Page 3 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
We got through the doors, and only as the warm air in the entryway washed over me did I realize how cold it had been outside. My face felt like it was being jabbed repeatedly with needles as I led Milo to the front desk. The clerk saw us, and her eyes rolled up to the ceiling. If the ER and other urgent cares had dealt with us enough over the years, the past few years had seen us showing up at the campus medical center just as much, if not more.
“My God,” Cynthia groaned, slapping the file in her hand down to glare at us. “It was looking to be a quiet night too. What the hell did you do this time?”
“Just a little accident,” Milo said, clearly missing his calling as an actor because damned if he didn’t sound perfectly innocent while he lied right to the face of the woman who’d been working the first time I’d ever had to bring him into the center.
“Of your own making,” she said with narrowed eyes that flitted over the pads still wrapped around his elbows and knees. “At least this time youtriedto be smart. Which is rare.”
Milo wiggled the pad on his right arm, immediately regretted it with a hiss, and tried to recover by showing a pained smile as he wiggled his left instead. “These were Eli’s idea.”
Her eyes shifted to me, and I knew what would come out of her mouth, something that had come out of countless people’s mouths many times before. “Really? That’s the best you could do? You couldn’t, oh, I don’t know, try to stop him?”
Which was precisely the question people asked when they didn’t have to deal with Milo and his great ideas. When Milo wanted to do something, Milo was going to do it ninety-nine times out of a hundred. The best you could do was try to curb the worst of his impulses and redirect them; otherwise, you just held on and hoped the ride didn’t end in blood and disaster.
“Feel free to give it a try,” I told her with a shrug, just like I’d told people so many times before that I’d lost track.
Cynthia huffed and grumbled that she had other ways to spend her time. Most people knew keeping Milo out of trouble wasn’t nearly as easy as they made it out to be. It was just easier to blame someone else for something they couldn’t do themselves. Honestly, the only reason I kept making that offer was because I really did want to see someone try. The few times someone had taken me up on the offer had been hilarious.
“Sooooo,” Milo said, finally remembering his injury and using his left hand to point at his right. “Eh, eh?”
Cynthia sighed. “I think this is a wonderful opportunity for our latest addition to get an idea of what kind of ridiculousness comes in here. So why don’t you shuffle your butt to room three and leave me in peace?”
“As hospitable as ever,” I remarked, earning a snicker from Milo, who managed to use his hands to form a heart directed at Cynthia, who only rolled her eyes and waved us on.
It was quiet in the center, but even I knew that could change on a dime. At least for now, it seemed like we had the place to ourselves, and we walked down the short, quiet hallway into exam room three. Milo walked over to the covered exam chair and hopped up, using his left arm. The motion might have been smooth except the leg he’d been favoring earlier was a lot more awkward, and he barely managed to catch his ass on the table.
“Her bedside manner is awful,” he complained, but ruined it by grinning.
“Boy,” I said, pushing the door closed partially so I could grab the chair behind it and sit down. “It’s almost like she’s sick and tired of always seeing you. She probably sees you more than her boyfriend.”
“Ooh, she’s seeing someone?” Milo asked, eyes going wide. “What’s he like?”
“Boring compared to you,” I said with a raised brow, dropping into the seat.
“Well, that’s true of most people,” he said with a one-shouldered shrug. That was the thing with Milo, at least with life lessons, he might be slow to learn, but he did learn.
“I see that with you, modesty, like wisdom, runs, but you are faster,” I noted, stretching my legs out and wondering how long it would take. They had someone new working tonight, which meant it could take longer, but the other exam rooms had all been open, so that meant we were the only ones here, which meant quick. Then again, it would depend on what Milo had done to himself. “And if we have to get you a cast, we’re taking a pit stop by the apartment. I have a paper to finish.”
“Not my fault you wait till the last minute to get it done,” he said, sounding awfully smug for someone infamous for waiting until the last second to finish his work.
The door opened, and sure enough, a face I hadn’t seen in the clinic came in. He was young, at least by medical standards, and there was a pinched expression on his face as he looked at the device in his hand that had Milo’s records. There were probably medical textbooks with less word count, and I didn’t blame him for looking confused.
“Mr...Beckett?” he finally asked, looking up to catch Milo’s gaze, who grinned at him and waved.
“Hello,” Milo said, and I raised a brow. Not that Milo wasn’t usually friendly, he was, but I’d known him for years, and I knew when hello meant ‘hi, it’s nice to meet you, I’m being polite,’ and when it meant ‘I don’t like you, but my mom raised me with manners.’ In this case, he was definitely thinking about what the man looked like out of his scrubs, and if I weren’t sitting there, he would have probably found a way to be more obvious about his intentions.
“I’m Dr. Rimes,” the doctor said, smiling back at him. “Heard you had yourself an accident?”
“Again,” Milo said, bouncing his good leg and shrugging with his...good shoulder. “Did you...just graduate?”
The doctor chuckled. “No, but I was warned more than enough times that I was going to get comments.”
“About your looks?” Milo asked because subtlety was something he had a passing relationship with, but not a full involvement in.
“Mm, about my age,” the doctor said, but my brow twitched when I saw color grace his face. Alright, so the fresh doctor apparently was picking up what Milo was putting down, and so far wasn’t telling him to beat it...so that was fun.
“You do look pretty young,” I threw in, smirking when the doctor jumped and glanced in my direction.
“Ah, and...you are?” he asked, hitting the politeness hard as he tried to make up for being caught off guard.
