She took it instantly, her hold firm, her smile bright. “Hi, Gracie. You can call me Agatha. We don’t really use honorifics in the family.” Her head swiveled to the door where Alex was still standing, arms crossed over his chest. “What are you doing, Lexi?”
“Standing here,” he said plainly.
“Do you think you’re going to stand there during her checkup is what I’m asking?” she asked him in a tone that made me blink.
His gaze flicked to me briefly, his chin going up. “She doesn’t know you.”
Agatha’s eyes moved toward me too.
“I don’t feel unsafe around you,” I told her directly before looking at ol’ Grumpy Shit. “I’ll be fine. I’m sure you have better things to do.” He had some brooding to do. Some grumpy faces to practice in the mirror.
Those dark eyelashes fell over his eyes. “I can hear your heartbeat.” He shot Agatha a look I couldn’t interpret before taking a step back. “I’ll wait out here.”
Fuck. “It’s fine,” I tried to tell him.
Without another word, he walked out and took a stand with his back to the wall beside the doorway.
She shook her head. “Want me to close the door?”
It wasn’t like he couldn’t hear through them anyway, and what did I have to hide? “That’s okay.”
“There’s no privacy in this family, as you’ve already figured out,” she said, opening her backpack and starting to root around in there. “Secrets get old. It’s not so bad. You get used to it with time.”
That was a weird comment.
Either way, I wasn’t going to be here much longer, so there wasn’t going to be much to get used to.
She pulled a few things out of her bag before moving toward me. “Can you fill this out for me first? Then I’ll check your vitals.”
“Check her lungs,” Alex suddenly spoke up. “She swallowed and inhaled a lot of water.”
We both glanced toward the doorway.
“Thank you,” I told her, hearing the hoarseness in my voice. I took the tablet from her and filled out the online questionnaire that covered my medical background and that of my family. At least what I knew, which wasn’t really all that much. I hesitated with my last name and settled on Castro.
What all did they know about my family anyway? How had his grandmother known where to look? How the hell hadn’t I wondered about that before? Was that another superpower?
Just how lazy had I gotten with staying under the radar that everyone had fucking found me?
And who the hell was the cousin who had supposedly ratted me out?
It made me upset. Made me angry too, to be honest. Because look where I was. Look at everything that had happened. Everything that I’d missed out on.
Now here I was, living on other people’s charity. My life was in ruins. I had nothing. I had no one because I’d been too cautious to ever let anyone close enough to really know me. What I had was a big mouth and a chip on my shoulder, and I would have gotten drunk one night and totally told someone something I shouldn’t have.
I needed to find out how Alex’s grandma had found me so that I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
My hands shook, and I set them between my thighs and waited as she took my temperature, my blood pressure, checked my mouth and ears, then listened to my heart and lungs.
I could see her watching my face from time to time, but all she did was ask some general questions about my health. I stared at her hand the whole time. A big ruby ring sat on her finger, the sucker the size of an acorn.
“Robert…” She paused, busting me. “Gave it to me. It’s a family heirloom. It gets caught on everything.”
“It’s amazing.” Could I be less obvious? “Have you been married for a long time?” I asked her before she could turn the conversation around on me. Plus, everyone kept using his name like I should know who he was.
“Twenty-one years next month,” she answered. “It feels more like forty-nine sometimes.” She laughed, and it was a really nice one that made me smile.
Then I really thought about what she said and blinked. Twenty-one years? “How old are you?” Oh boy. That could have come out better. “I’m sorry.”
She looked up from the tablet and flashed me a playful smirk. “I’m fifty-four.”
I tried my best not to make a what-the-fuck face but figured I’d failed when she winked before focusing back on the tablet.
“It’s one of the many benefits of being married into this family and having a lot of naked time together.”
Outside of the room, Alexander groaned in obvious disgust.
“Oh, be quiet,” she said with a roll of her eyes. She dropped her voice. “They’re so square about sex at first, and then—”
“Do you talk to all your patients like this?” he called out, his voice weird.
“Yes. You’re all family, and you all hear everything, and most of you don’t act like preteens about s-e-x.”
“I know how to spell, Agatha,” he barked out, still sounding weird.
“I’d hope so.” She smiled. “Mind your own business anyway, I’m not talking to you.” The doctor shook her head like she was trying to remember where she was going with her thoughts. “While we’re talking about sex, I’m aware of your situation. Do you need me to fill you a new birth control prescription? You put on here you aren’t on any medications.”
Oh.
The last time I’d been to the gynecologist, she had written me a prescription that I hadn’t filled.
Was I in a position to be that vulnerable with someone?
I thought about it.
Wasn’t that the same thing I’d been telling myself for the last decade? The same lame-ass excuses? I was about to be thirty. I’d kissed less than a handful of people. I’d given a couple blowjobs when I’d been a teenager straddling the line between listening to my grandparents’ orders of secrecy and being a horny little shit who wanted one more connection in life. Since then, it had been a rush of taking care of my grandparents, then just learning how to be truly alone and surviving. Making enough money with my limited circumstances to eat, pay bills, and save for an emergency.
Then all this had happened.
Of course I wanted to have sex, that was one of the things I’d been the most upset about when I’d thought everything was over. I didn’t even have a vibrator anymore. What the hell did I have to lose taking a daily pill?
Maybe I could finally get over the lying and just… do it.
Literally.
“Yes, please,” I told her before I could talk myself out of it. Maybe I could drive out of the state to fill the prescription, or have it mailed somewhere else to be safe.
There was a thump from the hallway that we both ignored.
Agatha nodded, her eyes crinkling. “Okay. What were you on before?”
I rattled off the name that my gynecologist had recommended, looking toward the door.
“I’ll email it to you,” she said before giving me a serious face. “Birth control is effective in this family.”
What? I didn’t even get a chance to be embarrassed about what she was implying because she kept going.