Page 3 of Family Vacay

Grunting, I pushed the front door opened and stepped inside onto the welcome rug, toeing off my shoes as I shut the door. The hall light flickered on above me, damn near blinding me for a moment, and then, Ezra rounded the corner, frowning at me, his eyes tired. Concern had my brows furrowing low over my eyes. Had he stayed up? He’d worked a long shift today, too. Why had he stayed up?

“Why are you up?” I rasped, my voice rough from talking so much today. We’d been even busier than usual in the ER, and between relaying messages to nurses and speaking to patients, I felt like I’d talked more today than I had in the past year. It was days like today I wondered if I truly wanted to continue being a doctor.

“You’re home late, and you didn’t text us,” Ezra said.

“I did,” I protested, pulling my phone out of my pocket to prove it to him. Only when I pulled up our group chat, I winced. I’d typed out the message, but I’d apparently forgotten to hit send.Fuck. Sighing, I dropped my phone back into the pocket of my scrubs before bending to pick my shoes up and put them on the shoe rack. “I typed it out. Just… forgot to hit send, I guess,” I muttered.

Ezra drew me into his arms when I neared him. His chest was warm and bare, and his flat stomach was on display. And when his arms wrapped around me, I went boneless, sinking against him with a long, tired sigh.Home. He was home. I could fall asleep right here, just like this, so long as he continued holding me.

“Let’s get him to bed,” Logan rumbled, appearing out of nowhere and making me jump in shock. He reached out and ran his hand over my hair. If I were a cat, I would have purred. “Come on, pretty boy. You look dead on your feet, and we have to be at Jaxon’s by eight.”

I groaned. I so badly wanted to go on vacation. To get away and have a legit reason for the hospital to not call me in. But fuck, couldn’t we leave later? I needed like a whole twenty-four hours of sleep to recover from all the time I’d been putting in at work.

Ezra released me, and Logan grabbed my hand in his, leading me to our room. “Shower,” I grumbled. “I need a shower.” I smelled like the hospital, and since my vacation was officially starting now, I wanted to crawl into bednotsmelling like my job.

Detouring, Logan and Ezra led me into our bathroom. Ezra worked on stripping me out of my pale green scrubs while Logan got the shower going. Once I was beneath the water, they let me be and disappeared, doing God knew what. Usually, they’d shower with me, but I was sure they could tell I was too tired to do anything but manage this shower and make my way to bed. And even that was going to be a task.

When I got out and dried off, Logan and Ezra were sitting up in our king-sized bed. Logan was holding a protein shake, and Ezra had a protein bar in his hand. Overly tired and overwhelmed by the care and attention they always lavished on me, my eyes welled with tears. Sniffling, I swiped my arm beneath my nose.

“Ah, baby,” Ezra said softly, patting the space between him and Logan. “Come on. None of that. Eat this and drink the shake, and then, we’ll all crash together, okay? Put those tears away.”

Naked, I crawled onto the bed between them, taking their offered gifts. I quickly scarfed the protein bar down, hungrier than I thought I’d been. Hell, I couldn’t remember when I ate last, honestly. Once the protein bar was gone, I greedily gulped down the protein shake. Logan dipped out of bed with the cup, and Ezra cuddled me to him, his arm wrapping around my waist so he could tug me back against his body.

I was passed out before Logan ever made it back from the kitchen.

* * *

“Pretty boy, come on. You need to get up and get dressed.”

“No,” I mumbled, rolling away from Logan and burying my face beneath the pillow. “Fuck off.”

He softly laughed, and his fingers began making a path down my spine to the curve of my ass before working their way back up. If he was hoping to wake me up, he was mistaken. That was quickly lulling me back to sleep.

The bed dipped on the other side of me, and then Ezra’s calloused palm was rubbing across my upper back. “Come on, baby. Just get up, get dressed, and get in the backseat of the Jeep. I’ve got you a pillow and a blanket, so you can pass right back out.”

“Promise?” I asked, still more asleep than I was awake, so my words were a bit slurred.

“I promise,” Ezra said.

I rolled over onto my back with a whine. Logan helped me sit up, and bless his heart, he already had clothes pulled out and resting beside him on the bed. Together, he and Ezra got me dressed, helping each other get me into my clothes since I was practically no help. And then, I didn’t even have to walk out to the Jeep. Logan simply lifted me from the bed, cradling my body to his chest, and carried me out to the Jeep.

I didn’t even have a chance to fully wake up, so when he laid me down on the leather seat and Ezra adjusted the pillow beneath my head and covered me up, I promptly fell back asleep, dead to the world.

For the next two weeks, no one would be yelling codes, no one would be bothering me for assistance or asking my advice on a patient. My phone wouldn’t be ringing with a call from the hospital administration asking me to come in and help fill a shift during my day off.

I wasfree. And it was fuckingglorious.

CHAPTER3

Eros

Ash swirled between my legs as I stood at the kitchen counter, scarfing down my toast. I’d been harping on everyone to make sure they had all their things together so we could leave on time today, yet I was the one making us run behind. I’d worked late to finish up paperwork and make sure everything was prepared for my part-time veterinarian, Ren, to take over while I was on vacation the next two weeks, and I’d forgotten to make sure my alarm was set to get up on time this morning.

Zeppelin had laughed when he woke me up, casually asking, “So, are we going on vacation today or what?”

I’d panicked and shot out of bed, only for Jaxon to assure me he and Zeppelin already had everything loaded into the SUV, and we were just waiting on the boys to show up. He’d then told me coffee and toast were waiting for me and assured me we would have time to grab some kind of fast-food breakfast on the way.

“They’re here,” Zeppelin announced just as the front door opened, revealing Logan. I frowned when Ezra walked in behind him, but there was no sign of Spencer. The whole reason we were going to the beach was because Spencer had chosen that location. Where was he at?

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