The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden(48)

I crouched down in front of him, keeping enough distance to make me comfortable. “Are you sick or something? You look…”

“Like shit,” he finished for me as he got to his feet and sighed.

My gaze snapped down to his leg, swollen twice its size, blotchy and red. “What happened to your leg?”

He released a slow exhale as he inclined against the brick wall of the school. “I may or may not have forgotten to take my insulin for the last few days.”

“You’re a diabetic?”

He put a finger to his lips and shook his head. “Don’t tell anyone. I don’t like to show weakness. It’s a weird thing with me.”

“Why haven’t you been taking your shots?”

“I ran out and never picked up more. It’s another weird thing with me… I sometimes can’t bring myself to stab a needle into my body.”

I didn’t press as I eyed his leg, enflamed from the knee down. “Do you need me to take you to the doctor? Or go find Kayden?”

He shook his head, stepping forward and then stumbled back, banging his elbow into the wall. “Don’t tell Kayden. When I say no one knows, I mean no one knows.”

I adjusted the strap of my bag higher up on my shoulder. “I think you need to go to the doctor.”

“I know I need to go to the doctor.” Putting some weight on his leg, he hobbled toward me. “Look, don’t you have stuff you don’t want people to know?”

I nodded warily. “Yeah.”

“Okay, well for me, this is one of those things,” he said. “So can you keep quiet about it?”

I nodded again. “As long as you let me take you to the doctor.”

He shut his eyes, breathed in through his nose, and his chest expanded out from underneath his shirt as he opened his eyelids. “Okay, we have a deal. Let me go change my clothes, make an appointment, and then I’ll meet you out front in like twenty minutes.”

“Maybe you should just go to the ER,” I suggested. “You look terrible.”

“ER trips cost a lot of money,” he replied, limping toward the metal doors. “Money I don’t have.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you out front,” I told him and then he stepped inside, letting the door slam shut behind him.

As I headed for my dorm to drop my stuff off, I had no idea how I’d gotten myself into the situation. I’d spent the last six years trying to stay away from guys, but it seems like that’s all I've been around lately, but I wasn’t going to bail out on him.

When I met him out front twenty minutes later, it turned out he couldn’t get into the doctor for another two hours, so we exchanged numbers and I promised him I’d be back from the gym in time to take him.

Two hours later, we’re sitting in the office. Luke jiggles his knee up and down as I read through a copy of People magazine while finishing off a piece of licorice. I changed out of my workout clothes into jeans and a t-shirt. I’m surprised how well I’m handling what I did at the gym with Kayden. Sitting on top of him like that was strange, but my body liked it. A lot. Seth teased me about it the entire drive home and I kept waiting for it to crash into me, yet I still feel fine.

Luke’s skin looks almost yellow beneath the lighting of the waiting room. I flip the page and then tilt my head to the side to try and make out what I’m looking at.

“Don’t you hate doctor’s offices?” Luke says abruptly.

I glance up and his brown eyes are huge as he stares at a man across from us, hacking into his hand. “I guess so.”

He scratches agitatedly at his temple until there are red streaks on his skin. “It’s so f*cking unsanitary.”

I close the magazine and drop it on the table. “Maybe if you didn’t think about it so much, then you’d relax a little.”

He pauses and his foot quits tapping. “I just really hate needles.”

It makes no sense, since he’s probably had to take insulin shots for a while. The fear in his eyes makes me wonder if there’s more to his phobia than just the needles, though.

“Okay, think of something else.” I scoop up a copy of Sports Illustrated from off the table beside me. “Read this. It’ll help take your mind off stuff.”

His eyebrows furrow as he takes the magazine from me and studies the girl on the cover. “You know, I don’t remember you being this way in high school. You were really quiet and everyone…” He trails off, but I know what he was going to say; that everyone made fun of me, picked on me, teased and tortured me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bring that stuff up.”