PIERCED - A Stepbrother Romance (6 page)

Present

I wake in a dark room – my living room – with a cold, melted baggie of ice over my ankle. The underside of my ankle is warm. My body is warm. There’s a blanket covering me. The second my eyes adjust, I see the outline of a man at the foot of my couch.

I pull my ankle from his lap. “Sutton, why are you still here?”

He stirs from his light slumber and clears his throat as he faces me. His eyelids are vaguely parted, giving him an impossibly dreamy expression, and I hate myself for noticing. “Just taking care of you, Lauryn. Like I said I would.”

My ankle has stopped throbbing. I think I can walk on it now if I try. I drag my feet to the ground and brace my hands against the seat cushions.

“Don’t,” he says, springing up. “If you need something tell me.”

“You’re acting like I have a broken foot,” I huff. “It feels better.”

“Let me see.” He clicks on the lamp on the side table and crouches down to examine me. His hands are warm and soft and his touch is gentle and light. When he’s in doctor mode, it makes me forget how much I want to punch him. “Fine. But let me help you stand. We’ll go from there.”

His hands are outstretched, and I place mine in his. He hoists me up, holding me as I put pressure on my right foot.

“See? I’m fine,” I assure him. I wait as he stares, glancing from my ankle to my face and back.

“All right. Fine.” He releases my hands, and I do my best not to hobble as I walk away.

“What time is it?”

He glances at his watch. “Time for me to head to the hospital.”

He’s going to work a 24-hour shift after taking a catnap in a seated position on my sofa, all so he could take care of me. That says something.

I grip onto the edge of the kitchen counter as I watch Sut slip his shoes on. He tugs his white lab coat over his shoulders and pulls a badge from his pocket, clipping it on. Never in a million years did I ever think Sutton Pierce, ladies man extraordinaire with a wild, obnoxious streak and a cock piercing, would ever be a doctor.

Never mind that he’s a doctor who delivers babies and tends to medical issues of the womanly variety.

Sutton reaches for the doorknob; turning and flashing me a close-lipped smile that almost makes me forget how angry I’ve been.

“Have a good night at work.” I say it like we’re friends, and then I promptly remind myself that we are most definitely not friends. My lips purse in case I say something else I shouldn’t.

He nods and vanishes behind the door within seconds. His void fills the small space of my apartment. It’s noticeable. I can feel it in my bones. I breathe in the nothingness and miss his presence instantaneously. It’s unsettling and confusing, so I shake my head to rattle my thoughts before heading back to my room to change.

I need to call James.

My
boyfriend
.

I need to stop thinking about Sutton.

“Dr. Pierce, thank God you’re here.” A plump nurse in Winnie the Pooh scrubs grabs me by the elbow the second I walk through the door of the delivery floor and pulls me down the south corridor. “I’ve got a patient in twenty-six who’s ready to push. I’ve been paging Dr. Cardwell but she’s not responding. She needs to deliver now.”

“Where’s Dr. Brunswick?”

“He’s with another patient,” she sighs. “Full moon, Dr. Pierce. I swear that’s it. We’ve been delivering one after another all day.”

I head into twenty-six, wash and sanitize my hands, and wheel my stool over to where a red-faced, huffing and puffing woman is lying with thighs wide open across her bed. She’s squeezing the life out of her husband’s hand, and he’s taking it like a champ. He wears the quiet smile of a man who’s done this before and knows better than to say a damn word.

Smart guy.

“I need to push, I need to push!” she pants, her words thick with desperate intensity. Our eyes meet, and she looks at me like I’m her hero, like I’m the only person in the entire world who can relieve her pain and safely deliver her of her condition.

I know it’s my job, but damn it feels good to be needed.

“Okay, Missy, the doctor’s here. I couldn’t reach Dr. Cardwell, but this is Dr. Pierce, he’s going to take good care of you, and we’re going to get that baby delivered,” the nurse says. She scoots a tray of tools next to me and pulls out a paper delivery gown to cover my scrubs.

“I need you to breath, Missy,” I say, eyeing the monitors. Each time she has a contraction, the baby’s heart dips slightly. I don’t want to alarm her. I don’t want to cause panic. If she can deliver this baby soon, all will be fine. It’s my job to keep her calm and to get this baby delivered safely. “We’re going to start pushing. Are you ready?”

“This is her fourth baby, doctor,” the nurse says. She’s talking to me, but she’s smiling at Missy. “She’s an old pro.”

“Oh, this won’t take long then.” I smile at her, my hands finding her vagina and massaging and stretching her perineum. The top of the baby’s head is coming down.

“Last one came in four pushes,” her husband says. It’s typically the woman who brags about those minor details, but he seems just as proud.

“All right, ten seconds of pushing, Missy. Here we go,” I say. The nurse pulls Missy’s leg back and her husband grabs the other. She pushes a few times and out slides a newborn baby girl with a full head of dark hair. I suction her nose and mouth, and the nurse takes her and cleans her up.

Missy is crying, happy tears of course, and her husband is cupping her cheek with his hand, his forehead pressed against hers.

The nurse swaddles the baby and hands her to the mother, laying her across her bare chest. Her father whispers, “She’s beautiful.”

“Thank you.” Missy pulls her gaze off her baby for a second and looks at me. Her face, which was previously writhing in pain, is now softer, and her eyes are gentle and misty. “Dr. Pierce, would you mind taking a picture with us? You know, for the baby book?”

This is why I do this.

“Of course,” I say. I clean up and head to the side of her bed. Her husband hands one of the nurses their camera and we lean in, posing for a picture that will be cherished for the rest of their days.

“One, two, three!” the nurse declares with a heart-warmed grin before the flash goes off.

I lean away, placing my hand on her shoulder. “You did great, Missy. Really. You’re a pro.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you, Dr. Pierce,” she says.

I wave her comment away. “All I did was get here in time to catch. You did the hard part.”

“Dr. Pierce, if I could get your signature here,” the nurse pulls my attention away, holding a pen and pointing to the birth certificates and hospital records lined up along the counter. The room is hot now with the afternoon sun beating in through the window. I push up my sleeves and take the pen.

A second later, Missy and her husband laugh. When I look up, they’re smiling in my direction.

“That’s something you don’t see everyday,” Missy giggles.

“Excuse me?” I ask with a polite smile.

“I can’t wait to tell my sister that a tatted up doctor delivered her niece,” Missy laughs. “I’ve never seen a doctor with a whole sleeve of tats. You drive a motorcycle too?”

“No, no motorcycle,” I say. “Just a fan of ink.”

“You single, doctor?” Missy asks. One of her eyes squints, and she cocks her head slightly.

“Missy,” her husband says gently. He’s embarrassed for her. “Sorry, doc, I think the meds have gone to her head.”

“That’s very likely the case,” I say with a wink, signing the birth certificate.

Missy nudges her husband with her arm; the one not cradling their fresh, sleepy baby. “I just thought I’d ask.”

“You’re always trying to hook someone up with your sister.” Her husband shakes his head, turning back to look at their baby. He smiles, gently grazing the side of his finger across her chubby cheek. He’s itching for his chance to hold her, I can tell.

“I’m sorry, but he’s very good looking, he’s tatted up, and he delivers freaking babies for crying out loud,” Missy says. “Why did you go into this field, doctor? What made you want to deliver babies?”

I pause. No one’s ever asked me that question before except a few times in med school, and even then I never really gave an honest answer. It always seemed silly coming from someone who looked like me. I’m not supposed to be sentimental. I’m supposed to be damaged and deep and dark. I don’t see a reason I can’t be everything and then some.

“It’s exciting,” I say. “There’s never a dull moment.”

I neglect to mention the part about how my family is slightly fucked up and all kinds of broken, and that all I ever wanted was to be a part of a normal family. The next best thing I could think of was delivering joy to other people’s families.

Missy smiles and nods before returning to tend to her suckling baby. I think she was expecting a better answer than the generic one I gave her.

I head to the door, stopping and turning back to them. “You might forget your podiatrist. You might forget the urgent care doctor who diagnosed you with a mild case of shingles five years ago. But you never forget the person who delivered your baby.”

It’s the most honest answer to that question I’ve ever given in my adult life. I don’t want to be forgotten.

“Got any more for me?” I ask when I breeze past the nurse’s station.

“Not yet, doc,” one of them calls back. “I think thirty-seven’s going to go soon though.”

“I’ll be in the on call room.” I’m tired. I hardly slept at all at Lauryn’s. I spent the better part of the afternoon watching her sleep. God, she’s so fucking beautiful. Her mouth would dance open as she slept, probably dreaming, and every so often she’d let out a soft sigh and turn her head from side to side but never waking. I could watch her for hours.

I miss her.

I miss Lauryn.

I’ve missed her for ten goddamned years, and in ten years, it never got any easier.

I crawl into an on call bed and turn out the lights, making sure my pager is one before I press my head into the cool side of a flat pillow. A smile tugs on the corners of my mouth as I shut my eyes, Lauryn’s face in the forefront of my mind.

It’s been a long time since anyone’s made me smile like that.

“Soak it up, Dr. Pierce. Your looks aren’t going to last forever.” I’m in a mood today. “Enjoy it while you can.”

“Excuse me?” Sutton adjusts his nametag as he slides behind the table I’ve set up that Monday morning. I haven’t seen him since our last event, when he iced my ankle and treated me like a fragile China doll before jetting off to work a twenty-four hour shift at the hospital. A group of nurses amble past our table, all eyes on me. One waves and another winks. The third one whips her hair over her shoulder. “You think I like this kind of attention?”

“Isn’t that why you went into this field?” I ask. “You get to be surrounded by women all day, every day. All kinds of attention.”

I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I’ve been an anxious, confused wreck since he left, unable to reconcile my sudden warmth toward him with the decade-old resentment I’ve kept safely in the forefront of my mind my entire adult life.

I missed him.

I missed Sutton Pierce the second he left my apartment.

It’s all kinds of wrong.

And now I’m taking it out on him because he’s right here, and he looks amazing, and I’m all sorts of angry at the butterflies swirling around in my belly like they own the place.

“You don’t know me at all.” Sutton blows a puff of breath through parted lips. “I’m actually insulted that you think I’m that shallow and starved for attention. It’s disgusting actually.”

He walks up to me, our bodies mere inches apart. He towers over me, making me feel two feet tall.

“What I do is beautiful, Lauryn,” he says. “It’s my passion, and I won’t have you belittling it because you’re insecure with your own life path.”

“I am not insecure with my life path. I like what I do.” My chin tilts up, as if to add a silent exclamation point to my statement.

“Yeah, but you don’t love it. That’s the difference between you and me.”

“You and I are different in every possible way.” I state my opinion with a huff and cross my arms.

“Not really, but if it makes you feel better you can believe that.”

The clearing of a throat makes us jump, and I take two steps back. My face is hot, and I realize I’ve been holding my breath. Sutton looks calm and unshaken, stepping up toward the waiting patron. He’s an older gentleman with a nametag that reads, “Dr. Robert Hocking, OB-GYN, Biscayne Women’s Group.”

Sutton speaks with him for a second as I arrange and rearrange brochures and swag for lack of something better to do. When the doctor walks away, Sutton and I don’t speak another word to one another. When the event is over, he packs everything up with me in silence. Another doctor, someone who apparently knows him, stops to chat, and I use the opportunity to sneak away, wheeling my bag out to my car before he has a chance to stop me.

Not that I even know if he would. I really pissed him off today.

I’m driving back to my apartment, when a call comes in.

“Hey, Connie,” I say over the Bluetooth.

“Hey, Lauryn.” Her voice booms through the speakers of my car. “How’d it go today? We just got the preliminary numbers in from the first week on the market, and things are looking good, girlfriend.”

“Yeah, today was fine,” I say, switching on my right turn signal. “Glad to hear the numbers are looking good.”

“How do you like working with that doctor? Isn’t he a dream?” I can picture Connie sitting in her office, clutching a brochure in her manicured hands and fanning herself with it. I almost ask her if she’s taken another Arovag lately.

“He’s very smart.” I wince.

Can’t think of anything else to say about him?

“Ah.” Connie sounds disappointed, and I’m quite certain she wanted my answer to excite her Arovag-laced hormones.

“He’s okay to work with,” I add.

“You’re lying through your teeth,” Connie says with a laugh. “But that’s okay. I get it. You have a boyfriend. You’re a good girl. Anyway, how’s James liking Miami so far? Forgot to ask you that.”

“He’s in New York,” I remind her.

“No, he transferred to Miami a few weeks ago. Said he wanted to be closer to you?” Connie sounds confused.

I’m doubly confused. “Connie, what are you talking about?”

“Yeah, he’s got eastern Miami and a few of the ‘burbs.” Connie’s voice dwindles, as if she’s starting to realize she let the cat out of the bag. I didn’t know there was a cat or a bag until just now.

“I’ll call you later.” I end the call without waiting for her response. I can’t think with Connie’s raspy voice blaring through my speakers.

Why the fuck would James have moved to Miami and not told me?