I climbed over the ropes and walked away as Sebastian called, "Would you just calm the hell down? Get back here, Shap."
I was wrong. The torture wasn't worth it.
And I still despised him. Quite thoroughly.
Chapter 19
Sebastian
Malakai Ford was the kind of guy who wore jeans and a button-down shirt with a pinstriped suit vest and tie to a Saturday night taco party and that was all you needed to know about him. A tie to a taco party. For shame.
Everyone else wanted to know about his work in forensic climatology and how long he'd be visiting from England and whether he was enjoying it here in Boston but I did not give a single fuck about any of that. I didn't want to hear about his research or his endless struggle to find a decent cup of tea in this town. His observations about the public transit system could go fuck his mother for all I cared.
For the fortieth time this evening, I shot Erin a side-eye glare. In response, she pried the half-empty beer bottle from my cross-armed clutch and replaced it with a fresh one. "Lighten up," she ordered under her breath.
"I couldn't if I tried," I said. "You know that."
"Some day," she started as she buzzed around me, "you will explain this behavior to me. Until then, I will pray you don't actually sever any heads with that glare. This crew would have a lot of fun trying to reattach that head but I draw the line at sutures in my kitchen. Full-on surgery is a hill too far, you know?"
In spite of myself, I snorted out a laugh. Erin was right—this group of surgeons would makeshift the shit out of this kitchen. I glanced at Alex and Nick. They were debating the merits of a new robotic surgical tool as she expertly opened and pitted one avocado after another and he mashed them. O'Rourke was telling two of Nick's neuro residents about a case he saw last week involving an off-road vehicle crash. You could take the surgeons out of the operating room but you couldn't take the OR talk out of the surgeons.
Except Sara, apparently.
She stood on the opposite end of the kitchen between Alex's husband Riley Walsh—who happened to be Erin's brother—and that fool in the vest. I'd missed the introductions because I was late in getting here—and I'd been running late because I didn't want to come—but it was obvious Sara was putting some effort into getting to know this guy.
My life could go fuck itself right to hell.
Not for the first time, I was responsible for my own tragedies. I'd lost my fucking mind with Sara this morning. I couldn't explain it. All I knew was I'd opened a door and invited her to walk through it. Instead of doing that, she slammed it in my face. Seeing as I was my own worst enemy, I'd opened another door and then another—and instead of her traveling from here to there with me, she bolted them shut.
I'd responded to that in the only reasonable fashion and acted like a fucking tool. I'd crossed at least eighty stupid lines and then pretty much demanded she stab me with my own scalpels. I'd deserved to be kicked in the chest. It was fine. It was cool. I survived all the other shit I inflicted upon myself so I'd survive this too.
That left me to do the only thing I knew how to do: park myself in a corner and glare at the asshole running his A game on Sara from across the room. That I had a beer in my hand was an added benefit. And the food Erin kept leaving in my vicinity helped too but there was nothing shaking me from this spot until I could figure out how to kill this guy without inciting an international incident.
"Hey, I'm wondering something," O'Rourke called, his beer bottle held aloft. "This kept me up last night and I need it settled tonight so I can sleep."
"You were on call last night," I said. "That kept you up."
"Was I on call? Yes. Was I amusing myself with stupid ideas instead of answering pages the first and second times? Also yes," he said. "Back to the topic at hand. Very serious. I need the best minds in the room on this so you two"—he pointed his bottle at the neuro residents—"just sit down and be quiet. I'm sorry but you won't be ready for this conversation until after your third years. You're not there yet. It's you, it's not me. Anyway." He held his arms out wide. "Which surgical specialty could you take in a fight to the death?"
Nick barked out a laugh. "Why is this a question, O'Rourke?"
"Just like neuro to answer a question with another question," he said. "We all know you're using this time to source your strategy."
"Why are we fighting anyone to the death?" Alex asked. "Why not just fight them until they're down for the count? I don't need to kill anyone but I would like to dominate them."
"That's right," Riley murmured to her. "That's exactly right, honeybee."
"You're doing it wrong," O'Rourke said. "You're all doing it wrong. You're supposed to think about the other specialties and then explain why you'd be able to kick anesthesia's ass any day of the week."
"No, no, no," Nick said. "Anesthesia keeps paralytics in their pocket. All they need to do is throw one syringe and it's lights out."
"I could take cardio," Alex said. "But don't tell Hartshorn I said that. It'll hurt his feelings."
"It would hurt his feelings but he'd agree with you," I said. "Then he'd say he could take nephrology with both hands tied behind his back."
"He'd say that and he'd start a holy war," Alex replied, busy taking a paring knife to at least a million small limes.
"I figure I could throw down with ortho," O'Rourke added.
"Dude, they have saws. They break bones," Nick said, moving on from the avocados to squeeze the limes into a pitcher.
"And they drill so deep into their own specialty that an ankle guy would have one trick in his bag and would be helpless when I threw an elbow," O'Rourke replied. "They're only specifically intimidating, not broadly."
"What you're saying is you could take on every specialty?" Sara asked him. "Is that a feature among trauma surgeons or a defect?"
Before I could stop myself, I said, "A defect, for sure."
I met her gaze from the other side of the room and held it while the conversation continued around us. I tightened my grip on the beer bottle and silently dared her to look away first. She would. She'd blink down at her drink or the man she was politely ignoring or over at the infantry of limes or to O'Rourke and the mask of apathy he wore so flamboyantly. She'd end it like she always did.
"Pretty sure plastics would be an easy hit," I said.
And that did it. She rolled her eyes, muttered "Asshole" under her breath, and shifted just enough to pivot her attention toward O'Rourke.
"Yeah, that's obvious," O'Rourke agreed. "Plastics, uro, neuro—"
"Wait a fucking second," Nick snapped. "You are not seeding neuro with urology. Not while you're drinking my beer."
O'Rourke glanced at the bottle in his hand. "Did I say neuro? I meant nephrology. Totally nephrology. Did I mention I was on call last night? And I haven't slept since I was twenty-three?" He glanced at the residents. "This is why you can't play the game. You need to reach and exceed this level of deprivation. You need to be broken. Then and only then will you be ready to play the game of surgical specialty fireball."