Burn (6 page)

Whatever the cause
of Ryan leaving was, it obviously still caused him a lot of pain to talk about,
and for that reason Tate now felt like a selfish asshole for seeing things so
one-sidedly. She’d made giant assumptions that he’d left Atlanta for purely
self-serving motives, and that might not be the case at all. There was no room
in her professional life for assumptions, so why she’d made such a monumental
one in her personal life was beyond her realm of comprehension.

Perhaps she owed
him an apology.
Or maybe not.
She didn’t know what to
think, really. At least not until he finally decided he was ready to talk and
could clear up this problem that hung between them like a dense, gray storm
cloud.

In the interim,
he called or texted.
Just little short, sweet messages asking
how her night had been, or what the last movie was that she’d seen.
Did
she think to eat
dinner.
And they were working. Tate
could feel herself melting like candlewax, forgiveness edging out the old hurt
and resentment until the only thing left was want.

She had to hand
it to him. He’d played his cards well. He’d known the sex would serve as a
potent reminder of the physical connection they’d shared. Now he was slowly
filling in the gaps with his tender, caring gestures that played on her
heartstrings like only he knew the chords. And didn’t he?
 
She’d never let anyone else get as close as
Ryan. His leaving had left wounds she never wanted to reopen, so she’d erected
barriers too impenetrable for any man to break through. Until now, when the one
person who’d been responsible for those barriers shredded them as if they were
made of tissue paper.

“It
was my family, and I had no choice but to leave you.”

That one
sentence kept running through her mind in an unending loop, punctuated by the
pain and earnestness she’d heard in his voice as he’d said it.

She tried to
think of things her family could’ve done to her to make her drop everything and
go to them against her will, something that she wouldn’t want anyone else to
know about, not even those closest to her, and everything she came up with was
grim. Dark, deeply disturbing subjects like murder or sexual abuse.

Ryan had a
younger sister, Dannie, who he was extremely close to. Tate had met her a few
times when she’d come to Atlanta for a quick visit with Ryan’s parents. She was
a beautiful, bright girl, full of joy and typical teenage enthusiasm for
everything.
The thought of her being abused, physically or
mentally, made Tate’s stomach turn over.
Dannie would’ve been around
thirteen at the time Ryan left. Could that have been it? Did their father or
mother mistreat her in some way and Ryan intervened? That would certainly be
something painful that would be hard to discuss. Everyone felt shame and guilt
in those instances, even when it wasn’t necessarily warranted.

Tate buried her
fingertips into her stinging eye sockets in a futile attempt to rub away the
fatigue and accepted that she’d already been privy to too much darkness in the
ER. Her imagination had been seeded by all the horrific abuses she’d seen
firsthand. Now her brain was permanently corrupted. She’d become jaded about
the world, and that made her sad. On a few rare occasions she saw the good side
of humanity, but mostly she saw the awful.
The attempted
murders, drunk drivers’ victims, domestic violence, and rapes.
It was
hard to keep your perspective sometimes.

Tonight was a
prime example.

There’d been a six-car
pileup on I-75, instigated by a drunk driver crossing the median into oncoming
traffic, and Atlanta General had absorbed the brunt of the aftermath.
Everywhere Tate looked was carnage and death. Blood pooled beneath gurneys,
leaking from broken bodies faster than it could be replaced through transfusions.
Cries of agony became the soundtrack of the evening, punctuated by the monotonous
beeps and alarms of machinery and the shouted orders of staff members trying
their best to save the lives they could.

During these challenging
times, Tate’s training took over, and she ran on autopilot, doing what was
necessary, blocking out the human emotions like sadness and frustration and
anger. There was no place for any of that to creep in during the heat of the
moment. Letting it in would only serve as a distraction, and those could cause
deadly mistakes in the ER.

When the last
patient had finally been stabilized enough to transport to surgery, Tate
stripped off her gloves and looked down at her scrubs. She was splattered with
blood, the spots so thick in some areas they formed Rorschach patterns against
the blue background of the material. Her white leather Nikes
were
speckled with deep crimson droplets. Unfortunately, she hadn’t remembered to
put a spare set of clean scrubs back in her locker since the puking incident
several shifts ago.

The hospital had
protective booties and gowns to cover clothing when working messy cases like
they’d had this evening. Tate found them mostly cumbersome, and usually by the
time she thought about putting something on, she was already too focused on the
patient to care about her attire. Besides, they were scrubs—if they didn’t come
clean in the wash, she tossed them out.

She’d worked
many overwhelming, stressful nights, but for some reason this particular shift
hit her with the force of a locomotive. She felt drained of life, as though
she’d been one of the accident victims, too.

Strangely, tears
began to sting her eyelids. Not wanting anyone to see her lose it, she ran for
the nearest bathroom, locking herself inside a stall and collapsing on the seat
of the toilet. She rolled off a wad of tissue and dabbed at the wetness on her
cheeks, cursing this abrupt, crashing vulnerability. A few minutes later, she
heard the door open and the squeak of sneakers on the linoleum.

“Tate, is that
you?” Colleen asked.

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

Tate sucked in a
deep breath through her mouth in hopes of avoiding more of the blood smell,
then
slowly released it. “I will be. Everything just got to
me out there for a second.”

“Want to grab a
coffee and talk?”

Tate exited the
stall and walked to the sink, splashing her face with handfuls of cold water.
“Thanks, but I think I’m going to head home.”

Colleen placed a
hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “Something’s going on with you, and
it’s not work. Does it have anything to do with the sexy chef from your past?”

“He wasn’t a
chef in my past.” Tate dried her face with a hand towel and tossed it in the
trash. “He was just the cute guy from my Dramatic Lit class who hated
Shakespeare as much as I did. Then one day he brought me chocolate chip muffins
after I casually mentioned they were my favorite. He’d made them himself from
scratch.” Tate smiled weakly. “To this day it’s still the best fucking muffin
I’ve ever tasted. So I guess maybe he was born to be a chef, and he just hadn’t
realized his full potential back then.”

“Why does his reappearance
have you so emotional?”

Tate sighed.
“Things ended badly between us. Not with either of us cheating or fighting all
the time. If we’d broken up over something like that it might’ve been easier to
accept and recover from. Instead, he just up and disappeared. Not one word of
explanation as to why.”

“Not even a note
or a phone call?”

“Nope.”

Colleen looked
as perplexed as Tate had felt the day it happened. “God, who does something
like
that
?”

“Never in a
million years would I have thought Ryan.”

“Obviously you
were deeply in love with him, though.”

Rubbing the back
of her neck, Tate had to agree.
“Obviously.”
Otherwise
it wouldn’t still hurt as much as it did after all this time. She wouldn’t
still carry it around inside of her like an ulcer, an open sore that wouldn’t
heal.

“Did he love you
back?”

“He never said
the words, but I felt sure he did. But then again, I never professed my
feelings either.
Not verbally anyway.”

“You don’t
always have to speak the words to convey the sentiment.”

“Then why do we
hear so many people say they wished they’d said ‘I love you’ one last time?”

“Because they
weren’t doing the rest of it right. If you
show
them every day, they’ll know without having to hear the words.”

“Is leaving
someone in the middle of the night showing them you love them?”

Colleen shook
her head.
“Not at first glance, no.
But he doesn’t
sound like the type to just give up on someone overnight. He went to the
trouble of baking you homemade muffins. After all these years, he remembered
your favorite flower, and he cooked you
and
practically the entire ER staff an Irish dinner.
 
Amongst all of the hospitals and care centers in
Atlanta, he sought you out and found you.
Honey, to me that
speaks volumes about how he
still
feels
about you.”

Emotion swelled
in Tate’s chest, filling her throat until she thought it would split her in
half. Colleen was right.

Colleen was
always right.

She patted Tate
on the back and left her alone in the bathroom to mull over what she’d said.

Twenty minutes
after her shift ended at midnight, Tate found herself standing in front of
Ryan’s door. Somehow her car had just steered its way over there, and her tired
feet had carried her up the two flights of stairs to his landing. She should’ve
called first before showing up so late and unannounced. He was probably asleep,
exhausted from a busy night, too. Or he might be out with friends, having a
drink and a laugh. She hadn’t thought to look for his motorcycle parked on the
street. She hadn’t really thought of anything, her mind too spent to think
logically.
Perhaps not even rationally.
It just seemed
as though her body knew what it needed and made the decision for her.

She raised her
hand and knocked, then listened quietly for the sounds of movement on the other
side of the door. After a moment of nothing, she started to walk away when she
heard the chain slide through the hasp and the deadbolt turn.

“Hey,” he said
gruffly when he opened the door. His hair was mussed, his beautiful blue eyes languid
from sleep. All he wore was a pair of dark green boxer briefs. “Come in.”

Tate stepped across
the threshold, running her damp palms over her hips, while he shut and locked
the door behind her.

“I…” she started
before she realized the purpose for her impromptu visit was selfish and
somewhat irrational. There was no simple way to explain why she was there.

He frowned down
at her scrubs. “Is all of that blood?”

She sighed
tiredly. “It was a very bad night.”

“Looks like it.”
He ran his hand across his hair, causing the muscles on the left side of his
chest to lengthen. “Is that the reason for the late night visit? Stress relief?”

I’ve
gone numb, and you make me feel something again.

She swallowed
her shame. “Yes.”

Ryan stepped
closer, his fingers going to the bottom of her top. “Then let’s start by getting
you out of these reminders.” Tate nodded, lifting her arms obligingly.

They left a
trail of her clothing on the way to his bedroom, stripped piece by piece in
between deep, wet kisses. By the time the bed was reached, both of them were
blessedly naked, desperate for each other, and Ryan was donning a condom.

Together they
melted onto the bed, a warm tangle of limbs and eager, seeking mouths. He
stripped the elastic band from her hair and massaged the back of her scalp with
his fingertips. Tate closed her eyes, groaning softly in pleasure from just
that simple, tender gesture.

His lips found
every sensitive spot on her throat while his hand cupped her breast, thumb
teasing the nipple to a hard peak. He captured it between his lips and tortured
it with his tongue, until Tate writhed and whimpered beneath him, clawing at
his shoulders with her nails, pulling him closer still, his cock sliding into
the juncture of her thighs where she was already slick and achy with need.

He encouraged
her to turn onto her side, curling his bigger body against her back. Draping
her leg over his thigh to open her up, he eased inside her so slowly Tate had
to bite her lip to keep from begging him to hurry. There was no rush.

And God, it felt
wonderful to have him take her like this—patient and careful—despite the
lateness of the hour and their shared fatigue. The two of them just fit
together like puzzle pieces, always had.

Ryan’s hand
caressed her breasts and belly while he slowly rocked his hips. His mouth
brushed her ear, making her shiver. Tate turned her head to look up at him. The
expression on his face was tender, the soft smile on his lips familiar. He
kissed her, long and languidly, never feeling the need to speed things along. Still,
an orgasm built between her hipbones, gathering strength with every lazy thrust.