Page 44 of Top Shelf
And as much as I told myself I had to stay away, I knew that wasn’t going to last.
“Quinn?” I spun to look at him, and he was frowning. “Actually, should I call you Dr. Rhodes?”
I laughed and shrugged. “Quinn is fine for you.” I wasn’t sure I could handle him putting up another wall of professionalism between us. What we had was intimate, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t erase it.
“What do your other patients call you?”
I frowned, then felt something uncomfortable twisting around in my gut when I realized most people didn’t say my name. “They don’t usually call me anything.”
“Oh. I don’t think I like that,” Ferris said quietly. He wriggled his boot from side to side as though he was testing his pain level. “I’m scared to become a number.”
“A number?”
He bit his lip and shrugged. “Number seventeen. That’s what’s on my Bruins jersey. What if people stop using my name?”
I felt my lips curl up into a smile, and I walked over, kneeling beside his chair. “That is not going to happen. You’ll be Ferris. You’ll be number seventeen, Ferris Redding. Maybe just…Reddy?”
He rolled his eyes. “They call methatalready.”
“You won’t lose who you are, Ferris. I promise.”
His mouth softened, though he didn’t grin back at me. His fingers twisted in his lap, and then he shoved them under his thighs like he was trying to force himself to stop stimming. “Today was better than last time. Thank you.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t expecting to be thanked. I hadn’t been doing this for a long time, but even in my residency, gratitude was very rare. “Um.” I bit my lip. “Are you hungry?”
Ferris’s brows lifted. “It’s almost my dinnertime.”
Right. His schedule. “The receptionist brought me dinner, but I over-ordered. If you don’t have to rush back, we can share. It’s burritos.”
His eyes crinkled in the corners with a grin. “The good ones?”
“The best ones.”
He hunched his shoulders and nodded. “Yeah. I convinced my mom to let me take an Uber today, so I have to text her and let her know I’m staying late. Otherwise, she’s going to show up here thinking you’re a serial killer.”
I stood up and offered him my hands. “Is that where you got your fear from?”
He burst into laughter. “Probably. I spent most of my childhood being warned away from strange men in white vans. One time, the peewee team rented a white van to take us to an out-of-state game, and I had a full-blown panic attack when I saw it.”
His hands were warm against mine, and I was so reluctant to let go, but I handed him his crutches and took a step back. “I had the same fear growing up. I had to walk home when I was in first grade, and they did this whole PSA at the school about stranger danger and what to do if a vehicle you don’t recognize starts following you. They told us to run to a house and pretend like it was ours and tell the grown-up inside that we were goingto be kidnapped. The first time I saw a UPS truck rolling down the street, I thought I was a goner.”
“Did you run into someone’s house?”
I snorted as I led the way out of the clinic and down the hall toward the waiting room. “Yep. A really old man who couldn’t see very well lived there. He shouted and cussed at me until I started crying and ran home.”
Ferris grabbed my arm and tugged me to a halt. “That’s terrible.”
Fuck, he was sweet. I laid my hand over his and squeezed gently. This was crossing so many lines, but I couldn’t help it. I knew him. Intimately. I had something that had once been his that could be given to no one else.
How was I supposed to deal with that?
I took a deep breath. “I turned out fine. Never got kidnapped even once, and I never ran into a stranger’s house again, so that was a bonus.” Without waiting for him to respond, I pulled my hand away, then turned to open my office door. “Wait in here for me. I’m gonna grab the food and make sure the front door is locked.”
He nodded, looking a bit nervous, but he slipped past me, and I shut the door before letting my forehead drop against the wall.
I was so, entirely, completely, incredibly fucked.
Chapter Thirteen
