The Exception by Lauren H. Mae

Twenty-four

Coffee was calling Sonya’s name as she moved through the house early the next morning, but instead, she grabbed a bottle of water and the brochure explaining the running trail she’d decided to take a tour of. She needed to clear her head and running had always been her go-to for that.

Inviting Trav on this weekend trip to prove she could just be friends with him might go down in history as one of her worst ideas of all time. If she was being honest, it was right up there with deciding to elope.

The two of them had spent the entire night coupled off, from Pictionary partners to sharing a wicker loveseat around the firepit. He’d even built her s’mores from the other half of his graham cracker.

The worst part? It wasn’t that she couldn’t just be friends with him. The problem was she wasn’t sure if being just friends was still what she wanted.

“G’morning. You’re up early.”

She looked up from the brochure to find the object of her overthinking standing in the kitchen doorway looking adorably rumpled from sleep. He yawned, stretching his arms over his head. His pajama pants hung low on his hips, offering a glimpse of that V that was quickly becoming her weakness.

She took a sip of water to distract herself.“Good morning. I wanted to go for a run before everyone else wakes up. The brochure says there’s a trail that goes along the lake and ends up back here.”

“What’s the distance?” he asked.

“It’s a little over five miles.”

He nodded like her answer was acceptable and ran a hand through his hair. “Mind if I join you? I need to wake up.”

Shit.

So much for running to clear her head, but she couldn’t tell him not to come. Besides, there was a little part of her bouncing up and down over running with him again. Marcus hated running, preferring his weights to any other workout, so it had been a long time since she’d had a running partner. If she’d had that much fun running next to him on a treadmill, running outside with Trav would probably be even more fun.

And so would beating him like the last time.

“Meet me out front in ten minutes?”

“Sure,” he agreed before turning to go back to his room to get ready.

She watched him walk away, her bottle hovering at her lips. Water was clearly not the only thing she was thirsty for.

* * *

Sonya was stretching when Trav met her outside a few minutes later, wearing a backward army green baseball cap and reminding her of one the frat boys back at UVA. She’d never paid much attention to those guys, preferring to focus her attention on the overachievers with goals similar to her own. Now, she had to literally remind herself to look away so she wouldn’t get caught staring at him. Again.

Everything about him, from his loose running shorts and concert t-shirt with a hole in the sleeve, to the lazy grin stretched across his scruffy face was relaxed and laid back, but it was all wrapped up in an aura of confidence that she couldn’t deny being attracted to.

Maybe he wasn’t so different from the goal-driven men she usually gravitated toward. It was just that Trav’s goals were different—living life, having fun. Being fun.

Fascinating.

He stood across from her and began his own warmup routine, standing on one leg and stretching his quad. It gave Sonya a clearer look at the large tattoo she’d spotted on his calf for the first time the day before. The black ink sketched out a caduceus with a winged helmet and crossed swords centered inside of a star of life. The words “Do No Harm” were at the top and the words “Do Know Harm” were underneath.

Did he have any more tattoos in places she hadn’t seen yet? She allowed her eyes to drift across his body looking for bits of ink peeking out from underneath his sleeves and at his collar, but she found nothing except tanned skin and taut muscles.

“It’s the combat medic badge,” Trav said, his voice pulling her out of her inspection of his body. She blinked before allowing her eyes to meet his, and the amused twinkle she found there made her face go hot. So much for not getting caught, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it.

She cleared her throat. “Oh? What does the saying mean?”

He switched his stretch to the other leg. “Medics are there to treat the injured but we carry weapons and are trained to use them with deadly force. So we know harm even though we’re not supposed to do harm, if that makes sense.”

It did make sense and it sounded like a tough position to be in. She wondered, How many times did he risk his own life to save someone else’s?

“Did you ever have to...” Her words trailed off as she noticed his face harden like he already knew what she was going to ask. “Never mind.”

Trav lifted his eyes to meet hers and she saw the emotion simmering inside his deep blue pools. He sighed. “No, it’s okay. I did what I had to do as a medic and as a soldier to make sure my unit got out of some tough situations. The Hippocratic oath doesn’t carry much weight in the middle of a war zone.”

Sonya understood that and she wanted to know more about his time in the army, but maybe he wasn’t ready to go that deep into his experiences. Her dad never wanted to talk about the time he spent in Iraq, even though he needed to for so many reasons. Hopefully, Trav was talking about it with the therapist she’d overheard him telling Frank about. She decided to keep things surface level.

She asked, “Did you join the army thinking you’d be a medic?”

“Nah. I didn’t want anything to do with medicine, but I scored high enough on the vocational aptitude test that they couldn’t see placing me anywhere else.” He shook his head and smiled almost bitterly. “Only I would join the army to get away from following in my dad’s footsteps and end up being pretty much a doctor anyway.”

“Maybe you just needed to do it your own way,” she suggested.

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I got out of the army and chose to stay in the medical field so it must be where I’m supposed to be.”

It was where he was supposed to be. He was good with patients and his reflexes when it came to trauma care had been honed in the army in ways that couldn’t be learned in school. He was going to make a great paramedic and possibly more if that’s what he wanted.

She pulled her arm over her head in another stretch. “You could be a doctor, you know. You’d be a good one.”

That laugh was back but this time it was less bitter and more resigned. “There’s only enough room in D.C. for one Dr. Travis. What about you, though? Did you ever think about becoming a doctor? Because you’d be a great one.”

She smiled faintly and remembered her mom saying those exact words when she’d graduated with her RN. Becoming a doctor had always been the plan until one day it wasn’t.

It was her turn to shrug. “I was originally pre-med but I chose nursing because I wanted more interaction with patients. Doctors don’t get to spend as much time building relationships as nurses do and I think that sometimes it’s those relationships that can help with healing the most.”

He nodded in agreement and asked, “Why psychiatric nursing?”

Sonya was suddenly struck by the memory of how her dad had been so lost when he’d retired from the Air Force and how it got worse until she felt like she’d lost her dad even though he’d been right there. She shook those thoughts away.

“It was an area with a lot of need,” she said. It wasn’t the whole truth but it was the only answer she could give. Just like he wasn’t ready to go into detail about his time in Afghanistan, she wasn’t ready to go into detail about the things that called her to mental health.

They both went quiet for a moment, but she could feel him watching her in that perceptive way he’d probably learned in the army. It felt like he was seeing past all of her defenses right through to her soul, and it always left her a little unsettled. Maybe this conversation had gone far enough for a Saturday morning.

“Ready to run?”

He watched her for a second longer like he knew she was intentionally changing the subject, before the corner of his mouth curved into his trademark grin.

“We’re outdoors in the sunshine and fresh air. This is my element. The correct question is, are you ready Ms. Treadmill?”

Sonya bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from smiling. It had been a long time since someone brought her competitiveness out, and she was trembling with excitement. She folded her arms over her chest and cocked her head to one side.

“Do you want to make this a race so we can find out whose element this is?”

Trav’s eyes narrowed, telling her that she’d triggered the athlete in him as well.

“What’s the prize?” he asked.

She pretended to think about it for a minute before announcing, “If I win, you have to bring me my Starbucks order every morning for a week.”

He took a step closer and mirrored her stance by folding his arms over his broad chest.

“And if I win?” His voice was a low rumble and it sent the adrenaline already coursing through her body into overdrive.

“If you win, I’ll be responsible for our lunches for a week,” she offered, somehow managing not to sound like she’d already run six miles. She’d count that as her first win of the day.

He twisted his lips as he considered her terms, before grinning and extending his hand for a shake. “Deal. Just remember I’m allergic to shellfish.”

She nodded and gripped his hand. “As long as you remember I like my coffee extra hot.”

* * *

About 100 yards from the end of the run, Trav realized he’d been played. The slap of Sonya’s sneakers against the ground came closer together, and he glanced over his shoulder to see her feet flying over the dusty path. The comfortable lead he’d maintained since the first turn was being whittled away as she pumped her legs and gained speed with each push.

Her story about preferring to run on a treadmill was bullshit. Sonya liked to run anywhere and she liked to win.

Facing forward, Trav picked up the pace, his steps pounding the ground in time with his heartbeat. He didn’t want to let her catch up, and especially didn’t want her to pass him, but running in the army had been more about endurance than speed. While that was a useful skill in other aspects of civilian life, he found it pretty damn irrelevant when she pulled up beside him.

“What’s wrong, soldier?” she asked.

That breathy voice had his mind racing faster than his feet. What he wouldn’t give to hear that voice in a very different context, but that thought was just about as unhelpful as his ability to run far but not fast.

“Cross country runner?” he asked.

Realizing he’d uncovered her rouse, she grinned. “2014 UVA cross country record holder.”

He wanted to laugh but his lungs were focused on breathing. Anyway, she laughed for the both of them as she passed him, her ponytail swinging behind her without a care in the world. She didn’t even look like she was running at top speed. God, she was frustrating.

And sexy as hell.

Still, he wasn’t just going to give up and hand her this race. Gritting his teeth as a surge of adrenaline shot through him, he forced his legs to push harder and faster. The front end of her Pathfinder was the finish line, and she was a few yards away from crossing it when he caught up enough to grab her by the waist and snatch her into his arms.

Sonya squealed in protest as he jogged across the finish line backward making sure no part of her body crossed it ahead of him.

“You cheater!”

“I call it finishing strong,” he rebutted. “Especially considering the fact that you hustled me.”

“I did not,” she argued.

He rolled his eyes and imitated her. “I prefer running on the treadmill because I can better manage my workout.”

She laughed and slapped his chest. “Oh, shut up. I don’t sound like that.”

“You do too.”

“Do not!”

He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth to stop himself from grinning down at her like an idiot, but it was too late for that.

“Either way, you’re a hustler. Admit it.”

She giggled. “I admit nothing.”

He was still holding her off the ground, but she’d stopped squirming and looked up at him with one of those megawatt smiles that crinkled her nose and made him feel like some kind of hero for putting it there.

And there it was again, the unbridled desire that lingered just below the surface whenever he was around her. It made him want to stop worrying about messing up the friendship that had come to mean so much to him and find out if she wanted to kiss him again.

Her eyes went a little hazy and like a reflex, his arms tightened around her waist. He shouldn’t read more into that look, but it reminded him so much of the one she’d had right before she’d kissed him before that he couldn’t ignore it.

“Here you are—oh my God! Sonya, are you okay?” Emma’s worried voice and the sound of footsteps on gravel pierced the little bubble he and Sonya were in.

“Put me down,” Sonya whispered, and he reluctantly complied.

Emma’s screech must’ve alerted everyone else in the cabin because they’d all made it out to the porch to see that the fuss was all about.

“Did you hurt yourself on your run?” Emma asked.

Sonya shook her head. “No, I’m fine. We were just playing around.”

Emma scanned Sonya from head to toe before looking to Trav for confirmation.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. The only thing hurting is her pride for losing our race.”

Defiance filled Sonya’s dark eyes and Trav just grinned, knowing that would only rile her up more.

“I didn’t lose! He grabbed me like some kind of caveman so I couldn’t cross the finish line before him,” Sonya complained.

“Because she hustled me by pretending she wasn’t an outdoor runner.”

A laugh burst out of Emma. “Yep, you got hustled. She runs a 5K just about every other weekend in the spring and fall.”

“Ha!” Trav shot Sonya a vindicated smile and she gasped in disbelief.

“Em! You’re supposed to be on my side, remember?”

Emma shrugged and smiled a little sheepishly. “It’s true, though. The only place she won’t run is the beach.”

Sonya rolled her eyes and groaned. “That’s because people who run on sand are asking for a twisted ankle.”

“Hey Emma,” Trav said. “I know Sonya is good at desserts but what’s her best dish?”

Sonya shot him a glare.

“She makes the best chili and cornbread I’ve ever had in my life,” Emma gushed. “We ask her to make it for us all at least twice a month in the winter.”

He winked at Sonya. “I’ll take that as one of the lunches you owe me.”

“We’ll see about that,” she snapped, but there wasn’t any bite behind it.

She silently glared at him for another minute before threading her arm through Emma’s and pulling her back toward the cabin. Trav followed a few steps behind, listening as they talked about plans for the day, including waterskiing which he was excited about. It had been years since he’d done that and he was looking forward to being out on the water.

But mostly, he was looking forward to being anywhere Sonya was.