Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 89535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
“I’ll drive you,” Kole says.
I nod. “West, you stay with the others. I’ll take him—”
“I’m his legal guardian,” West says.
“Are you going to be able to take him without vomiting everywhere? No, so you should stay with the other kids.”
“We can watch them if you need to go,” Kole’s mom says.
“I want to go with Emmett,” Bennett cries.
Oh of course, now that Emmett is injured, suddenly they’re best friends.
I take control of the situation and stand. “West, you stay with the kids and try to calm down Ben. Kole, you drive me and Emmett to the emergency room, and West, if you need to be there to sign him in or whatever, we’ll call you, but I think it should be all right. He just needs some stitches. It’s not like he’s going to be admitted.”
Even though Emmett’s nine, he’s still small enough for me to carry out to the car. It’s hard, but when he refuses to get off his damn seat, I don’t have much of a choice.
Kole keeps the napkin pressed on Emmett’s hand out to his car, and then I take over once we’re in the back seat and buckled in.
Kole jumps in the driver’s seat, and we head for the UVM Medical Center.
Emmett is still sobbing next to me, but he’s starting to calm down. “Will … will it … hurt?”
“Nah. They’ll make it all numb first. You won’t even be able to feel it.” I look at Kole in the rearview mirror. “Shame you weren’t already a doctor. You could fix him right up.”
“You’re a few years too early.”
There’s something weird in his tone I can’t exactly pinpoint. “You okay? You’re not feeling faint at the sight of blood too, are you? I don’t know how successful a doctor you’re going to be if that’s the case.”
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”
I frown. “O … kay.”
“Just, what West said … I—”
Ah. I wave him off. “It’s fine.”
Is it though?
“But—”
Emmett cries out as I press tighter on the wound.
“We can talk about it later.”
Not that I want to.
The thought of Kole only hanging out with me because my brother asked him to makes me feel ick, but can I really blame Kole? If I were him, I wouldn’t want to hang out with me either.
Then there’s the whole Coach mess, but again … if I were Coach, I wouldn’t want my kid dating a Dalton.
I sigh. It sucks, and I hate it, but it is what it is.
Having a shitty attitude doesn’t get you far in this world, but that’s all I know. It’s all that I am.
So maybe I don’t have a right to be mad that we started under false pretenses, but that doesn’t stop it from stinging.
30
Kole
Asher’s right. Now’s not the time.
In the scheme of things, Asher being pissed with me should be registering pretty low on the scale given the complete one-eighty today has done. All I’d wanted was for Asher and his siblings to have a better Christmas, yet here they are separated, one of them broken, another sick with worry, and Asher pissed with his boyfriend and probably his brother.
So yeah, his reaction to West asking me to keep an eye on him should be low priority.
But it’s all I can think about.
The waiting room is packed with people who all thought Christmas would be the best day possible to injure themselves. I’d make a mental note to bitch Mom out about giving that knife to a nine-year-old, but I wouldn’t have thought of that either.
What age do they get to use sharp cutlery?
Yikes. See? This is why marriage and kids are in the nope column.
Professionally, I’ll be trained to keep people alive, but personally? How the hell do parents do it?
But … I think of how passionately Asher wants all that. It sort of sounded nonnegotiable.
And I really, really like him.
So much that my gut is in metaphorical knots while I wait for Emmett to get stitched up so we can go home and talk out this tension between us.
Would the marriage and kids thing be something I’d be willing to compromise on? When it comes to something like kids, you either have one or you don’t.
Do I want one?
No.
But also, I’ve always pictured my life working in a busy hospital and not having the time to dedicate to someone else. It never even occurred to me to think of the other person in the picture.
Even before considering kids, though, is the whole NHL thing. How do we make that work? Sure, it’s forever away, but if I’m in med school and he’s going pro, what then? Mom brought up a good point at dinner about the trades and moving and—
I stop and blink at the opposite wall for a moment.
Am I really thinking about marriage and kids and being a fucking WAG? And in this case, the G doesn’t stand for girlfriend.