perfumed the hall. My stomach rumbled in appreciation. It was pretty institutional in the hallway. Bland colors, clean floors, and otherwise empty.
His apartment was different.
It had spots and splashes of color everywhere.
“I do have help at the clinic,” Doc told me as he set his backpack down on the floor below a row of hooks. He hung up his keys and his jacket next. There were four deadbolts on the door, and he threw all of them once he’d closed it. “Just only a couple of days a week. A nurse comes in to help out if I have female patients.”
He’d mentioned that.
“But you do everything else? Administration? Cleaning? Seeing the patients? Opening? Closing?” It seemed like a lot. I traced my gaze over the prints on the wall. Most of them were photographs. Some were of Doc, in the military. There was desert behind him in one shot. Ocean in another. Still, a tree-lined pathway in another. I didn’t know any of the people with him.
“It’s my clinic,” he answered. The sound of the fridge opening and closing echoed through the quiet room. He walked back out with a couple of beers. He held one out to me. “Have a drink and a seat. I need to grab a quick shower and change.”
“Thank you,” I murmured when he handed me the beer. “I’m going to kind of miss the scrubs.” No lie. He really did look good in them.
His chuckle was genuine and aching with a hint of disbelief. “If you say so. Remote is there,” he said, pointing to the coffee table. “There’s chips in the pantry if you can’t hold out until I fix us some grub. The sofa is moderately comfortable, the chair is better. I’ll be back in a sec.”
“Mickey,” I said before he took two steps, and he paused. “Thank you for having me over.”
The corner of his mouth hitched a little higher into a near lopsided smile. “Little Bit, you’re welcome anytime.”
“Great, as long as I can skip death’s elevator.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “I’ll hold you on the way down, I promise it will be better.”
Snorting, I raised the beer to my lips and turned away so he could go grab his shower. No door closed after him, so either he had the softest doors on the planet or he hadn’t closed them.
I took another swallow of the beer rather than consider what that meant. Instead of sitting, I explored the living room. Instead of art, he had pictures of places—a house, a community center, and the clinic were all featured prominently. There was a shot of a woman with dark hair and kind eyes. She was older, and that photo sat on a bookshelf with a lot of well-worn copies of everything from Tom Clancy to Gandhi. Fiction. Non-fiction. I studied the titles before I continued my circuit.
More pictures. I picked out a younger Doc—Mickey in one of them. Here at his place, I should probably call him by his name. He had a kind of carefree smile on his face, and he had his arm around another guy, a kid really, in a kind of headlock and was rubbing his head. They were both laughing.
Everything about the picture just made me smile. When I spotted Jasper and Rome in a shot near it, I studied it closer. Mickey was seated on what looked like a picnic table, and he was in deep discussion with Liam and another guy. They were all younger in the photo.
A lot younger. Liam still looked a bit like a cocky asshole. I tracked my gaze to where Rome stood. He held himself back, hands in the pockets of a hoodie that seemed familiar. It probably should, since I was wearing it. I couldn’t tell if he was irritated by the conversation or just focused. But Jasper was right behind him, and he mugged straight at the camera.
He flipped it off, mouth open and tongue out like he was saying something.
It probably shouldn’t make me laugh, because everything else in the image was so intent and focused, but Jasper radiated fuck off energy as clearly as if he were standing here. There was history on these walls.
A lot of history.
My heart squeezed at a picture of Doc in a graduation cap and gown. He looked determined but pleased. He would have been my age there. But his eyes seemed older. A shot in the frame next to it had that same dark-haired woman, and