Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Why, you ask, couldn’t I keep my gaze on my friend, the polite thing to do while she was talking to me?
Because I knew something Valhalla Drew—she’d changed her name sometime since I’d last seen her—didn’t.
I would be her attending.
I would be the one keeping an eye on her.
I would be the one making her life a living hell and enjoying it.
Because she’d done the same to me, I saw no reason there couldn’t be fair play.
“You want to grab a burger? Pizza?” she asked, batting her eyes at me.
I ignored her eye batting and once again looked toward the ER doors. She’d be coming through them any second. Unless she was late, which would be par for the course for her.
She was always late.
Late to school. Late to her birthday. Late to the BBQ thrown by the medical students.
But one thing she wasn’t ever late for was work.
It didn’t matter how many times I tried to get her to skip—because hell, we only had so many days off of school—she was on time, every time. And never missed a day, not even when she was sick.
“No,” I answered honestly. “Pops needs me home.”
Pops was my seventy-eight-year-old grandfather who’d moved in with me a few months ago. My grandmother, Nonna, had died about a year ago, and I’d watched my pops go downhill very slowly, then finally decided if I didn’t do something, I’d come by one day to check on him and he’d be gone.
That was why I moved him and my dog that he had been “dog sitting” for me for years, Gee, in with me.
He was very capable of being alone still. But on days like today, where the weather was fucked up and could go bad, I wanted to make sure I could get to him if I needed to. Plus, if I was there when the power went out, I would be the one to start a fire, not him.
Not saying he wasn’t fully capable of it, but I hadn’t had time to get any firewood inside before I’d had to leave, and that old goat would go out there and bring it inside himself if he needed to.
“Your pops is perfectly capable of taking care of himself,” Tammy pointed out. “Whoa, who’s that?”
I turned only my head to see who she was talking about, and my breath froze in my lungs.
I’d seen photos of her since she’d left, of course.
But the years hadn’t aged her at all.
In fact, she was even more beautiful now than when she’d left.
And she was wearing a set of scrubs that looked more like workout wear than scrubs. Definitely not her style.
She looked super uncomfortable, and she kept twisting her hair around on her finger like she wasn’t used to it being there to do it with. She’d stop, place her hands down at her sides, then go right back to doing it.
A nervous habit, that was for sure.
But fuck, she was beautiful.
It fucking sucked that she was still so pretty.
The least she could’ve done was age, goddammit.
So I might or might not still be hung up on the woman. And I definitely hadn’t told my best friend about her coming.
“That’s the new baby doc,” I said, acting like I was just as surprised by her appearance as Tammy was.
In all honesty, I’d known she was coming. I’d actually worked with an old friend to get her here, and in my department, under my control.
It might make me a dick, but fuck. Something needed to make her hurt the way she’d made me hurt.
It was only fair that I was the one to do it to her. Return the favor, so to speak.
“She looks like a bitch,” Tammy mused.
If she only knew how much of a bitch Val came off as but in actuality wasn’t.
Which only made me more annoyed.
It was just plain fuckin’ sucky, all the way around.
I’d wanted her in the worst way when she’d left. I’d offered solutions. I’d offered to move with her. I’d offered to come home, then we could come back, and go back to her ‘circus’ any time she needed to go, just as long as she graduated and became a doctor with me.
But nothing swayed her.
And honestly, I fucking hated that I came second to a circus.
“She looks…” I hesitated, trying to find the right words. Beautiful, breathtaking, heart stopping, scared, lonely, introverted, standoffish. “Like someone who is coming to a job that’s unfamiliar to her.”
Tammy snorted. “It’s in the way she’s staring around her, like this place isn’t good enough for her.
I didn’t correct Tammy’s notions, though.
In fact, I encouraged them.
If she wanted to be a bitch to her, well then that fit into my plans for Valhalla ‘Drew.’
“She’s trying too hard,” Tammy muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.
Rose, the second most senior nurse in the ER, grinned wickedly at me and said, “Oh, darlin’. We’re gonna get along just fine!”