Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
He holds my hand in a tight fist. “You’ve been reading someone else’s diary, man. Mine just talks about fucking you.”
I laugh. “Let me read it.”
“Let me read yours.” His tone is serious.
I nod a few times, understanding that he wants more. “In retrospect, if I could pinpoint a day that I’d say I felt an…” I suck in a breath, searching for the word “…intense chemistry, I’d say it was when I went to Harvard and sutured your leg. I couldn’t stop looking at you, and I fucking craved to know you even better. If you had asked me to spend the entire day there with you, I would’ve said yes.”
He dazes off.
Where’d you go, wolf scout? I snap my fingers until his focus is back on me. I’m smiling. “You can masturbate to that later,” I tease.
“No thanks,” he says dryly, and then he takes a breath. “I was just thinking about which day that I felt we’d be good together. In hindsight.”
“What day?” I ask, curious.
He releases my hand from our stronghold and then outlines the inked letters k.n.o.t. on my fingers. “The day on the yacht,” he says, assured. “The summer bash when I was nineteen. You threw me your shirt after I fought with Charlie, and you made one of the worst days of my life easier. Better. Just being around you…” He threads our fingers again, thinking for a short beat. “You had a boyfriend that day, didn’t you?”
I nod. “Yeah. But it was close to being over by then.”
I replay that memory in my head where Maximoff was frozen next to a cooler on the yacht deck. When I caught his attention, he revived. And he looked up at me.
My lips lift because I’ve remembered that moment before. That one part where he reawakens always floods back and breaks my face into a smile. I remember the salt in the air and how his dark brown hair blew in the wind.
And those tough forest-greens that said I can handle everything.
Now years later, I’m at a crossroads with him. I’ve been vacillating between security and finishing my residency because neither feels one-hundred percent right. If I could speed through residency and just be his doctor right now, it’d be an easier choice. But there’ll be three years where I’m not around him that much.
I do believe what Maximoff said. Being his bodyguard isn’t what binds us.
It never has been.
And hell, if anything feels right, it’s him and me. We’re better than good together. Better than perfect. Gradually, I start envisioning what’ll happen if I choose medicine. “If I’m not your bodyguard,” I tell him, “that means some other prick is on your detail.”
“Yeah,” Maximoff says. “You’ll have to be okay with that.”
My eyes almost roll around the world because I’m not that excited about it. Somewhat for territorial reasons. Mostly because this’ll upheave his life. He hates big change, and he’s been bulldozed with it recently.
I shake my head. “I can’t do this to you right now. I’ll wait—”
“No,” he cuts me off. “I can take a lot. And a new bodyguard isn’t even that hard to handle. Unless you have an annoying clone, I’ll live.”
I could easily make a joke back, but I contemplate something else. And then I watch him skim his palm down my palm, our hands almost the same exact size.
His fondness for my hands ropes me in. And warms me.
I lift my gaze to his. “You said that I need to do what I love, but I love security, wolf scout. That hasn’t changed. So why do you think that I want medicine more?”
He sees the path that I can’t see yet.
Maximoff clasps my hand tighter. “Medicine is a part of you, and unlike security, that’ll never change. Christ, I know you hate believing that medicine is who you are, but I don’t think it ever left you even when you left it.”
He lists off all that I’ve done just while I’ve been on his security detail.
Including treating his sister’s infected tongue piercing to setting his dislocated shoulder and triaging an entire car crash. I could do more if I were a concierge doctor.
I’d have a license to prescribe medicine. I’d be on-call for all emergencies.
But I waver.
Maximoff sees. “If you’re only fighting yourself on this because you love me,” he says, “I’m telling you to go. It’ll eat at you for the rest of your life if you don’t. So I need you to go.” His voice almost breaks. “Fucking Christ.” He knocks his head back to the rock wall. He’s conditioned himself to bottle up a certain kind of emotion.
He could marbleize his face. But he’s actually wrestling to let go and be more vulnerable.
Quickly, I pull my hand out of his. Only so I can hold his face between my palms. “You don’t need to pretend that it won’t be hard. Not being your bodyguard will be just as hard on me.” I keep swallowing a lump lodged in my throat.