A nurse entered the room and smiled as she began to check Kinsey’s vitals. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, just peachy—” She broke off as the only person she trusted more than herself rushed back into her room.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“Moving the car,” Eli said.
He’d been doing this every hour or so all day long and it was driving her nuts. To be honest, life was driving her nuts. “I told you not to park in the drop-off area or you’d get a ticket. Did you get a ticket?”
He smiled. “Nope.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why do I feel like you’re lying?”
“I’m not. I got there just in time.”
“Let me guess,” Kinsey said. “A female cop was about to write you up and you flashed that annoyingly charming smile and got out of it, even though I’ve never once managed to talk anyone out of giving me a ticket.”
“Because you don’t even try to use charm. Ever.”
This was true. “It’s false advertising.”
He smiled. “Not in my case.”
Also true.
“And I’d park in the visitors lot if there were any open spots, but there aren’t.”
The nurse looked up from the chart to eye Kinsey. “Your husband reminded me that you haven’t eaten anything today. Is that correct?”
“Yes, during the preop, I was asked not to eat twelve hours before surgery. And Eli’s not my husband. He’s my . . .” She hesitated, because it was hard to describe the person you loved like a best friend, but also often wanted to smother with a pillow in his sleep.
Eli raised a brow.
She rolled her eyes. “Annoying-as-crap life mate.”
He’d been her best friend since third grade, from the day Kinsey had pushed bitchy Donna Morgan into the mud for saying that Kinsey was trailer trash. Eli had taken the blame so she wouldn’t get in trouble, and they’d been BFFs ever since. Actually, more like brother and sister, because it truly was a sibling-like relationship, right down to bickering being their favorite pastime. Together, they’d been through thick and thin, and there’d been a helluva lot of thin. Her health issues. His family issues. Her utter failure to let people into her life. His inability to trust people to love him. And so on.
Though they were both pretty messed up, they’d become a family of sorts, and she knew no one had her back like he did. Just as she also knew she’d do anything to protect him.
Still, he managed to drive her insane on a daily basis. Like right now. “Why do you smell like chocolate?”
“Because I made a pit stop at the vending machine.”
She sniffed him like a police dog on the scent of drugs, and her stomach growled. She might’ve growled too. “Oh my God, you had a Snickers,” she accused.
“Yep.”
She wanted to kill him on sight, and was glad to see the nurse step out of the cubicle so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. “Are you kidding me?”
He didn’t even have the good grace to look guilty as he came to the side of her bed and took her hand. His eyes were guarded. Worried. “What did the doctor say?”
“Haven’t seen him yet.”
Eli let out a breath. “Your text scared me. I rushed back.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She paused. “Were you really just moving the car and getting a snack?”
“What else would I be doing?”
“Calling Deck.”
There was a beat of disbelief, during which Eli apparently absorbed the fact that she hadn’t called Deck.
Deck, short for Deckard Scott, was the guy Kinsey let into her bed on the nights they were both free. He was big and built, tough as nails, sexy as hell, and best of all, didn’t have any need to fill a silence with words. She could love him for that alone—if she was free to love anyone.
She wasn’t.
She’d grown up with chronic renal failure, and after her first transplant at age fifteen, her body had switched things up for shits and giggles to a new problem—transplant rejection. This meant she was literally a walking, talking expiration date. She didn’t know when, but she knew it would happen. Eventually she’d run out of luck and her kidney would give out. So falling in love and letting someone fall for her in return was selfish. And she might be a whole bunch of things she wished she wasn’t, but selfish wasn’t going to be one of them.
“You should’ve called him,” Eli said finally, clearly trying to keep his tone even, but also just as clearly thinking she was an idiot. “He’d want to be here.”
Yeah, but . . . Deck was supposed to be just her fun-time guy. A year ago, he’d agreed on that term with a rough laugh and a dirty gleam in his eye.
She loved when he had dirty thoughts. It always worked to her benefit. But she’d never imagined him sticking around for a whole year with no sign of wanting to kick her to the curb. Which meant she’d have to be the one to kick him to the curb. “Don’t start.”
Eli shook his head, but after all these years, he knew how to pick his battles. “Fine. So what’s the news?”
“The nurse said the doctor will be in anytime.”
“They’ve been saying that for eight hours.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, as her stomach growled again. “Has it been hard on you eating your favorite food group all day while I sit here in a stupid hospital gown with nothing to eat but ice chips?”
He scooted his chair closer and took her hand, and she had no idea how the hell he did it, but he eased her blood pressure with every single economic movement he made.
“You’re going to get through this,” he said, his voice quiet steel. Everything about him was quiet steel. If Deck was a bull, Eli was a cat. A feral mountain lion, deceptively playful, strong inside and out, intelligent and capable of getting shit done with quiet and deadly finesse. Sometimes she thought maybe he’d kept her alive with nothing more than the sheer force of his personality.
But she’d leaned on him enough. His face was drawn. His hair was even more wild than usual around his face, framing those stormy gray eyes that could be cold as slate when he was pissed, or warm as a summer storm. “Go home,” she said softly. “I’ll call you when I know what’s up.”
“I’m not leaving you,” he said.
“Eli—”
“You going to call Deck? Cuz unless you do—and you know you damn well should—I’m not leaving.”
“Okay, then, how about a favor?”
“Anything,” he said, so easily she knew it was true. He’d proven it over and over again. But . . . she needed him gone to ask the doctor the kind of questions she wanted to ask. “Go home and get me my favorite comfy wrap, the soft black one? And a couple magazines to read?”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to get rid of me.”
“No, I’m cold and tired of my ass hanging out.”
He sighed and nodded. Bending over her, he brushed a kiss to her forehead and vanished.
Not five minutes later, her doctor finally strode into her room, his expression inscrutable. But in that moment, Kinsey knew the answers to all her questions and she closed her eyes.