PIERCED - A Stepbrother Romance (5 page)

“How do I look?” I pop the collar of my white lab coat as Lauryn unloads brochures, pamphlets, and logo’d pens and stacks them neatly along the table at the convention center that Monday morning. “Say it, Lauryn. I look like a sexy doctor.”

She pauses for a moment, refusing to look anywhere other than into my eyes, and chokes on her spit. “Get over yourself.”

Oh, how I’ve missed messing with her. “You need some help?”

She shakes her head, grabbing the last of the brochures and slamming them on the table. “I’m good now. Fifteen minutes ago, I would’ve said yes.”

“I’ll get here earlier next time.”

The conference center’s main doors fling open and staff members secure them as throngs of lab coat and scrub wearing medical professionals stampede into the space. Everyone loves an excuse to leave their post, and everyone loves free stuff. Drug reps are notorious for giving out gobs and gobs of free stuff. Oh, and there’s a free lunch catered by one of the top Cuban restaurants in town that books out for weeks at a time. That must be the draw.

“So basically, we just stand here and wait for people to come up and ask us about Arovag,” she explains. She stands back, her arms folded across her lower belly.

“You should uncross your arms,” I say. “Makes you appear more inviting.”

Lauryn shoots daggers my way as her arms fall to her side. “I know what I’m doing, Sutton.”

A lovely Latina doctor in a long white coat and candy apple red heels floats up to our table. Her shiny lips curl into a seductive smile as her dark eyes lock into mine. She’s a woman on a mission, like many before her. “Hello.”

“Hi,” I say, squinting to read her name take. “Dr. Ortega.”

“Yes,” she says, tracing her finger along the dip of tanned skin that peeks through her jacket. “And you are?”

“Dr. Pierce,” I say. “And this is my esteemed colleague, Lauryn Hudson. Lauryn here-”

“Dr. Pierce,” she says, rolling the ‘r’. “Yes, yes. I’ve heard of you. You’re a hospitalist who refuses to work at a clinic.” She says it as if she’s amused, as if I’m the first OB-GYN in the history of the world to refuse to work in a clinic setting. “I believe my boss tried to get you to come to Women’s Health Group. We offered you a pretty penny.”

“It’s not about money, Dr. Ortega.” I offer a polite smile and lift a brochure, spreading it wide and pointing to the words. “So this is a great new drug for older women suffering from a minimized libido. They can be pre or post menopausal, and the drug is even approved for women as young as twenty-five.”

She doesn’t seem interested in the drug. “Would you consider coming to the clinic for a private luncheon? Perhaps you can give our staff a lecture on the benefits of this new…drug?”

I turn to Lauryn who’s standing slack-jawed, trying to fight a smile, and watching the entire exchange. If she could talk, I’m sure she’d be saying, “Who’s the amateur now?”

My mind instantly imagines copious scenarios of Lauryn being hit on by doctors during her visits, and a twinge of jealousy heats my body.

“Lauryn here is the representative for Arovag.” I grab her by the crook of her elbow and drag her in closer. Dr. Ortega still won’t pay attention to her. She only has eyes for me.

“Do you have a card, Dr. Pierce?” Dr. Ortega asks. She rubs her lips together and smiles, tilting her head to the side. I think she’s trying to flirt with me. I glance over her shoulder where a line of people begins to form, mostly women, some looking much too young to be doctors. There are nurses, physician’s assistants, and nurse practitioners here. The booth across from us, which is touting estrogen patches and progesterone therapy, is empty. The booths flanking our sides are also home to bored-looking drug reps waiting for interested patrons. The party is clearly at our booth.

“Hi.” I watch Lauryn attempt to talk to the second-in-line woman. “Can I help you? Were you interested in Arovag?” Lauryn lifts up a pen covered in the teal and hot pink logo and hands it to the lady. She takes the pen, but she’s still watching me. Lauryn leans into me, placing her palm on my shoulder and leaning into my ear. “Please tell me you’re not wearing some kind of pheromone cologne today.”

I shake my head.

“This is ridiculous,” she mutters out of the corner of her full mouth. “It’s like a bunch of goddamned feral alley cats in heat.”

“Nice meeting you, Dr. Pierce,” I say, handing her my card. Only it’s not
my
card, it’s a card to the hospital with our general numbers printed on the back. She doesn’t notice. She palms the card and presses it against her chest, staggering away backward as if the sight of me makes her drunk with lust. “Next.”

A young nurse in pale pink scrubs walks up, staring up at me with a goofy grin on her face as her fingers fidget with her long, brown hair. “So, what’s this new drug?”

Lauryn rolls her eyes and steps back, and I catch her checking her watch. I want to tell her this thing ends in four hours. It’ll be over soon. I want to tell her the attention gets old. I want to tell her that a line of women all waiting to talk to me means absolutely nothing to me when the one I want is sitting right beside me wanting nothing to do with me.

The young nurse saunters away with a stack of brochures and swag, and I welcome the next patron.

Lather.

Rinse.

Repeat.

I never should’ve signed up for this gig, but when the lady at the pharmaceutical company told me whom I’d be working with, I agreed without so much as a single stipulation. I’d have done it for free had she asked.

The convention dies down in time for lunch, and Lauryn boxes up her things as if she has a plane to catch.

“Let me help you,” I say, handing her handfuls of what little swag remains.

“I got it.”

“Let me carry this stuff to your car,” I offer.

She zips the rollaway suitcase and pulls up on the handle. “No need.”

“Can I walk you to your car?” I’m getting nowhere with her.

She turns to face me. “Why?”

“Because we barely had a chance to talk all morning.” That’s one excuse of many, but I’ve got plenty more if she continues to play difficult.

“We’re not here to talk, Sutton. This is work. We’re working together,” she reminds me. She wheels her suitcase out and around our table and heads to the exit, her heels clicking on the tile in quick little ticks. I follow her, taking wide strides until I catch up.

“Let’s get lunch. My treat.” I grab the handle of the rollaway from her hand, our fingertips brushing, and pull it behind me. “You’ve got to be hungry. We’ve been standing around for the last four hours sipping bottled water. I mean, it was loud in there, but I swear I heard your stomach growling.”

“It’s probably not a good idea.”

At least she isn’t saying no. There’s hope.

“Do I need to run it by James real quick? Get his approval?” I snicker. It’ll be a cold day in hell before James approves of me hanging out with his girlfriend. But it’ll be an even colder day in hell when I give a shit about anything James says, thinks, feels, or does.

Lauryn snaps toward me, her lips curled in disgust. “Leave James out of this.”

I toss a hand up to apologize, but I’m not really sorry.

“What happened with you two anyway?” Her tone has taken a softer pitch, a sure sign she wants something, and in this case, it’s information she wants. I’ll gladly give it to her, but I’ll have to feed it to her in bite-sized pieces because if I dump it all on her at once, she’ll write me off as a jealous asshole touting conspiracy theories in an attempt to destroy her happiness.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I slip a hand in my pocket and slap a smug smile on my face. Having the upper hand with Lauryn feels good for a change.

“Yeah. I would like to know.” She shrugs her shoulders. “He won’t tell me a damn thing, but I know something went down with you two. I tried asking him last-”

Lauryn screams. The scrape of gravel against flesh mixes with the symphony of traffic across the street. In an instant she’s out of my reach and lying on the ground grabbing her ankle.

“Did you just fall?” I try not to laugh, but I’m only laughing because I know she’s okay.

She clutches her right ankle, her face writhing and twisted. I release the rollaway bag and crouch down. “This hurt? How about here?”

She nods, but she isn’t crying. She’s tough, and I know it pains her in ways that are more than physical to look weak and vulnerable for a small sliver of her life.

“Here,” I grab beneath her shoulders and hoist her up. “Can you walk on it? How’s it feel to put pressure on it?”

She takes one hobbled step and lets out a tiny yelp before lifting up her foot and balancing on her good leg. I hoist her up on the trunk of someone’s white Audi and take her ankle in my hands once more. It’s swelling by the second. I touch it with tenderness, but I don’t think it’s broken.

“It’s twisted that’s all,” I say. “How’d you fall anyway?”

She rolls her eyes and looks away, as if she’s ashamed. “I saw one of those lizard things.” Her head hangs, and her wild curls fall in her face.

“An
anole
?”

“Yeah, a lizard,” she says, puffing hair from her eyes with a single breath. “He climbed across my shoe. I thought he was going to climb up my ankle.”

“Those things can’t hurt you, Lauryn.” I brush the hair from her face, though she still won’t look at me. Across the parking lot is a Seven Eleven. “You need to ice this. Wait here, okay? I’ll be right back.”

I don’t give her time to protest. I run across the parking lot and return with ice chunks in a Big Gulp cup and a box of sandwich baggies. I make her an ice pack and hold it against her swelling ankle.

“It’s bigger now than it was five minutes ago,” I say, pressing into her puffy flesh. “Still hurt?”

“Like a motherfucker.”

“I’m taking you home,” I declare. “You’re staying off this thing the rest of the day. Doctor’s orders.”

“I’ll be fine.” She slides off the trunk of the Audi and pretends not to wince when she lands. Slow, hobbled steps lead her to where her car is parked a few cars down, though I follow her the entire time with my hand on her low back.

“I’m driving you home.”

“No,” she grits.

“You can’t drive with a swollen right ankle.” I take the keys from her clutches and unlock her car, opening the passenger door and lifting my brows. “Get in.”

Lauryn stares at me like she wants to sock me and then drags herself inside the car one painfully slow inch at a time. I shut the door behind her and head around, throwing her bag in the back before jumping in.

“Where do you live?” I start up the car, the black leather melting the thin fabric of my blue scrubs. Cranking the AC, I turn to her and wait for her to speak up. She seems annoyed that I’ve taken over, and looks at me as if I’m invading her personal space. She hits a button on her NAV and a voice begins directing us to Mosby street, which is two blocks north of my place. “Just relax, Lauryn. You’re in good hands. I’ll take care of you.”

11 years ago – senior year, fall semester

“All right, class, we’re going to do something a little different today.” Coach Wiggins, my gym teacher, paces the basketball court as we sit and stretch out. Her fingers tug and toy the lime green lanyard attached to her whistle as her sneakers squeak against the shiny floors. “We’re playing dodge ball against Coach Mallory’s class.”

A boy behind me lets out a quiet, “Yesss…” and a couple kids to my right bounce excitedly.

I fucking hate dodge ball.

Tennis? Okay.

Swimming? Fine.

Whiffle ball? Whatever.

Dodge ball? No! Just…no! Nothing about dodge ball is remotely enjoyable.

“Everyone grab a mesh vest from the bin over there and meet me on our half of the court.” Coach Wiggins blows her whistle, sending a sharp pain through my left ear drum. She is obsessed with that thing. It hangs out of her mouth for the duration of our gym period every day, and she blows it every chance she gets. She should’ve been a damn traffic cop.

I pull a vest over top of my gym uniform and take my place strategically sandwiched between layers of other classmates.

I fucking hate dodge ball.

The shuffle of sneakers ushers in a stampede of our opponents. I scan their faces in search of only one: Sutton’s. We haven’t spoken most of the school year, but I know we have gym at the same time because I’ve seen him in passing.

He spots me immediately, as if he’s looking for me too. I glance away, hoping he didn’t see me watching him. As soon as it’s safe, I look his way once again, watching as he grabs a ball and palms it. From across the gym, I see his mouth moving, and my heart flutters for a second when I catch him smiling. He speaks to a classmate who seems to be laughing at everything he says. He has that effect on people. They think everything he says is hilarious. Everyone wants to be his friend or his girlfriend or whatever. They’ll do whatever it takes to spend a moment basking in the way he makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world.

The shrill chirp of Coach Wiggins’ whistle forces me back into the moment. “All right, everyone. You know the rules. Balls are not to come into contact with faces.”

A few students snicker.

“Opposing teams are not to cross the center line,” she continues. “Once you’ve been hit, go sit on the bleachers. First team to hit all members of the opposite team wins. Best of three. And…go.”

Coach Wiggins blows her whistle once again and heads to the sidelines to chat up the other teacher. I stay back, hoping to blend in with some of the other girls while the guys laugh and chuck balls as hard as they can at the opposite side of the court.

I fucking hate dodge ball.

I cross my arms, glancing up at the clock and mentally calculating how many more minutes I’d be subjected to this medieval torture.

DOINK
.

That’s the sound the ball makes when it hits me in the face. Correction – it hit me in the nose. Pain pulsates through the center of my mug like a ring of fire, spreading to the rest of my face. The gym grows silent. All activity ceases. Everyone stares in my direction, but I glance down at my shoes where drips of blood are splattered between my white sneakers.

It’s my blood. I am bleeding. Coach Wiggins doesn’t blow her whistle, instead she runs toward me as if I’m two seconds from dying and this is a life or death emergency.

I lift my hand to my nose and pull it away along with a handful of blood. I pray it’s my nose and only my nose. Noses heal. Noses can be fixed. I run my tongue along the inside of my mouth, making sure all teeth are accounted for, and thank God they are.

“Who did this?” Coach Wiggins screams. “I said NO balls to the FACE!”

The students across the gym separate, everyone distancing themselves from Sutton Pierce.

“Sutton,” the other teacher said. “Did you hit this student in the face with your ball?”

The boys behind me snort.

“It was an accident,” he says. His face is somber, but I still don’t buy it.

Yeah fucking right.

“Ms. Hudson, go see the nurse. Pierce, you’re in time out.” Wiggins blows her whistle and the game continues while I hightail it out of there, stomping down the empty halls toward the nurse’s office.

“Wait up.” A voice behind me, that could only belong to the biggest asshole on the face of the earth, fills the empty hall. The shuffling of his sneakers is a clear sign he’s running toward me.

I turn to face him, holding my bloody nose and furrowing my brows. If my face wasn’t smeared in blood right then, he’d have seen that I was glaring at him. “What do you want? Aren’t you supposed to be in time out or whatever?”

“I snuck out,” he says, as if that was supposed to impress me. It kind of did. “Wanted to check on you. Tell you I’m sorry. It was an honest mistake. I was going for Clayton’s shoulders and someone bumped me and-”

“Save it.” I turn around and resume my trek, but he continues to follow me.

“Honest, Lauryn, I’m sorry. God,” he huffs. “Just stop. I need to talk to you.”

His hand grabs my shoulder, pulling me toward him. I glance up and down the halls in search of a hall monitor, the principal, a lunch lady, anyone. We are alone. I haven’t been alone with Sutton Pierce since the previous summer. It was one of the greatest summers of my entire life, until it all went up in flames.

“You don’t answer my texts anymore,” he says. “And obviously our families don’t hang out anymore.”

No fucking shit they don’t hang out anymore
. “No need to state the obvious.”

My nose alternates between throbbing and numbness. I need an ice pack right away.

“How is my dad, huh? You always said you wished he was yours. Looks like you got your wish.” I spit my words at him like poison darts. I hope they hurt. He hurt me. I want him to hurt too.

“This is why we need to talk. I have so much more to tell you about-”

“Oh, now you want to talk?” Tears burn my eyes. “You couldn’t have said anything over the last five years, but now you want to talk?!”

My mind flashes to the look on my mother’s face when she told me what had happened. She’d stopped by Sandra’s to drop off a dress she’d borrowed, opting to hang it in her closet for her, only she walked in on my dad and Sandra naked and tangled in Sandra’s bed. She flew out of there, crying and broken, and Sutton walked her to her car, apologizing like it was his fault.

He had good reason to feel guilty, too.

He knew. He could’ve stopped it. He could’ve spoken up at the very least. He could’ve prevented my mother from finding out the way she did. It wasn’t his fault that they cheated, but he stood back and did nothing about it. And for that, I can’t forgive him.

“My mother tried to kill herself!” I yell through a whisper, as if there are ears lined up and down the hall. Not many people know that my mother, five time Emmy award winning actress, Diane Hudson, tried to take her own life after her marriage crumbled. As her daughter, it’s my job to pick up the pieces, arguably a burden much too heavy for a teenage girl. I do it though. I do it because I love her, and all we have left is each other.

Sutton hangs his head, opening his mouth to speak until the shuffle of scuffling sneakers against tile jerks our attention toward a red-faced Coach Wiggins.

“Pierce! What the heck are you doing out in this hallway? I put you in time out.” She pauses for a second, studying our faces with her hands on her hip. “Come on, kid. Let’s go. NOW. Lauryn, you get along. Go find the nurse.”

The blood is half dry before I make it to the nurse’s office, but the pain is already subsiding.

“Oh, honey, let’s get you cleaned up,” the white-haired nurse says sweetly as I walk in. “Coach Wiggins called ahead. Said you took a dodge ball to the nose. Ouch.”

I nod, saying nothing because my mind was too busy thinking about Sutton.

“Do you want to file a report against the boy who did this to you? It would go home with his parents and another copy would go to yours. If your nose is broken and requires surgery, it’s a mandatory process.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t want to file a report against him. It was an accident.”

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but I don’t need any more excuses to have anything to do with my dad and Sandra or with Sutton.