Free Will & Patrick Wake Up Married by Leta Blake

of everything.”
    “Oh, goodie. All the stuff I’ve been just dying to share with someone! Girl talk at the sleepover! How did you know?”
    “Lucky guess.”
    Patrick laughs and sits beside Will on the sofa. “All right. I was raised in Alabama, did pre-med at UK, med school at Yale, and I’ve been in Atlanta for the last five years.”
    “UK? Like Kentucky?”
    “Duh.”
    “So what’s your specialty? In neurosurgery, I mean?”
    “I’m a generalist, which means I can operate on kids, adults, the spine, and the brain. But I have a preference for brain trauma in peds. Those are my favorite.”
    “Creepy.”
    Patrick yawns. “Let’s see, what else? You wanted to know about my parents. My mother’s name was Sandra and my father’s name was Gerry. They’re both dead.”
    “Oh God. I’m sorry.”
    Patrick shrugs. “It’s fine. My mom died when I was eight and my father died six years ago.”
    “That had to be rough. Who raised you? After your mom, I mean.”
    “My father.” Patrick’s mouth thins. “We weren’t close.” He clears his throat. “Now for the quid pro quo.”
    “Hit me.”
    “All right. First things first, what’s your sign?”
    Will laughs. “Libra. Yours?”
    “Aries. Aquarius rising.”
    “That explains everything,” Will says sarcastically.
    “It really does.” Patrick doesn’t sound like he’s kidding, and Will cocks his head trying to gauge whether the self-proclaimed genius surgeon really believes in astrology. Patrick asks, “What’s your mother’s name?”
    “Kimberly.”
    “What do I need to know to fake it as your loving husband?”
    “Well, I’m really close with my family. There’s my mom, like I said. And I have two younger half-sisters and a little half-brother: Caitlin, Olivia, and Connor.”
    “Ew, too many kids.” Patrick doesn’t sound serious, though. Maybe he’s starting to see through Patrick’s bullshit.
    “Um, there’s my Nonna, Eleanora—”
    “Your mafia grandmother.”
    “Yeah, and my other grandmother, Betty—I call her Grandma. She and my Uncle Kevin, my mom’s twin, live out on the old family farm. Kevin’s always lived there. He’s gay too. The family joke is that I resemble him that way.” Will laughs softly. “He’s a horse trainer. Grandma says he was born in the barn—literally.”
    “Classy.”
    Will scratches at his chin. “Kevin doesn’t like to leave Healing. He traveled a little now and again back when his partner, Roy, was still alive. But he didn’t enjoy it.”
    Will mainly remembers Roy as a skinny man, coughing and trembling on the farm sofa with an oxygen tank at his feet. But he’s seen pictures of Kevin and Roy from before, and he’d been handsome, with black hair, green eyes, and a smirky, wise-ass smile. Will’s mom always says Roy was funny, but Will just remembers being afraid of him because he was so sick.
    “Roy died of AIDS. My uncle’s never really been the same since.”
    Patrick grunts. “Anything else I should know about? Traumas you’d have shared with me?”
    “I had a stepfather pass away.” Will shoots Patrick a glance. “We weren’t close.”
    Patrick’s lips curl up in acknowledgement of the code established for ‘no sympathy needed.’
    “Then there’s Ryan, but hopefully you won’t even see him.”
    Patrick’s head tips back against the sofa and his eyes slide lower. His tight, always twitchy body relaxes a little. “So tomorrow. What’s the plan?”
    They outline the next day as Will does his final blood glucose test and injects his long-lasting insulin according to his nightly schedule. As they talk, Will shares some more tidbits of his history and life that Patrick will need to know to make a believable husband out and about in the town. He learns a few more things about Patrick too. Patrick is pretty tight-lipped about his life and Will surmises from his body language that his childhood was pretty grim.
    But Patrick’s eyes light up when he talks about