Only When It's Us (Bergman Brothers #1)(48)

I’m a doctor’s son. I know about patient-physician confidentiality and I’m not a snoop. I honestly try not to think about all the sick people my dad cares for each day. Cancer’s depressing, and selfishly, I’m absorbed enough in my own damaged body not to want to think about other ways our bodies fail. So it’s not like I’m looking or even noticing labels until a last name practically screams itself at me.

Sutter.

Sutter, Joy is a patient of my dad’s, and according to the basic information page that fell out of her folder as if the universe insisted I see it, she’s in Room 337. I stand abruptly, feeling the room swim.

Sutter. It’s a common enough last name. LA’s a huge place. It’s probably no particular connection to Willa. But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like something I’m supposed to know.

Dad taps my shoulder gently, and I spin.

“You all right?” he asks.

I nod. Hot, I mouth, pulling my shirt from my chest as if cooling myself.

Dad seems satisfied with that. I let him hug me hard once more goodbye before he sends me off. I walk the hallway, counting tiles, telling myself not to look at door numbers, to not even think about them. Even if this Joy Sutter is someone to Willa, who am I to know? It’s not like Willa told me.

Her voice storms my head as the memory of her anger, her frustration, floods my thoughts.

“Why do I know almost nothing about you?”

If this person is Willa’s and means something to her, Willa has some balls to give me shit for holding my cards close, when she’s been silently carrying a much heavier burden. As I’m walking and working my way through those thoughts, I hear a familiar sound. It carries faintly and distorted, an auditory mirage in the distance.

I freeze in place, turning on my heel when I catch the noise again.

That’s Willa.

My body instinctively takes me toward the sound. I bypass rolling computer carts, sidestep a nurse, until I’m outside a door that’s cracked open. I don’t let myself see the room number, not yet. Instead, I see two feet tucked up on a bed. A pair of water-logged sneakers I watched walk away from my car just a few hours ago.

Willa.

Then I hear her voice in a way I hear no one else’s. Not perfectly, not exactly how I want to, but with a clarity otherwise foreign to me since my ears went to hell.

There’s her laugh again. Then another word. One that lands like a knife in my heart.

Mama.





I sit in my usual seat, waiting for Willa in our first Business Math class since everything got hot and heavy and superbly confusing on that damn hike. The room fills up quickly because Aiden’s known for being a hard-ass who starts class on time and doesn’t take kindly to late arrivals. The minute hand ticks closer to the hour. Nervousness is a weight wrapped around my body, compressing my muscles, tightening my throat. It’s dread, not just nervousness. What is Willa thinking after what happened? What if things are going to be stilted and uncomfortable now?

My eyes scan the back of the room. Maybe she’s sitting there. I could see her making a point of creating distance. As I squint, craning my neck, I hear a voice from my right.

“Looking for someone, Lumberjack?”

I startle, once again smacking my knee against the desk, this time truly nailing my patella. On a groan, I drop my head to the wood surface. Willa’s hand lands warm on my back, two platonic pats. My phone buzzes, and I unlock it to read her message. Your hearing might be shit but you’ve still got reflexes like a coked-out monkey.

I sit up slowly, turning toward her as I type back, Where do you even come up with that?

She glances down at her screen, then up to me, and shrugs. “Who knows.”

Our eyes hold and I steal a chance to examine them for whatever insight they can give me. I see the pinch at the corner of her chocolate brown eyes. I catch the faint smudge of purple under her lower lashes. She looks tired. Worried.

I start to type, but Willa’s hand wraps gently around my wrist. I look up at her and watch her say, “The hike was…weird.”

I nod, warring with words begging to be said. Good weird? Bad weird? Never-again weird? I-want-to-jump-your-bones-and-do-it-forever weird?

Removing her grip, Willa offers her hand, as if we’re meeting for the first time. “Frenemies still?”

I stare at her, trying to process what she said. Frenemies? I mouth.

She nods, hand unmoving. “As we were. Nothing changed.”

My stomach drops. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t sit right. Nothing changed? Bullshit. It’s different between us, and Willa wants to pretend it’s not. Worse, maybe she’s not pretending. Maybe, to her, that difference is nonexistent. Well then, I’ll just have to show her.

I wrap my hand around hers and watch her breath hitch, her spine straighten. My heart pounds a violent tattoo against my ribs. My thumb skates along the satin skin of her wrist, over her pulse which trips beneath my touch. Dad’s words weave through my mind.

Being around her made me wake up and sit straighter. Simply existing in her sphere made my blood run hot, my heart beat hard.

Willa’s ramrod straight, her pupils blown wide. Her pulse flies beneath my thumb. There it is. Confirmation.

Nothing changed my ass.

Willa pulls away first.

I need time to figure out how the hell we’re going to talk about this because we are damn well going to talk about it. For now, I need to know. I need to know about today and tomorrow and if she’s okay. I have to see if she’ll open up and let me in, even just a sliver of truth about what’s going on in her life. I’ve been worried about her since I heard her in the hospital. I can’t imagine what it’s like, what she’s feeling and going through. Her mom is sick. Really sick.