Page 6

Unlike the masochistic psycho I lived with, I didn’t work out in the morning when I was still half-dead with sleep.

I preferred to kick my own ass with punching bags and running track after I’d been awake for, well, around nine hours or so.

That was why I was running, my feet pounding hard against the green track as sweat coated every inch of my flesh with Kaiden by my side, at four-thirty. In the afternoon.

I’d been trying to get my ass up at the crack of dawn with Amara, (it was worse on days we had class than on the weekends) but I just couldn’t do it today.

Today, when my alarm sounded only four hours after I’d fallen into bed, I thought I’d die.

No joke, I seriously thought that was it for me. Kapoosh. I was done. Toast.

Thankfully, two and a half more hours of sleep and mismatched socks later, I was in class on time and feeling—well, I didn’t feel quite so dead to the world.

I even made it to my evening workout, which was something I hadn’t been feeling I could do with the workload I was taking home every night. Being that it was Friday, I had the whole weekend to kill myself with studying. I could take the evening to work the tension from my muscles.

The beginning of September had been rough, but now, with the middle of October coming to a close, I was beginning to learn the definition of agony.

Agony: Med school.

The two went hand in hand. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Honestly, if I hadn’t taken a year between my four-year undergraduate program and the torture I’d enrolled myself in for med school, I’d probably have already flunked.

But against my parent’s wishes I had taken that year.

And I didn’t regret it. Not even a little bit.

Yeah, so I was one year farther from graduation and the working world, but at least I’d gotten a little living in before true adult life kicked into full swing.

I’d always wanted to backpack through Europe. Now I had those memories.

By the time I hit twenty-seven, I’d be everything I’ve ever wanted to be. Lucky for Mom and Dad, I’ll be everything they ever wanted their son to be.

But as much as I might want to be a Doctor one day, I definitely couldn’t say I liked anything about the long hours that came with studying. It was tough. Worth it, I’m sure, but still tough.

The timer on my watch sounded and my lungs released a long breath as my legs slowed their determined strides for a steady fast-paced walk. I could feel Kaiden beside me, but even if I couldn’t, I could hear his ragged breaths.

I didn’t know why the guy strove to keep up to me. I had years of working out on him. But he said I was butch and Raina liked butch, so he’d work out with me.

I think he was spewing shit. Raina’s been obsessed with Kai for years. She couldn’t care less if he had a few more pounds of muscle or not.

“How’s living with the nutcracker been?”

“Man,” I gave him a look that made him chuckle, and shook my head. “Where do you come up with this shit?”

“Her.” He said, sounding defensive. “Called her peanut when we first met. She told me she wasn’t the peanut, but the nutcracker. Told me if I hurt Raina in any way, it’d be my nuts she cracked.” He shivered. “Woman scared me.”

“Gimme a break, she’s tiny. She can’t be more than five foot four.”

“She’s got a bit of demon in her,” he assured, clearly convinced. “Demons can come in tiny little packages with great legs and big blue eyes.”

I shook my head at my buddy, feeling my wet skin start to cool as my heart rate dropped steadily. “She the star of your nightmares?”

“Naw,” he chuckled. “I’m not dreaming of much while I have Raina in my arms. But I do know whose dreams Mar does star in.”

“You said it man.” I decided to go with his teasing jibe. “Great legs and big blue eyes. What’s there not to dream about?”

“If you’re still dreaming then it’s not going all that well, is it?”

“Not as well as I’d like.”

“What would you like?”

“A date for starters.” I rubbed my brow regretting it instantly when I felt my fingers slide over my wet skin. “Maybe some trust.”

“Trust?”

“The girl doesn’t trust me. She even sleeps with her door locked.” My steps quickened, but Kaiden kept pace. “I didn’t even know that door had a lock.”

“It didn’t.” Kaiden admitted, and he’d know as the room used to be his. “Wait, how would you know her door has a lock?”

“I wasn’t trying to sneak in. She left her phone on the counter. Maddy kept texting her so I knocked. She didn’t answer so I tried her door and it was locked.”

Kai was quiet for a beat while he processed.

When you travel with another person in a foreign country for any length of time, you begin to know the ins and outs of their quirks.

This was one of many that Kaiden had. He didn’t just reply with one of his countless quips when the conversation was serious.

If a conversation was serious, you could always count on Kaiden to give it real thought before he replied.

It was for this reason that I was getting really nervous. My heart raced and my lungs felt—well, they felt damned uncomfortable.

“It’s not my place to tell you this and Raina would kill me if she knew, so I won’t say much and please don’t ask for more .

. .” he pinned me with his ice eyes. I’d known two people in my life with eyes that blue.

Kaiden and his father. Apparently his kid brother, Austin, the one who sent him to Europe where he met me, had the same ice eyes.

“Won’t ask for more.”

“Amara had a tough life. Raina won’t tell me the details and I honestly don’t think even she has the details of how tough it was.

But she knows enough to know it wasn’t something any kid should live through.

Sure, Mar has quirks and she can scare the balls up inside a man, but all that hard she hides behind is just that. A wall she hides behind.”

“She’s not hard.”

“Not even a little. For Raina and even Maddy, Mar’s all soft.”

That much I knew. It was that soft I knew she had that I wanted. Every inch and more.

“She’s afraid of me.” I admitted under my breath. I heard Kaiden’s low hiss of breath and I wondered why I even said the words. I hadn’t thought of them. I hadn’t meant to say them. They’d just sounded.

“What?”

“I was teasing her in the kitchen one morning and I got a little close. Not real close. Well, I wasn’t touching her. Anyway, she got freaked. Locked up tight and trembling. Her eyes were wild and . . .” I shook my head. “Man, I wouldn’t hurt her. I’d never hurt her.”

“I know.” Kaiden did know. Yeah, I went through my fair share of ladies and never turned down the offer of a good night, but I wasn’t an ass.

The girls I played with knew the game. They knew what one night meant.

Honestly, I think they wanted attachment even less than I did.

I didn’t consider myself a true player, but I’d never deny that I liked the game.

“Guess after that morning I haven’t known how to proceed.”

“Gently?” Kaiden made it sound like a question. “She’s been hurt. Don’t know how or from whom, but she’s been hurt. That much isn’t in question. Take it easy and maybe, if you’re serious about her, she’ll let you in.”

“Yeah.”

There was another long pause. “Are you serious about her, Beck?”

If there was a question I hated more, I hadn’t found it yet. “I don’t know. I don’t know enough to know whether I can be serious about her. She barely talks to me and when she does it’s never about anything serious. Kinda hard to know if you want serious when you never get anything real to go on.”

“Give it time.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s only been a month and a half.”

“Yeah.” I said again. As far as I was concerned, the conversation was over.

But I’d ended up with more concerns and questions than I’d begun with.

Who had hurt Amara? And if she were so wounded that she didn’t allow herself to trust, would she ever trust a man like me? Teasing was second nature to a guy like me. I liked to laugh and date; I’d never even seen the girl smile. Never.

Who went through life without smiling?

It killed, but no matter how hard I knew it would be, and how I couldn’t yet admit it to my best friend, I was serious about Amara. I wanted her, past hurts and future smiles included.

I just had to figure out how to build a bridge between the hurt of her past and the laughter of the future I intended to give her, because I knew if she walked across that bridge to the other side, she’d be mine. She’d be safe.

Amara was home when I opened the front door. She was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a book in her lap and a bowl of cake on the coffee table. When I say cake, I mean cake. She’d already scooped off all the icing.

“Hey,” she said, lifting those big blue eyes to me. I swear those eyes could weaken the toughest of men to falling to their knees. And her lips, I won’t even get started on her lips.

“Hey,”

“Tough day?”

“Tough workout.” I smirked, dropping onto the couch beside her. Consciously, I didn’t sit too close. “You gonna eat the rest of that cake?”

Her nose wrinkled. “I don’t think so. I already ate the good stuff.”

“Blasphemy!” I accused, snatching her bowl and shoveling a big chunk into my mouth. She watched as I let my lips drag over her fork and to my surprise and enjoyment, she blushed. “This is the best part right here. Fluffy and moist.”

“I beg to differ.”

I chuckled, continuing to down the icing-less cake. “Each to their own, eh, beautiful?”

“I suppose so.”

“How was class?”

She shrugged, but her cheeks were still pretty and pink. “It was class.”

“Really? For some reason class seemed kinda great today.”

“Could it have anything to do with it being Friday?”

Sweet heaven have mercy, the girl knows me so well already. “I’d wager that’s it.”

“I was thinking of ordering Chinese tonight.”

I raised a brow. “A woman after my own heart.”

“Quit it.” She huffed, lifting her phone. “What do you want?”

“Dinner for six.”

“Gross! We’re two people.”

“Who desperately want leftovers so they don’t have to cook for the rest of the weekend.”

“Who raised you?” Her big blue eyes were wide as saucers and her pretty pink lips were puckered in a frown I’d pay with my right arm to kiss away. “You can’t eat Chinese for three days.”

“Oh peanut, how I must teach you the ways of the world.”

“You’re a funny man, Beckett.” She shrugged and I noted she didn’t laugh as she lifted her phone to her ear. “But if the good Doctor in training wants to poison his organs three days in a row with MSG’s, who am I to stop him?”

Who was she to stop him? Well, she was probably the only one who could. The good Doctor would do pretty much anything for his pretty little patient, but she didn’t know that.

And if she did know, would she care?