dibs (23 page)

“Mac.”

“Sam,” he mimicked me.

“I can’t do this right now.”

“Then don’t.”

Flustered, I turned to face him…to face…this…head on. His shoulders seemed broader, his chest wider. He was still full of confidence.

“What do you want, Mac?”

There was no way I could look at him for long. Every ounce of resolved slipped away…

“Your time.”

He’d said that one other time to me, on the ship.

“I have so much on my plate right now. My time isn’t even mine to give.”

“Sam. You’re burning it from both ends. Running on all cylinders. You have to give yourself a break.”

Tears flooded my eyes without warning. I fought to hold them back. He’d either talked to Kat or Juls, or I suppose, Blake. Wow…

His arms came around me and I didn’t fight it. I couldn’t. He’d caught me at one of the most vulnerable times in my life. I wanted him to hold me. It was like coming home from a long trip.

Once he had ahold of me, my body collapsed into a heap. A blubbering exhausted heap. I had zero fight left in me.

“I’m sorry, Mac,” I cried as he cradled me in his arms.

“Shh.”

Ordinarily, I would have argued over him shushing me, but truth was, I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to feel. I just wanted to have him hold me and make everything go away.

***

The smell of coffee lured me from sleep. My feet were tangled in the sheets, and as I kicked them off, my eyes caught movement. I wearily sat upright. Mac sat in a chair, sipping a coffee, with his feet resting on the end of the bed. The night before flashed back through my brain.

“Mac…” I whispered.

“Good morning, Samantha.”

Morning? “What time is it?” I frantically glanced around for my phone…for any of my things. “Where are we?”

“Relax, Sam. Jake is at school. Juls called him. Becca is with the nurse. You needed your sleep. You can’t give what you don’t have. You have to take care of you.”

I released a pent up breath, covering my face with my hands. Honestly, I didn’t know how to respond to this. I’d never been taken care of. There was so much to do.

“How do you know all that? Juls? Kat?”

He nodded. “Yes, for the most part.”

There was no direct answer to my question. It wasn’t important how he knew. The point was…he knew.

“Where are my clothes?”

He tilted his head toward the chair opposite him. My scrubs were folded neatly over the back.

“You took my clothes off?” The image in my head caused desire to stir.

“It wasn’t the first time.” The look in his eyes matched what coursed through my veins.

“Scrubs are pretty binding. I can see why they would need to come off,” I said sarcastically with a hint of a smile.

He uncrossed his legs and then crossed them with the opposite ankle resting on his knee. “They didn’t need to come off. I simply took advantage of the situation and wanted to see you naked.”

“Oh yeah, I can see why you’d do that. I played so hard to get the first time.” I pursed my lips.

“Why’d you bail?” he asked…my humor lost on him.

“Bail? Bail on what? Our fuckfest?”

His Adam’s apple jutted out and back in as his eyes darkened.

“Yeah. Was it that hard to stick it out for the last two days.”

This man had no idea the difficulty of walking away from him. The restraint to have not contacted him on some level over the past month. And now, here he was…alone with me…in a hotel room telling me everything that was going on in
my
life.

“I’m sorry for what happened,” he whispered.

My eyes darted up to his and then away. I didn’t really want to talk about this. I’d replayed the situation over and over again in my head. Outside of me being scared for a few seconds, nothing bad had happened. Mac had fought to defend my honor.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left. The minute that happened—every wall that you’d demolished shot back up. That.” I swallowed. “Was…the worst loss of control ever.”

When he rose to his feet, my heartbeat escalated. My entire body warmed with anticipation.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have left you there to go fight,” he said, indecision obvious in his tone. “I wasn’t gonna to let him get away with pictures of you…of us.” He towered over me, standing next to the bed, his eyes jetting back and forth like he still vacillated between right and wrong.

Anxiety surged through my body as I reached for his hand, outweighing any I’d felt before. Rejection rested on his response, and I couldn’t handle the thought. When our hands made contact, all the walls came tumbling down. His eyes instantly softened as he exhaled a long, slow breath.

“Mac. Leaving was so hard. But don’t you understand that goodbye two days later was only gonna be harder?”

Somewhere between kneeling and falling…he wound up on his knees next to the bed. His forehead rested on my thigh.

“Why? Why would saying goodbye be so hard? We were just fuckin’, right?”

If his words were meant to hurt, then he was successful. Hypocritically, I’d said the same thing, but I didn’t mean it. I stared up at him wondering if he did.

“Yes. But it was still fun.” I was supposed to be the grownup here. All of me wanted to tell him how much I longed for him now. To shout my desires to him. For him to fulfill every one of them again. Over and over. When I asked if he wanted more, his answer was no…

My phone buzzed on the dresser breaking the tension. He retrieved the phone, handing it to me.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Casey.”

“Yes?”

“We need you at home,” Maggie said. She’d been the hospice nurse for the past 30 days.

Instantly, I shot out of the bed and went straight for my scrubs.

“I’ll be right there.”

With no hesitation, Mac grabbed his keys along with other things lying around. My attention was more on what I was doing and what awaited me at home. My tummy turned over, causing a wave of nausea.

“Tell me about Becca,” Mac asked, shifting gears in his sports car. I vaguely remember him buckling me in last night and thinking that the car suited him.

“She’s very my best friend. Her husband was killed a few years ago. They have a little girl…Peyton.” Tears appeared out of nowhere.

“Cancer?”

I nodded. “It’s eaten her entire body…organ by organ.” No matter how I said it, the end result was the same.

“I’m sorry.”

His words touched me. Probably more than they should. I wanted him to hold me. To comfort me. I wondered when he drove directly to my house how many times he’d been there. Even after he parked in the driveway, the car still idling, I didn’t ask. Never once did he ask for directions.

Before I could even move, he was out of his door, around the car and opening mine.

“You’ve been here.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” he said softly, his gaze shifting away from mine then his hand cupped the small of my back as he guided me indoors.

Maggie met us at the door.

“Dr. Casey, I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Hi, Maggie. What’s going on?”

She pressed her lips together, frowning as she shook her head. I shoved past her, rushing toward Becca’s bed. My heart stopped for a moment, seeing her seemingly lifeless body lying on the bed in the middle of the room. She’d dwindled down to nothing…a mere skeleton was nearly all that was left. I knelt next to the bed, caressing the shriveled skin on her hand.

“Where’s Peyton?” I whispered.

“At school,” Maggie said.

Gently, I placed my fingers against her wrist; the faintest pulse beat beneath my tips. I inhaled deeply, holding my breath—wishing I could give her my oxygen…maybe even life. Her ragged breaths were the only noise in the room.

“I need to call Kat and Juls. I need to call her parents. Let’s leave Peyton at school for now.”

Compassionate friend mode slipped away. I actually felt it happen. Promises had been made that I intended to keep. Promises for the sake of Peyton. Clinician easily slid right into place. This role was simple—my comfort zone.

When I spun around, Mac was behind me. Like, right behind me.

“Mac…” I’d forgotten he was there.

“What can I do?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. You should probably go.”

The man I wanted in my life was shockingly asking to stay and the friend I never wanted to lose—was going—forever. The pain in my heart lurched with an irony that was tremendously unfair and ridiculously unjust.

“Let me help you,” he said softly, his baritone voice reverberating deep in my chest.

Never in my life had I asked for help. I’d managed forty years with very little help.

“Mac…” I said for the second time in a matter of a minute.

“Sam.” He wasn’t backing down either.

“Fine, Sherlock Holmes. Since clearly you’ve managed to keep tabs on me, find out where I live, find me at work, kidnap me and still be standing her before me…tell my friends they need to get here now.”

When I stepped past him, I inhaled, catching his scent, which made my knees wobbly. His hand caught my elbow, steadying me.

“Listen, Samantha
Williams
or Dr. Casey, whichever it is,” he grumbled into my ear, sending a surge of goose bumps over my body. “You can be mad at me later…let me help you with this now.”

Then he released my elbow and walked around me, out the front door and to his car.

The blaring sun baked my already tan skin as I laid sprawled out in the lounger, tossing the tennis ball at the stone wall. I’d finished my work out and come outside to sweat the rest out. The absurd heat pulled every drop of sweat easily from my pores.

“What the hell are you doing?” Blake asked, coming around the corner in his khaki pants and silk shirt. “We need to hit the road.”

“I told Sam we wouldn’t be there until 4. And let’s get one thing straight, you’re not going into her home to pound the fuck out of Juls, you got it?”

“Mac. Seriously? Growing up, I kicked your living ass in all those etiquette and gentleman courses. Fuck you for thinking otherwise.”

As he shuffled away from me, I reluctantly got up and walked inside with him. The cold air-conditioned air washed over me.

“Blake. I know you’re good. I just… her friend is dying.”

He turned sharply into me, in somewhat of a stand off. Our chests were nearly touching.

“Have I ever let you down before? Huh? What the fuck has gotten into you, Mac?”

Simple guttural instinct forced my chest to bump his as my lip pulled up. I didn’t want to admit that anything had gotten to me. But she had. Disengaging, I back stepped, walking to my office. Though I attempted to slam the door, he stopped it with the slap of his palm.

“Answer me. What have I ever done…”

“Just shut the fuck up. I shouldn’t have said it. Of course you’ll be professional.”

Ruffling some papers, he sat on the corner of my desk. “We are professionals, Mac. You need to remember that. We worked hard to get where we are. Don’t go and grow a conscience now.”

My jaw ticked back and forth while my teeth ground together.

“It’s too late, buddy. I told you, I’m getting out. I’m selling.”

I knew he was frustrated—maybe even angry as he shook his head.

“You’re like a goddamn moth drawn into her flame.”

“Yep.”

“Does she know? What we do? Does she know?”

Making a steeple out of my two index fingers, I arched back into my chair and rested my fingers on my nose mulling over his question.

“No. She doesn’t know my real first name and there’s hardly anything out there on me with Mac.”

When he got to his feet, he straightened the papers and then casually walked to the door smoothing his slacks. “What do you think a woman of her caliber, a wealthy doctor in Tahoe, just might do when she finds out—she’s in love with a man who gets paid by women to dominate them? We are whores, man. Very well paid whores.”

As angry as his words made me, as much as my blood simmered at the thought, and as much as my pulse cussed in my ears with the truth, what Blake said was reality. That is exactly what kept me at bay on the cruise…but I couldn’t deny it anymore. I had to know if she would have me.

When I saw her for the second time, her red, swollen eyes hit me like a punch in the gut. All three of them had shed tears; it was evident on their faces. Yet, both Kat and Juls welcomed me with a hug. They’d seen me at my worst the last two days of the cruise. Neither bailed on the friendship we’d made, but they also stayed loyal to their friend, which comforted me in some strange way.

There was also something about this house that felt like home to me. As Sam welcomed us through the door, and as we all hugged each other, I spotted the cocksucker across the room, sitting with knees crossed on the sofa. Truth is, I’m not sure who spotted whom first, but his beady eyes zoned in on me.

“How is she?” I pulled Sam close, not only to smell and feel her, but also to make a statement to him.

“I think it’ll be anytime,” she said with a crack in her voice. Her head fell forward…shoulders rounded. I kissed the top of her head, securing her up against my body. For a brief moment, her body conceded and went limp. She grasped onto me for stability. I’d have held her up for as long as she needed.

Jake trotted down the enormous staircase and came straight toward us. For being 15 years old, he sure intimidated the shit out of me.

“Jake. These are my friends. Blake and Mac.”

Jake grinned when he looked at me. He lifted the sleeve of his t-shirt eyeing his bicep then glanced at mine.

“Big Mac,” he said, making me smile.

I flexed and winked at him.

“Nice to meet you guys,” he said, shaking both my hand and Blake’s. “You ready, Dad?”

Dickhead stood and, with the worst swagger known to man, strolled toward us. Jake walked over toward Becca and brushed a kiss across her forehead.

“How about Big Mac keeps his special sauce to himself?” Bryan grunted as he passed Sam.

Naturally, my teeth bared. Sam, instinctively, stood a little bit closer to me.

“Don’t do this,” she hissed at Bryan. “Not here. Not now. Not in front of Jake.”