Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(46)

His mother had won that particular one. And bitched that he was just like his father.

Not a compliment, and something he’d heard all his life—also something that didn’t mean shit because he’d never met the guy. All he had was a faded picture that was the only thing he’d ever put in a frame—

Why the hell was he thinking about that this morning?

Coffee was Starbucks Breakfast Blend. Workout clothes went on while it was brewing, and two mugs were downed over the sink as he watched the superearly traffic snake around the Northway’s curves in the dim light of dawn. The last thing he did was grab his iPod and put it in his ears. He was not a chatter to begin with, but Lord help some chipper chick with a motormouth today.

Downstairs in the workout room, the place was fairly empty, which was a huge relief, but not something that was going to last. Hopping on the treadmill closest to the door, he turned off the CNBC newscast on the overhead TV and got huffing.

Judas Priest carried his feet, and his mind unplugged, and his stiff, aching body got what it needed. All things considered, he was better than he had been coming out of the previous weekend. The headaches were still hanging in, but he was keeping up with his work and patient load, and functioning all right.

It made him wonder, though. Right before Jane had hit that tree, she’d had headaches, too. So if they’d been able to do an autopsy on the body, would they have found an aneurysm? Then again, what were the chances of the two of them both having one within—

Why did you do it, Jane? Why fake your death?

I don’t have time to explain now. Please. I know this is asking a lot. But there’s a patient who needs you, desperately, and I’ve been looking for you for over an hour, so I’m out of time—

“Fuck—” Manny quickly popped his feet off onto the side gunwales and gritted his teeth against the agony. Draping his upper body over the machine’s instrument panel, he breathed slow and steady—or as much as someone who’d been running a six-minute-mile pace could.

Over the last seven days, he’d learned through trial and error that when the pain struck, the best call was to blank out his mind and focus on nothing at all. And the fact that the simple cognitive trick worked was reassuring on the whole aneurysm front: If something was going to blow a hole in the wall of a cerebral artery, ain’t no yoga-two-part-breath shit going to make a difference.

There was a pattern, however. The onset seemed to follow thoughts either about Jane . . . or that wet dream he kept having.

Fucking hell, he’d had enough orgasms in his sleep to lame out even his libido. And, sick bastard that he was, the near-guarantee of being back with that female in his fantasies made him look forward to hitting the pillow for the first time in his life.

Although he couldn’t explain why certain cognitions would bring on the headaches, the good news was that he was getting better. Each day after that bizarre black hole of a weekend, he felt a bit more like himself.

When there was little but a dull ache remaining, Manny got back on the treadmill and finished the workout. On his way to the exit, he nodded to the early-morning stragglers who’d come in, but took off before anyone could Oh-my-God-are-you-okay him if they’d seen him take his breather.

Up in his place, he showered, changed into clean scrubs and his white jacket, and then grabbed his briefcase and hit the elevators. To beat the traffic, he took the surface roads through the city. The Northway was invariably jammed this time of day, and he made great time while he listened to old-school My Chemical Romance.

“I’m Not Okay” was a tune he couldn’t get enough of for some reason.

As he turned into the St. Francis Hospital complex, dawn’s early light had yet to break through fully, which suggested they were going to have clouds. Not that it mattered to him. Once he was inside the belly of the beast, short of a tornado, which had never happened in Caldwell, the weather didn’t affect him in the slightest. Hell, a lot of days, he came to work when it was dark and left when it was dark—but he’d never felt like he was missing out on life just because he wasn’t all I’ve seen sunshine, I’ve seen rain. . . .

Funny. He felt out of the loop now, though.

He’d come here from Yale Medical School after his surgical residency, and he’d meant to go on to Boston, or Manhattan, or Chicago. Instead, he’d made his mark here, and now it was over ten years later and he was still where he’d started. Granted, he was at the top of the heap, so to speak, and he’d saved and improved lives, and he’d taught the next generation of surgeons.

The trouble was, as he went down the ramp into the parking garage, all that seemed hollow, somehow.

He was forty-five years old, with at least half of his useful life in the bin, and what did he have to show for it? A condo full of Nike shit and a job that had taken over all his nooks and crannies. No wife. No kids. Christmases and New Years and Fourths of July were spent at the hospital—with his mother finding her own way for the holidays and no doubt pining for grandchildren she’d better not be holding her breath for.

Christ, how many random women had he f*cked over the years? Hundreds. Had to be.

His mother’s voice shot through his head: You’re just like your father.

Too true. His dad had also been a surgeon. With a wandering streak.

It was actually why Manny had picked Caldwell. His mother had been here at St. Francis as an ICU nurse, working to put him through his years and years of schooling. And when he’d graduated from med school? Instead of pride, there had been distance and reserve in her face.... The closer he’d become to what his father had been, the more often she’d gotten that faraway look in her eye. His idea had been that if they were in the same city, they’d start relating or some shit. Hadn’t worked out that way, though.