“I’m afraid so, Axe… but don’t worry: I will monitor him myself for the next couple of hours and I will come back after my shift to check on him tonight and I will do the same every day as long as he has to stay here… and… and then since we live across from each other, after you take him home, I can come over and visit Didar to follow up on him… make sure he’s recovering all right and everything.”
“That would really ease my worries…”
I nod, smiling. “Good, great… now, do you want to go see if we can sneak in and take a look at him, Axe? I… I mean, Axel?”
Crap, I have to stop calling him that. It’s not like he gave me permission to use a nickname or anything. It’s just that that’s what I call him in my head whenever I think about him.
He gives me this smirk that’s both sexy and soft and just melts my panties away.
“That’s okay, baby: you can call me Axe if you want. I like that. I’ll like anything you want to call me. Come on then, let’s go see him.”
Baby?
Oh dear!
And here I go blushing up to my ears again.
Chapter 5
AXE
I pace up and down the living room of Tess’s little cute apartment with my mind almost entirely focused on my worry for Didar, the only bright spot is that I know right now he’s with Tess and there’s no one in the whole world I would trust with his care more than her. Not just because I’m so in love with her it’s stupid, but also because I saw today with how much passion, devotion and competence she treated him.
I mean, she saved his freaking life, nothing could ever beat that.
We stayed together in the pet hospital sneaking in to watch over him until he finally woke up about two hours and a half later.
It broke my heart to see him in that crate, all covered in bandages and on a IV drip, so weak from his ordeal that he could barely raise his fluffy head up, but he did it anyway, yelping as soon as he perceived I was close by and thumping his tail up and down on his plush bedding with the little energy that was available to him.
That was the moment I became really sure that he would make it, because despite his conditions, I could see his strength and his spirit burning bright into the single ice-blue eye that he kept on me the whole time, his pink tongue lolling out as he tried to give me one of his little wolfish grins almost as if attempting to reassure me he was gonna pull through.
And Tess…
Damn, she was absolutely wonderful and kept me grounded with the gentle, no-nonsense ways of her doc persona.
When it was time for me to go home, she could see I was gonna freak again, since poor Didar was whining and crying for me not to leave, so she went beyond what she had initially promised and rather than going back there after her shift to check on him, she stayed on.
I felt bad at first, because I could see she was tired and the day was starting to affect her, but Tess swore up and down that a nice, hot shower and comfy clothes —which she had on hand in her locker— would put her to rights. She told me she would eat something and then look after him until it was time to put him on a new drip and she had a chance to take a look at his charts and the results of the exams they did. Tess even said she had asked one of the best nurses, someone she had befriended a little, to do her a solid and change her shift to work that night so that she could keep an eye on Didar and text updates on his conditions to her so she could pass them on to me.
And even after doing all of this, she was a little nervous to ask me to babysit her pets, even though the only reason she was leaving them was to take care of my puppy.
I mean, isn’t she a total doll? And I don’t just mean on the outside anymore. She’s just as sweet inside it seems.
I think I fell a little bit more in love with her right then and there in that clinic and it took everything I had not to maul her and drag her somewhere private while we kissed goodbye. One of Tess’s cats, Teddy I think, jumps down from his perch on the large cat tree and comes over, immediately starting to brush against my leg, purring, his round blue eyes staring up at me as he taps my shin with one of his snow-white paws and I smile down to him.
I bend to scratch behind his ear and he trills up at me and I swear the furry ladies, Rebel –the large silver cat from this morning– and Minx are practically scoffing in disgust at his friendliness toward me by now, both of them still perched each on their condos up in their tree.
I never had cats in my life so I don’t know much about them, I’m a dog person through and through, but even I can tell that so far Teddy is the one who likes me best, the other two have been mostly snubbing me since I came in, only yowling at me when I gave them their food, while Snap is just staring at me suspiciously from one of his many hides in his large enclosure. I never thought a tortoise could pull off a menacing look, but I guess I was wrong.
I level him with a hard look. “Sorry, buddy, I think I’m here to stay, unless your mistress sends me packing. You’d better get used to me,” I tell him and to appease him I offer him a fresh strawberry.
He takes the treat with a ninja-like speed I would have never thought such an animal was capable of and then slowly chews on it; his little dark eyes still glowing at me.
I drop on Tess’s couch and tap my leg, clucking my tongue to get Teddy’s attention.
He jumps on my lap, not minding much that I’m treating him as I would a dog it seems. While I stroke his brown and white fluffy back, I think about Tess and that first impulsive kiss we shared.
I was so damn happy about Didar being alive that I threw caution to the wind and just picked my little sexy neighbor up and kissed her like there was no tomorrow, acting on pure instinct and by the time my brain was starting to catch up with my heart and beginning to order me to pull away and put her back on her feet, Tess was kissing me back just as hard and I simply went with it: just living in the moment as every one of my dreams came crashing down on the sweet lips I was savoring.
But now I can’t help but wonder, did she kiss me back because she wanted to, because she wants this, me, just as much as I want her, or was she just caught off guard by me planting one on her?
I’m fucking elated that she did kiss me back, but what does it mean?
Was it just the heat of the moment?
Or maybe her way to share in my happiness for Didar’s being safe?
Or was it what I so desperately wish it to be?
I don’t have a clue and I can’t even draw some conclusions from the way she acted when we kissed goodbye.
Tess is friendly but also seems to be very shy and since there were plenty of her co-workers around, some of them even openly staring, we exchanged nothing more than a lingering peck.
So there’s just one way for me to find out if I’m fooling myself that she could care for me or if there’s actually something going on for both of us here.
I’ve got to man up and kiss her again.
And I will.
Just as soon as she steps through that door.
I keep on cuddling Teddy and he sprawls on my chest, purring away and it doesn’t take long for me to feel my eyes growing heavy: the combination of one too many fourteen-hour-shifts in a row and the day straight out of hell I’ve had finally starting to make itself known and before I know it, I’m out cold.