Page 4 of Fall for Him

“Just let me show you my bedroom, and I think I can convince you.” Gallagher’s tone was serious and urgent. “I really think we can work something out here.”

“Um.” Derek scrunched his face. “Nah, dude. I think we might have gotten our signals crossed here.”

Abject horror flashed across Dylan’s face. “Um… Yeah, no. Believe me. That’s… that is absolutely not what I meant.” Gallagher’s ears turned magenta after a dismissively snarky huff. “I meant because I’ve been renovating the apartment for my uncle. That room’s done, so you can see the drywall and painting work. I’ve got before photos too. Christ…” He rubbed his hand over his bare shoulder.

Derek never would have guessed Gallagher would have that many tattoos hidden beneath his typical uniform of that faded gray hoodie and paint-stained jeans. The intricate fine lines and circles covering his lean-muscled upper back were especially surprising. “Guess I’ll get to fix up the kitchen now… I’ll just frame it like it’s a surprise from the others. Floors were a wreck anyhow. No choice now…” Dylan’s eyes went slightly unfocused.

Derek’s body was on the verge of collapse, and now his bed was an unsalvageable mess at two A.M.

Dylan Gallagher seemed to have no idea that Derek knew exactly who he was from the second he moved in. Although given that Gallagher couldn’t remember the trash pick-up days or to close his sunroof in the rain, he probably didn’t bother remembering how he’d treated Jake Murphy several years ago. Jake Murphy, the older brother of Derek’s best friend, Olive. Jake Murphy, who was once almost Derek’s… something.

Just having Dylan Gallagher in the building tugged on a wound Derek thought had healed, and now the man literally crash-landed into Derek’s life. Yet for some reason, the longer Gallagher was around wincing and bleeding, the more Derek’s ER nurse instincts urged him to get the guy an ice pack or a Band-Aid. And Derek did not want to be nice to Dylan Gallagher.

“I have to get up for work in…” Derek looked at his phone and groaned. “Three hours. I’m going to go crash on my couch, so you—”

“How ’bout…” Dylan stepped forward, still clutching the broken half of his glasses in a way that made him look like Derek’s sister Michelle’s douchebag New York City friend who wore a monocle unironically. “You stay upstairs. I’ll sleep on the couch. I can put something in the kitchen where the floor broke to keep the dog out. Then you can get some sleep in an actual bed while I clean this up.”

If Satan himself had offered him a bed, Derek might have sold his soul right then. Still, the idea of sharing a space with Dylan Gallagher made him feel unsettled in a way that tightened every muscle in his body. His arms crossed in front of his chest and his jaw clicked. Gus rubbed his nose on Derek’s leg, annoyed Derek had stopped petting him.

Gallagher exhaled. “Stop being a stubborn ass and just let me take care of this. If I muck it up, I’ll call a professional.”

“Oh, I’m the ass? You’re just going to do some shoddy bad flip work and fix the cosmetic stuff while—”

“I do not do shitty flips.” Gallagher glared.

That must have hit a nerve.

Gallagher’s grip tightened on that one half of his glasses, sending another streak of blood down his arm.

Goddamn. How deep was that cut? Did he even notice the blood?

Shaking his head, Derek headed into the hallway.

“Where’re you going?”

“Your hand’s still bleeding because you keep forgetting to hold pressure on it, and I’d rather not have your genetic material all over my apartment if I kill you for waking me up and wrecking my bedroom. C’mere.” Even though Derek’s general desire to be liked did not apply to Gallagher, he still didn’t want the dude to hemorrhage, or faint again, or whatever. If Gallagher was Derek’s only hope in handling this, he couldn’t let the guy get gangrene or tetanus. No matter what had happened between him and Jake.

“I’m fine.”

Giving up diplomatic negotiations, Derek yanked Dylan by his un-bloody arm into the bathroom. A guy who fainted at the sight of blood probably wouldn’t know how or bother to properly clean out a laceration.

Derek twisted the faucet. “Look away. Just hold it under there for a second.”

As the water hit the cut, Gallagher’s low hiss prickled against Derek’s bare skin. “You work at a hospital, right? The scrubs. I mean, you wear scrubs sometimes. Not now obviously…” His gritted-teeth gaze drifted downward but then shot back up to Derek’s face as if scandalized by the bare skin and underwear.

Derek grabbed gloves from the first aid kit under the sink. “ER nurse.” He was too busy mentally figuring out why he had felt the need to pull Gallagher into a full-bodied embrace to catch him before for a longer response. From an ergonomic perspective, Derek should have just eased the man’s deadweight ass to the ground, but when Gallagher had gone all pale and limp, some bizarre instinct made Derek catch him as if Gallagher were some swooning debutante on Olive’s newest TV show obsession. After getting her own well-deserved happily ever after six months ago, Olive converted from cynic to hopeless romantic. This must be her fault.

“Sorry…” Gallagher wrinkled his nose as if straightening the glasses usually perched there. “I don’t do good with blood. Never have.”

Derek must have missed the thanks for not letting me fall on my ass part. You’re so welcome, jackass. “Yeah. Noted.”

“Do you have to be a dick about everything?”

Derek was being a dick, but even without the personal history shit, it was two o’clock in the fucking morning and his ceiling had collapsed.

Ignoring the question, Derek focused on gently cleaning the wound. He dried it with gauze but frowned as it reopened again.

“What?” Dylan asked in a tentative voice very different from the one he’d just used to call Derek a dick.

Source: www.kdbookonline.com