Rock the Cradle: An Mpreg Romance (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 6) Page 7

  "Me?" Alex pressed a hand to his chest. "I honestly just feel bad about what an ass I've been. I'll probably be an ass again in the future, but I'm trying."

  "Okay, but why?" Amadi's face contorted. "You've been pretty up front about your opinion of him, of us. Why are you all of a sudden Team Derek?"

  "I'm not." Alex shook his head. "I don't know him well enough to be on Team Derek or not. That's my fault, and I'm trying to work through it." Alex scratched his head. "Isn't that what you normally do, when you've been wrong? Apologize and try to make it right?"

  Amadi huffed out a little laugh. "I'm not sure cupcakes make up for five noise complaints on an empty condo."

  Alex’s cheeks burned. "Probably not. But it's a start, I guess. It's not like I could bring a bottle of vodka by."

  Amadi grinned then. "Well what do you know? You were listening after all!"

  Alex would have replied to that, but he heard two people walking up the hallway. He turned around only to see Derek supporting all of Carmela's weight. His narrow jaw was set, probably against what had to be agony in his broken ribs, but his voice never lost a bit of smoothness as he spoke quietly to his charge in Spanish.

  He guided Carmela to the couch and spoke to her again, before turning to Alex. "Okay. She's uncomfortable with this, but she's in a lot of pain so she's willing to give it a shot. You're going to have to trust me to understand what she's saying and tell you truthfully, okay?"

  Alex swallowed. "I can do that." He looked over at her. "Let me know if I'm hurting you."

  He unwrapped the bandages on her feet, and recoiled from what he saw. "Okay," he said, getting control of himself. "I can see what's wrong right away." He looked up into Carmela's eyes, shining with pain. She seemed to be following his words, so he kept going. "Your feet aren't healing, and I'm pretty sure they're not healing because you're allergic to the ointment they gave you. Do they itch?"

  "Si." She nodded and gripped Derek's hand.

  "Okay. You've developed a rash, and I think you're getting a bit of an infection. I'm going to prescribe you a new ointment, and an antihistamine, and some antibiotics. You might feel a little bit drowsy because of the antihistamines, but it's the only way to cure the itching and help your body to heal from the burns. Do you understand and can you accept that?"

  Carmela's dark eyebrows knit together, and she rattled off a stream of Spanish Alex couldn't hope to follow. Derek responded, and then he turned to Alex. "She's uncomfortable with anything that makes her sleepy. Is there anything you could give her that wouldn't make her sleepy?"

  "Not really. We could give that for hay fever, but not for an allergic reaction like this. We want your feet to heal," he explained, addressing her directly. "We need for them to stop reacting as soon as possible, so you can get better. The side effect is fairly mild. You can take it when you're alone in your room and lock the door if you're more comfortable with that."

  Carmela blushed and spoke again. Derek grinned and ruffled her hair, and then he translated for Alex. "She says she knows she's safe with me, she just doesn't like to remember how it felt when the traffickers drugged her. We'll work something out, though."

  "Okay." Alex looked away. "I'll ask Rick to bring some things over after his shift ends, if you think you'll still be up. He'll probably want to have a word with Holmes about the follow up, too." He couldn't look directly at Derek right now.

  He stayed for a little longer, making small talk about the complex, and then he got up to leave. Derek escorted him to the door, and Alex’s pulse raced.

  Derek stepped outside the door and let it shut behind him. They stood on the little landing that connected their two entrances and looked at one another for a moment, the humid, buggy air surrounding them. Then Derek spoke. "Thanks for coming out and looking at Carmela's burns. She hasn't wanted to complain, but I know they've been bothering her."

  "I'd imagine they have." Alex grimaced. "That's not why I came over, though. I needed to apologize. I've been a dick."

  Derek snickered. "Thank you for that, too. I hope we can maybe get along a little better going forward."

  Alex stepped into Derek's space. He had no idea what made him think this would be okay, but he could no more stop himself than he could stop the tide. He'd had to look at those full, dark lips all night. "This okay?" he murmured.

  Derek nodded, and Alex brought Derek's lips down to his.

  Derek kissed like he meant it. His long, thin fingers cradled Alex’s face and he opened up readily under Alex’s questing tongue. This close, Alex could smell the sandalwood soap Derek used and the vaguely lavender scent of his shampoo. His close-cropped beard felt downy under Alex’s fingertips.

  Alex never wanted the kiss to end.

  Just then they heard footsteps coming toward the door. They moved with too much force to belong to Carmela. Alex and Derek stepped apart just in time for Amadi to open the door and clear his throat meaningfully. "Anyway, thanks for the cupcakes," Derek said. He didn't blush, or miss a beat. "I'll see you soon."

  Alex followed Derek's lead, although the way his cheeks burned told him he didn't succeed quite as well at hiding his embarrassment. "Definitely. I'm going to want to follow up with Carmela."

  Alex headed into his apartment. He could hear Amadi scolding Derek in half whispers as both doors closed behind them. What did Amadi have to complain about, anyway? They were both consenting adults, and they'd only kissed.

  He locked himself into his condo and fixed himself a martini. What a kiss it had been! If he closed his eyes, he could still catch Derek's sandalwood and lavender scent over the clean juniper of his cocktail. How long had he been attracted to Derek, anyway?

  It couldn't have been that long. He hadn't known what his neighbor looked like until the morning after his arrival in Alex’s ER. And sure, Derek was a beautiful man, but he was an even better person. It was seeing Derek with Carmela that had pushed Alex over.

  Alex frowned at himself. He wasn't going to pretend he wasn't attracted to Derek. What did it mean for him that he was?

  Chapter Five

  Amadi didn't say anything until after Carmela retreated to bed, but once she had and her door was closed he turned to Derek. "Seriously? Mr. Noise Complaint?"

  Derek knew he was blushing, but he didn't care. "What? It's a nice night, he's a good looking guy, it was only a kiss."

  "He's not our kind of people, Derek." Amadi sat down on the other end of the couch, the one Carmela vacated. "You may or may not recall his father saying almost that exact same thing, right here in your living room."

  Derek shrugged as best he could. "I know." He shook his head, and reveled in the feel of his long hair against his shoulders. With hair like that, he could never be "like" the Brennans. Hadn't he grown it out just to flip people like that off? "I know," he said again, "and I wouldn't want to be their kind of people. I'm a rock and roll DJ, and I wouldn't want to be anything else. Okay?"

  "Then why mess around with Dr. Stuffypants?" Amadi threw his hands into the air and cast his eyes up to the popcorn ceiling. "I mean really, why?"

  "It's not forever, Amadi. It's a kiss, for crying out loud. Sometimes a kiss is nice."

  "But you could be kissing someone normal. Someone like us. What about that bartender we met during that promo appearance last week?" Amadi turned to face Derek.

  "Oh, him." Derek looked away. "Don't you think he was kind of intense?" He wrinkled his nose. "Anyway, nothing happened. And nothing's going to happen with Dr. Alex, either."

  "You're damn right nothing's going to happen with Dr. Alex." Amadi screwed his face up and mocked the name. "You want to know why? Because guys like Dr. Alex don't go for people like us, okay? Not for the long term. They'll slum it for a few days or weeks, but when it comes time to make things serious they wind up wanting someone who'll fit in with their families and the rest of the country club."

  "Oh my God." Alex couldn't help but laugh at his brother. "You're sitting here thinking about the rest of my lif
e, are you kidding me? I'm twenty-four, man. I'm not thinking of the rest of my life. I'm not even really thinking the rest of this year. It's been a little while, it's nice to get a little bit of attention here and there. That's it."

  Amadi glared, but there wasn't any heat to it. "I just don't want to see you caught up in a jam, or worse yet getting your heart broken over a guy like that. "

  Derek snickered. "No worries there. Can you imagine? He'd probably call in a noise complaint on himself, just for having sex with me!" He slouched down into a more relaxed position. "I have way too much going on in my life right now to think about anything beyond a moment anyway, you know that."

  Amadi sighed and bowed his head for a second. "Don't you ever think about the future, though? I mean you must want something, right?"

  Derek shook his head. "I don't think about it much." He grimaced. "I sometimes wonder if I don't think about it because I'd scream if I did, but hey. I'm not exactly hurting, you know? I've got a good life, and I'm not one of those guys that sits around pining. Maybe I will be when I'm in my thirties. Maybe I'll have regrets when I'm in my forties, I don't know. I think I'd have more if I tried to force myself into some kind of mold just to please guys, instead of being me."

  Amadi threw him a wan grin. "I know. I know you would. I just worry about you, you know? It can be cold out there."

  "It can. But hey, I've got everything I need."

  Derek did have everything he needed, and as the next week wore on he couldn't help but be grateful he was still single. He was grateful to every one of his former foster parents, too, as he tried to help Carmela. When he'd been a traumatized kid in foster care, he hadn't understood these strangers were just trying to help him. He only wanted the impossible—his life back, the way things used to be, with maybe a little more sobriety thrown in.

  Carmela was older than Derek had been, and she could understand what was happening. She wasn't just being taken out of a familiar environment and being stuffed into a house full of strangers. She'd chosen to stay with Derek while they tried to get her life back together. The fact remained however, that Carmela was a traumatized young woman who needed a lot of help and support.

  Derek couldn't drive, and wouldn't be able to drive for a while yet. Carmela's support staff had to come to them, which meant an influx of visitors that felt almost constant to Derek. His home, the one for which Derek had scrimped and saved, wasn't really his own anymore. He could live with that, though.

  Trying to keep the place stocked well enough to have something to offer each social worker, therapist, and detective that showed up to talk to Carmela, on the other hand, was proving to be a little bit more of a challenge than he could quite manage.

  He tried, though, and for the most part he succeeded. And if Dr. Radic wanted to turn up her nose at the K-Cups he had to offer, well, she could do that. The place was as clean as he could keep it under the circumstances, and a damn sight cleaner than most of the foster homes where he'd lived as a child.

  Carmela didn't want to reach out to her family back in California. She had her reasons, and Derek wasn't about to shame her for them. He sat with Dr. Radic and Ms. Myles on Wednesday and discussed the issue with them. "I've seen this happen before, you know. The bad guys, they really go to town on these kids' heads. On some level, Carmela knows her parents love her and always will, but she isn't at the point yet where she can trust that knowledge."

  Myles nodded slowly. "She says her parents were fairly religious."

  Both Derek and Dr. Radic winced. The latter went on. "There are plenty of religious people who won't blame her, of course. The Church I grew up in understood that suffering violence, and doing what you have to do to survive, is not a sin. But there are others out there that are different, I suppose, and she knows her family better than anyone."

  "Maybe." Derek waggled his good hand from side to side. "I've seen kids eventually get through that fear and reunite with their families, even super religious ones. My guess, and she hasn't said anything about it, is the kidnappers used her faith against her when they were trying to get into her head. But I'm not an expert."

  "You could have fooled me." Myles grinned. "Seriously, you do seem to know a lot."

  "I might have known a few people." Derek squirmed. "Anyway, I don't know her folks at all. But if we try to push it, it'd be a disaster."

  "We'll see what the advocate has to say." Radic rested her head in her hand for a moment. "I have to say, I agree with you, Derek. It's not something I want to push. We need to get to the bottom of how she wound up in that situation in the first place. I don't want to force her back to her parents if they're behind that disaster. And I don't want to put her in a situation where she'll be shamed if she goes back. She deserves better."

  Carmela did deserve better. Fortunately, changing her medication and getting her on some antihistamines helped with those feet of hers, and she started to see some progress right away. Lessening the physical pain seemed to help with some of her anxiety, which contributed to progress with therapy.

  They were baby steps, of course. As with all of the survivors, these things would take time.

  The slow progress frustrated Carmela. "I'm not getting any better!" She flopped back onto the couch one day after Dr. Radic left. "I still can't remember how to speak English, I'm still afraid of my own shadow, I still have nightmares every night. I thought therapy was supposed to fix all of this stuff!"

  Derek could only sigh. "Does it help to know it took years, for me?"

  She glared at him. "Not especially."

  Derek chuckled at that. "Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. It did take years, and I still have nightmares sometimes. I'm okay with it, though. Now, I didn't go through what you did, so I can't tell you exactly, 'Oh, this will help you,' or 'Oh, don't do this, it won't work.' What I can tell you is that having stability in your life will probably help you quite a bit. I didn't start to get better until I was placed with Amadi and we got close. He, and his family, were my touchstones. I could kind of look to them, you know? They were people who were always in my life."

  "Okay." She nodded, dark hair falling into her face again. "That makes sense. But that's still kind of up in the air for me, isn't it?"

  Derek winced. "Well, yeah. A little bit. I'm going to stay in your life as long as you and the courts will allow, and for the most part Social Services wants to allow you to stay in a stable environment. That's part of why they were willing to let you stay here instead of shuffling you off to a group home or something. You'd identified someone you felt comfortable with, and that was enough for them. They, or you, might decide that you don't want to stay here long term though."

  She pulled her knees up to her chest. "I don't want to think about that."

  "Then don't." Derek grinned. "Like I told you, we're moving at your pace right now. You're the one that matters here. It might not feel like it sometimes, but my whole job right now is to make sure that you're comfortable and taken care of. And to remind people to think about your needs. Okay?"

  She smiled at him. "Okay."

  Derek didn't share his private conversations with Carmela with anyone else, and he didn't share any of the details of his conversations with her care team either. He would have been perfectly happy to keep his relationship with Carmela and his fling with Alex completely separate. That wasn't really possible, given that Alex was her doctor by default at this point, but he could try.

  Alex, had other ideas. Alex was full of questions. "Have you spoke to Carmela's family? When are they coming for her?"

  Derek groaned. "Honestly, Alex, you know I can't talk about that. It's not my place."

  Alex sighed and pouted, just a bit. "I know. I know. It's just it must be killing them, not knowing where she is."

  "Maybe." Derek closed his eyes and relaxed against Alex’s shoulder. "Maybe they put her there. Maybe she ran away and got nabbed. I don't know. When the advocate comes, we'll get to the bottom of everything but dude, we've got to go at Carme
la's pace, you know?"

  "Of course." Alex pulled Derek in a little bit closer. "It's just… Okay. I know what happened with Ayla from our side of the equation, okay? She went to spend time with our uncle, and he sent her off—" Alex cut himself off and turned his head away. All of his muscles stiffened, and Derek felt a pang in his own chest. Even years later, it still hurt Alex. "He gave her to someone. He took her from us, and gave her to the bad guys. She suffered most, and I'm not trying to pretend she didn't, but we also suffered, you know? We're also victims.

  "I guess what I'm trying to say is, even if one family member did a bad thing, there are people out there who are suffering, right now, because Carmela isn't in their lives. Don't they have a right to be rescued too?"

  Derek bit the inside of his cheek. He'd rather be kissing right now, but this was important. "Yeah. They do. And I know you, and your family, are suffering because of what happened to your sister. I wish there could have been some closure for you, some kind of peace. But Alex, my priority right now has to be Carmela. And I honestly do think everyone else's should be, too." He straightened himself up a little more.