Hotline Fling

49: Puppy Love

Juneau's POV

Christmas turned into New Year's Eve, a huge fucking deal in the city. I signed up to work extra hours because I had no social plans, but now I worked the best fucking job I'd ever had. One week of graveyard shift hours at the receptionist's desk and seeing the work here inspired me to apply for online classes for a veterinarian technologist degree.

"No making out at midnight?" Courtney's smile faded. Within my first week, I made a few friends here. One of my new favorite people pulled back her new corkscrew curls into a ponytail.

"Want me to grab one of those NYPD Officers on security outside?"

I palmed my warm cheek. "While I envy your solid lockdown on your life, I don't think that'll help."

I hadn't seen Damian since the cemetery, where his hugs felt like second chances wrapped up in a strong, sexy apology. His presence surprised, confused, and overwhelmed me, and his hugs quadrupled those emotions. I wanted to stay in his arms forever and would have, except Uncle Joe blasted the horn and jolted us apart.

Damian didn't deserve my silent treatment, and the disappointment in his eyes still stung my memories of that evening. He said all the right words and hid back none of his amazingly open feelings behind them. I felt them as much as his arms clutching me to him, the first time in relief and the second with reluctance to let me go. Guilt coated him in a second skin, but until my life settled into place, he was too much, too soon.

My phone chimed with a text, which I smiled at.

Adam: Don't do anything I would do!

I reconnected with him and Celia over a group text exchange. Adam still reigned as Wet Dreams' Employee of the Month and was obsessed with his boyfriend, Vaughn. Celia left after I did, killed a second plant from me, and started nursing school full-time.

"Just a friend," I warned the interest gleaming in Courtney's eyes and handed her a stack of folders. "Here's nine."

There were no surgeries scheduled between midnight and eight am. Since we fielded emergency-only visits, part of our job was refiling all the previous day's surgeries' paperwork and assembling the next day's eight am to noon block. With more than a hundred of the most amazing veterinarians, dozens of surgery and dental procedures happened simultaneously. Once the regular phone lines opened and appointments started at eight am, the desk staff were too busy to process paperwork, so we went through the patient record shelves to ensure organized paperwork before the first scheduled patient arrived.

"Must be slow if you're already doing nine." Courtney took the stack and began printing their consent forms and discharge instructions. "Couldn't at least find a supply closet with one of the new techs?"

"No." I turned away from her wiggling eyebrows and skimmed over the ten am surgery patients on my list.

"Without Callum, one of us has to be gettin' some." She huffed, then retrieved her printouts. "It's not the same when it's just my fingers doing all the work."

If only she knew. "Did you call him?" I started the ten am procedures, mostly spaying or neutering. Ouch.

"Better than called." Her lips pulled into a wicked smile. "His New Year's started earlier, but we...Yeah, we celebrated as much as possible with a vibrator and cams. Thanks for letting me use your monthly Brazilian coupon. I posted a Christmas bow right over it for Callum."

"Consider it a belated Christmas present." I held back a smile and pulled down a few more files. "Or thanks for your service."

Courtney's fiancé Callum was deployed in the Air Force. All her pictures and hearts in her eyes whenever she spoke about him were nearly enough that I believed in true love. Nearly.