The rest of the morning went off pretty uneventfully as I continued to work and anxiously waited for Erik to return to the unit. He had been gone for hours, and I seriously couldn’t imagine any family meeting taking that long. There was no way Jarrod had the time in his schedule to sit with them and work out every problem the group of three men had, but since Erik wasn’t returning to the unit, I had to wonder if Jarrod was making time for them after all.
It was well after lunch when Erik, his father, and his brother all walked onto the unit. They looked happy with smiles that spread across their faces. His brother even reached out and patted Erik on the back as they stood near the exit and seemed to be saying their goodbyes. Whatever Jarrod had done seemed to have worked wonders because the men had made up and even hugged each other just before they walked out the door.
Every bone in my body wanted to walk over to Erik and meet his family before they left. I hardly knew anything about his past, except what he had told me, and that was very little. He was a private guy and I understood that, but the more I got to know him the more I wanted to learn about him. I wanted to know what made him tick. Why he had started drinking and partying as much as he had. Hell, I wanted to know everything – although I would have settled for just a little more.
“So, that was my brother and father,” Erik said with a huge grin as he walked straight down the hallway toward me.
His walk had changed since he had arrived at the treatment center. What had once been a cocky walk that had him looking anywhere but at the person in front of him now had him looking me directly in the eyes as he stood only inches away from me.
He was too close, though. I looked around to see if anyone was paying attention to us, and my gaze caught the eye of Brianna. She just smiled big and turned away, but it was enough to get me to take a step away from Erik.
“It looks like things went well.”
“Yes. Once Jarrod agreed with me and explained that I was actually trying to do something nice for no reason at all, they both started to calm down. I swear the hardest thing was admitting that I had been terrible to them the last few years so they had a right to be suspicious of my intentions.”
“You guys hugged it out, though. So, you’re good?”
“I think so. Only time will really tell, but I’m optimistic,” he said as he took a step toward me again. “Come to my room.”
“No,” I said in shock. “It’s the middle of the day.”
“That’s the perfect time. No one will notice you’re missing.”
“Erik!”
“All right, all right, I was just all juiced up from my meeting going well. I think that was probably a bad choice to have asked you to my room.”
I laughed at his analysis of himself. He was right, though. He had probably just been excited, and I knew how that adrenaline could make you do crazy things when you were first sober.
“How about we wait until you’re done to do any more naked time,” I said as I winked at him.
As much as I truly did want to be naked with Erik, I had started to feel very guilty about what we had done. Not guilty enough to stay away from him because I truly enjoyed talking to him, but I didn’t want to make another mistake by sleeping with him.
“I can dig that,” he joked. “Are you allowed to come on a hike with us again? I convinced a few of the guys and Brianna to go out tomorrow and Melanie is taking us back up to the peak. It’s supposed to be a nice day.”
“So, you think I’d volunteer to hike back up that mountain again?” I asked with a dramatic look on my face.
“I think you’ll do it for me.”
His smile was irresistible, and I couldn’t help but say yes to the man. I was even a little excited to have a second go at the mountain. My mind hadn’t been totally in it the first time and now I knew how darn good it felt to be on top and look out over everything, so I wanted to do it again.
“Yeah, I’ll come. But not if you’re going super early.”
“How’s ten o’clock work for you, sleeping beauty?”
“Perfect.”
We walked over to the main dining area and both grabbed a seat as we continued our conversation. Part of my job was to interact with the patients, so it wasn’t unusual for me to hold conversations with them. Plus, I had felt Brianna’s eyes on us the whole time, which made me extremely nervous considering what had happened the night I had slept with Erik.
“So, tell me more about your family.”
Erik didn’t look like he was all that interested in talking about them, but he humored me a little. I appreciated that.
“The story I used to tell was that my father disowned me when I went off to college,” he said.
“That’s horrible!”
“But that was my skewed version of the story. The truth is my mother passed away and left my father alone to care for two teenage boys and run the family funeral home. He was overwhelmed and ill equipped for the job. He loved us, but he couldn’t handle it. So, when I decided to leave and go to college on the We