One Moment Please (Wait With Me #3)(71)

Lynsey makes everything personal and fun and carefree. Even when she sleeps, she seems completely at peace, her lips parted slightly and her dark hair fanned on the white pillow. Frankly, watching Lynsey sleep and talk to the baby has become almost therapeutic for me these past couple of months. I’m sure she could psychoanalyze the shit out of whatever fucked-up meaning stands behind that, but for now, all I care is that I like her here in my bed, knowing she’s safe.

And the sex…is fucking mind-blowing. For being so sweet and innocent-looking, the girl likes some kink in the bedroom. And fuck—that combination is lethal for me.

Maybe if things were different…maybe if my past hadn’t fucked me up so much, we could be something more. Though Lynsey’s past isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Lennon’s pain was her pain. She felt it acutely, even beyond the fact that she donated bone marrow for her niece. How is it possible for Lynsey to experience such heartache and still feel she can make the world a better place?

After everything that happened with Julian, the ER was literally the only contribution I could continue to make to mankind. And that’s only because I don’t have to follow up with patients or see any of them beyond the emergent state they find me in. I patch them up and pass them off. End of story. No connection. No long-term commitment.

Julian was different. He was small and wide-eyed and hopeful, just like Lynsey. He was my favorite little man. And now he’s gone.

And it was all my fucking fault.

The baby moves again, and my eyes sting with unshed tears over all that could happen to this kid too. All the pain and horrors in this world that are out of my hands. I can’t prevent everything, and that thought is terrifying.

That’s why I professionally detach. That’s why I can’t fully give myself to this baby or Lynsey. Because I need to keep my eyes wide open. I need to be able to see past them. Caring about them, loving them, will distract me from what’s most important—their safety.

But for right now, I will take this moment. I will savor this quiet time in the dark between this little baby and me and imagine what it would be like if life could be different.





“The directions say to slide the loose springs over the dowel and insert it just above the bottom hole in the drop side railing,” Lynsey says, her voice strained as we stand over a half put together crib in my once upon a time office.

“I told you there are no fucking dowels,” I growl, chucking the wrench to the floor. It clunks loudly on the hard wood, probably leaving a scuff, but I seriously don’t give a shit right now. I’m hot and irritated that something made for a baby needs a fucking team to put together. “I told you this crib you ordered online is missing parts.”

“I’m telling you that I went through all the parts earlier, and they were here!” She looks around the room with one hand on her thirty-week swollen belly.

“So what the hell happened to them?”

“I don’t know,” she exclaims, balling up the directions and throwing them over her shoulder. “Everything is a mess in here! If you’d get your big-ass desk moved out, then maybe we’d have some room to work.”

“Maybe if we didn’t get so many damn packages every single day, we’d know where shit is.” I retrieve the stupid wrench off the floor. “My garage is so full of cardboard boxes that I’m still going to be breaking them down when this kid goes to college.”

Lynsey makes a guttural noise in her throat. “Maybe if you’d let me have Dean over to help me move some of this stuff and put things together like I said in the beginning, it wouldn’t have piled up so much.”

“I told you I don’t need Dean’s fucking help,” I grind out, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. I don’t want him coming in and showing her how much better he can do this. That he could replace me. “And you’d better not tell him about this crib debacle, or I swear to God—”

Her brown eyes flash with rage. “Are you ever going to stop being jealous of Dean?”

“Are you ever going to stop acting like he could replace me at a moment’s notice?” I snap back.

“I don’t say that,” she exclaims, her face paling. “I’ve never acted like that.”

“You did in the beginning.” I can tell by her face that she knows I’m telling the truth.

She huffs out a noise while turning to leave the room when suddenly, her foot slides on a pile of bubble wrap. Her hands fly out as she falters. I lunge forward, just in time to wrap my arms around her waist and pull her into my body. I heave several large breaths as a sharp pain in my chest erupts when I think of what could have happened had I not been here. How bad that fall could have been for her and the baby.

I can’t lose her.

I can’t.

I won’t.

Lynsey exhales heavily and looks up at me with wide, apologetic eyes. Her gaze dips to my lips and darkens with something I’ve seen before, and the next thing I know, we’re naked and fucking on the hardwood floor amidst a sea of cardboard boxes and bubble wrap because, well…

We have lost our fucking minds.

And I don’t know how to stop it.

We’ve been playing house for months, and I’ve become completely obsessed with the woman riding me and calling out my name at the top of her lungs. A strand of her brown hair is stuck in her mouth as her nails bite into my chest. Her moans are loud and sexy as fuck as she gyrates her pelvis over top of me, chasing her orgasm like it’s on the run. I grip her sides and pump up into her, matching her intensity and marveling over how I’ve become so used to her belly now, and so consumed and beguiled by everything else about her.