Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Grumbling, I grabbed my bag and headed toward the pediatric cancer unit.
Fucking Rush. Things had been awkward between us since September—okay, okay, I’d been awkward since September, but it was…weird. It made me realize Beau was right and I never should have slept with Rush…at least not too many times to count.
I hated it when Beau was right, which was why I would pretend he wasn’t.
But then, I was also starting to think that Rush was right, and maybe we hadn’t had to stop fucking. It had been a long-ass four months. Not gonna lie, I missed getting dicked down by Rush Alexander. He had a great cock and knew how to work it. Okay, so yeah, I got some of the credit too because I’ve been told my ass is sort of like a come-to-God moment. Which, you know, was true and all. It was really silly of me to be denying both of us the pleasure of each other.
Oh, and it had also been four months since I’d fucked anyone. September to January. My body wasn’t happy with me.
It’s the right thing, I reminded myself.
Well, not the whole no-sex thing, but the no-sex-with-Rush-Alexander thing.
Why was I still on that subject?
Shoving those thoughts from my head, I went into the bathroom, washed up, changed clothes, washed up again, then continued my journey toward the cancer unit.
I put booties on my shoes, disinfected again and all that good stuff, just as one of the nurses walked by. “Hey, Lincoln. You here to see Trey?”
“Yep. Is he in his room?” He would be crushed if I missed him. I’d be crushed if I missed him.
“Yeah, he’s there. Just got back from CT.”
“Nice!”
When I got to his room, I poked my head around the corner. He was sitting on his bed with his laptop, typing away like crazy. It was an accident that I even met Trey. They’d been short-staffed, so I was called to oncology to fill in during a lunch hour, which happened to be when they were running tests on him. He’d looked at me with big brown eyes, and that was all it took for me to be smitten with him, this African American kid, who was sixteen years old, though you wouldn’t have known it; he was small, frail, and looked more like fourteen. And I guess the gay glowed off me or something, but whatever it was, he could tell right away I was fabulous. The way his eyes had taken me in, the immediate connection that sparked between us, made me see he was gay too…and lonely. So fucking lonely.
He’d been the kid who was teased at school, called a fag and queer, names I knew all too well from my childhood. Trey lived with a single dad who loved his son unconditionally, but just…didn’t know how to support him. How to relate to him. He spoke in sports metaphors and, according to Trey, he hadn’t ever been close to anyone who was LGBTQ, or had no experience with men who liked things that some considered feminine.
Trey couldn’t have been further from that.
His dad tried his best, and I gave him a shit ton of credit for it, but as much as the support from his dad was a lifesaver for Trey, it wasn’t the same as looking at someone else or talking to someone else who was like you—someone who made you feel a little less alone in the world. Holy shit, I was in a sappy mood. I always got…weird when Rush raced. Not because it was Rush. I was weird when Beau fought fires too. What was with all the dangerous shit my friends did?
“Hey!” Trey snapped me out of my thoughts.
“Hey, you!” I pasted a smile on my face and practically danced into the room. “Sorry I’m late. I had to find this doctor and blah, blah, blah. Anyway. Not important. How are you?”
Trey closed his laptop, and I took it from him and set it on the table. “Doing okay. I was wondering if you were gonna come.”
“Um…have I ever told you I was going to come and then not shown up?”
Trey smiled, and it warmed my cold, dead heart. “No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Well, it’s Saturday. You don’t usually work Saturdays, and I didn’t know if it was Saturgay or not.” He nearly glowed at the word gay. I shared anything age-appropriate with Trey that I could. I wanted him to know it got better. Those fuckers who teased him would grow up and be nothing, and he’d be fucking fabulous. And he sure as shit would beat cancer. I wouldn’t accept any other possibility.
“It’s not. But even if it was, I’d still come here first. We’re meeting up to watch Rush race tonight, though.” And I really needed to stop picking up extra shifts. It was as if now that I wasn’t fucking Rush every once in a while, I’d suddenly decided I couldn’t have any other kind of life either.