My Only - Alex & Jamie (11 page)

“Okay, well, bye, see you later.” Jamie knew something was up. It was probably time she dealt with it. She had tried several courses of action to keep her distance and none of them had
been terribly successful. She knew he probably had more questions than ever for her now that he had heard Amber mention Joey. She wasn’t great at letting people in, but over the last week she had genuinely grown to trust Alex. Not in the romantic sense, but as a friend.

She took a deep breath as she pushed open the door. Alex was sitting up in his bed smiling at her, looking ridiculously sexy of course. She moved and sat in the chair beside his bed.

“That was subtle.” She nodded her head to the hallway that had just been filled with his relatives.

“I never claimed to be subtle,” he said, his green eyes looking more serious than she had seen them look before. “So you have a son?”

“Yes. Joey is five. He's my whole world.” Jamie figured she would answer whatever questions he had and then maybe he would be less interested in her. The mystery would be gone and he would ‘get bored’ as the girls at The Grill had said he would. Then maybe they could just be friends without the sexual tension. That thought made her feel both sad and relieved.

“How old were you when you had him?” he asked. She could hear the genuine concern in his voice. He didn’t ask that question the way most people did when they found out she was a mom.

“I was eighteen.”

“Where’s Joey’s dad?”

If Jamie didn’t know better she would think that Alex sounded jealous. But from what everyone had said about him over the past week – which was a lot – she knew that really wasn’t his style.

“He passed away when I was four months pregnant. Car accident.”

“Oh my God. Jamie, I’m so sorry,” Alex said in a near-whisper.

“It’s fine. I mean, of course, I feel bad for Joey, but we’re fine,” she said. It was her patented answer whenever someone found out about Joey’s dad. But deep down, she was really worried about her little boy growing up without a dad.

“What about your family? Were they around to help?” He asked.

Jamie had to smile, not because it was a happy memory but because she still couldn’t quite comprehend what she was about to tell Alex.

She let out a forced laugh, shaking her head, “Well, about a month before I was due I came home from work and found a note on the fridge. It was from my mom, and it said that her boyfriend - of
two
weeks
mind you - thought that her being a grandma was 'creepy' so they were taking off to Arizona, where he wouldn’t be reminded of the fact that she was about to be one.” Jamie tried to blink away the tears that she felt forming in her eyes, she looked down at her hands folded on her lap, “That was almost six years ago. I haven’t heard from her since.”

“Jamie.” Alex’s voice sounded strong now.

She didn’t want to look up at him. She didn’t trust herself to hold it together if she did.

“Jamie, come here,” he said, his voice edged with a plea.

She lifted her head and the look in his eye made her heart nearly stop. It wasn’t pity, it wasn’t disgust. It was caring, it was support.

“Come here,” he repeated.

Her mind raced, she knew she shouldn’t move. She should just stay where she was. She knew that if she did what Alex was asking she would be in even more dangerous territory than she already was. But despite that fact, she felt herself rising out of her chair.

She stepped up next to the bed and Alex pulled her into him. Her head automatically rested on his shoulder as if that was where she belonged. As his arm wrapped firmly around her, she clasped her hands at the back of his neck to make sure she didn’t put any pressure on his ribs. His fingers moved in a small circular motion as they pressed into her lower back. She felt his chest rising and falling against hers. She could hear him breathing as though he was trying to calm down, the air rushing in and out of his nose.

She didn’t want him to be upset or worried about her, “I’m okay, Alex. Really. It was a long time ago,” she said as she allowed herself the luxury of resting on his broad shoulder, reveling for just a moment in the sense of security that being held in his strong arms gave her. It felt so good. She wanted to melt into him.

It felt
too
good in fact. She tried to pull away, but he pulled his arms tighter around her. She knew that this was just a hug. She had seen Alex’s family over the past week they all seemed to be huggers. This was just his way of expressing his concern. A friendly embrace. That’s all this was.

Her brain knew that, but her hormones had a different take on things. They were convinced that this contact was more than just friendly support. She felt her breathing growing
ragged. His fingers pressing into her lower back, gently massaging her, were sending all kinds of tingles in places not nearly as innocent as where Alex was actually touching her.

“Alex,” She lifted her head and they were face to face, barely an inch of space between them. She felt the intensity of his stare all the way down to her toes. She reached up and touched his cheek. She felt his stubble beneath her fingertips.

He leaned into her touch and pressed his lips softly to her wrist. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think, she didn’t want to second-guess herself, she just wanted to feel. She just wanted to be in the moment. To be present.

A loud beep sounded, startling her, and she jumped back. She stood for several moments just staring at Alex, who looked almost as shocked as she was by what had just transpired between them. They were both breathing heavily. Neither said anything.

The door opened just as her watch beeped again. It was the alarm she had set to remind her to change the dressing on his back. She heard a noise behind her and looked over her shoulder just as Dr. Corbin was coming in the room, making his nightly rounds.

Jamie’s stomach plummeted to the ground. What if her alarm hadn’t gone off? What if Dr. Corbin had walked in and seen her and Alex a few moments before?

She could have been fired. Or at least written up. What was she doing? This was crazy, and it had to stop.

Alex had been feeling restless, anxious, and frustrated all day. He didn’t do well with down time and that was all he had had over the past week. The only bright spots in his days had been the time he had spent with Jamie. But the more time he spent with her, the more complicated his feelings for her seemed to be. Or, maybe not his
feelings
, so much - those were exceptionally clear - but definitely the situation.

Now Alex was visiting with Mike Hunter, his fire chief, Mike's wife Grace, and Mike's father, Grandpa J (aka The Colonel). They had stopped by and brought him a care package that some of the folks at Harper’s Garden Nursing Home had put together for him. Still, despite their kindness, he was having a hard time doing anything but thinking about Jamie.

“Does that sound good?” Mike asked, pulling him back into the conversation.

“What?” Alex asked, having no idea what he was referring to.

“I said that the seniors wanted to hold a banquet in your honor two weeks from Saturday.”

Alex wished they wouldn’t do that. It felt wrong for them to ‘honor’ him when he had just been doing his job. But he knew that once those folks set their minds to something, it was happening, He figured there was no use in trying to talk them out of it. He would just grin and bear it.

“Sure, that sounds great.” Alex tried his best to sound enthused, or if not that, then at least grateful.

“I spoke to Doc Corbin and he says that once you get out of here it should only be a couple of weeks before you can come back to the firehouse. You’ll be on restricted duty, of course,” Mike explained.

“A couple of weeks?” Alex repeated, disappointed at what he had just heard. He had only been focused on going home, nothing more. He hadn’t even thought about the downtime he would still be facing once he got out of the hospital.

“Afraid so.” Mike confirmed before patting Alex on the arm, “Honestly kid, if you wanted some time off all you had to do was ask. This is a little extreme.”

“Ha Ha,” Alex smiled, appreciating the fact that Mike was trying to cheer him up even though it wasn’t really working.

“Alex, you’ll be back to full duty in no time,” Mike’s tone grew very serious, “This could have been a lot worse. That beam that hit you could have done a lot more damage. You’re lucky your injuries were this minor, it could have been fatal.”

A somber silence fell over the room. Mike and Grace had tragically lost their son Nick in a car accident the summer after his senior year of high school. Alex got the point. He knew that Mike was right and that he was just feeling sorry for himself.

“Basically, son, you just need to drink a can of suck it up,” Grandpa J added, lightening the mood in the room.

“Dad,” Grace said, shaking her head while Mike and Alex smiled.

Mike’s pager went off and after looking at it, he said, “I’ve got to get going. Take care of yourself and Alex, do what the doctors tell you to do. That’s an order.”

“Got it,” Alex replied.

Grace looked at the watch on her wrist, “I better get downstairs. My shift starts in a few.”

She stepped to the bed and leaned down, kissing him on his forehead, “You let us know if you need anything, sweetie. Anything at all.”

“I will.” Alex felt himself getting a little choked up.

His mom, Cheryl, had never been very nurturing. She had battled with severe bi-polar disorder. Sometimes she would be really happy and sometimes she would be really sad. But he couldn’t remember a time when her drastic mood swings included comforting or caring. When Alex was four, she left. After that, he only saw her sporadically until he was eight at which point she had lost her battle and overdosed.

“You coming, Dad?” Mike asked The Colonel as he and Grace were headed out.

“Nah, I think I’ll keep the boy company for a little while,” Grandpa J said as he stood and moved to sit in the chair next to the bed, the one that Grace had just occupied.

As soon as the doors shut he asked, “So, how’s that pretty little nurse of yours?”

“She’s good.” Alex could tell that this conversation was going somewhere. He had never known The Colonel to bring a subject up unless he had something he wanted to say about it.

“You know she works over at The Grill?” he asked, although Alex was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

“I do know that,” Alex answered anyway.

“Two jobs and a small boy to care for. That girl’s got a lot on her plate,” Grandpa J said with a very protective sub-text.

“Yes, she does.” Alex knew exactly what he was getting at.

“I hear you asked for her hand,” Grandpa J stated as he lifted his left eyebrow.

Alex remembered seeing that face before. When he was thirteen The Colonel had caught him with a girl under the bleachers. He had gotten a pretty stern lecture about the right way to treat a lady. Now over a decade later, he thought he was about to get the same lecture.

“I did, but I don’t remember it. It was the night of the accident, I was pretty out of it,” Alex explained.

“She know that?” The Colonel pointedly asked.

“Of course she does.” From what Alex had heard, in fact, Jamie was setting everyone and their brother straight on that matter.

When his cousin Becca, who was friends with Nina, who worked with Jamie at The Grill, told him how adamantly Jamie was denying that anything was going on between them, he had to admit it had it actually bothered him a little bit. Normally the opposite happened with him. More often than not, girls exaggerated whatever relationship they perceived happening between the two of them.

“Because, son, you don’t play house with a girl in her situation.” Grandpa J’s stern tone left no room for misinterpretation.

He wanted to put the Colonel’s mind at ease, to tell him he would never do anything to hurt Jamie - or Joey for that matter.

Alex had never lied to anyone he was seeing, had never led anyone on. They had all known the deal. He had friends, he kept things casual, and he didn’t do ‘relationships.’ Sure, there had been some girls that thought they would be ‘the one’ to change him, to make him see the error of his ways. But that had never happened.

Until now. Until Jamie. With Jamie he wanted things he had never thought he would. He wanted to be in a relationship with her. He wanted everyone to know that she was his and visa-versa. Finding out that she had a son, far from discouraging him, had made him want that even more. He wanted to be with her more, not less. And they weren’t even ‘seeing’ each other, per se.

Damn, he had it bad.

“I know, Colonel. I would never do that.” Alex looked him straight in the eye.

Grandpa J waited a few moments, holding his stare. Finally, he nodded and said, “Make sure that you don’t.”

As if on cue, Jamie walked in, carrying his dinner tray. They both must have had odd expressions on their faces because she paused for a moment before saying, “Sorry to interrupt. I just need to drop this off.”

Today she wore light blue scrubs with little Garfield faces on them. Her hair was down and it had a soft wave to it. She looked young, and fresh, and happy...amazing.