Page 20 of Wicked Things
“You’re lucky our boyfriends aren’t here,” Sequins spits. “They’d kick your fucking ass.”
“Ormaybe they’d thank me for revealing to them what ungodly whores you are,” I shoot back.
The girls’ expressions fall blank, like they can’t actually believe what I’ve just said to them. They’re about to cause a scene, I can tell, but a male doctor with latex gloves heads into the waiting room. “Lauren Pinskey?”
They both glare at me as the doctor shepherds them away to a treatment room. A gaggle of frat boys hiss and laugh as they disappear. “Yo, dude. You got someseriousgame. That was hilarious,” one of them says, holding out his balled up fist me to bump. I get up and I move instead, shifting to the emptiest corner of the waiting room. I’m just making friends all over the place tonight, and that’s not why I came. I came for a very specific reason, and it has nothing to do with my phantom migraine.
An hour passes.
Then another hour.
It’s two thirty in the morning by the time I finally get what I came for. She emerges through the set of double doors to the right, her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, her face a mask of worry as she surveys the carnage of the E.R. room before her. She looks tired. I know she started work nearly eighteen hours ago, so she must by dead on her feet by now.
I keep my head down as she talks to the woman at the reception desk.
“Is Olly around, Gracie?” she asks. “We were meant to meet half an hour ago, but my surgery ran long.”
“Hasn’t been down here yet. I’d say he was delayed, too. You breaking for something to eat?”
“Yeah.” Sloane presses her fingertips into her temples, groaning. “I need coffee. Like, right now.”
I casually observe her out of the corner of my eye as she stands and talks to the nurse she called Gracie. Sloane’s not supermodel rail thin—she has curves in all the right places, visible even through her scrubs. Her hair is a little longer than the last time I saw her. She’s pale. Always so pale. She works every hour god sends at the hospital, so it’s no wonder she’s white as a sheet. She looks beautiful with it, though, instead of sick like some of the other doctors who work here.
I haven’t made a habit of this. I’ve checked in on her a grand total of four times since that night at the hotel. The last time I stopped by the hospital to catch a glimpse of her, I told myself I wasn’t going to do it again. When I woke up this morning, though, I knew I was going to come here. I just needed to make sure she was okay. I just needed to see with my own two eyes that she was alive, well and happy. And now here she is, standing ten feet away from me, playing with a ballpoint pen as she chats aimlessly with her friend, her eyes shining brightly under the strip lighting despite the subtle shadows hover beneath them.
She is alive.
She is well.
The happy part, though? I can never fucking tell. She puts on a good show most of the time, but there’s always this sadness that clings to her.Always.
I get to my feet, heading for the elevator. I can’t sit here all night, and now that I’ve done what I set out to, there’s no reason for me to stay. Only…it’s so fucking hard to walk away.
Fuck. Me.
I stab the call button for the elevator, my back to Sloane. I haven’t been able to forget her. In all the time that’s passed since we met in that darkened hotel room, I haven’t been able to get her out of my fucking head. It’s been fucking torturous.
“Oh, hey, I came down here looking for you,” a voice says behind me. Her voice. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder, and Sloane’s standing even closer now, only three feet away, talking to some tall, blond haired guy with a jaw like a motherfucking Ken doll. I turn back around, closing my eyes, my body fizzing with unexpected anger. Who the fuck is that guy? She’s smiling at him. Fucking smiling at him. And the way he was looking at her in that brief snapshot I got of the two of them together…I didnotlike the way he was fucking looking at her.
“Good. Are you ready? I’m starving,” the blond guy answers her.
“Yeah, let’s head for the canteen. If I don’t fuel up, I’m going to pass out.”
The elevator doors slide open, and people exit. I wait until the car is empty before I enter, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end when Sloane and the blond guy get on after me.
He reaches out and hits the button for the second floor. I freeze for a moment, considering my options. I’m meant to be heading down, into the basement, to the parking level, but something inside me resists hitting the P1 button.
I inhale deeply through my nose, trying to maintain my calm. Big fucking mistake. The second the air hits my nose, I smell her. Her scent. The same perfume she wore the night at the hotel—light, floral, slightly sweet and impossible to forget. I have no control over the way my body reacts to that smell. My dick is instantly hard, straining against my pants, my heart thundering in my chest. I can’t fucking breathe.
She’s standing right in front of me, laughing at something Dumb Blond Guy has said, and all I can do is stare at the tiny, fine hairs at the back of her neck that won’t reach up into her ponytail. I want to take hold of her and bite the back of her neck as my hands rove all over her body. I want to make her moan. I want to make her fucking shake with her need. I want to hear her gasping my name.
I also want to punch my fist through this fuck boy’s larynx. I’ve been trapped in an elevator with him for less than ten seconds and I can tell he’s in love with her. It’s painfully fucking obvious. Does Sloane know? How could she not? My mood blackens as I imagine what that means. If she knows how he feels about her, and she’s joking and laughing with him like this, does that mean they’re fucking? Goddamn it, I need to get out of this elevator right fucking now. I’m already grabbing hold of him in my head, wrapping a hand around his throat as I smash my other fist repeatedly into his face. I’ve already broken his nose. I’ve already knocked him the fuck out. He’s already dead, lying in a pool of his own blood on the elevator floor.
Mercifully, the doors sweep back and the two of them walk out, still talking about their respective patients. I don’t follow after them. I was going to head to the canteen, to sit at a table close to them so I could watch her some more as she eats, but I can’t.
He’s going to lay a hand on her at some point. It’s going to be a friendly cuff of the shoulder, or a barely-there graze of his fingers against hers as they line up to purchase their meals, and I am going to lose my fucking mind. I won’t be able to stop myself from launching at him, teeth bared, the testosterone on fire in my blood stream. I will rip his fucking throat out.
As if she senses the intensity of my gaze on her skin, Sloane looks back into the elevator as the doors close again. Our eyes meet for the very first time. She smiles softly, her mouth quirked up at one side as she finallyseesme…
