The Playboy Doctor Swore Off Love, Then His Best Friend Claimed Him novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Car in the Garage

Elias Thorsen sat in the dark on level P3 of the hospital garage and watched the exit door for six hours.

He had driven Damon here at ninety miles an hour with his own belt still undone.

Neither of them had said a word about it.

Damon had run in through the ER doors, still tucking his shirt.

A nurse had thrown a pair of scrubs at him in the hall.

Elias had parked, turned off the engine, and stayed.

There was nothing to do.

He was the chief operating officer of the company that employed the man, and he had no business here at four in the morning.

He was also a man who had decided at twenty that he would be wherever Damon was if Damon ever needed a car.

At five he turned the heat on for a few minutes and off again.

At five-thirty he opened the glove compartment and took out the folder he kept there, and did not read it.

It was the Harbor Street letter, due to the accountants on the first of March, same as every March.

He signed it every year in the same black ink.

Every year Damon's people filed it under passive investors, and Damon never asked who was behind it.

Elias shut the glove compartment.

He had other things on his conscience tonight.

On Tuesday, while Damon was in surgery, he had called a gallery director on the Upper East Side.

She had a low, pleasant voice and a standing Thursday arrangement with Damon that had lasted five months.

Elias had said that Dr. Kosmas would not be calling this week, or after.

She had said, "Who is this?"

Elias had said, "A friend."

She had laughed, kindly, and said, "Tell him it was fun."

That was all.

It was low, it was possessive, and he would do it again.

He had never told Damon to stay away from anyone.

He had simply made sure, quietly, in a hundred small ways for ten years, that none of them lasted.

A late dinner moved.

A flight booked a day earlier.

A mutual friend invited to the same table, who knew when to say how well the two of them looked together.

He had called it protecting his best friend's time.

It had been the only thing he could do.

At ten to six the door of the garage elevator opened.

Damon came out in blood-spotted blue scrubs with his head down.

He walked straight to the car.

He did not go to the driver's door.

He opened the rear door, climbed into the back seat and shut it.

He sat staring at the headrest in front of him, with his hands hanging between his knees.

Elias turned around.

"Five lived," Damon said.

His voice was flat.

"And the sixth?"

"A kid. Seventeen. I had my hand in his chest for forty minutes." He looked at his hands. "It wasn't enough."

Elias got out of the driver's seat and into the back.

He didn't say he was sorry.

He had learned long ago that Damon did not want sorry; he wanted a body in the room that didn't leave.

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