side and us on the other, alone in the elevator.

“Nico! What—wait—what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking you need to tell me what’s going on right now. There is something wrong.”

I spun and hit his chest; the elevator and my anxiety began their ascent. “That was incredibly stupid! All of our security is on the other floor, we’re alone!”

He gripped my wrists. “What is going on? You look petrified. I don’t know what I can say about this morning, okay? I was being impulsive, it was stupid. I never should have said it—”

“This isn’t about that. I had, someone—damn it!” I darted to the other side of the elevator and hit the wall, furious. “Don’t you care at all about your safety?”

“Yes! . . . Wait, what?”

“This. This right here is the problem! There is a crazy person running around this hospital! You have a nutty fancy stalker who is completely unhinged, cutting up lab coats and leaving creepy pictures all over the place and you’re dodging your security!” I had no control over the volume of my voice. I was screeching like a banshee.

“What the hell happened?”

“You push and you push and, you know what? Maybe I wasn’t ready for this! I told you over and over again that I didn’t want to do this, but you wouldn’t listen! You just kept pushing me and now I’m not going to let you do this to me, do you understand? I’m not going to be left! You are going to start taking your safety seriously—if you get hurt or die I will kill you!”

Just as I finished my screaming tirade the elevator dinged, announcing our arrival at the fourth floor. The doors slid open. I could see several people in my peripheral vision hovering at the entrance to the lift. They didn’t get on. Something about the way Nico and I were glaring at each other must have warned them away. The doors closed.

He swallowed. I could tell he was trying to school his expression, was attempting to build a wall between me, my words, and him. He broke eye contact first and punched the button for the basement, where we’d left our guards, Rose, and Angelica.

I huffed, blinked against the gathering, stinging moisture and took a step toward him. “Nico . . . I—”

“No.” The single word was a sharp reprimand, a line in the sand. “We’ll talk when you get off work.”

“Something happened this morning—”

“I said we’ll talk about it later, when I’m not pushing you.” He wouldn’t look at me. Instead he stood in the opposite side of the car and glared at the doors.

I huffed again, leaned heavily against the wall. “I didn’t mean that.”

Silence.

“I mean I did, but I didn’t . . .” After a brief second of indecision on how to continue I threw my hands in the air. “Why are we always having these conversations in elevators?”

The doors opened once again, revealing two security guards—one of them was Dan—who breathed a visible, audible sigh of relief upon seeing us. Without glancing back, Nico left the elevator and followed his guard to a waiting black SUV. Dan stepped on the elevator, his expression stern, perturbed.

But I didn’t care about Dan’s silent disapproval. I cared about Nico’s silent departure and how he’d disappeared into the big vehicle without giving me a backward glance.

Chapter 25

As soon as the opportunity presented itself, I sprinted to the doctors’ lounge and tried to call Nico. When he didn’t answer I called again. When he didn’t answer for the third time I left him a long, rambling voicemail describing the events of the morning and apologizing for my over reactive outburst. I called him a fourth time and told him I loved him.

My heart plummeted that night when Rose brought Angelica to the evening appointment, Nico conspicuously absent. I did take heart from the fact that Rose was still giving me knowing smiles. When she reminded me, just before leaving, that I had a key to the penthouse the sick feeling in my stomach dissolved a little.

If Nico were truly angry with me surely his mother would know. Surely she would be prying and pushing me to fix whatever I’d broken. But she appeared to be happy, happy as a crazy fox in a hen house.

I also took comfort from Angelica’s happy, albeit sleepy, face when she saw me. We hugged. I indulged myself by sitting next to her the whole time and stroking her hair. When she left I felt like she took part of my heart with her.

I counted the hours until my shift was over. When the clock struck 3:00 a.m. I bolted, left my charting for the next day. Dan had been replaced sometime in the evening with a tall, imposing guard named Jackson. Like Dan, he shadowed me through my shift and, when we left the hospital and walked to the car, he kept one hand on my upper arm and one hand hovering over his gun.

We arrived back to my building without incident, though Jackson insisted on riding up with me to Nico’s penthouse. I bid him goodnight—although he didn’t look like he was going anywhere—and tiptoed to Nico’s room.

Part of me hoped that he was asleep so I could strip na**d and snuggle against his warmth. Part of me hoped he was awake so that I could apologize then yell at him some more about putting himself in danger.

He was awake. His laptop was perched on his lap and was the only illumination in the room. I hovered in the doorway briefly, memorizing his face, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that we were both here, safe, unharmed.

He looked up when I shifted forward and closed the door behind me. I noted his face darken, his eyebrows pull into a deep V of concentration or irritation or concern—or all three.

“How was your double shift?” He didn’t sound precisely mad, more like distant.

I closed half the distance to where he sat then loitered, uncertain if I should cross to him, if I were spending the night, of where we stood. “Busy. Did you get my messages?”

He nodded. His jaw ticked.

I waited for him to say something. When he didn’t I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. “What happened earlier, with the elevator, you can’t take chances like that.”

“You should have called me right after the police. Why did you stay at work? You should have come home.” Now he sounded mad. In fact, he sounded downright furious.

“I stayed because I have a job to do. My guard was with me the whole time.” I leveled him with a severe glare. “I didn’t strand myself alone in an elevator.”

“Wait—are you mad at me?” When I didn’t answer his expression transformed from disbelieving to defiant.

“You separated us from your security team.” I flicked on the light by the dresser; he and the room were better illuminated. I was able to discern, but didn’t quite register, that he had his small satchel half-packed on the edge of his bed.