The sabbatical was supposed to be three months, but somewhere around Bar Harbor Robby decided he needed more time. For what he wasn’t sure. But he knew he needed to stay far, far away from the Pitt for a little longer. With his position at the hospital safe, he stayed in New England through the end of the summer.

On his first day back, he’d been gone as long as the two of you were together. Six months. Six months without text messages or phone calls or, hell, postcards. Six months of feeling like Robby was a ghost in your life, something you had and lost that lingers around every corner. Six months of rebuilding your life after he disappeared from it.

You found out about Robby’s sabbatical the same way everyone else did, during one of his evening speeches exactly two weeks before he was scheduled to leave. Two weeks’ notice for a relationship you’d honestly believed was headed toward an engagement ring in a few months. He didn’t think to ask you, didn’t think to check in, didn’t even bother to tell you in the privacy of the home you’d basically moved into. Your life fell into brutal clarity in that moment: Robby was a huge part of your life, but you were a footnote in his.

He sent you a text five nights ago: Back in town. When can I see you?

You didn’t answer.

You don’t plan to.

The morning of September first, Jack hands off shift change seamlessly, like Robby had never left, and Robby finds his footing on the ED floor with a newness, a fluidity, a casual lightness on his shoulders that strikes everyone as foreign. A version of Robby with no tension in his shoulders and no sarcasm biting at his tongue might as well be a new doctor.

Once he has the ED machine churning on pace, Robby leans his elbows on the nurse’s station and scans the shift board. “And where’s my favorite nurse this morning? Night shift?”

Dana barely spares him a glance as she processes the last of a stack of paperwork. She’d always disapproved of Robby pursuing you, so she’s not exactly sympathetic when she tells him, “She transferred months ago. I’m sure the notice is in your email inbox if you ever get around to clearing that out.”

His mind spins at the idea of the Pitt without you – your steady hands, your shy smiles, your forgiving wit. “Transferred? Where? Why?”

“Not my business,” Dana replies with a shrug. She pushes a chart into his chest and says, “They need you in exam six.”

As Robby takes the chart and looks over it with blank eyes that don’t see a word, Princess stands up on her toes so she can meet Robby’s eyes. With a knowing but curious gaze, she tells him quietly, “She’s working at the hospital’s satellite methadone clinic up the street now. Rumor is that she had an ugly breakup with someone at the hospital and wanted to get some distance.”

Robby sucks in a sharp breath. Holds it. Lets it out slow. His eyes focus to actually look at the chart and he mutters out, “Thanks for the info.”

She adds, “Smart money’s on Frank, by the way, since they were always so close.”

Robby grits his teeth. “They weren’t that close.”

“Whatever you say, cap.”

The biggest thing Robby notices in his shift once he’s working closely with his doctors again is a change in the batch of residents he helped onboard last year. They’ve gained confidence during his absence, which he’d expected, but there’s something else. To put it briefly, there’s a lot of scowling and it’s definitely in his direction. Even Whitaker, who used to glance up for his praise like a puppy, is now averting his eyes and keeping his sentences short, professional, unsmiling. The newest batch of students and interns is all polite deference and eager introductions, but the ones he’d come to know and care for and consider friends are acting like he stinks of BO and betrayal.

In the locker room preparing for his lunch break, he approaches Dana, trying to be casual about his tone, and asks, “What’s wrong with the kids, by the way? I have a sign that says ‘ignore me’ on my back or something I didn’t notice?”

She snickers, “Maybe they’re just mad that daddy went to the gas station for milk and didn’t come back for six months.” She gives him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and adds, “Give them some time; it’ll take a minute for people to find their rhythm around you again.”

He nods slowly and swallows, hoping that’s all this is. “Right, sure.”

The truth doesn’t even occur to him: You had been their favorite person around the hospital, his abandonment had made you leave, and they aren’t quite ready to forgive him for that.

—

It’s almost your lunch break when a whole flood of people arrives at once. You’re behind the check-in desk today and you can’t help groaning to yourself. You have to pee, your stomach has been growling non-stop for an hour, and you’re desperate to put your feet up.

You’re on autopilot as you check in patients, collect consent forms, and support doctors however you can without getting up from the desk. You’d started modified work duty this month and it’s driving you nuts not being able to do the hands-on clinical work you love. With your eyes on your monitor, the next patient enters your peripheral vision and you tell him, “I’ll be with you in just one moment.”

“No worries, gorgeous.”

Your focus snaps.

Anger rises up like bile in your throat. Part of you wants to cry, part wants to run, part wants to scream. Ultimately, with so many wars raging inside of your body, your expression goes flat as you meet Robby’s eyes. “You pick up an opioid habit while you were screwing your way up and down the eastern seaboard?”

Robby almost laughs. Almost. He hadn’t expected you to act so hostile – in his mind, you’re still the woman he loves, waiting patiently for his return home – and it pinches like frostbite. Voice soft and respectful, he offers, “I just wanted to stop by and see you.”

You set your jaw and cut back, “Well I didn’t want to see you, but I forgot that my opinion doesn’t affect your decisions.”

He sighs. “You’re still mad at me.”

You turn back to your computer and finish up the file you need to before lunch. “‘Still’ implies that eventually I’ll stop, which won’t be happening.”

“C’mon sweetheart, you can’t-”

“Don’t.” Your eyes flick up as you shake your head. “Just- just don’t.” After closing out your computer and sighing heavily, you tell him bluntly, “You’re officially eating into my lunch, so I’m gonna ask you to leave or I can get security. I’m happy either way.”

Robby presses, “Let me at least buy you lunch.”

You extend your hand and reply without emotion, “Sure, give me $20 and I’ll happily spend it.”

Robby grits his teeth and digs his heels in. “Please.”

Anxiety sparks in your chest as you realize he really isn’t going to leave without talking to you alone first. You’re going to have to stand up from behind the safety of the tall desk and half wall right in front of him. The moment was inevitable, but you’d hoped to at least be in control of it.

“Fine. Buy me lunch.” You’re almost laughing as you mutter, “Let’s see how this goes. Might as well do it in public.”

Then you get to your feet. You stretch your arms above your head, back tight from sitting all morning, and your navy scrub top rides up slightly.

Robby’s next words are breathless and desperate. “You’re pregnant.”

“Glad your eyes still work after six months of wind burn without your goddamn helmet.”

He swallows hard, barely hearing the malice in your voice now. “How- how far along?”

“Take a fucking guess, Doctor,” you huff, shouldering your bag and walking around the nurse’s station. He moves to follow you, but you point at the ‘only employees past this door’ sign and give him a mock pout. “Wait outside if you care so much.”

Robby debates for a second and says weakly, “It’s my lunch, too; I need to get back to the hospital.”

You give him a look that reeks of ‘that’s what I thought’ and say, “Then get back to the hospital. I’m immune to being left behind now.”

It’s not your hatred that hurts. It’s your apathy.

He sends you texts. You don’t reply.

He leaves you voicemails. You don’t listen.

After a few more days of silence, he’s got his head in his hands at the bar while Jack nurses a beer, pitying his sorry ass. He’s been silent for two straight beers, clearly gathering the courage to tell him the good news. It takes Jack reminding him that this is his only night off for Robby to choke out, “She’s pregnant. Very pregnant. Seven months, probably.”

“Ah.” Jack studies his best friend’s face for a long time before settling on a simple, succinct, thorough, “Fuck.”

Robby sucks in a long breath and lets it out slow. “Yeah. Fuck.”

“And she doesn’t want anything to do with you now.” It’s not a question. It’s the truth of the matter. Jack shakes his head and then gives Robby one of those pointed looks only a brother could get away with. “I don’t blame her.”

Robby balks, “You said I should go on the trip.”

“But I’m not your girlfriend.”

“And thank god for that.”

“You didn’t talk to her about leaving?”

“I didn’t realize I needed her permission.”

“You didn’t. But you should’ve wanted it.” Jack puts on that sage old friend voice and goes on, “You told me before you left that she’s the one. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“A lot. That’s why I had to go,” Robby replies, grappling with too much of himself. “Look, leaving was the right thing to do. I know that now more than ever. I figured a lot of shit out and I feel a hell of a lot better – about myself, my future, my life. But now? Now there’s going to be a baby. My baby. Our baby.” Robby gently thumps his forehead on the bartop and groans, “The whole time I was gone, I thought she’d be waiting for me when I came home. Every step of the way, I figured- I figured she’d still want me.”

“Delusions of grandeur,” Jack opines almost absently. Then he yanks Robby to sitting upright by the back of his hoodie. “She’s so far out of your league you’d have to get drafted first just to be her water boy. Why the hell would you think that?”

“Because she always waited for me,” Robby mutters, sounding so absolutely pathetic Jack debates recording it for blackmail down the road. “She- she was always there. She always stayed.”

“And you repaid her by leaving.”

Robby’s voice drops to an ashamed whisper. “I didn’t realize she loved me enough to care that I left.”

“But she did.”

“She did.” Robby stares straight ahead, through Jack and through the walls and through the world until his eyes settle back on his relationship with you – the one good part of his life that had spiraled squarely out of his control. “She was shining a light in my face, but I was too busy covering my own eyes to see her. Too deep in my own self-doubt and self-hatred to recognize what was right in front of me.”

“Alright, Socrates, pack it in.” Jack claps a hand on Robby’s back and summarizes, “You fucked it up and you need to fix it.”

“I fucked it up and I need to fix it,” Robby confirms. “But how do I even begin to say sorry for something like that?”

“She doesn’t want you to say sorry,” Jack replies. It’s effortless for him, this kind of thing. Robby is supremely jealous of how simple Jack makes it all sound. “She doesn’t want Robby the rich attractive attending anymore.”

“Flatterer.”

“Shut up. I’m saying she’s spent the last six months thinking you were gone. While you’re god knows where, she’s figuring out how to be a single mom on a nurse’s salary. So I know she doesn’t want what you used to be for her.”

Jack pauses for long enough that Robby has to sigh and prod, “You’re really gonna make me prompt you? Tell me what you think she wants.”

“She wants a dad for her kid. A real dad, not a sperm donor. She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She wants a husband. And a husband doesn’t have to run away to figure his shit out. Show up for the baby and you’re showing up for her.” Jack finishes off his beer, slaps down a handful of cash, and tells him, “Let’s get a cab. I think you need to cry yourself to sleep to figure out your next move.”

At nine a few nights later, after his shift, Robby knocks on the door of the new address he definitely didn’t steal from your personnel file. It’s a small townhouse in an okay part of town, better than your previous shoebox, but it’s still nothing compared to his spacious home further out of the city. The place he always imagined raising his family in. The place where you’d taken up half his closet, half his bathroom counterspace, half his life. Half his heart, undeniably.

When Trinity Santos answers the door, Robby nearly falls on his ass. With a green face mask cracking on her skin and her eyes burning with anger, he’s never seen her looking so full of wrath. Which is saying something. “What are you doing here, Dr. Robby?”

His brows furrow as he explains, “I was trying to see my girlfriend, but I guess I got the wrong address somehow.”

Santos scoffs and crosses her arms over her chest. “You girlfriend? Pretty sure you forfeited that title when you ditched her like she didn’t mean anything to you.”

“Woah, Jesus,” Robby chuckles, holding his hands up. “Is that the general consensus? Guess that explains all the hostility today.”

“Not hostile, just professional.”

“You were definitely hostile.”

Trinity glares. “File a complaint.”

She moves to shut the door, but he catches it with one large hand. “Is she here?”

Trinity continues to use her body to block him from entering. She knows he’d never do anything crazy like push her, but she wants to make her allegiance perfectly clear. “Yup.”

“She lives with you and Whitaker now?”

“Yup. Saving money until the last minute.”

“God.” Robby runs his hand over the back of his head. “Can I- Can I just come in and see her?”

Holding bitter eye contact, Trinity calls over her shoulder, “Do you want to see Robby?”

Your voice is immediate. There’s more hurt in it than he’d heard this morning, and something about that makes him feel hopeful. Like there might still be something for him to hold onto. “He’s here?”

“At the door.”

Robby listens as a chair squeaks across the floor and your footsteps recede toward a staircase. Away from him. Fainter now, you call, “Get rid of him.”

Trinity nods and turns back to her boss. “You heard the woman. Go home.”

“Fuck, fine. It’s getting late anyway; she should sleep.” With a rough sigh, he reaches into his inner jacket pocket and hands her an envelope. “Can you give this to her at least?”

Santos snatches it from his hand and demands, “What is it?”

“It’s ten thousand dollars.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fuck off, Robby.”

Without saying anything else, she slams the door in his face. Shaking her head, Trinity ascends the steps to the second floor, where all the bedrooms are, and knocks on your door. You answer with puffy, tear-swollen eyes. Right away, Trinity wraps you up in a hug and sighs, “He’s the worst. I’ll kill him at work tomorrow.”

You laugh, sniffle, and shake your head. “No need. I was going to have to deal with this eventually, right?”

“Yeah, but it should be your choice on your terms, not him showing up unannounced.” You nod and pull back from the hug, swiping your cheeks one more time. Trinity holds up the envelope and says, “Robby wants me to give this to you. I can rip it up or hold onto it or-”

“I’ll take it.” You smile softly at her and add, “Thanks, Trin. You shouldn’t have to deal with my drama.”

“You deal with my gay soap opera with Yo,” she points out with a conspiratorial grin.

Your reply is interrupted by the sound of Dennis emerging from his bedroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He’s been on the late-night shift the past couple weeks, slowly becoming nocturnal. “What’s going on?”

Trinity answers with malice lacing her tone, “Robby showed up.”

Dennis shakes his head. “Bastard.”

“You don’t have to say that,” you reply with a laugh. “I know you want to go back to being his personal assistant as soon as possible.”

“Trinity would kill me,” he mutters.

She punches him on the arm. “And I’d be right! We don’t defend shitty men who-”

“Robby’s not a shitty man; you know that,” he interrupts her. “He handled leaving in a shitty way; that doesn’t make him a shitty person.”

“You’re too forgiving, Nebraska.”

“And you’re not forgiving enough.”

You sigh sharply, “And I need to go to sleep.”

“At least open up the letter for us,” Trinity insists. “My nosiness is absolutely screaming for the intel. I won’t be able to sleep without it.”

Ripping open the envelope, you sigh, “I’m sure it’s just some stupid saccharine guilt bomb designed to make me-” Your voice falls to the ground and melts through the floorboards. There’s a folded-up note wrapped around something much more interesting. You hold it up to Trinity and Dennis and breathlessly announce, “It’s a check for ten thousand dollars.”

“Oh my god, I thought he was being a dick,” Trinity replies, her voice equally low and surprised, almost reverent – not for Robby but for the sheer amount of money. “Why the hell would he…?”

With shaking hands, you read the corresponding handwritten note to your roommates.

I don’t know whether or not when you’ll let me back into your life. That’s up to you. I accept it. I respect that it’s your choice. But I’m not going to be a deadbeat dad. You know I can’t do that. You know about my father. I’m never going to become him. I hope you believe that. So this isn’t a bribe to take me back. I promise it isn’t. It’s not an apology. I’m still working on that. It’s for our kid. For you as the mother of my child, not just the a woman I want need miss love care about. Nursery stuff, vitamins, doctor’s appointments, your favorite hot chocolate from Vino’s, anything you need until they’re born. I’m not going to let you want for anything. If money is all you’ll accept from me, then take every penny I have. Please. I promise I won’t abandon the baby. I promise I will do whatever you need from me and more. And I promise I love you. Both of you. I hope you’ll Please, let me prove it. Love, Sincerely, Yours, M.

All three of you hold your breath in the space that follows Robby’s painstakingly scrawled words.

Then Dennis takes a long breath and urges, “See? He’s good. He cares. He wants to take care of you and the baby. You could do a hell of a lot worse.”

Trinity shakes her head and swallows hard. “She could do a hell of a lot better, too. He still left.”

Dennis argues, “He didn’t know she was pregnant.”

You whisper, “Do I really want a man who would only stay because of a baby?”

Knowing far too much for his own good, Dennis touches your shoulder and presses, “Do you really want any man besides him?”

You pinch the bridge of your nose and try to breathe. “I need sleep. I’ll…Fuck. I’ll let you guys know whenever I figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life.”

Trinity brushes your cheek with her thumb. “Love you, sunshine. Goodnight.”

You wish her goodnight and Dennis a good shift before retreating into your bedroom. You change into your pajamas, ignoring the tee of Robby’s that still lives in your drawer, and curl up with your thoughts. In bed on your side, you rest your hand on your bump and wish the little life inside could tell you the right thing to do.

In his home across town, all Robby knows is that he’s never felt so much relief watching $10,000 leave his account.

In the morning, on your way out, the door thumps against something heavy on the stoop. A large plastic tote with a brown bag from your favorite cafe on top of it. You call over your shoulder for Trinity and she hauls the heavy box inside while you focus on the little bag of treats with a note card stapled to it. Inside the bag is your usual order that Robby always brought into the hospital for you in the mornings, the coffee replaced by a ginger tea but the bear claw looking as delectable as ever.

I figured you might want your things back from my place. I’m sorry for being gone longer than you expected for not giving you a key in the first place for unintentionally stealing your stuff for coming by last night. I don’t want to make anything worse. M.

Trinity reads the note over your shoulder and announces, “He’s groveling.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should let him grovel.”

Biting the sweet fluffy pastry, you consider, “I don’t want to be cruel. I’m not going to keep his own baby from him.”

“Of course not. But that’s not what we’re talking about. Do you want him? Not just as your co-parent or sperm donor or whatever. A husband. A real man. Do you want to be Mrs. Robby someday soon?”

“Of course I do,” you sigh, “but I just…I don’t trust him anymore. How could I?”

“I’m just saying,” she reasons with a shrug, “if his baseline grovel is 10k, I for one would love to see where he goes from there. Maybe you’ll end up with a private plane or something.”

“Robby’s got money, but he doesn’t have that kind of money.”

“As far as we know,” she replies with a snicker. “Look, at the end of the day, you have to decide if you can trust him, so I say you tell him exactly what you need and see if he can hack it. Be blunt with him about your expectations. He can worship the ground you walk on from here on out or he can spend the rest of his life signing child support checks and seeing his kid every other weekend.”

You laugh and polish off the bear claw. “You’re a menace, Trinity Santos.”

“My specialty.” She pours herself a coffee and collects her bag. “Now do you want a ride or are you grabbing the bus?”

“It’s a beautiful morning; I don’t mind the bus.”

“Maybe Robby will get you a car.”

“Yeah,” you snort, “maybe.”

Right as your lunch break starts that afternoon, a delivery driver shows up by the staff entrance with an order bearing your name. After one of the other nurses calls you back, you take the heavy bag of absolutely heavenly-smelling Thai food and ask the driver, “Is this from Michael Robinavitch?”

“Yeah, he said you’d be expecting it.” He checks the order on his phone and reads, “The delivery instructions said ‘tell her I know for a fact she doesn’t eat enough protein to be growing a whole new person.’ Congratulations; he sounds like a nice dad.”

You shake your head and sigh. “Yeah, he can be.”

And it goes on like that for the next five days before you decide what to do. Robby always orders you lunch. None of the following meals come with messages, though, just something carefully chosen for your tastes and needs. He even remembers the way you order things – extra lime on your pad thai, salsa verde instead of pico on your tacos, and any bonus dessert he can throw in – to the point where you wonder if people at the Pitt are helping him out, campaigning for the two of you to get back together.

Robby checks his phone way too many times that entire first week that he’s back. He keeps waiting for you to text, call, email, hell he’ll even take a DM at this point. But you don’t. It’s agony. If nothing else, Trinity’s dagger-glare has dulled into more of a butter-knife-glare by Friday afternoon.

Then.

After he clocks out and heads to the parking lot, there you are. Leaning on his fucking motorcycle. You’re a vision in the waning afternoon, sunlight catching your hair and brightening your eyes. You speak first: “Can we talk?”

“Yes,” Robby answers too fast. “Of course we can. Do you…want to go somewhere else?”

“No. I don’t.” You swallow hard and then nod to a nearby bench, sitting down before he does the same. With one hand on your belly, you train your eyes forward and tell him, “You said in your note that you want to prove you love me. But I know you love me. That’s not the problem.”

Robby has to resist the urge to take your hands in his, to tilt your face toward him, to do anything that would ground your bodies together. “Tell me.”

Confirming his every fear, you whisper, “I don’t trust you enough to raise a child with you.”

Throat thick and limbs heavy, he rasps, “You don’t want me to be involved with my own kid?”

“Of course I want you to be in her life; that’s not- that’s not what I meant. But I don’t know if I can trust you to be her dad – her mom’s partner – and not just her biological father.”

The world tilts slightly.

Robby’s breath catches in his throat. 

Tears sting his eyes and he blinks them back. His voice trembles alongside his hands as he confirms, “It’s a girl?

You can’t help the way that softens you. You can see the universe he’s building behind his eyes: Robby holding a pink-blanket bundle, Robby learning to braid hair, Robby being fiercely protective and achingly tender.

You want to share that life with him so badly that it hurts. To sit by his side at dance recitals and tell bedtime stories together and be real.

“Yeah,” you settle for saying, intimately quiet, just for the two of you, “she’s a girl.”

“Wow. Holy shit. A girl. A little girl. Have you-” He clears his throat and swats a tear from his cheek. “Have you picked a name yet?”

You shake your head and admit, “I have some favorites, but it wouldn’t feel right to choose by myself. Without you, I mean. She’s not just mine.” Robby lets the next few tears fall onto his scrub pants and you can’t bear to watch. So you dig around in your purse and hand over the few ultrasound pictures you’d set aside, always hoping you’d be able to give them to him. One from each of your check-ups, a timeline from blob to baby. “Here. Yours to keep.”

Robby stares down at pure gold in his hands. He looks over each photo like a precious ancient text, smiling with those lovely wrinkles of his. After looking at the most recent one for a long time, he murmurs lovingly, “She’s got your nose.”

You touch your pointer finger to the picture and reply, “And your huge feet.”

His eyes stay locked on the scan for another full minute; he’s too choked up to add anything else. Once he’s finally starting to recover from growing a new chamber of his heart so quickly, he tucks the photos into his backpack, slides onto the sidewalk in front of you like he’s about to propose, and gazes up at your face. “I’ll do anything to be yours again.”

Biting your lower lip, you nod. Slow. Thinking. “I can’t just pick up where we left off.”

“I don’t expect you to. I don’t want that.” He sits back onto the bench next to you, this time tilting his whole body towards yours. Creating space he begs you to fill. “I know we can’t exactly start over, but I- I want to be new together. I want to fix what I broke.”

“Okay,” you whisper back, trying hard not to cry. Hormones and hope make a brutal cocktail. You sniffle hard and suggest, “Trinity told me you have the weekend off. Breakfast tomorrow? Well, brunch; the baby likes to sleep in.”

“Absolutely. Anywhere you want, any time.”

Your eyes narrow. “That fancy place you took me after the first time I slept over?”

“I’ll pick you up at ten.”

You wince as the baby launches a foot into your ribcage. “Sold.”

With those dumb beautiful wide cow eyes of his, Robby asks, “Are you okay?”

“Your daughter’s beating the shit out of me,” you groan. When he laughs, though, you soften even more. Tentative, you offer, “Do you want to feel?”

Robby’s voice is ragged and desperate like you’ve never heard it. It’s heavy with love and with need and with hope. One word holds every dream he’s ever had. “Please.”

You take his hand and guide it to the spot where the baby is currently dancing a samba, watching his tender, reverent expression every moment.

“Holy shit.” Robby laughs and grins at you while the baby nudges him over and over like she’s saying hi. “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt.”

You roll your eyes and try not to smile. “Please; you’ve felt a million babies kick.”

“But this is-” He shakes his head and chuckles again at another flutter. “This is different. Is she always this active?”

“In the evening, yeah. Like she can tell I’m done with work and it’s playtime.” You put your hand over his, nothing more than an instinct, and rub your thumb over his skin. “She’s gonna terrorize us.”

‘Us’ settles, warm and cozy, in the hearth of Robby’s chest. He leans down and kisses your bump gently. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

You’re halfway through the insanely decadent strawberries-and-cream crepes you ordered when you actually get up the confidence to break the charged silence between you and Robby. He’d overly complimented your cozy but stylish enough ribbed knit dress and you’d noted his freshly trimmed beard making him look too handsome for you to think clearly. Then a healthy dose of small talk while you waited for food. Now silence.

After licking a bit of vanilla cream from the corner of your mouth, you rush out, “I want you to audition to be my husband.”

One side of Robby’s lip ticks up into a cute, amused smirk. “Shall I prepare a monologue or a musical number? Will there be a dance portion?”

You hum teasingly, “There’ll be whatever I want; that’s the whole point.”

“This has Trinity Santos written all over it.”

You shrug and relent, “She may have had a hand in the concept.”

His fork wavers in the air. “Should I fear for my life?”

“No more than you usually do around her,” you giggle, just a bit, and Robby feels part of himself taking flight at the proof of any lightness left between the two of you. Then you go on seriously (so seriously it wraps back around to adorable for him), “For the next two weeks, I’m going to tell you what I need from you and you’re going to do it as soon as you can. Every time. I want to be the most needy, most demanding, most pregnant person in the entire world. If you can survive that, you can apologize. Give me a real, thoughtful apology and I’ll accept.”

Right away, Robby nods and confirms, “Consider it done.”

You raise a challenging eyebrow. “That easy?”

He puffs up his chest a bit. “I’m an emergency room doctor; I think I can handle a few midnight craving runs.”

“Is that so?”

“I’m 100% confident.”

“Great. Love that.” You sip your drink, gaze at him over the rim, and then tell him with the most vindictive smile you can manage, “The first thing I want you to do is sell the motorcycle.”

That night, Robby’s phone rings with a call from you for the first time in six months. It wakes him from a dead sleep, but he’s been craving your custom ringtone so much that he still manages to answer within less than a second. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he slurs out, “Hi, mama.”

“Hey, Michael.” He can clearly picture you sitting cross-legged on your bed with a menacing smile as you ask, “Can you bring me a tub of that cake batter ice cream I like? The one with the blue frosting swirl and rainbow sprinkles and the actual chunks of pound cake.”

Robby puts you on speaker so he can sit up, stretch his arms, and hit the lights. As he tugs on whatever clothes he runs into, he clarifies, “You mean the one they sell at that kitschy 24-hour diner roadside attraction thing off the highway out in Bridgeville?”

“That would be the one.” Sounding downright wistful, you tell him, “I’ve been craving it my whole pregnancy, but I felt bad asking Trinity to do nearly an hour of driving to scratch the itch.”

Robby frowns as he fumbles through tying his shoes. “You still don’t have a car?”

“I’m living with Dennis and Trinity to save money so I can get one by the time the baby needs to go to daycare,” you tell him softly, trying not to let it sound like an invitation. You swallow hard and repeat firmly, “Ice cream. One hour.”

He smiles to himself as he picks up his car keys. “See you soon.”

Before Robby opens the door to the garage, his phone pings with a text. It’s Whitaker, for some reason.

Good luck on your first mission. Her feet are killing her extra today, by the way.

With a grateful little smile, Robby grabs a tube of the cocoa butter lotion you’d put him onto back when you were together and tucks it conspiratorially in his pocket.

Noted. Thanks for the tip.

Dennis shoots off two more texts before Robby gets to driving.

I’m rooting for you.

If you could also grab me some of those real rootbeers in the dark bottles they sell there that would be great.

Robby rolls his eyes and starts the car. It takes almost exactly one hour to make his way to the neighboring town, stand in line at the Cracker-Barrel-esque diner shop, and head over to your place. It’s quiet this time of night in your neighborhood, so quiet that he doesn’t even have to knock. You answer the door in a crop top that sits on top of your bump and gray sweatpants that hang low beneath it, rolled up around your ankles. You’re visibly exhausted and need a shower and you’ve never been more beautiful.

Then you glance over his shoulder at the car still idling by the curb and your mouth falls open in shock.

“Michael David Robinavitch,” you say breathlessly, hopping down onto the stoop to get a better look, “is that a minivan?”

“Brand new Chrysler Pacifica,” he confirms, following you over and slapping his hand on the hood like it’s a sports car. “Most safety and security features in its class. Ain’t she a beaut?”

With a shy smile, you confirm, “You got rid of the motorcycle?”

Robby shrugs modestly. “Not very practical when you have kids.”

“Kids. Plural.”

He cuts you a look that’s all cocky and loving. “Yeah. Plural.” Then, before you can stop buffering and come up with a response, he slides open the side door of the van and removes his spoils. Hoisting heavy reusable bags, Robby announces, “Two gallons of ice cream as ordered. Hopefully that’ll last you until after my next shift.”

You squeal and grab one of the bags from him, practically skipping back into the house. You leave the front door open and Robby hesitantly takes it as an invitation to join you inside, lingering in the doorway as you beeline to the kitchen, scoop yourself a hearty bowl, and put the rest away in the freezer. You pause, turn to Robby, and check, “You want some?”

Robby carefully steps the rest of the way into the living room and closes the door behind him. “I think all that sugar and fat would give me a heart attack even faster than the stress.”

You sigh and flop down on the couch, lifting your feet onto the coffee table and settling the bowl on your stomach. “Try telling that to your daughter; all she wants is sugar and fat.”

“Thus why I keep sending you balanced meals to eat.”

“Thank you for that, by the way,” you lilt gently, smiling around the spoon as you indulge in the ice cream. You close your eyes and throw your head back, moaning, “Fuck, this is so good. Are you sure you don’t want any?”

“I’m happier watching you eat it,” he chuckles as he memorizes your pleased expression. It’s the first time he’s seen you so content and not on the verge of yelling at him since he’s been back. “Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?”

“Yeah, actually,” you tell him as you try to get comfortable, adjusting pillows around your limbs, “I want to hear about your trip.”

Robby’s brows go up; he genuinely hadn’t expected you to want to talk to him at all. “Really?”

“Yup.” You pat the couch next to you. “Princess kept calling it your midlife crisis fuck-a-thon, so I want to hear about all your exploits.”

Robby tilts his head to the side and says plainly, quietly, urgently, “I didn’t have sex with anyone while I was gone.”

You try to ignore the way that knowledge makes you breathless, focusing on creating perfectly balanced bites of ice cream. “You didn’t?”

“Of course not.” He shrugs, joins you on the couch, and says sheepishly, “I thought I had my girl waiting for me when I got back.”

“Girls don’t wait for men who don’t even text while they’re gone,” you murmur back, sounding more pathetic than you’d wanted.

“I know. I was really screwed up before I left because of everything with the shooting and with Langdon and I- I didn’t see anything clearly. Couldn’t.” Without making anything of it, Robby shifts your bare feet into his lap and starts to rub the arch of one with his thumbs, deep and perfect. He gives you a cheeky look and adds, “But someone I’m trying to impress told me that I had to earn the opportunity to apologize, so I won’t get into all that yet.”

You give him a pointed look. “Any particular reason you’re rubbing my feet?”

He shrugs innocently and reasons, “You’re pregnant; I’m sure they’re killing you all the time.”

“It’s just interesting timing,” you muse, “considering I was complaining about needing a foot massage to Whitaker right before he left for his shift and you just so happened to bring him that weird Pennsylvania root beer he’s been wanting.”

“A man has to have some secrets,” he murmurs. Then he removes all pretense and rucks up the legs of your sweats, takes the lotion from his pocket, and really gets down to business. While he works tension from your feet and ankles and calves, Robby tells you honestly, “All I really did on my trip was think.”

You tease, “Sounds horrible.”

“It was, a lot of the time.” Robby takes the empty bowl from your hands and sets it on the coffee table, promising to wash it before he leaves, and insists you just relax under the expert working of his hands. “I didn’t go because I needed a vacation. I needed to…reset. I watched a lot of sunsets in beautiful places, wrote in my journal twice a day, tried to get eight full hours of sleep every night.”

Your mouth falls open. “You wrote in a journal?”

“Still do,” he replies, sounding a little impressed with himself. “It helps me think. Helps me view my thoughts more rationally – see how stupid they can get, how untrue – when I can read them on the page instead of just repeating them over and over in my mind.”

“That’s really good,” you sigh, head on the cushion and eyes closed. He’s not sure if you’re talking about the journaling or the foot massage or both. Frankly, he doesn’t care. Just getting to hear your sounds of simple pleasure is enough. Interlocking your hands over your bump, you sleepily prod, “Tell me about all the beautiful sunsets, then.”

Robby knows you’re about two minutes from falling asleep, but he happily obliges regardless. He talks about the rolling Appalachians that separate Pittsburgh from the East Coast, the light over the Atlantic early in the morning, the busy cities and empty back roads alike. He talks about the old man he sat with for three hours in a coffee shop listening to him glow about his late wife. He talks about the beach where he saw a family playing and finally felt at peace about Heather’s miscarriage years ago. He talks about the synagogue in New York City where he went just to feel connected to some peace but a rabbi sought him out from the sea of faces and said the Tefilat Haderech over him. He recites the lines he remembers.

…lead us in peace and direct our steps in peace, and guide us in peace, and support us in peace, and cause us to reach our destination in life, joy, and peace…grant me grace, kindness, and mercy…bestow upon us abundant kindness…

After a while, he hears you softly snoring, but he doesn’t stop. Instead he touches your exposed belly, gently working the lotion over your stretch marks, and soothes, “Someday I’ll take you all the beautiful places I’ve seen. You’re going to have the most perfect life I can give you. You and your mom and me.”

Coming in quietly after her shift, Trinity walks into the living room, takes in the scene in front of her, and grins unabashedly. Big bad attending Dr. Robby waiting on you hand and foot just like she told you he should. Grabbing a late snack, she chuckles and praises, “Now this is what I like to see, Rob.”

Robby whispers back, “Be quiet. She’s out like a light.”

“You were just talking to her.”

He corrects, “I was talking to the baby. Mom might be asleep, but my little girl is up and kicking in there listening to my stories.”

She gives him a slap on the back as she walks by. “You’ll bore her to sleep soon enough, gramps.”

Robby’s eating leftovers in bed the next time you call on him. He pauses the TV and picks up the call. “Michael Robinavitch personal assistant service, how may I help you?”

You groan, “I want to shave my legs and I can’t reach anymore.”

He chuckles quietly and hastens to eat the last few bites of his dinner. “Sounds like something I can handle. Do I need to pick up anything to enhance your experience? Chocolate?”

Your voice perks up just a little. “Twix. Several.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And a blue raspberry slushee if you get the Twix at a 7/11.”

“I think I can manage that.”

Half an hour later, you’re in the bath sipping on a Big Gulp and wearing a bikini – much to Robby’s eye-rolling amusement, you insisted he had to earn even non-sexual nudity – while Robby lathers up your legs with your fancy moisturizing gel. You don’t miss the way he takes the time to massage the knots from your calves with those deliciously large hands. God, you missed his hands.

“You’ve got a real jungle going down here,” Robby tuts as he starts in above your ankles, working his way over your skin methodically and thoroughly, his glasses sitting low on his nose as if he’s prepping a surgical field. If this is a measure of how much he cares for you, then he’s not going to miss a single hair. “Gonna need a weed wacker for those shins.”

You glare at him. “I will send that razor straight through your hand, Michael.”

“I’m just saying you could’ve asked me a week ago.”

“I didn’t have any reason to shave my legs a week ago.”

“But you do now?” He raises a suspicious eyebrow. “Hot date?”

“With the OBGYN, yup. She’s a real hunk.”

He gives you a very pointed look at that. “Do you want me to trim your bush?”

“Michael!”

“I know you prefer to keep the topiary neat and the ground below smooth.”

“I will not hesitate to splash you.”

Robby just laughs. As he rinses off the razor and touches up some areas – he even shaves your big toes without saying a word, the gentleman – he sighs and lets his voice go low and honest. “That was a sincere offer. I’m not trying to get off on your personal maintenance, I promise. You always told me you felt uncomfortable when things got a little unruly.”

Sounding far too flirty for Robby’s sanity, you reply, “And you always told me you like unruly.”

“But it’s your body,” he replies. Earnest. Insistent. “I’m not going to push it, but it’s on the table if you change your mind. I want to do anything that will make being pregnant more comfortable for you. I know being up in the stirrups every few weeks can’t exactly be fun.”

After a moment, you whisper, barely loud enough to be heard above the gentle movement of the bath water. “You’re making it really hard to stay mad at you.”

His eyes drift up to yours. You both hold the eye contact for so long that, for some reason, tears sting at your waterline. His golden brown irises are too familiar, too warm, too full of love you’re afraid to accept and afraid to lose. Finally he says, “I want you to be mad at me until you don’t need to be anymore.”

You scoff, “You want me to be mad at you?”

He swallows hard and amends, “I want you to feel everything you need to feel. I can take it.”

And you want to kiss him.

You hate him – and you want to kiss him. So you sigh and say, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Untying the sides of your bikini bottoms, you confirm, “Let’s trim the bush.”

He makes a show of patting his pockets before announcing, “Crap, I think I left my pruning shears at home.”

You smile and roll your eyes, grateful for his levity and the effortless way he makes you feel safe in his presence. You slip the rest of the way out of the bikini, wring it out, and hand him the sopping fabric. He hangs it over the sink and returns to his place by your side.

As he cleans off the razor again, Robby assures you, “Tell me if you want me to stop. It’s okay if you change your mind any time. You know as well as I do that the OBGYN won’t care what your vulva looks like.”

You snicker, “I know. Get to it, doc.”

Robby chuckles, sinks his hands into the water, and guides your legs apart just enough to give him access. When his fingertips graze your labia, he hisses in a needy breath at the familiar feel of your soft lips. Then he curses softly, shaking his head with a laugh. “Sorry, sorry. Reflexive reaction. Nothing short of professionalism from here on out.”

You laugh, “It’s okay. Glad to know someone still finds me remotely attractive even though I feel like a beached whale.”

“You’ve never been more attractive,” he says quietly. Quickly. But he doesn’t let it hang. He gives a sharp soldier’s nod and gets to work, using his precise doctor’s fingertips to guide his motions. “You know, the last time I did this, it was because a woman had superglue in her pubes. Gluing her shut.”

You wince. “Jesus fuck. How does something like that even happen?”

He shrugs. “Freak sex accident, I’m assuming. That’s half the job.” Then he furrows his brow and drags his fingers up your innermost thigh, cleaning up the edges. “Alright, no more jokes, I’ve gotta focus when I’m relying on touch.”

You roll your eyes. “Yes, sir.”

You close your eyes and lean your head back on the bath pillow Robby ordered to be delivered to your place a few nights ago. In the low light with a backdrop of soothing water sounds, you relax easily; Michael’s touch could never be unfamiliar to you. He uses the fingers of one hand to guide the other, methodically following his own touch along your labia, down near your entrance, up towards your clit. You try to control your breathing as his confident motions start to work some neglected parts of your brain. When he gently pushes against your mons to make the skin straighter and easier to shave, the heel of his hand rests against your clit and you can barely think. He’s not doing it on purpose – that much is clear from how he’s got his tongue slightly out in focus, attuned only to what he’s doing – but it’s working you up nonetheless.

Your shaky voice breaks through the silence. “Michael?”

Totally concentrated on the task at hand, he slows his hands and offers, “Hm?”

Like a guilty child, you admit, “You’re turning me on.”

Right away, he withdraws his hands from under the water and moves away from the tub. “Shit, I’m sorry. I swear I wasn’t trying to do any-”

“No, it’s- it’s okay,” you assure quickly. “I just haven’t been able to, um, do anything about, ah, that particular sort of thing for the last two-ish months. I’m a little…pent up. I didn’t want to, like, start moaning or something on accident.”

Robby hesitates. There’s a war in his eyes. You watch his adam’s apple bob as he swallows hard, trying not to think about anything at all. His cheeks turn red the way you always teased him for and he opens his mouth to talk. Closes it again. Repeats that a few times.

Ultimately, he doesn’t say a thing, just waits for you to lead.

You love him for not offering, for not cracking a joke, for not deflecting. He just creates space for you, leaning against your counter and keeping his eyes on your face. The man in front of you is the same Robby you’ve adored for years and claimed as yours for months, but he’s different, too. There’s a calm to him you haven’t seen before. When Robby used to touch you, it was hot and claiming and craving and yearning. You felt his desperation in every kiss. This man is waiting. Deferent.

For the first time, you’re in charge. You get to decide.

So you decide.

Gently, certain but sheepish, you ask, “Would you mind, um, helping me out with that?”

His voice is strangled and his face is contorted into something akin to agony. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t want to change anything with where we’re at right now,” you clarify, speaking slow, like you’re worried about a nervous cat darting, “but I could really use some relief on that front. If that- if that wouldn’t be too weird.”

“Weird?” Robby laughs and rubs the back of his neck. “No, it wouldn’t be weird.”

“What would it be, then?”

He takes in a shaky breath and replies, “It wouldn’t have to be something.” Sitting down by the tub again, he says, “I said I’d do anything to make you comfortable. Anything.” He lets his hand once again drift below the water, looking at you like it’s a challenge. “I’m not a chicken about fingering a girl when she needs some help.” As his thumb ghosts over your clit, you gasp and stifle the ensuing moan with the back of your hand. Suppressing a self-satisfied smirk, Robby reminds you, “Just tell me if you want me to stop. This isn’t about me.”

You nod eagerly and tilt your hips forward to give him better access. Robby shakes his head a bit; you were always so greedy for him to touch you and it doesn’t seem like that’s changed. Robby uses the pad of his thumb to work your clit, keeping firm contact as he rubs it in small circles, not too fast but not teasing, either. Your need is obvious in the fast rising and falling of your chest, the twitching in your thighs, the way you bite your lower lip and pinch your eyes shut. He treats this like what it is: Relief.

When he can tell you’re wanting more – letting out those soft and desperate little moans he always replays when he jerks off – he dips his other hand between your legs and feels between your lips. You’re wet and begging and he’s not going to deny you for even a second. With the water not letting anything get particularly lubricated, Robby keeps his fingers seated inside of you, curling them instead of thrusting. Your pretty lips fall open in a pleased ‘o’ and Robby’s borderline dizzy from how good it feels to get you off again. He’s not sure if it’s the pregnancy or the desperation but you feel downright swollen with lust, hot and plush and like he could spend the rest of his life keeping you knocked up and-

Woah, asshole.

Calm down.

He takes a deep breath of his own, matching one of yours, and focuses back on you and not on his achingly hard cock straining for freedom from his sweats. As he massages your g-spot way too effortlessly, the palm of his other hand pulls the hood of your clit back slightly, just enough to light your nerves on fire from the intensity of his touch. Heat rises in your cheeks, your chest, your thighs. Robby knows how to work a long, hard orgasm out of you. He never rushes. He matches the curls of his fingers with his thumb on your clit and doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow, doesn’t race. He lets you feel every singular sparking second until you’re tightening up around him, your toes curling, your thighs clamping around his hand, your back arching as much as it’ll allow.

All Robby gives himself permission to say as you cum around his fingers is a soft, loving, “There you go. That’s it.”

When your pussy finally starts to release him, only faint fluttery aftershocks remaining, Robby pulls out of you, resists the urge to lick his fingers, and wipes his hands dry. He shuts his eyes for a second and takes a deep breath before he can bear to look at you. The sweat on your brow, the blown darkness of your pupils, the slight swell from biting your lower lip. You’re too beautiful for him to cope with. Robby gazes at you only as long as he can handle before averting his eyes. 

To distract himself from the goddess bathing below him, Robby absently strokes your oversized towel hanging on the nearby rack and offers, “Ready to get out? I’ll help you up.”

Still breathless, you stare up at Robby in surprise. He didn’t kiss you, didn’t ask for any pleasure in exchange, only gave you what you needed, what you asked for. Pure, unadulterated respect. For your body, your boundaries, your desires. That’s so much sexier than the desperate love the two of you used to make between agonized sheets. “That would be good. Thank you.”

Robby pulls the stopper on the tub and extends his strong hands for you. Your eyes lock together as you stand with a groan. As he wraps you up in the towel, he holds your shoulders a moment and says urgently, earnestly, “Anything. Any time.”

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

In the morning, Robby’s securing his sleeves with his nicest cufflinks when you call him exactly when he’d expected. He may have snooped on your calendar – it was hanging on your wall as he helped you into bed, sue him – and saw that your OGBYN appointment this morning is, in fact, your third trimester anatomy scan at 9:00am. He knew as soon as he saw it that you were going to ask him to come at the last minute, so he’d asked Jack to stay a few hours late and he’d do the same at night.

He picks up the phone, trying not to sound to pleased with himself. “What can I do for you, oh glorious mother of my child?”

“Laying it on thick already,” you tease. He can hear you talking around your toothbrush and the image makes him smile as he smooths out his charcoal gray blazer and applies a few dabs of cologne. “Would you mind coming to my ultrasound with me today? Trinity was supposed to drive me but I guess she can’t now.”

Robby grins from ear to ear when he catches you in the blatant lie. Trinity’s working a double, which of course Robby would know as her supervisor. You were never planning on asking anyone else. Tucking that knowledge away in a secret place in his heart, Robby nudges, “Do you need a ride or am I invited in?”

“It’s your baby, dumbass,” you reply, the words half-formed now as you floss. After you rinse and spit again, you tell him more seriously, “I want you there.”

“You do?”

There’s a beat of silence where he’s worried he’s pushed too far. But then you say, “Yeah, I do. I wish you could’ve been there for the first few.”

With a deep breath, he replies, “Me too. I’d give anything to go back and-” He takes another deep breath and shakes his head at himself. “I’ll be there to pick you up in a few, okay?”

“See you soon, Michael.”

“Lo- See you, sweetheart.”

When you see Robby leaning against that goddamn minivan, you nearly jump his bones. He’s wearing slim-cut jeans that make his thighs look like tree trunks, his white button-down is undone just enough to show off some chest hair, and he’s got on a fucking blazer. A blazer. The bastard. When did he start putting mousse in his hair to make it so…tousled? Touchable. You can just imagine grabbing it while you ride him into oblivion.

Robby can’t suppress the very similar thoughts he’s having at seeing your outfit. You’re wearing a tea-length floral skirt with a slouchy, oversized sweater half-tucked into it. You look so comfy. Something about how soft and domestic you look as you approach him with your lace-hemmed socks and your oversized travel mug of tea is driving him crazy. He sees his whole life walking toward him with a sleepy smile on her lips.

Trying not to gawk too hard, you eye him up and down and say, “Michael, you look-” sexy as all fuck “-very handsome.”

He puffs up his chest. “Gotta look good; it’s my first time seeing my baby girl. I need to make a solid first impression.”

You roll your eyes, grinning as Robby pulls open the front door. “She can’t see you through my organs, babe.”

You don’t notice the word slipping out, so Robby doesn’t call attention to it. He just makes sure you’re buckled in and then sits on your other side with a glow in his gut. Then he reaches into his messenger bag in the backseat and hands over a king-sized Twix before starting the car and heading toward the hospital.

As you greedily open the wrapper, you hum, “What happened to Mr. Balanced Meal With Lots of Protein?”

“Mr. Balanced Meal With Lots of Protein knows you’re having your favorite burger with bacon and an egg on it from your favorite dive for lunch, on me,” he replies, glancing at you knowingly over the tops of his too-sexy sunglasses. “Throw in a side of sweet potato fries and I’m pretty sure science says that balances out a chocolate bar or two.”

You give a mock-salute with the half-eaten Twix. “Whatever you say, doctor.”

When Robby parks in his reserved spot near the ED, you both seem to realize the same thing at the same time. Robby stiffens up in his seat and offers, “I’m sorry; I wasn’t thinking. I can, ah, drop you off at the main entrance and meet you inside?”

You turn to him with one of those soft, shy smiles that made his heart stammer every time he looked your way when you started in the Pitt. “It’s okay. Really. I mean, you’re gonna be on paternity leave in at most ten weeks, so it’s not exactly a secret, right?”

“Fair point,” he concedes. “You know they’re gonna make it a whole thing, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“There might even be cake by the time we’re done.”

“God forbid.”

“Alright, fuck it.” Robby kills the engine and then walks around to your side of the van, helping you get your footing. “Let’s announce our lovechild to the world.”

“They probably already know; Trinity isn’t the most tight-lipped person,” you reason as he guides you with a large hand on the small of your back. It feels too protective and grounding for you to even pretend to protest.

“Jack didn’t know until I told him.”

“Because he’s such a notorious gossip.”

Robby can’t even respond because, as soon as you’re through the staff entrance, Dana’s staring straight forward at the two of you. Without moving her eyes from your stomach, she beelines your direction and gasps. After wrapping you up in a a warm hug, she looks you over and, disbelieving, mutters, “Holy hell, you are extremely pregnant.”

“Not extremely,” you balk as if it’s a ridiculous idea, “30 weeks.”

Dana seems to notice Robby’s presence and she narrows her eyes suspiciously, running the numbers in her head. “Thirty weeks, eh? Is that a new Robinavitch she’s growing?”

You absolutely beam when Robby blushes like a middle schooler. He confirms, “Yeah, that would be my little girl.”

“A girl!” Dana hugs both of you again and then looks at you seriously. “This one treating you like you deserve? Groveling profusely?”

“Yes, mom.”

“Good. As he should.”

Robby cuts in gently, “We’ve got an appointment upstairs, so we need to try to get through the floor to the elevator without too many interruptions.”

“Yeah, good fuckin’ luck with that,” Dana laughs as she gestures to the buzzing crowd gathering around the nurse’s station to get a look at you and Robby. “Have fun, lovebirds.”

Your cheeks are burning hot, so you poke Robby in the side and murmur, “Can you do one of your magical Dr. Robby speeches to make them go away? I don’t do well with public interrogations.”

“Your wish is my command,” he assures you quietly, pressing a kiss to your temple. In the nerves of the moment, you want to turn and nuzzle your face into the comfort of his broad chest.

Then Robby claps loud a few times until the handful of free doctors and nurses gather up, including a deeply amused Jack, Trinity, and Whitaker. He announces in his Big Serious Attending voice, “Alright guys, a handful of things to stop-slash-start the rumor mill. One: Yes, I’m wearing a blazer; pictures are $45 a pop. Two: Yes, your former APRN is heavily pregnant. Three: Yes, it is my baby. Four: I’m in a period of repentance to regain her favor after being an ass for the last six months, but we’re figuring it out. Finally: The buy-in for the due date betting pool starts at $25; I’m not skimping out on my firstborn. Any follow-up questions can be directed to the admirable godmother Dr. Trinity Santos. Got it?”

Whitaker gives a charming little whoop and starts off the clapping, joined quickly by everyone else. As Robby accepts a handful of congratulations, Jack pulls you into a strong hug and looks you in the eyes, serious and stern as ever. There’s an undeniable warmth in the twitch of his lips, though, as he tells you, “He’s got you, kid. I know he does. He loves you to death and he knows he fucked up.”

You squeeze his bicep gently. “Thanks, Dr. Abbot.”

“No problem.” Then he points at your bump and adds, “That’s Uncle Jackie to you, miss.”

You blink back hormonal tears as you laugh. “Uncle Jackie, huh?”

He grins and boasts, “I was born to be an irresponsible but lovable bad influence uncle. That girl is gonna have the biggest and most annoying family of doctors and nurses.”

The baby gives you a swift kick in the bladder like she heard him say it. You place your hand over the ginger spot and smile. “Yeah, she will. We’re lucky.”

And suddenly so much love washes through your body you’re not sure you can hold it all. When you watch Robby absolutely glowing talking about becoming a dad, you know this is right. He’s the right man for you. For her. You’re swept up into the collection of hugs and congratulations, too, but you can’t stop watching Robby’s smile lines. The way he checks in with you every time he laughs. The way he’s looking at you not like a girlfriend or a baby mama but like the sun of his solar system.

Robby tucks you under his arm easily and calls, “Alright, alright, we have an ultrasound to get to, people, let’s back off the pregnant lady. You all have lives to save and baby shower gifts to buy.”

You giggle under your breath as he leads you to the elevator. “Baby shower gifts. Please.”

“What? You don’t want a shower?”

“I just don’t know who would put it together; I don’t really have the time.”

Robby scoffs, “As if either of us could physically stop the nurses from throwing one now that the cat’s out of the bag.”

“Good point,” you concede, trying to suppress the smile that won’t stop threatening your cheeks.

Maybe it’s just luck or maybe it’s the presence of one of the hospital’s more important doctors standing behind you, but you’re in the exam room with Robby holding your hand within a few minutes of checking in. The OB attending, Dr. Montgomery, arrives shortly after your vitals are taken.

She’s borderline glaring after she greets you and extends a hand to Robby. “Dr. Robinavitch, good to see you back at the hospital after so long away.”

“Good to be back,” he replies carefully, shaking her hand. “I’m guessing you’ve been given a harsh but fair view of me the past few months.”

“That would be an accurate assessment, doctor.”

Robby does that thing where he kind of hunches his broad shoulder to seem smaller and more approachable. It’s what he does when he’s hiding from Gloria or talking to a little old lady with chlamydia. He insists, “Call me Michael, please.”

“We’ll see.”

You snicker, “Addie, I promise he’s putting the work in.”

“Fine. Claws away while we say hi to baby girl.” Dr. Montgomery preps the ultrasound station as you get your clothes tucked out of the way. As she applies the warmed gel and manuevers the wand, she tells you, mostly addressing Robby since he wasn’t there for the other appointments, “She was a little small at our last scan, so I’m gonna take a few extra measurements to track her progress.”

Robby nods slowly and stares at the back of the ultrasound monitor like he can see through it and gather information. “Has there been anything else on the scans I need to know about?”

You gaze up at him while Dr. Montgomery takes her notes. “Nope, she’s been a total champ. I’m the problem between the two of us.”

Robby strokes your hair with his other hand; you can tell it’s more to soothe himself than you, so you let him. “What does that mean?”

You lean into his touch unconsciously and reply, “I’m just anemic; I passed out early on. That’s how I found out I was pregnant in the first place.”

Guilt skewers Robby like an ice pick. “You’re taking iron now?”

You roll your eyes. “And eating spinach and letting handsome baby daddies buy me burgers.”

Robby’s ensuing smile is cute and proud. Dr. Montgomery looks up from the ultrasound and happily announces, “Baby girl’s growth has gotten much better since your last vosot. She’s no longer small for her gestational age and is now firmly average. Good work, mom. Have you been adding more protein and healthy fats to your diet like I suggested?”

When Robby opens his mouth to speak, you narrow your eyes at him an say, “Michael Robinavitch I will strangle you right now with my bare hands if you say ‘I told you so.’”

He chuckles and gives your hand a squeeze. “I would never. I’m just glad to hear our girl’s healthy – and not a bowling ball. I was 11 pounds.”

You cringe at the thought. “Lucky she takes after me on that front.”

So softly it sounds more like a prayer, Robby asks, “Can we see her now?”

Flipping the monitor around with a smile, Dr. Montgomery replies, “Yeah, of course. There’s her side profile; she’s perfectly posed for us. I’ll turn on the doppler, too.”

Robby leans forward and looks at the screen. Something cracks open in his chest as the baby’s heartbeat fills the room, whooshing fast and steady. He lets out a tiny, barely audible whimper. Your eyes fly up to his and you see the tears flooding down his pink cheeks as he gazes at his daughter wriggling around on the monitor.

You squeeze his hand and he gasps a tiny bit like he just remembered you’re there. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

“She’s perfect,” he breathes softly. Then he presses his lips to the top of your head and takes a trembling breath. Even his softest whisper trembles. “How could I ever leave you? I can’t believe I let myself miss this. You’re so fucking perfect. So strong. I love you so much.”

Tears thicken your throat as you lean up to press your forehead to his, sniffling out, “Mikey.”

He starts to cry in earnest, then, and you reach up to hold him. Your arms tangle together and your tears stain each other’s shoulders and there’s nothing but future in the places where your bodies touch.

Things get easier between you and Robby after that. You find yourself asking him for more and more trivial things just to see him and hear his voice. Your phone calls turn from a few sentences to a few minutes to an hour or more if you catch each other at a good time. He takes you shopping for baby clothes and even pretends to have an opinion about different fabrics when you ask. He stocks up on diapers, helps with your labor go bag, and does absolutely everything in his power to take the mental load off your shoulders.

From that new closeness, a quiet tension emerges. As you reach week 32 of your pregnancy, the shared knowledge of your needing to move hangs over you both, unspoken but omnipresent. Robby hasn’t pushed the issue yet, but you know it’s going to reach a tipping point.

That day comes during the worst rainstorm of the year one gloomy day in October. It’s your day off, so you’re treating yourself to a shopping spree when the rain starts. The forecast had only been for a light drizzle, so you were comfortable leaving the apartment in something cozy with an umbrella and rain boots. But the light drizzle turned torrential while you were inside a baby boutique on the other side of town.

Meanwhile, the heavy, dark, oppressive thunderstorm has the ED swamped. All the attendings are on staff to handle the onslaught of car accidents, falls, and asthma attacks. As he’s supervising Mohan’s work on an elderly woman’s obliterated tibia, his phone vibrates in his pocket.

While closing another line of sutures, Samira asks over her shoulder, “Is that mama?”

Robby slips his phone out just long enough to check. “Shit, yes, it is. She wouldn’t call me during weather like this if it wasn’t important. Do you mind if I-”

Mohan chuckles, “I think Mrs. Frost and I have this handled. Go save your woman from her aching feet or lack of chocolate bars.”

Robby gives the patient an apologetic smile and excuses himself. He ducks around the nearest quiet-ish corner where the hospital’s chaos lowers to a dull roar and manages to pick up right before it goes to voicemail. “Hey, sweetheart, what’s going on?”

He can hear you crying on the other side, the sound barely coming through the rain. “Can you come pick me up?”

Robby half-jogs toward the locker room, already stripping off his trauma gown and dodging questions from his fellow doctors as he goes. “Where are you?”

“A bus stop in East Liberty,” you sniffle out. “The buses are all delayed because of the weather and I tried to get ahold of Trinity but she didn’t pick up and I’m soaking wet and freezing and I can’t-”

“Breathe for me, honey. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” Robby can hear the shivering and the tears and the panic in your voice and his gut clenches up in pain. He spares a glance outside and sees that the rain is still a deluge, the clouds dark and murky above and the ground shiny and slick with oil leeching out below. Lightning strikes and thunder claps. “Which bus stop?”

As you tell him, he dumps his trauma gown, rummages through his things, and grabs his keys and his gym bag, which at least has a towel and some dry clothes. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, okay? Is there somewhere warm and dry you can wait for me?”

“I- I don’t know. I’m all frazzled,” you admit. He can feel your reluctance to tell him, but you can’t stop it from spilling out through the crackling rain. “There was this guy who wouldn’t leave me alone, asking all these gross questions about my boyfriend or whatever and I just ran to the closest public spot I could find.”

Anger flares in Robby’s chest. He scribbles out a note and hands it to Dana as he passes the nurse’s station, barely pausing to see her reaction – just long enough to see her annoyed but supportive nod – before he shoves out of the door into the rain. “Are you alone now? Are you safe?”

“I’m okay, just- just kinda scared and tired and- and-”

“Breathe, baby, breathe. I’m getting in the car right now.”

A few beats pass with nothing but the rain in Robby’s ears. Then your meek, nervous voice: “Would you stay on the phone with me?”

“Of course.” He guns the engine and peels out of the parking lot, careful but quick. “I’m right here with you. Just keep talking and the time’ll pass. Tell me about what you were doing. Shopping for something fun?”

“Yeah, I was.” You sniffle again and try to smile. “I bought this, um, this handmade baby wrap carrier thing. It’s really soft and, like, this quilted fabric that I think would be really comfy for her.”

“You gonna teach me how to baby wear like all the hip dads are doing?”

“Definitely.” You actually let out a small laugh as you tell him, “The whole ‘big man carrying baby’ thing is very sexy. I’m sure it’ll help you pick up chicks at the grocery store.”

Robby snorts. “You know perfectly well there are only two chicks I’m interested in picking up the rest of my life.

“Rest of your life, huh?”

“If they’ll have me.” He makes a turn and spots you huddling beneath a leaky bus stop shelter. “Alright, I’m only a minute away now, but I might be late because I have to stop and offer the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen a ride, okay? She’s soaking wet and very pregnant and dressed inappropriately for the weather.” Robby pulls up to the curb and pushes your door open as he hangs up the phone. “Hey, stranger, can I give you a lift?”

You slide into the car next to him, your eyes puffy from crying and your hair disastrous from the rain. As you buckle in, you pout and observe, “You turned on the seat warmers for me.”

“I also brought you a threadbare towel and a hoodie; I’m a real gentleman,” he replies as he opens up his gym bag in the backseat and hands them off.

Gratefully toweling off your hair and tucking yourself under the hoodie, you smile and nudge him. “Yeah, actually, you are.”

Robby gives your knee a quick squeeze and pulls the car into traffic, heading back toward the highway. You gradually begin to feel like a person instead of a pregnant popsicle.

Teeth still chattering a bit, you manage to get out, “I’m sorry for interrupting you at work; I’m sure things are swamped there.”

Despite the fact that his phone’s been ringing non-stop since he left, Robby replies earnestly, “Nothing’s more important to me than your safety.” He swallows hard and apologizes for himself, “I’m sorry for calling you baby on the phone; I wasn’t thinking. I heard you upset and I just went on autopilot.”

You tell him softly, “It’s okay, Michael.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, it really is,” you murmur back. “You missed the exit, by the way.”

Robby shakes his head. “I’m taking you back to my place; you need a warm bath and a hot meal and to sleep for twelve hours uninterrupted in a king size bed.”

You avert your eyes and admit, “That sounds really nice, Mikey.”

“I like hearing you call me that again,” he says gently. “Thank you.”

“Thank me by ordering me some orange chicken while I take a bubble bath.”

Robby chuckles, “Yes, ma’am.”

As soon as Robby has you inside, he’s helping you strip your exhausted, pruny body and drawing you a silky bath. As he collects some of his old comfy clothes for you to wear from his closet, you call out from the tub, “Would you actually make that matzo ball soup that you made when you gave me mono?”

“I did not give you mono,” he laughs, “but I will absolutely make you some nourishing comfort food.”

He can hear the teasing eye roll in your voice as you call back, “You had mono. You made out with me. I then had mono. Who the hell do you think I got it from?”

“Alright, whatever.” Robby sets down the clothes on the counter and points at you seriously. “Don’t you dare try to get out of that tub without my help, missy. I’ll be back once I’ve got the soup boiling.”

You smile at him fondly and bat your eyelashes. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t play dirty with me.”

“I would never.” You sink deeper into the bubbles and sigh contentedly, “I’m more than happy to stay in here and turn myself into a little matzo ball.”

He leans down and kisses the top of your head. “Good girl.”

“Now who’s playing dirty?”

“I would never.”

Robby slips out of the bathroom and you just…relax. While Robby takes care of you. While he waits on you.

God.

God.

Between the bubbles and the bergamot bath oil, the tension and nerves leave. The sound of the storm outside becomes white noise. From downstairs, the smell of rich schmaltzy chicken broth wafts into your nose and you feel settled. Held. By the time Robby returns to the bathroom, you know, deep down in your bones, that you’ve forgiven him.

Robby helps you out of the tub and wraps you up in a fluffy robe he must’ve been warming in the dryer for you. Then he grabs a tube of lotion, sits down on the bed, and gestures for you to join him. While he tends to your feet and legs, he pleads with you, “Move in here, sweetheart, please. I can’t- I can’t function not knowing if you’re okay. Not knowing where the baby’s going to be sleeping and not knowing if I can be there for her and for you and-”

“Michael.” It’s a whisper, a tender one at that. “I don’t want to feel like I’m trying to fit into your life.”

“I don’t want to make you feel that way; I swear.” He kisses your hand a few times and then takes a deep breath. “I’d like to apologize now. If you’d let me.”

You nod slowly and try to ignore the tears that rise to your waterline. “I’m ready. Go ahead.”

“Thank you.” After a deep breath, Robby starts, “Look, I’m not going to apologize for leaving. I needed to leave. I needed to-” He gestures wide and begging as he searches for the right words. “I needed to grow up. I know I’m a little old for that, but I think it’s the closest thing to true. I’m sorry I told you instead of talking it through. I’m sorry I went radio silent. But honestly?” 

Suddenly he reaches out and cups your cheek in his large hand. His palm is warm and so familiar that you can hardly breathe. With his thumb stroking your skin, he finishes, “What I’m the most sorry for is that I didn’t ask you to come with me. Every sunset, every motel mattress, every wide open highway would’ve been so much better if I shared them with you.”

He presses his forehead to yours and murmurs, “I swear I’ll spend every single one with you from now on. I’ll be there for every birthday, every Chrismukkah, every fucking thing you want me at. Nothing has ever or will ever matter to me more than being your husband. The father of our children. So tell me what you want. Tell me every single thing you want for you and for me and for the baby and you’ll have it. Because I love you more than my stupid bike and more than my career and more than everything I’ve ever had. You are everything now.”

The air sparks like the lightning outside. For a full minute, it’s you and it’s Robby and it’s the storm.

Then you lean forward. You hold Robby’s face with both hands and search his golden brown eyes. His heart pounds in his ears. His lungs are tight and screaming.

And you kiss him.

It’s slow, so gentle, and he’s holding his breath. Then reality seems to settle softly on his shoulders and he smiles against your lips, slides his hands onto your waist, thumbs affectionate on your bump, and kisses you back. When you pull away only slightly, you inform him, “I want a house with a yard. One that I get a say in. Further from the city. I want a safe, sensible family car for myself. No black interior. Light brown. I want a big fat diamond ring. Four carats minimum. I want sex at least three times a week. Six orgasms for me as a baseline. And I want a husband who works at most 50 hours.”

Robby gazes at you with watery eyes. “Okay.”

You smack him on the chest and laugh, “‘Okay’? I was trying to be unreasonable, Michael!”

“Well I’m being serious. Let’s move to the suburbs and have a huge wedding and fuck whenever you want. I’ve got savings to get us through as long as we need. I’ll start my own practice, slow down, buy a grill, join the PTA, the whole nine yards.”

You roll your eyes and scoff, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not,” he assures seriously. “If you’re taking me back and making me a dad, you can be a hell of a lot more unreasonable than asking me to put my family first.”

“Fine.” You cross your arms over your chest and try not to grin. “I want a puppy.”

Robby grips his heart like you’ve stabbed him. “If you really want one – when the baby’s old enough that I won’t have a panic attack having a dog around her.”

“Deal.” You rest your forearms on his shoulders, playing with the hair at the back of his neck. “I want you to mow the lawn shirtless on Saturday mornings.”

He melts under your touch and smiles. “Okay.”

You lean in closer, a smile of your own breaking out. “And I want my own craft room in the house.”

Glancing down at your lips, he promises once again, “Okay.”

“I want a hot tub.”

“Okay.”

“And a soaking tub.”

“Okay.”

“Manicures every other week. A tropical vacation every summer. Two more babies in the next ten years.”

“Okay, okay-” he kisses you again, soft and warm and unhurried “-very okay.”

Your hand slides down his chest and toys with the hem of his tee. You watch his stomach twitch and his chest gasp upwards as you purr, “And I want you to fuck me. Right now.”

Robby’s lips return to yours. Urgent now. He pulls you into his lap and drags kisses up your neck, tasting your clean skin and your pulse beneath him. His breath is hot and his every touch – slipping the robe from your shoulders, lazing his fingers along your arms, kissing the shell of your ear – is an act of worship. At last, he murmurs against your lips, “Okay.”

By the third time your card declined in front of Jack Abbot, you were ready to walk into traffic and let Pittsburgh finish what your bank account started.

Not dramatically. Not even with much feeling.

Just a clean, practical exit from the kind of humiliation that made your skin feel too tight over your bones.

The cafeteria at PTMC was too bright for this hour, all hard fluorescent light and polished floors and the faint, permanent smell of fryer oil losing a war against antiseptic. Behind you, the emergency department pulsed on with its usual awful rhythm—monitors chiming, stretchers squealing past, somebody coughing low and ragged, the sound dragging itself through the corridor, Dana Evans barking for someone to move their ass before she moved it for them. It was a living thing down here. Hungry. Overlit. Never satisfied.

You had a wrapped turkey sandwich in one hand, a bruised banana in the other, and that particular, skin-tight shame of being broke in public.

The cashier, who looked as tired as everyone else in the building, tried not to make a face at the register.

“Sometimes it’s the chip,” she said.

“It’s not the chip,” you said, because apparently your mouth had decided the truth was less embarrassing than optimism.

You could feel the line behind you growing restless. A respiratory therapist with a Diet Coke. A med student in wrinkled scrubs whispering urgently into their phone. Dr. Whitaker, gentle-eyed and awkward, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to give you privacy by force of will. Somewhere near the coffee station, Santos was talking too loudly about a procedure she “absolutely could’ve done faster if anyone had let her finish,” and Dr. Mohan was answering in that careful, measured way that made even a correction sound like she’d considered the whole person first.

You shifted the sandwich lower against your palm.

“It’s fine,” you said, already turning. “I don’t need it.”

A hand reached past your shoulder and tapped a card against the reader.

The machine beeped.

Approved.

You froze.

Jack Abbot stood close enough behind you that you caught the familiar edge of him before you looked up—the clean, medicinal bite of hospital soap, the stale warmth of coffee, the faintest trace of sweat under scrubs after too many hours on his feet. He didn’t look at you right away. He watched the cashier print the receipt with the same expression he wore when waiting for labs, jaw set, eyes tired, patience worn thin but not gone.

“Bag?” the cashier asked.

“No,” Jack said.

You stood there with the sandwich in one hand and the banana in the other, suddenly too aware of the bruised peel, the cold give of the sandwich through the cloudy plastic, the line behind you, and Jack Abbot’s shoulder beside yours.

You stared at him. “Seriously?”

He finally looked at you.

Jack Abbot always looked like he’d been awake since the Clinton administration. It should’ve made him less attractive. It didn't. The exhaustion sat under his eyes and in the lines bracketing his mouth, but there was something about him that made tired look like discipline instead of defeat. His hair was a little mussed, his scrubs were creased at the hips, and his stance had that slight adjustment you’d learned to notice after months of seeing him around PTMC—the subtle distribution of weight that came with his prosthetic leg and the old damage he carried without announcing it.

“What?” he said.

You lowered your voice. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“That’s my lunch.”

“Looked like it.”

“You paid for it.”

“Sharp today.”

You huffed, heat crawling up your neck. “Jack.”

That got you the smallest change in his face. Not a smile. He didn’t hand those out recklessly. More like one corner of his mouth remembered humor existed and gave a half-hearted twitch before giving up.

“Eat the sandwich,” he said.

“I was going to.”

“No, you were going to put it back and pretend you weren’t hungry.”

You opened your mouth.

Jack’s eyebrows lifted.

You closed it again.

Behind him, Whitaker looked down at his shoes like they might offer instructions, visibly desperate not to be part of this. Santos, unfortunately, had no such instinct.

“Damn,” she said, appearing at Jack’s shoulder with a coffee she had definitely not paid for recently enough to still be that hot. “Abbot’s buying lunch now? Is this a resident perk, or do I need to almost faint near the muffins?”

Mohan didn’t look up from stirring sugar into her tea. “You would never almost faint quietly enough to qualify.”

“I don’t faint,” Santos said.

“You got lightheaded during central line training.”

“That was low blood sugar and a hostile learning environment.” Santos pointed two fingers toward Jack. “But I’m serious. I want in on the cafeteria patron program.”

Jack looked at her.

Santos looked back.

The silence lasted exactly long enough for her confidence to thin at the edges.

“Or not,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “Noted. Very selective program.”

Dana passed behind the group with a stack of charts under one arm and a look sharp enough to split sutures. “If any of you are done loitering in my cafeteria like it’s a damn wine bar, I’ve got three beds backing up, a grown adult arguing with registration, a kid melting down in triage, and a Lego stuck in one of their ear canals.”

Whitaker blinked. “Who? Adult guy or kid guy?”

Dana didn’t slow down. “That’s the part that’s gonna disappoint you.”

Santos grinned. Mohan gave a small, resigned sigh. Jack, without looking away from you, said, “Eat.”

Your face was still hot.

The sandwich felt heavier now that it had been purchased by him. Not because it was expensive. It was hospital cafeteria turkey on wheat, overpriced and bland, the cloudy plastic crinkling under your fingers every time your grip tightened. But Jack had noticed. That was the part you didn’t know how to hold. He’d seen the little calculation you’d tried to hide, the quiet defeat of deciding hunger could wait until later, and he’d stepped in with no fanfare. No pity. No soft voice.

Just a card tapped against a reader and a dry order to eat.

“I can pay you back,” you said.

Jack’s eyes dipped briefly to the sandwich and then back to your face.

“Don’t.”

“I don’t like owing people.”

“You don’t owe me.”

“That’s not how money works.”

“It is when I decide I don’t care.”

You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s very generous of you, Dr. Abbot.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

You should’ve let it go.

You really should’ve.

But the humiliation had already burned off into something else, something warmer and more dangerous, because Jack was standing there with his tired eyes and that blunt, immovable steadiness, and you had never been good at leaving tension alone when you could poke it until it bit.

“Careful,” you said, tucking the sandwich against your chest. “People are gonna think you’re my sugar daddy.”

Whitaker made a strangled sound and turned toward the condiments with the strained focus of a man suddenly invested in ketchup packets, while Santos choked on her coffee hard enough that Mohan closed her eyes like she was choosing patience on purpose. Jack only stared at you, and for one awful second, you thought you’d gone too far.

Then Jack took the receipt from the cashier, crumpled it in one hand, and said, flat as a dead monitor, “People think a lot of stupid shit.”

He walked away before you could answer.

You watched him disappear through the cafeteria doors and into the arterial chaos of the ER, shoulders squared, limp controlled, already swallowed by the work waiting for him.

Santos leaned closer, grin wide enough to be medically concerning.

“Oh, that was not nothing.”

“It was lunch,” you said.

Mohan looked at you over the rim of her cup, thoughtful in a way that made you feel unfortunately examined. “He noticed before anyone else did.”

You pressed the cold sandwich wrapper against your burning face.

Dana shouted from somewhere down the hall, “Santos, if you’re socializing instead of working, I’m assigning you Lego ear.”

Santos snapped upright. “I’m not socializing.”

“Good,” Dana called. “Then you can do it faster.”

You stood there with Jack’s lunch in your hands and tried very hard not to smile.

It would’ve been easier if that had been the end of it.

But Jack Abbot, you learned, was not a man who did anything halfway once he decided it made sense.

He didn’t become flashy. He didn’t start acting like some rich asshole in a bad romance novel, throwing cash around and waiting to be thanked for it. That would’ve been easier to resist, probably. Less intimate, anyway. You could’ve rolled your eyes at that. You could’ve made fun of him. You could’ve called it ridiculous and kept your pride intact.

Jack was worse.

Jack was practical.

He bought your coffee the next morning because, as he put it, “I was already standing there.” He brought you half a container of pasta from the staff fridge because “Robby ordered too much and nobody here understands portions.” He left a protein bar beside your laptop during a night when the waiting room looked like every bad decision in Pittsburgh had agreed to arrive at once. He noticed when your left shoe started peeling at the sole and said nothing, which somehow made you more self-conscious than if he’d pointed at it.

Robby noticed before you did.

Or maybe Robby noticed everything and simply chose when to weaponize it.

It was just after noon on a bad shift, the kind where every hallway seemed to have sprouted a stretcher and every call light sounded like one more thing nobody had enough hands to answer. You were near the nurses’ station, trying to make sense of a scheduling conflict that had three departments blaming each other in increasingly creative language, when Robby came up beside you with a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

His hair was doing that thing where it looked like he’d run both hands through it enough times to qualify as a cry for help.

“Is Abbot feeding you?” he asked.

You nearly dropped your pen. “What?”

Robby glanced toward trauma two, where Jack was leaning over a chart with Dr. McKay, both of them listening while Javadi spoke quickly and carefully, too eager to be casual. Jack’s attention was fixed, but his expression had that faintly skeptical set that made med students stand up straighter by instinct.

“Food,” Robby said. “Coffee. Whatever else he’s pretending is a coincidence.”

“He bought me lunch once.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And coffee.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe pasta.”

Robby’s eyebrows rose.

You narrowed your eyes. “Do you have a point?”

“Not one worth putting in writing.” He took a sip of coffee, then winced like it tasted exactly as bad as he expected and somehow worse. “Just be careful.”

That killed the humor faster than you wanted it to.

Your eyes shifted back toward Jack before you could stop them.

Robby caught it. Of course he caught it. He was annoying that way, all ragged compassion and clinical perception, the kind of man who could call out a hemorrhage, a lie, and a panic attack in the same breath.

“He’s a good guy,” Robby said, quieter.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s uncomplicated.”

You swallowed. “I know that too.”

Robby’s face softened by a fraction. It made him look older, which was unfair, because he already looked like the hospital had been chewing on him for years and kept forgetting to swallow.

“Okay,” he said. Then, because sincerity seemed to physically pain him if left unbalanced, he added, “Also, if this turns into some HR nightmare, I’m denying I noticed.”

“There’s nothing to notice.”

“Great. Love that. Very convincing.”

You looked back down at your schedule so he wouldn’t see your face.

Across the department, Jack glanced up.

For a second, through the moving bodies and swinging privacy curtains and fluorescent glare, his eyes found yours.

He didn’t smile.

He just looked.

That was becoming the problem.

Jack didn’t flirt the way other men flirted. He didn’t crowd you with charm or drown you in compliments or make a show of wanting to be watched. He looked at you like noticing was a form of pressure. Like every detail went somewhere and stayed there. The coffee order. The bad shoe. The way you tucked your hands into your sleeves when you were cold. The way your voice got flatter when you were trying not to admit something hurt.

You wished he’d be less good at it.

You wished you liked it less.

The car thing happened on a Thursday.

You were leaving PTMC after a shift that had somehow lasted ten hours despite only being scheduled for eight, which felt like a violation of both labor law and physics. Your head ached from fluorescent lights. Your feet throbbed. The parking garage smelled like wet concrete, exhaust, and old rain, with the city beyond it slick and dark under a spring storm that had rolled in hard after sunset.

Your car made the noise again when you turned the key.

Not the cute noise. Not the “haha, she’s old but reliable” noise.

The expensive one.

A grinding, metallic cough dragged itself out from under the hood, followed by a rattle that sounded like several important pieces had started a fight and nobody was winning.

You shut the engine off immediately.

“Please,” you whispered, resting your forehead against the steering wheel. “Not tonight.”

The car answered by doing absolutely nothing, which was at least better than exploding.

You tried again.

The sound came back worse.

A knock hit your window.

You screamed.

Jack stood outside in the harsh garage lighting, rain clinging to his shoulders, one hand braced on the roof of your car. He looked unimpressed by your survival instincts.

You rolled the window down halfway. “Jesus Christ.”

“No,” he said. “Just me.”

“Do you always lurk in parking garages?”

“Only when cars sound like they’re about to die.”

“It’s fine.”

Jack looked at the hood. Then at you.

“That’s not a fine sound.”

“It does that sometimes.”

“It shouldn’t do that ever.”

You tightened your grip on the steering wheel. “I’m taking it in next week.”

“You’re not driving it until then.”

A laugh slipped out of you, brittle and defensive. “Okay, Dad.”

His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened.

Your stomach dipped.

Not fear. Not exactly.

Something else.

Jack leaned slightly closer to the open window. “Pop the hood.”

“I don’t need you to—”

“Pop the hood.”

There was a particular tone he used in the ER when people were bleeding, lying, or being stupid about symptoms that could kill them. Apparently, your car had been triaged into that category.

You popped the hood.

The storm pushed rain sideways into the garage, misting the concrete in silver sheets beyond the open level. Jack moved around to the front of your car and lifted the hood, shoulders hunching slightly as he looked inside. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just dark scrubs under a gray zip-up that had seen better decades, sleeves pushed to his forearms. The overhead light caught the tendons in his hands, the salt at his temples, the hard concentration in his face.

It was obscene, honestly, watching a man become attractive over engine trouble.

He checked something, frowned, checked something else, then lowered the hood with more control than the situation deserved.

“Do not drive this,” he said.

You were already shaking your head. “I have to get home.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, Jack.”

He stared at you over the hood. “You got a better plan?”

You did not.

You had forty-three dollars in your checking account, a rent payment looming like an execution date, and a car making noises you couldn’t afford to identify. But admitting that felt worse than standing barefoot on broken glass.

“I can call someone,” you said.

“Who?”

The question was simple. Too simple.

That was the problem with Jack. He had no patience for the decorative lies people used to get through conversations. He stripped things down until you either told the truth or stood there bleeding around it.

You looked away first.

Rain ticked against the garage opening. Somewhere below, an ambulance siren rose and fell, dopplering into the wet city.

Jack’s voice dropped. “Get your bag.”

“I don’t want to be a problem.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t want you fixing everything.”

“I’m not fixing everything.” He came around to your side of the car, opened the door, and stood back enough to give you room. “I’m stopping you from driving a death trap.”

You didn’t move.

Jack exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh.

“You can be mad in my car,” he said. “It has heat.”

That was how he won.

Not with softness. Not with a speech.

Heat.

You grabbed your bag and got out.

Jack’s car was clean in the way a person’s car got when they didn’t spend enough time in it to make a mess. There was an old coffee cup in the holder, a folded jacket in the back, a snow scraper on the floor, and a faint smell of leather, rain, and whatever soap he used that always made you think of hospital sinks and his hands.

He turned the heat on without asking. Then, after a second, he aimed one of the vents toward you.

You noticed.

You hated that you noticed.

Neither of you said anything as he pulled out of the garage. The rain blurred the windshield, smearing Pittsburgh into traffic lights and dark brick, ambulance bays and slick streets, the city looking bruised and alive under the storm. Jack drove with one hand low on the wheel, the other resting near the gear shift, fingers flexing once when his leg seemed to bother him.

“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

His eyes stayed on the road. “Yeah.”

“Your leg?”

“I said yeah.”

“Right. Sorry.”

His jaw worked.

Then, quieter, “Long day.”

That was as much as he usually gave. A door opened an inch, then locked again.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

The wipers dragged water from the glass in steady, tired arcs.

At a red light, Jack said, “Where do you take the car?”

You laughed weakly. “To a mechanic who knows me by name and already looks tired when I walk in.”

“I’ll call someone.”

“No.”

“You don’t know who yet.”

“I know it’s going to involve you paying for something.”

The light turned green.

Jack drove.

You looked at him, incredulous. “You’re not even denying it.”

“Seemed like a waste of both our time.”

“Jack.”

“I know a guy.”

“Of course you know a guy.”

“I’m old.”

“You’re not that old.”

That got you a glance. Brief, sharp, almost amused.

“No?”

“No,” you said, and then because you had apparently decided self-preservation was for other people, you added, “Just old enough to have a guy.”

The corner of his mouth moved.

You felt victorious and doomed at the same time.

“I can handle it,” you said, softer. “The car. I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you can.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Jack was quiet long enough that you thought he might not answer.

Then he said, “Because figuring it out shouldn’t mean hoping your brakes make it another week.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

You looked out the window so he wouldn’t see it.

The thing about being broke—really, really, broke—wasn’t just the lack of money. It was the math. The constant, grinding math of survival. A sandwich became a calculation. A repair became a catastrophe. A strange noise under the hood became a negotiation with God or luck or whatever indifferent force kept old cars alive for one more day. You got used to making everything stretch until stretching felt like living, and then someone like Jack came along and called it unsafe in that blunt, infuriating voice, and suddenly the whole thing looked different.

Not brave.

Not independent.

Just exhausting.

He pulled up outside your building and put the car in park. Rain ran down the windshield in crooked streams.

You didn’t reach for the door handle.

“Thank you,” you said.

Jack nodded once.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“I’ll pay you back if your guy does anything.”

“No.”

You shut your eyes. “Please don’t make me fight you in your car. I’m tired.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop noticing.”

“No.”

Your eyes opened.

Jack was looking at you now, body angled slightly in the driver’s seat, face cut by passing headlights and dashboard glow. Up close, in the dim, the lines around his eyes looked deeper. So did the restraint. He wore it like part of the uniform, like scrubs and a stethoscope and whatever pain he kept filed away under function.

Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. “Why?”

He didn’t pretend not to understand.

“I don’t know,” he said.

It was the first answer he’d given you that didn’t sound like a diagnosis.

That made it worse.

You tried to smile, tried to make the air lighter before it crushed you. “This is getting very sugar daddy of you.”

The joke landed differently in the dark.

You felt it. So did he.

Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Maybe less. Long enough for your pulse to trip, not long enough to accuse him of anything. Either way, when he looked back up, his face had gone still in a way that made the warm air from the vents feel suddenly too hot.

“You should go inside,” he said.

You nodded.

Neither of you moved.

Then his phone buzzed in the cup holder, snapping the moment clean down the middle. Jack glanced at the screen, saw Robby’s name, and declined the call before typing something one-handed with the resignation of a man who knew better than to leave him unanswered too long.

You opened the door before you could do something stupid, like ask him to come upstairs.

“Night, Jack.”

His hand tightened once around the phone.

“Lock your door.”

You smiled despite yourself. “Yes, Doctor.”

His eyes lifted.

There it was again, that almost-smile. Faint. Dangerous.

“Don’t start,” he said.

You got out before your face could betray you.

The car repair cost eight hundred and sixty dollars.

Jack didn't tell you this.

The mechanic did, because you called behind Jack’s back after getting one text that said, Car’s handled. Pick it up Friday.

Handled.

Like it was a chart. Like it was a consult. Like it was one of the million things at PTMC that needed to be assessed, fixed, signed off, and moved along.

You stood in a supply hallway with your phone pressed to your ear, your grip tightening around the case while the mechanic cheerfully explained that Dr. Abbot had already squared it away.

Squared it away.

You were going to kill him.

Unfortunately, when you found him, he was in the middle of resetting a dislocated shoulder with Robby at the bedside and King handing over medication with careful, focused precision. There was a teenage patient crying, his mother pacing, Dana telling everyone who wasn’t useful to back up, and Jack looking exactly like a man who could not be murdered until after he finished being competent.

You had to wait.

That made you angrier.

By the time he stepped out, stripping off gloves and tossing them into the trash, you had worked yourself into something sharp enough to throw.

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars?” you said.

Jack stopped.

Robby, behind him, stopped too.

Dana looked up from the desk.

Santos, who had the survival instincts of someone convinced she could talk her way out of anything, immediately leaned over the counter.

Jack’s eyes flicked over your face. “Not here.”

“Oh, no, definitely here.”

Robby pressed his lips together and took one very deliberate step backward.

“Coward,” Dana muttered.

“Experienced,” Robby corrected.

Jack lowered his voice. “You called the mechanic.”

“You paid the mechanic.”

“Yeah.”

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars, Jack.”

“Would’ve been more if you kept driving it.”

You stared at him. “That is not the point.”

“That is exactly the point.”

“I told you I didn’t want you fixing everything.”

“And I told you I wasn’t letting you drive a death trap.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

For the first time, something like frustration cracked through his calm.

“No,” he said. “I don’t get to decide everything for you. But I do get to decide what I do with my money.”

Dana made a low sound. “Jesus.”

Santos whispered, “This is better than whatever I was supposed to be doing.”

Mohan, passing with a chart, said, “You're supposed to be working.”

You barely heard them.

Your whole focus had narrowed to Jack’s face, the stubborn set of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. He looked tired. He always looked tired. But underneath it was something else now, something protective enough to be annoying and personal enough to hurt.

“I can’t pay that back right now,” you said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It makes it done.”

You laughed once, without humor. “You’re impossible.”

“Usually.”

“You can’t just—” You stopped, aware suddenly of how many people were pretending not to listen. Your voice dropped. “You can’t just keep doing this.”

Jack’s gaze held yours.

“Doing what?”

The question should’ve been innocent, but it wasn’t. Not after the lunches, the coffee, the rides, the mechanic, or the way Jack looked at you like you were a problem he wanted to solve with his bare hands. You stepped closer before you thought better of it.

“You know what,” you said.

For a second, the department moved around you, loud and bright and indifferent, but you and Jack were still.

Then Dana slapped a chart down on the counter hard enough to startle everyone within ten feet.

“Okay,” she said. “As much as I’d love to watch whatever this is turn into a workplace training module, Abbot, bed nine needs you. You—” She pointed at you. “Take a breath before you rupture something expensive.”

Jack’s mouth tightened, but he listened.

Of course he listened to Dana. Everyone did, eventually.

He stepped past you, close enough that his sleeve brushed your arm.

“Friday,” he said under his breath.

You turned your head. “What?”

“Pick up your car Friday.”

Then he was gone.

Santos waited exactly three seconds.

“So,” she said, bright-eyed. “How does one apply for the Abbot scholarship fund?”

Dana pointed at her without looking. “Bedpan in curtain three.”

Santos deflated. “Damn it.”

You hated how badly you wanted to laugh.

By Friday, when you picked up your car, there was a new pair of black nonslip clogs sitting in the passenger seat.

Not fancy. Not wrapped. Just sensible, comfortable work shoes in your size, made for twelve-hour shifts and the brutal, steady wear of the ER. A sticky note was pressed to the box in Jack’s blunt handwriting.

Your old ones were unsafe.

That was it. No apology, no explanation. Just another problem he’d noticed and solved before you could decide whether to be grateful or furious.

You sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, staring at the note, then laughed until your eyes burned.

The fundraiser was Robby’s fault.

At least, that was what you told yourself, because blaming Robby was easier than admitting you had agreed to attend a hospital donor event while quietly hoping Jack would look at you in something other than scrubs.

PTMC held one every year, apparently. A grim little ritual where administrators, donors, board members, and exhausted medical staff gathered in a hotel ballroom to pretend the emergency department wasn’t being kept alive by overworked staff, aging equipment, and the quiet fact that everyone had learned to make do with less. There would be speeches. There would be bad chicken. There would be wealthy people using phrases like “frontline heroes” while nurses calculated how many working monitors the cost of the floral arrangements could’ve bought.

You hadn’t planned to go.

Then Gloria Underwood’s office had needed extra administrative support for check-in, and Robby had said, “It’s easy money. Wear something nice. Try not to let the donors explain healthcare to you.”

You’d said yes before checking your closet.

That was how you ended up in your apartment three nights before the event, sitting on the floor in a towel, surrounded by every dress you owned and the creeping realization that none of them worked. Too casual. Too tight in the wrong way. Too old. Too funeral. Too “college career fair,” stiff in all the wrong places and not nice enough to pass under ballroom lighting. One had a broken zipper. One still had a stain from a margarita incident you refused to revisit.

Your phone buzzed.

Jack:

Car still running?

You stared at the message, then at the graveyard of dresses around you.

You:

yes, dad

Jack:

Don’t.

You smiled despite yourself.

You:

thank you, by the way for the shoes too even though you’re insane

Jack:

You going tomorrow?

You stared at the message for a second too long, then looked down at the heap of rejected clothes around your legs.

You:

maybe

Jack:

That means yes.

You should’ve stopped there.

Instead, with the fatal confidence of a woman sitting half-naked on her bedroom floor and losing an argument with formalwear, you typed:

You:

it means maybe now i just need a dress that doesn’t make me look like i wandered into the fundraiser by accident

The reply took longer than usual.

Jack:

Show me.

You stared at the message, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin the pile of rejected clothes wasn’t covering.

You:

the dress?

Jack:

What else would I mean?

Your face went hot.

You:

don’t ask me that when i’m half naked on my bedroom floor

The typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Jack:

You have tomorrow off?

You stared.

Then stared harder.

You:

why

Jack:

Answer the question.

There were several smart things you could’ve said.

You said none of them.

You:

yes

Jack:

I’ll pick you up at 10.

Your stomach flipped.

You:

jack

Jack:

10:30 if you’re going to argue.

You:

you don’t even know what i was going to say

Jack:

I’m learning patterns.

You pressed your phone facedown against your thigh and sat there half-dressed and mortified, thighs pressed together, waiting for your body to stop reacting like he’d put his hands on you.

The next morning, Jack arrived at 10:28.

Of course he did.

He drove you to a small boutique outside downtown, the kind of place you would’ve walked past without entering because the window displays didn’t include prices, which meant the prices were rude. Jack parked, got out, and came around to your side before you had fully finished spiraling.

“I don’t like this,” you said as he opened the door.

“You haven’t gone in yet.”

“That’s why I still have hope.”

He gave you a look.

You stepped out, hugging your coat tighter around yourself. “Jack, I’m serious. I’m not letting you buy me some expensive dress.”

“Okay.”

You blinked. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“That was too easy.”

“You said some expensive dress.” He closed the car door. “Find a cheap one.”

You stared at him.

He headed for the shop.

“That is not a loophole,” you called after him.

“It’s exactly a loophole.”

Inside, the boutique was too quiet, too soft, too expensive in ways it didn’t need to announce. Pale wood floors, warm lighting, racks arranged with almost insulting confidence, the dresses hanging with more breathing room than your apartment closet could spare. The air smelled faintly of steamed fabric and perfume, and the woman behind the counter looked up with the calm precision of someone trained to know who was buying before anyone spoke.

You hated that. You hated more that Jack didn’t seem to notice.

Or he did notice and simply didn’t care.

He told her what you needed in a few clipped sentences: hospital fundraiser, semi-formal, comfortable enough to work check-in, not black unless you wanted black, shoes optional because you had shoes. He didn't mention size like a man trying to guess or gesture vaguely at your body like an idiot. He looked at you when that part came up and let you answer for yourself.

That tiny bit of respect did something inconvenient to your chest.

The saleswoman brought options.

You rejected the first three.

Jack rejected the fourth before you could come out of the dressing room.

“No,” he said through the door.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, startled. “You haven’t even seen it.”

“I saw the sleeve.”

“You can diagnose a bad dress by sleeve?”

“I’ve diagnosed worse with less.”

You pulled the curtain back just enough to glare at him.

Jack sat in a low chair outside the dressing rooms, one ankle braced carefully, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked absurd there, too solid and worn-in for the soft gold mirrors and velvet hangers, like someone had dropped a combat medic into a room built for silk and champagne.

His eyes flicked to the sliver of dress visible through the curtain.

“No,” he repeated.

The saleswoman, traitor that she was, nodded. “He’s right.”

You shut the curtain. “I hate both of you.”

The fifth dress was the problem.

You knew it before you opened the curtain.

The fabric skimmed instead of clung, soft where it needed to be, structured where it counted. It made you look like you’d meant to be invited. Like you hadn’t spent the week calculating grocery money in your head and pretending exhaustion didn’t count if you kept moving. The neckline was tasteful, but not innocent. The color warmed your skin without washing you out. You turned once in the mirror and felt something low in your stomach shift.

Confidence, maybe.

Or danger.

“Let me see,” Jack said from outside.

“You’re bossy.”

“Yes.”

“You admit that way too easily.”

“I’m old.”

You smiled, then caught your own face in the mirror and watched the smile fade.

This was a bad idea. Not the dress—the dress was perfect.

That was the bad idea.

You opened the curtain, and Jack looked up.

For a moment, he said nothing.

The shop noise seemed to thin around you—the music, the soft movement of hangers, the saleswoman tactfully vanishing somewhere behind a rack. Jack’s gaze moved over you once, controlled enough to be deniable and slow enough to ruin you anyway. He didn’t leer. He didn’t smirk. He just looked, jaw set, eyes catching for half a second too long at your waist, your hips, the neckline of the dress, like the only thing keeping his hands to himself was the fact that you were standing under boutique lights instead of somewhere with a locked door.

His jaw shifted.

Your fingers tightened around the curtain.

“Well?” you asked, because silence was going to kill you.

Jack leaned back slightly, but it didn’t make him look relaxed. It made him look like restraint had become physical.

“No,” he said.

Your face fell before you could stop it.

Then he added, lower, “That’s the problem.”

The words landed low enough to make your stomach tighten. You looked down at yourself, then back at him. “Too much?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

His eyes returned to your face like it cost him effort.

“It fits.”

It was such a stupid answer. Controlled, careful, almost useless—and somehow hotter than a compliment, because you could hear everything he wasn’t saying in the rough edge of his voice.

You stepped fully out, smoothing your palms down the front of the dress because you needed something to do.

“It’s probably expensive.”

“Probably.”

“Jack.”

“You like it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s my point.”

You exhaled, trying to laugh, but it came out thin. “You can’t keep buying me things.”

He stood. Not quickly, not dramatically. Just unfolded himself from the chair and came closer, stopping at a respectful distance that still felt indecent because his eyes hadn’t left the dress, or you inside it.

“I can do what I want.”

“You sound like a nightmare.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

You glanced toward the mirror, unable to hold his eyes. In the reflection, he stood behind you, hands at his sides, older and tired and steady, and you looked like something neither of you could keep pretending was professional.

The thought went through you too sharply.

You swallowed. “People are going to think I’m exactly what I joked about.”

Jack’s reflection didn’t move. “What’s that?”

You met his eyes in the mirror. “Your sugar baby.”

There. Said out loud in the warm boutique light, with the dress between you as evidence.

Jack’s gaze held yours. Then he stepped closer, just enough that his voice didn’t have to carry. “That what you want this to be?”

Your mouth went dry. The smart answer was no. The honest answer was more complicated, and the answer your body wanted to give had no business being spoken in public before noon.

So you made it worse on purpose.

“I don’t know,” you said, tilting your head. “Depends on the benefits package.”

Jack looked at you for a long second. Then the almost-smile appeared, brief and devastating.

“Change,” he said. “Before I regret asking.”

You spent the rest of the day pretending your hands weren’t shaking.

Saturday night came wrapped in rain and reflected light.

The hotel ballroom looked too clean, too bright, and too expensive for a fundraiser built around people who spent most days trying to keep the whole place upright. White tablecloths. Gold fixtures. Centerpieces too tall for conversation. A stage at the far end with the PTMC logo projected behind the podium, clean and official and nothing like the controlled disaster of the emergency department. Nurses and doctors looked strangely exposed out of scrubs, like actors at the wrong rehearsal. Dana wore navy and carried herself with the same brisk authority she had at the nurses’ station, like the ballroom was just another crowded hallway she intended to get under control. Robby had put on a suit, but he wore it with visible reluctance, one hand already tugging at his tie before the first speech had started.

Dr. McKay arrived with her hair pinned back, already checking her phone for updates about her son. King stood beside her, fidgeting lightly with her bracelet while listening to Whitaker ramble about how strange it was to see everyone with “normal arms,” which he then tried to explain and somehow made worse. Javadi looked polished and nervous, her mother somewhere in the room like a pressure system. Mohan was composed, elegant, and already listening to the opening remarks with the patient focus of someone rationing her tolerance carefully.

Santos wore a sharp dress and confidence like body armor.

“Okay,” she said when she saw you. “I’m going to say something, and I need you not to make it weird.”

“That’s never a good opener.”

“You look hot.”

“Santos.”

“What? I said don’t make it weird.”

Mohan, passing behind her, said, “You made it weird by announcing you weren’t going to.”

Santos ignored her. “Abbot seen you yet?”

You busied yourself with the check-in list. “Why?”

“Because I’m invested.”

“You need a hobby.”

“I have one. It’s being right.”

You were saved from answering by Dana appearing at your side with two badges and a look that missed nothing.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Dana’s eyes swept over your face, then the room, then the entrance where Jack had not yet appeared. “Uh-huh.”

“You too?”

“Me too what?”

“Nothing.”

Dana handed you the badges. “Honey, I’ve worked ER longer than some of these donors have been pretending to care about ER. I know when there’s a thing.”

“There’s not a thing.”

“Then stop looking at the door like you’re planning an escape route.”

You opened your mouth, found nothing useful, and looked back down at the check-in list.

Dana smirked and walked away.

Jack arrived ten minutes late in a dark suit, and something behind your ribs fluttered hard enough that you had to look away.

It wasn’t fancy. That was the worst part. No special tailoring, no flashy tie, no clean magazine version of him. Just a dark suit on a man who looked like he’d rather be elbows-deep in a trauma bay than standing under chandelier light, his hair slightly unruly, his face tired, his posture adjusted in that familiar way. The jacket sat broad across his shoulders. The shirt opened at the collar because of course he looked better slightly undone. There was a roughness to him the room couldn’t soften, something lived-in and disciplined and worn close to the bone.

Robby said something to him at the entrance.

Jack answered without smiling.

Then his eyes found you.

Everything else blurred.

Not fully. You were still aware of the check-in table under your hands, the murmur of donors, Santos whispering “oh my god” somewhere behind you with absolutely no attempt to hide it. But Jack looked at you in that dress, and the rest of the room slipped out of reach for one dangerous second.

He walked over slowly.

“Hi,” you said, which was embarrassing because you knew more words than that.

Jack’s gaze moved over your face first, then the dress, then back up slowly enough that your skin warmed beneath the fabric he’d bought.

“Hi.”

You tried for a smile. “You clean up okay.”

“I was going to say that.”

“You can still say it.”

“No.”

“Too generous?”

“Too easy.”

His eyes dipped again, just once, and something in your stomach tightened before he seemed to remember the room around you. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

You stared. “What is that?”

“Receipt.”

“For the dress?”

“For the car.”

Your stomach dropped. “Jack.”

“Relax.” He slid it across the check-in table with two fingers. “It says paid. That’s all.”

You looked down.

Paid.

Your throat tightened.

“You said you didn’t like owing people,” he said.

“I still owe you.”

“No.” His voice stayed quiet, but something in it made the word feel less like comfort and more like a line drawn in permanent ink. “You don’t.”

You looked up at him, and for a second the ballroom felt too bright, too crowded, too public for the thing trying to break open in your chest.

Before you could answer, Robby appeared beside Jack with the timing of a man either doing you a favor or robbing you of a bad decision.

“Abbot,” he said, “Underwood wants us near the front for the photo.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “No.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. She used the phrase ‘visible leadership.’”

“That makes it worse.”

“I agree.”

Robby looked at you then, eyes flicking once between your dress and Jack’s face. His mouth twitched.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Abbot looks like he’s about to be taken out behind the building and shot, but that’s formal for him.”

Jack gave him a look.

Robby clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, visible leadership.”

Jack didn’t move immediately.

His hand came to rest at the edge of the check-in table, close enough to yours that your fingers could’ve brushed if you shifted an inch.

“Don’t disappear,” he said.

Your pulse kicked.

“I’m working.”

“After.”

Then Robby dragged him away with a level of cheer that was clearly retaliatory.

You watched Jack go and tried to remember how to do your job.

For a while, the event was exactly as awful as promised.

Speeches about resilience. Applause that sounded expensive. Donors talking about “the Pitt” like it was a concept instead of a place where every decision had a body attached to it. Gloria Underwood spoke with smooth authority while Robby stared at the middle distance like a man practicing astral projection. Langdon appeared late and left early, moving through the edge of the room with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Collins was mentioned by someone near the bar, her name landing with that particular hospital weight of people who had been part of the machinery and then weren’t there in the same way anymore.

You checked people in. You directed donors toward their tables. You smiled until your cheeks ached.

And Jack kept finding you.

Not obviously. Not enough for anyone to call it hovering. But he passed behind your chair and set a glass of water near your hand. He appeared during a lull with a plate from the buffet because “you weren’t going to get one.” He stood beside you while an orthopedic surgeon whose name you immediately forgot talked at you for seven minutes about golf, his presence quiet and solid and just intimidating enough to make the man eventually wander away.

At one point, you leaned toward him and murmured, “This is very attentive of you.”

He didn’t look down. “You looked like you were going to stab him with a pen.”

“I was.”

“Bad idea.”

“Because violence is wrong?”

“Because you’d still have to finish check-in.”

You laughed into your glass.

Jack looked at you then, and the humor in his face faded into something warmer before he caught it.

You saw him catch it.

That was the dangerous part.

Near the end of dinner, a donor with silver hair and a smile like a polished blade cornered Jack near the bar. You recognized him vaguely from the check-in list, one of those names with a foundation attached, the kind of man who spoke slowly because he expected people to wait for the privilege of his point. His wife stood beside him in pearls, looking around the ballroom with faint disappointment.

You were close enough to hear because you’d gone to retrieve extra place cards from the side table.

“Dr. Abbot,” the man said, clapping Jack on the shoulder like they were old friends and not strangers separated by several tax brackets and a moral canyon. “Hell of a turnout. You ER people clean up better than expected.”

Jack’s smile was minimal and false. “We try.”

The man’s eyes shifted to you.

You felt it like cold water.

“Well,” he said. “Some of you more than others.”

Jack’s face changed by degrees. Anyone else might’ve missed it. You didn’t.

“This is—” Jack began.

The man cut in with a laugh. “No, no, let me guess. You’re the resident I’ve been hearing about.”

His wife made a soft sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite disapproval.

Your fingers tightened around the place cards.

Jack went still.

The man looked pleased with himself, encouraged by his own cruelty. “Abbot and one of his young residents,” he said, eyes moving over you slow enough to make the dress feel suddenly too visible. “People do talk.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “Don’t.”

“Relax, Jack. I’m joking.” He lifted his glass slightly, like that made it harmless. “I just didn’t think you were going to start making public appearances with your little girlfriend now.”

The words entered you cleanly: little girlfriend. Not girlfriend—that would’ve been embarrassing enough. Little, like you were an accessory, a midlife crisis in a nice dress, something young and decorative Jack had brought out because he could. Something people could reduce in one glance and one ugly little adjective.

Heat rushed to your face so fast it felt like pain, and still you smiled automatically, hating yourself for it.

“It’s not—” you started, because apparently your first instinct was to make yourself smaller for the comfort of a man who had just insulted you.

Jack’s voice cut through yours. “Don’t call her that.”

The donor blinked. So did you. The room didn’t stop, not exactly—the music kept playing, silverware still clinked, someone laughed too loudly near the stage—but the air around the four of you tightened.

The donor’s smile twitched. “Easy, Doctor. No harm meant.”

“I’m not interested in what you meant.”

Jack didn’t raise his voice or step forward. He simply stood there in his dark suit, tired eyes gone cold, body held in a kind of controlled restraint that made the donor’s hand fall from his shoulder.

“If you’ve got something to say about me,” Jack continued, “say it to me. Leave her out of it.”

The wife looked away first. The donor’s face colored.

“No offense intended.”

Jack’s gaze didn’t move. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Your breath caught.

People were starting to notice. Not enough to make a scene, not enough for anyone to step in, but enough that the space around you felt suddenly brighter. Dana had turned slightly from the bar, her attention fixed and assessing. Robby watched from near the stage, glass lowered now. Even Santos had gone still, the eager curiosity wiped off her face by the look on yours.

You couldn’t stand any of it. Not the attention. Not the humiliation. Not the awful, sharp thrill of Jack defending you like he had any right to. Like he wanted the right.

You set the place cards down.

“I need some air,” you said.

Jack’s head turned toward you immediately. “Wait.”

But you were already moving.

You slipped out of the ballroom and into the corridor, then through a side door onto a covered terrace overlooking the wet street below. The rain had softened to a mist, silvering the railings and turning the city lights hazy. Cold air hit your skin, raising goosebumps along your arms where the dress left them bare.

You gripped the railing and forced one breath in, then out. In, then out. In. Out. It didn’t help. The door opened behind you, because of course it did.

You laughed under your breath because the tears were already gathering hot behind your eyes, making the terrace lights blur at the edges, and you refused to let them fall here—not in the dress Jack bought, not with your hands locked around rain-cold steel, not because some rich asshole had found the ugliest name for what you were already afraid this looked like.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you said.

Jack let the door close behind him. “Done what?”

You turned on him. “Made it worse.”

“They made it worse.”

“Now everyone thinks I’m exactly what he said.”

His face changed at that, anger tightening somewhere beneath the surface, but not at you. Never quite at you.

“They don’t know what you are.”

Your chest pulled tight.

“And what am I?”

The question came out too vulnerable to take back.

Jack didn’t answer right away.

Mist clung to his suit jacket, darkening the shoulders. Behind him, warm light spilled through the glass door, all gold and soft edges, turning the ballroom into something distant and unreal. Out here, the air smelled like rain on stone, cold metal, wet city streets below. Everything was sharper than it had been inside. The railing under your hands. The damp hem of your dress against your legs. The silence between his breath and yours.

He looked so out of place and exactly right, a man built for crisis standing in the aftermath of one he couldn’t stitch closed.

You hated that you wanted him to say it.

You hated more that he looked like he wanted to.

Instead, he said, “Not that.”

A hard little laugh left you before you could stop it. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I’ve got.”

“Great.”

Jack came closer, stopping beside you but not touching. The restraint was worse than touch. You could feel him there anyway, the heat of his body cutting through the cold night, the careful space he left like distance could still save either of you.

You stared out at the rain-blurred city. Headlights smeared over the street below. Somewhere, a siren rose and faded, thin and familiar enough to make your stomach twist.

“You bought the dress,” you said.

“Yes.”

“You fixed my car.”

“Yes.”

“You buy my food. You show up. You pay for things before I can even figure out how to say no.”

Something moved in his jaw, but he didn’t interrupt.

“What do you think people are going to call that?”

“I don’t give a shit what people call it.”

“I do.”

“Then tell me what you call it.”

The words took the air out of the terrace.

You looked at him.

Jack’s eyes held yours, tired and dark and unflinching. He wasn’t letting you hide in the joke this time. He wasn’t letting himself hide either. That was the terrifying part. The thing between you had been allowed to live as banter because neither of you had forced it to stand under direct light.

Sugar daddy. Old man. Doctor. Daddy.

All those little names you used to turn intimacy into comedy before it could ask something of you.

Now Jack was standing there asking.

Tell me what you call it.

Your mouth felt dry.

“I call it confusing,” you said.

His expression shifted.

You kept going because stopping felt worse. “I call it you being too good at noticing things I wish you wouldn’t. I call it you making it really fucking hard to feel normal around you. I call it embarrassing when someone says the quiet part out loud and I realize I don’t even know how to defend myself because I don’t know what we’re doing.”

Jack’s hands were still at his sides, but nothing about him looked relaxed.

You swallowed. “And I call it unfair that you get to act like this is all practical when you look at me like that.”

His voice dropped. “Like what?”

You shook your head. “Don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like you already know what I look like under the dress.”

The words left you too soft, too honest, and Jack inhaled slowly. Neither of you moved while rain whispered beyond the overhang and the ballroom noise pressed faintly through the door, muffled and useless, like it belonged to a different night.

Then he said, rougher than before, “I don’t.”

The words went through you slowly, leaving heat in places they had no right to reach.

His eyes lowered, not all the way down your body this time. Just to your mouth.

“But I’ve thought about it.”

The terrace went silent.

Or maybe your body stopped receiving sound from anything that wasn’t him.

You stared at him, suddenly aware of everything at once: the dress clinging where the mist had touched it, the cold air slipping beneath the hem, the damp railing at your back, the small, charged space between your body and his. Jack hadn’t touched you, but the way he looked at you made it feel like he’d already imagined where his hands would go first. The want in his face wasn’t polished or easy. It looked dragged out of him, unwilling and hungry, like every careful thing in him had finally started losing.

“Jack,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

You stepped closer, just enough to watch his control take the hit.

“What was I going to say?”

His eyes lifted.

“That we shouldn’t.”

The truth of it sat there between you, almost laughable.

You shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. The age gap was there, humming under the surface. The hospital. The money. The care. The fact that everyone seemed to have noticed before either of you had admitted it out loud. The fact that Jack carried enough damage to make most people step carefully, and you were standing there in a dress he bought, wanting him to ruin every careful thing about you.

“You’re right,” you said.

Jack nodded once, like the verdict had been delivered.

Then you added, “That's what I was going to say.”

His eyes sharpened.

You took one more step.

“But it’s not what I want.”

For the first time all night, Jack looked shaken.

Not much. He’d never give that much away in public. But you saw it in the slight part of his mouth, the break in his breathing, the flicker of something raw beneath the restraint.

“Say that again,” he said.

The words nearly undid you.

You lifted your chin because if you were going to tell the truth, you were going to do it with your head held high.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

Jack looked at you for one long, unbearable second, then lifted his hand slowly enough to give you every chance to step back.

You didn’t.

His knuckles brushed your jaw first, careful in a way that made your whole body ache. Not rough. Not yet. Worse than rough, maybe, because he was still holding himself back and you could feel the effort in every inch he didn’t take.

“You’re not my little girlfriend,” he said.

Your chest tightened. “No?”

“No.” His thumb shifted under your chin, tipping your face up by degrees, not forcing you, just making it impossible to look anywhere else. “You’re not little. You’re not a joke. And you’re sure as hell not something I’m ashamed of wanting.”

The words sank through you, hot and low, settling in every place he still hadn’t touched. Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth and stayed there long enough to make the choice for both of you.

Then he kissed you.

It wasn’t frantic at first.

That would’ve been easier.

It was deliberate, a firm press of his mouth to yours, steady and devastating, like he had finally decided to stop lying but still hadn’t given himself permission to forget where you were. His hand held your jaw; the other stayed at his side, fingers curled tight like touching you anywhere else might finish what the kiss had started.

You made a small sound against his mouth.

That was what broke it.

Jack stepped into you, guiding you back until the rail met your spine, and the kiss turned filthy in one sharp, breath-stealing shift. His mouth opened wider, tongue pushing past your lips to lick deep and slow against yours, wet enough to make your knees weaken, sure enough to make heat pool low in your gut. His breath came rough through his nose, his hand sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck, thumb tucked beneath your chin like he wanted to feel the exact second you stopped fighting him and melted under his palm.

You grabbed his jacket.

He made a low sound, almost a warning.

You pulled him closer anyway.

The rail pressed against your back. Damp air cooled your bare arms. Inside, beyond the glass, the fundraiser glowed on with its speeches and donors and useless flowers, but out here Jack’s body cut off the light, his mouth hot and sure, his hand at your neck keeping you exactly where he wanted you.

When he dragged himself back, he didn’t go far.

His forehead hovered near yours. His breathing was harsher now. So was yours.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

You laughed, breathless enough that it came out softer than you meant. “You kissed me.”

“I know.”

“So your professional opinion is hypocritical.”

His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed dark, fixed on yours with a heat that made it impossible not to remember his tongue in your mouth. He looked like he was still tasting you, like he was one wrong word away from dragging you back against the railing and making a mess of that pretty, expensive dress.

“You keep talking,” he said, voice low enough to feel like it belonged between your legs instead of in the open air, “and I’m going to forget we’re still at a hospital fundraiser.”

Liquid heat shot through you, sharp and shameless. You curled your fingers higher into his lapels. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It should.”

“It doesn’t.”

Jack searched your face for one last sign that you wanted him to be better than this.

You didn’t.

His thumb dragged once along the side of your neck, slow enough to make your thighs press together under the dress, then he stepped back and opened the door.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

His eyes held yours.

“My car.”

The walk through the ballroom should’ve been humiliating. Maybe it was. You couldn’t tell. Jack stayed close without touching you, which somehow looked worse after what had just happened, like distance had become another form of confession. Your mouth still felt swollen from his, your skin too awake beneath the dress, your whole body lit with the kind of want that made every normal step feel rehearsed.

Robby saw you first, because of course he did. His eyes moved from Jack’s face to yours, then back again, and he lifted his glass slightly—not smiling, just acknowledging the inevitable.

Dana caught your eye from near the bar with one eyebrow raised. Santos looked ready to say something disastrous until Mohan turned her gently but firmly toward the dessert table. McKay glanced over, clocked enough to know better, and immediately pulled Whitaker into a conversation he looked relieved to have guidance for. Javadi watched for half a second too long, then looked away like she’d remembered curiosity had consequences.

Jack ignored all of them.

You loved and hated him for it.

The elevator ride down was worse.

Mirrored walls. Soft music. Your reflection beside his. His shoulder inches from yours. The phantom feel of his hand still on your neck. Neither of you speaking because speech had become a loaded weapon and you were both already wounded.

In the parking garage, the air smelled like rain and concrete again.

Jack unlocked the car.

You stopped by the passenger door, suddenly aware of the line you were crossing. Not the moral one. That had been smudged for weeks. This was more physical. More real. A door. A backseat. His face in the dim garage light, turned toward you with all that want and all that control and all the consequences waiting behind both.

He saw the hesitation immediately.

Of course he did.

“You can change your mind,” he said.

The words loosened something in you.

Not because you wanted to.

Because he meant it.

You stepped closer. “I’m not changing my mind.”

Jack’s eyes searched yours.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t want.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

He nodded once.

Then you said, quieter, “Do you?”

His face shifted.

“Do I what?”

“Know what I want.”

The garage seemed to hold its breath.

Jack opened the back door.

“Get in,” he said.

Not loud. Not cruel.

Just low enough to go through you like a match.

You got in.

The door shut behind you, and for one suspended second you were alone in the dark leather backseat with your heartbeat, the rain ticking somewhere beyond the garage, and the reflection of Jack moving around the car in the tinted window.

Then the opposite door opened.

He slid in beside you, too big for the space, too warm, too close. The dome light cut over his face for a second before it faded, leaving him in shadow and stray fluorescent spill. His knee brushed yours. His hand came up, not touching yet, braced against the seat near your hip.

“You still think this is about money?” he asked.

Your breath caught.

You shook your head.

“Words.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t think it’s about money.”

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

“What’s it about?”

You could’ve said care.

You could’ve said want.

You could’ve said every soft, terrifying thing his hands had been saying for weeks with coffee cups and repair bills and the new shoes you wore until they stopped hurting.

Instead, because you were trembling and stubborn and still you, you whispered, “Your sugar daddy complex.”

Jack’s eyes flashed.

Then he kissed you hard enough to knock your head back against the seat and it was nothing like the terrace—careful and slow and weighted with confession. This was hungry. His teeth caught your bottom lip, tugged, and the sound you made was swallowed by his mouth as his tongue slid against yours, wet and deep and tasting like the whiskey he'd barely touched all night. His other hand found your waist, gripping the silk of the dress, bunching it, pulling you across the seat until your hip hit his and you gasped into his mouth.

"Jack—"

"Don't talk." His lips dragged to your jaw, your throat, the spot behind your ear that made you arch. "Just—let me —"

His hand slid up your thigh, pushing the dress higher, and the leather was cool against the backs of your legs but his palm was hot, rough, callused from years of work and combat and things he never talked about. You spread for him without thinking. He made a sound against your neck—approval, hunger, relief—and his fingers pressed higher, found the wet heat through your underwear, and stopped.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You're already—"

You bit his earlobe. "Your mouth on the terrace did that."

He laughed—a low, broken thing—and his fingers hooked the edge of your panties, dragged them down your thighs. You lifted your hips to help, and he dropped them somewhere on the floor mat, already forgotten, already gone. His hand came back wet.

"Look at me."

You did. His eyes were dark, half-lidded, his breathing ragged. The garage light caught the silver in his beard, the flush rising up his neck, the way his thumb was already circling your clit like he'd done it a thousand times before. He hadn't. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I tried to be careful with you,” he said, voice rough, his fingers sliding through your slick folds, gathering, teasing, “I tried so fucking hard. Then I walked in and saw you at that table in the dress I bought you, and I knew I was done.”

Your breath hitched as his middle finger pressed inside you, just the tip, just enough to make your hips buck.

"—and you knew, didn't you?" He pushed deeper, slow, watching your face. "Knew what it was doing to me."

You couldn't answer. His finger was inside you, thick and deliberate, curling, finding the spot that made your vision blur. Then a second finger joined it, stretching, and you heard yourself whimper—high and desperate and not caring who heard.

"That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you."

He worked you open like he had all night, like the parking garage was empty, like the world had shrunk to the space between his fingers and your cunt. His thumb pressed your clit in slow circles while his fingers pumped—not hard, not fast, just deep and aching, stretching you until you were dripping down his hand, until your nails dug into his shoulder through his jacket.

"Jack—I need—"

"I know what you need."

He pulled his fingers out slowly, deliberately, and you watched him bring them to his mouth. Watched his tongue slide across his knuckles, tasting you, his eyes never leaving yours. The sight of it—this tired, controlled man in his undone suit, licking your wetness off his fingers like it was the best thing he'd tasted all night—made your hole clench around nothing.

"Get on top of me."

It wasn't a question. He was already reaching for his belt, the buckle rasping open, the sound sharp and final in the close air of the car. You climbed over him, the dress bunching around your waist, your knees finding the leather on either side of his hips. His cock was hard beneath his briefs, straining against the fabric, and you reached down and wrapped your hand around it.

He hissed through his teeth. "Fuck —"

He was thick. Hot. The head slick with something that might have been precum, might have been your imagination, but when you stroked him once, slow, his hips bucked into your palm.

"If you keep doing that," he said, his voice strained, "this is going to be very embarrassing for me."

You laughed—breathless, wild—and leaned down to kiss him. "Then stop me."

He didn't.

His hand found your hip, guided you forward, and the head of his cock nudged against your entrance. Wet. Ready. The two of you hovered there, breathing each other's air, and his forehead pressed against yours.

"Tell me you want this."

"I want this." Your voice was barely a whisper. "I want you. Please, Jack—"

He pushed inside you.

The stretch was a shock—full and deep and so much more than his fingers had promised. You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders, your head falling back as he filled you inch by inch, until you were seated in his lap, his hips flush against yours, his cock buried to the hilt inside your tight, wet heat.

"Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck, you feel—"

He couldn't finish. His hands found your hips, held you there, and for a moment neither of you moved. Just the feeling of him inside you, the throb of his pulse through his cock, the way your body adjusted, accepted, wanted.

Then you moved.

Slow at first—a roll of your hips that made his eyes roll back, a tilt of your pelvis that drove him deeper. His grip tightened on your waist, guiding, and you found the rhythm together: him thrusting up as you sank down, the slap of skin loud in the enclosed space, the wet sound of your bodies meeting.

"Look at you," he said, his voice rough, his eyes fixed on where you were joined. "Taking all of me. Fucking yourself on my cock in a parking garage."

You moaned, riding him harder, the dress bunched around your waist, the silk skin-warm and bunched up. His thumb found your clit again, pressing, circling, and the pleasure coiled tight in your belly, hot and sharp and building.

"The dress," you gasped. "You bought me this dress—"

"I bought it so I could take it off you." He tugged at the strap with his teeth, the fabric slipping down your shoulder, exposing your breast to the dim light. His mouth was on it instantly—hot, wet, his tongue circling your nipple before he sucked, hard, and you cried out, your rhythm faltering.

"Say it again." His mouth against your skin. "Say sugar daddy again and see what happens."

You laughed, breathless, your hips grinding against him. "Sugar daddy."

He bit your shoulder—not hard, but enough to make you gasp—and then his hand was in your hair, pulling your head back, forcing you to meet his eyes.

"Then take what I give you." His voice was low and rough and it made your pussy squeeze around him. "Take this cock like you've been wanting to since I fixed your goddamn car."

You did. You rode him harder, faster, the leather squeaking beneath your knees, the car rocking with the motion, your breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His hand stayed in your hair, his other gripping your hip hard enough to bruise, and he thrust up into you with a rhythm that was pure instinct—hungry, claiming, the restraint he'd held for weeks finally snapping.

"That's it," he growled. "That's my girl. Taking what she needs."

"Jack—I'm close—"

"I know. I can feel you. You're squeezing me so fucking tight—"

His thumb pressed harder on your clit, circling faster, and the orgasm hit you like a wave—sudden and overwhelming, your vision white, your back arching as your cunt clamped down on his cock, pulsing, milking, the pleasure so sharp it was almost pain. You heard yourself cry out—his name, a curse, something that might have been a sob—and he kept thrusting through it, drawing it out, letting you ride him through the aftershocks.

"Fuck—" His voice broke. "I'm going to—"

"Inside me." You grabbed his face, forced him to look at you. "I want it. Please."

He came with a groan that was almost a prayer, his hips driving up one last time, his hand gripping your hip so hard it would leave marks. You felt it—hot and thick, pumping into you, filling you, his cock twitching with each pulse, his breath ragged against your lips. The sensation pushed you into a second, smaller climax, your body clenching around him, drawing out every drop.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. His forehead rested against yours. His breathing was harsh, uneven, mingling with yours in the close air. The car smelled like sex and sweat and the faint, stubborn trace of hospital soap beneath his cologne, and your thighs were slick and trembling, and his cock was still half-hard inside you, and it was the most real you'd felt all night.

Then he laughed.

A low, disbelieving sound, his shoulders shaking against yours. You started laughing too, breathless and giddy, and you kissed him—messy, open-mouthed, tasting salt and spit and the whiskey he'd barely touched.

"Well," he said, pulling back just enough to look at you. "That was—"

"Stupid," you supplied.

"Reckless."

"A really bad idea."

His hand came up to cup your face again, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Worth it."

You kissed him again, slower this time, and you felt him smile against your mouth. When you pulled back, you were still straddling him, his cock still softening inside you, and the reality of it settled into your bones like warmth.

"We should probably—" you started.

"Yeah." He didn't move. "In a minute."

His hand found yours on his chest, lacing your fingers together, and the garage light caught the gray in his hair and the tired lines around his eyes and the way he was looking at you like you were the first real thing he'd seen in years.

"I'm not going to pretend this was casual," he said.

"Good," you said. "Because it wasn't."

He helped you clean up with the wet wipes he found in the glove compartment—absurd, practical, so perfectly him—and then he helped you rearrange the dress, his hands careful now, almost reverent, smoothing the silk over your hips like he was putting something precious back together. The fabric was wrinkled now, carrying the memory of his hands, and when you looked at yourself in the window reflection, you saw the flush on your chest, the bite mark on your shoulder, the way your hair had come loose from the careful updo.

You looked like someone who had been thoroughly, completely, indisputably wanted.

He watched you adjust the strap, his eyes following the small, careful movement like it mattered. You sat half-turned against him in the backseat, put back together enough to face the world again, though both of you knew exactly what had happened here. Jack’s hand rested at the back of your neck, thumb moving slowly against your skin, and in the dim garage light he looked less like the man everyone trusted in a crisis and more like someone who’d finally let himself want something he couldn’t triage.

“What?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look like you’re about to disappear into your own head.”

That almost-smile moved over his mouth, faint and tired. “You diagnosing me now?”

“I learned from a very bossy doctor.”

“He sounds unbearable.”

“He is.”

The quiet settled, full of everything waiting outside the car: the fundraiser, the rumor, the receipt, the repaired car, the shoes, the dress, every careful thing Jack had done before either of you had dared to call it care. You looked down. “I don’t know how to let someone take care of me without feeling like a burden.”

Jack didn’t answer quickly. That made it worse. Better. Finally, he said, “Needing help isn’t the same thing as being helpless.”

Your throat tightened. You hated him a little for knowing exactly where to put the words. You loved him a little for it too.

“Jack,” you said softly.

He waited.

You smiled, small and shaky. “Do I get an allowance now?”

For half a second, he stared at you. Then his eyes closed, and the laugh that left him was quiet, rough, almost unwilling. It felt like winning something no one else got to see. When he opened his eyes, they were warm.

“You get breakfast.”

“That’s it?”

“And your car.”

“Already got that.”

“And the shoes.”

“Also already got those.”

“And whatever else you need,” he said, thumb brushing once at your neck, “if you stop acting like needing it makes you less.”

Your smile faded into something softer. “That sounds an awful lot like a boyfriend.”

Jack looked at you for a long moment, tired and undone and still there. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m working up to that.”

The fundraiser was still waiting upstairs, all polished glassware and polite cruelty, the kind of room where people could turn want into rumor before the night was over. You would have to go back to PTMC after this. You would pass Jack in hallways. You would hear his voice over trauma bays, see his name on charts, feel the weight of every title that should have made this impossible.

But in the backseat, with his thumb moving slowly against your skin, Jack wasn’t looking at you like a mistake, or a risk, or something he’d have to explain away in daylight.

He was looking at you like something worth keeping.

Either way, you're proud that the local establishment is now held in such high regard; particularly since you know the accomplishment means so much to so many.

You swing back around and continue on to the wooden door that'll lead you to the kitchen where your roommate should currently be.

Grant glances up from the assortment of ingredients he's currently considering for a taste test if he can combine them just so, when the kitchen door unexpectedly swings open and a strange young woman practically welcomes herself inside the private space.

He finds himself taken aback for a moment—someone barging into his kitchen with seemingly no hesitation is a first—before he springs into action. Tossing down the sharpened gourmet knife he holds with a clatter, he advances on you. "Excuse me! What the hell do you think you're doing back here?"

You open your mouth, but he cuts you off short before you can start pleading for a handout.

"The sign out front clearly stated closed. You're trespassing in a private establishment. You're lucky I don't call the police."

Grabbing you roughly by the forearm, he ushers you back out to the dining area.

You sputter all the while in an attempt to try and provide explanation. "I was just—my friend. She works here. My roommate. Andrea wanted me to—"

He turns you back around to him. "Andrea? My commis chef?"

You nod fervently and blink back the tears that're brimming in your eyes from fear. "She asked me to meet her so we could walk home together. I'm so sorry." You stumble back a step. "I'll—I'll go wait outside. Please don't be mad."

Just as you swivel on your heel to flee, Grant takes you firmly by the hand. "No, I am."

You still, then hesitate before finally turning around again.

"Sorry," he continues. "I should've given you a second to explain. It's just..." he shakes his head with a sigh. "Been a long day," he finishes while running long fingers through salt and pepper curls.

"I'm Grant. Reilly. Head Chef," he states with an extended hand, now that he's finally released your own.

You wait a moment then shake it—ignoring how yours still trembles.

It sends a wave of regret through him that he made you fearful in the first place.

"Y/N," you supply quietly. "I can just," you point a thumb over your shoulder, "Go wait on the bench outside."

He shakes his head, then wraps a steady arm around your shoulders and leads you over to a corner booth. "I'd rather you did so here. Safer for you than on the street."

Once you've plopped down in a plush seat, you tuck your bag away and consider a menu off to the side to give yourself something to do. Your phone is an option, but he's standing right there. Perusing their selection of wines will at least make you come off as interested in his flourishing business.

"Are you thirsty?" Grant asks with a far more gentle tone than the one he had a moment ago. "I could bring you a glass of water."

You shake your head, then pull a bottle from your bag and hold it up for inspection. "I've got it covered, but thank you."

Considering for a moment, Grant surveys your glittering eyes and soft lips. "Make yourself comfortable. We're prepping for tomorrow, so it may still be awhile yet."

You wave a hand dismissively, then toss a paperback novel from your shoulder bag onto the table. "I'll keep myself occupied," you remark with a reassuring nod.

He turns and leaves you to your reading material.

Once he's securely hidden away behind a solid stainless steel door, Grant rests calloused hands upon a gleaming metal countertop in an attempt to steady his heart. With his head hung heavily between his shoulders, he squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head.

You're here. For the first time, you're here.

And he nearly blew it.

You've never met—don't know one another from Adam, truthfully—but he's seen photos of you before on Andrea's lockscreen during the times she's pulled her cell out to check for notifications during her fleeting breaks. That, and in photos she's uploaded to her Instagram.

It was the only reason he followed her back to begin with: to be able to appreciate the sight of you, even from a distance.

He's not some infatuated stalker, though. No, just an admirer. The first time he ever saw you—ever heard your soft-spoken voice—had been in a short video she uploaded to her... What is the feature called again? Story? Reel?

They're always changing things.

Andrea had hidden behind the camera while she snuck into your room and filmed you hunched over a tiny desk. You'd been wholly oblivious not only to her presence, but the rest of the world it seemed as you typed furiously away on a laptop.

He'd assumed you were a college student, until she announced your name with gusto, followed up by "the next New York Times bestselling author!" You had tried desperately to hide your face from the camera in adorable mortification, but failed miserably when she tugged one of your hands away, revealing your warm smile beneath.

He's watched that video at least a dozen times. Has observed your towering bookshelf that was clearly organized with thoughtful care, and the trinkets you have arranged on small floating shelves above your workspace.

How did he fail to recognize you in person?

So much for first impressions...

Grant felt how your delicate hand trembled in his. As such, he needs to make this right.

"What's your friend's favorite food?" Grant demands with crossed arms while peering at Andrea from over the bridge of his nose.

Removing her attentions from a stack of carrots she's working her way through with a slicer, she blinks up at him. "What? Wait. She's here? Shit," she curses while making to tug her apron off.

He clicks his tongue. "I still need you to finish prepping. I want to make something for her, so give me a dish. Any dish. Now."

Her brows wrinkle together. "From the menu, or—"

"What does she eat a lot of at home?" he inquires.

She snorts quietly. "You're not gonna like the answer."

"Well, unless it's moldy bread—"

"Easy Mac," she retorts. "Rice-a-Roni, Ramen, frozen pizzas..."

He raises an incredulous brow. "She lives with you and that's the kind of..." He shouldn't judge. He's had them all himself. And he'd be lying if he claimed to hate every bite. Depending on the brand and flavor, they're not half bad. "That's what you let her eat?'

She rolls her eyes and returns to slicing carrots into thin strips. "I don't let her do anything. She's a grown woman. And I eat 'em, too. Makes for an easy meal sometimes, y'know?"

He rolls his eyes. "So, she likes macaroni."

"She should take stock in Kraft," she mumbles. "I've told her a hundred times to just get the damn boxes because she'd be buying more for less, but she likes having the little cups so that she doesn't have to wash a pot or bowl afterward."

Like a little kid, he muses with a smirk.

Fine. Dad will just have make you something filling to eat, then.

Turning a burner onto medium-high heat, Grant gets to work on preparing you the best damn macaroni you've ever had in your young life.

He boils a large pot of water first, then gets to work on whipping a bowl of cream cheese into smooth perfection. He follows it up with hand-grating three separate cheese blocks while the water heats. Once bubbles start popping on the surface, he pours a container of elbow pasta in and stirs until the noodles are al dente.

Once Grant has strained them, he pours the cream cheese into a pan, followed by noodles and more cream cheese and a couple cups of shredded cheese, along with a few odd spices for taste. He tops it off with a final thick layer of shredded cheese on top, then slips the dish into the oven with a tin foil cover to bake.

A very basic dish, yes, but one that will still hopefully serve to impress and endear you to him.

As the macaroni sits in the oven, he peers through the glass window at the top of the kitchen door and watches you flip through your novel.

Perhaps he should be embarrassed by his behavior. And not just that which he has and is currently exhibiting tonight, but the fact that he's already mildly infatuated with you.

He doesn't know why, really. He's never been able to place his finger on it.

Love at first sight?

But does that really count when it comes to curated social media?

Maybe he's just lonely in his latter years and has projected onto you. It's not that he has some great expectation in mind of who you are or what you're really like. He's just...enchanted by what little he's already seen.

But it's easy to fall for a mysterious stranger just by their looks.

A timer rings, and he returns to the oven to pull out a dish of golden-brown perfection.

You wrench your book back when a ceramic deep dish full of what appears to be baked macaroni is slid in front of you.

With your book clutched to your chest, you gaze up at Grant. "Oh. Hello again."

The corner of his lip twitches; wanting to verge into a smile on your account. "My way of apologizing," he explains with a nod toward the steaming dinner he's presenting you with. "For being an ass," he mutters as he takes the booth across from where you sit.

"No," you chirp, setting your book back in your bag. "It's okay. Really. I should've never barged in like that. It was inappropriate."

He purses his lips and shakes his head. "You did nothing wrong. My reaction was way out of line. So dinner's on me."

You study the melted golden-brown cheese on top. It's so incredibly kind that he took time out of his already late night to do this. "Well... It's your kitchen. Would be like someone barging into your home. Would you give them time to explain their motives before you jumped into action?"

He glances toward the ceiling in faux contemplation while bobbing his head back and forth, like he's silently debating with himself. "No," he replies while looking at you once more. "I'd probably grab my gun."

Your brows shoot up. "You have a gun?"

He chuckles while handing you a small plate. "I was in the Army some twenty-odd-years ago. So I have a few."

You take it from him and your cheeks warm when your fingertips brush against Grant's. "What did you do when you served?"

He glances to the steaming macaroni, then to you again in answer.

"You were a cook then, too?"

Grant nods. "Was where I got my start, in terms of making it into a career."

"Did you always know it's what you wanted to do?"

Pulling a silver fork out of a cloth napkin, he taps the end of it against the table. "Yes and no. I've always enjoyed cooking and baking. But it took me finally doing it for others—a lot of others—for me to realize that it was my true calling."

He stabs the fork into the mac and cheese, then lifts it toward you. "Blow," he instructs.

You do until steam disappears.

When you open, he eases the tines into your mouth, the sets the fork on your plate. "D'you like it?"

You take your time chewing and tasting before swallowing.

When you lick your lips, he feels a stirring below his belt.

"It's really good," you say with a grand smile that he can't help but return.

He's made you happy. And that fact makes him so very glad.

"Yeah?" he asks with a laugh.

"It's delicious," you say while scooping a heaping portion onto your plate. "What did you put in it?"

"Besides sugar, spice, and everything nice?" he asks sarcastically, which earns him a bubbly giggle. "Cream cheese, three different cheeses which I shredded by hand, and a few dashes of various spices."

He took care when making this for you.

"You did all this to say sorry?" you ask quietly.

He rests his shoe next to yours beneath the table. "I did."

Grant pulls out another fork. "So, am I forgiven?"

How odd for a stranger to care in the least what you think or feel. It's a welcome change, though, even if it's only temporary. Taking his fork from him, you return the gesture from earlier and feed him a bite as well.

Grant barely manages to keep his mouth closed long enough to chew because he's smiling so much.

"You are."

"Hey," Grant says, catching you and Andrea at the door before you head out for home.

He rests an easy palm against your back and you turn to meet his searching eyes.

"Come back and see me again some time," he encourages. Dropping his hand, he instead squeezes your fingers. "Next meal is on the house, just like tonight."

You smile, and nearly kiss him on the cheek for his kindness. "Thank you," you reply with a nod. "Have a good night, Grant."

His breath catches in his throat at you having finally said his name, and he watches you go—only turning back to the interior once you've disappeared.

What started as a hectic, nightmarish day has ended in perfection.

It's been almost two weeks and he's not seen hide or hair of you. Was the meal he prepared for you not as good as you let on? Was it him? Did he do too much, or not enough?

The two of you had only just met, so there's always a chance that he came on too strong; made you uncomfortable.

Living with the not knowing, however—his stomach squeezing painfully each time the restaurant door opens, only for him to fill with disappointment a moment later because it isn't the face he wants to see—is pure fucking torture.

He wants his girl back... Just one more time.

"Any reason she never took me up on my offer?" Grant questions with a low, gravely tone.

Andrea finishes tugging on her jacket before grabbing her purse and turning to look at her superior. "Huh? What?"

"Your roommate," he explains. He feels, for whatever reason, that using your name would make this seem too personal—would give him away too easily. As if pouting over your lack of presence doesn't already. "I offered her a free meal and—"

"Ah," she replies with a nod. "She's been busy. Picking up extra shifts at the library on the weekend."

And downing Easy Mac on the go, he presumes.

You deserve better than a microwavable snack.

He takes a step back while tossing a dishtowel over his strong shoulder. You're being an adult; working more for a bit of extra cash. And here he is, pining after you like a lovesick teen.

He's learned something new about you, at least: your occupation. Makes perfect sense with your passion for reading and apparent storytelling.

Suits you, Grant thinks.

Swiping up a ripe tomato to return to its rightful place across the kitchen, he nods. "Got it."

"Hey, so, you need to go back to the restaurant at some point," Andrea remarks from your apartment's dimly lit entryway.

Leaning back against the couch behind you, you pause your typing on a Bluetooth keyboard. Crappy makeshift computer set up—it, coupled with the small glass screen of your phone, that is—but you don't have much of another option right now with your laptop being away for diagnosis. And given it can be saved, subsequent treatment.

"What?" you ask while turning to face her with crossed legs.

"Grant," she explains while hanging up her jacket, then purse. "He asked about you tonight and why you haven't been by to take him up on his offer for free food or whatever."

Oh.

You'd nearly forgotten about that, you've been so preoccupied with other things.

So he was serious? You'd thought he was, of course, but the question being just how much? Had it just been meant as a passing comment in kind, or was it a genuine invitation he intended on you fulfilling your end of?

"Does he..." you begin hesitantly. "Feed a lot of girls for free?"

She plops down on the couch behind you. "Not that I'm aware of. I spend a lot of time staying late to help clean up and prep and this is the first I've ever seen of such behavior."

You glance back to the cheap LED keyboard.

"Was surprised he made you mac and cheese that night, tell you the truth. He's a great chef and a good boss—even if he can be a hard-ass—but he's never gone out of his way like that before."

She playfully taps your shoulder with her toes. "Must really like you. Probably wants you back there and bent over every surface he can find while you cry yes, Chef! yes, Chef! all the while," she thinks aloud with a snigger.

You quickly turn around to hide your embarrassment. "He's a little old for me."

She snorts while rising and padding toward her bedroom for a change of clothes before she showers. "That's what makes it all the hot-ter," she finishes with a sing-song voice. "Oh, turn up the heat, daddy!" Andrea cries from an open doorway.

You bury your face in your hands.

Once you're within the safe confines of an empty North & Vine again, you stand awkwardly near the door. You don't want to ambush Grant again by waltzing into the kitchen unexpectedly, so you finally opt to seat yourself at the same booth as last time instead.

You're sure he'll emerge eventually and catch sight of you.

Just when Grant pushes past the kitchen's heavy swinging door, he halts in his tracks.

You came back again.

Andrea must've said something.

He hopes you didn't feel pressured to return; to humor his boyish fancy. Letting things go might've been better for everyone, but he can't seem to get you off his mind no matter how hard he tries.

Coming nearer with slow, steady strides, he frowns at the sight of you so unhappy while you stare down at your cellphone. He never did ask if you were single. But if that's the cause for your displeasure tonight—some young asshole who doesn't know how to treat you—then he'll do all he can to set things right until you're content again.

"Everything okay?" Grant asks quietly. "Seem distracted tonight."

Quickly locking your phone, you glance up to him with a forced smile and a nod. "Oh. Yeah. It's not a big deal."

Grant considers for a moment while chewing the inside of his cheek. "Boyfriend problems?"

You snort. "Stopped bothering with those a long time ago."

Which is either very lucky, or very unlucky for him.

Taking the seat across from you like last time, he folds his hands together. "Anything I can help with?"

You shake your head. "No. It's just my laptop. Got a quote back from a repair shop for how much it'd cost to get it working again." Your eyes flit to his. "Might as well just buy a new computer," you grumble.

He wants to ask about your writing project, but then you'll wonder as to how he even knows about it in the first place. "Do you use it for work?"

"Not really," you reply while toying with a sea salt shaker. "Writing, mostly."

"You didn't lose anything—"

"No, thank God. I keep everything backed up on a cloud drive." You sigh and return the condiment to its rightful home at the back of the table. "I've been using a Bluetooth keyboard so I can write using my cell, but I hate having to use a smaller screen. And because the keyboard is, too, I keep making tons of typos."

You grow quiet for a moment.

He wants to offer to run out and get you a new one right now—whichever you'd like—but fears that such a gesture would make him come off way too strong.

He'll figure out another method to help his girl.

"Anyway," you say, now wanting to change the subject from your technical woes. "Andrea said you asked about me?"

He actually fucking flushes. Only because he's made his damn crush that apparent. "Just wanted to see you again," he replies with a casual shrug and a smile. Pulling a menu from a wooden holder, he drops it in front of you. "Choose whatever you like and I'll make it."

You blink a couple times in surprise. You knew it's what you were coming here for, but you still have yet to understand it. His wanting to cater to you must stem from an attraction, but it doesn't make this any less unconventional.

Should you consider this a date? Does he? What precisely are the two of you doing here?

Flipping the laminated menu open, you begin to peruse various hard-to-pronounce dishes. "Why, um... Why did you want me to—"

"Maybe I just like watching you eat," he interrupts with a smirk.

Shyly, you peer at him from over the top of the menu you hold before hiding behind it again.

He chuckles quietly at your adorable antics.

A cheeseburger.

You're a simple girl, he'll give you that much, but he was hoping for something that would require a bit more effort on his part than a seared patty and brioche bun. But as long as you leave here with a full belly and a thankful smile, he's content.

He did invite you back into the kitchen so that you could observe him in his element, though. All rolled-up sleeves, an apron which clings to his muscled chest, and sharp knives which slice through tomatoes as easy as a guillotine are the attractions he provides for your viewing pleasure.

"So," he begins while adjusting the gas burner on the stove with pinched fingertips. "Andrea tells me you work at a library around here."

"I do," you reply simply. "At the Boston Public Library. It's really nice there."

He hums in interest while patting ground beef into a plump, round patty. "But you want to be a writer," he states.

You shift on your feet from where you stand behind him. "If I ever manage to finish the book I'm working on." You shrug while toying with a loose string hanging from the hem of your top. "It gives me something to do in my spare time, at least."

He hates how defeated you sound—like you've resigned yourself to never accomplishing your dream. Is it because you're losing interest in the project, or because you don't think you're good enough and have what it takes?

"I'd love to read it," Grant says while placing the patty in a lightly oiled non-stick pan before stepping over to the sink to wash his hands. "Whenever it's finished."

You shrug. "You don't even know what it's about."

He turns back to you while drying his hands. "Do I need to? It's something you're passionate about. That's enough for me."

Your eyes flit between his until he turns back to the stove.

You watch as his shoulder blades shift beneath his thin white t-shirt as he flips the burger over.

"This is just something for you to keep in mind, but being in the culinary business, I know journalists—people in publishing. So if you're ever looking to get your foot in the door, I can help with that."

You're surprised by how selfless he seems. Thoughtful.

You understand then why Andrea has stuck around so long, despite the stressors of being in hospitality.

He's a good man.

"Thank you," you whisper.

Placing the medium-rare patty on a crispy bun, he lays a slice of cheddar cheese on top to begin melting, a tomato, pickles, and a bit of garnish, followed by the top bun. "Anytime."

He watches with utter satisfaction as you chow down. Had Grant had a bit more time to prepare, he would've made you up a plate of hand-cut seasoned fries as well, but given the size of the burger, he hopes it'll be enough to satiate your appetite.

"Good?" he asks while dragging a finger along the edge of your plate to gather a drop of mustard before popping it in his mouth.

You nod fervently while chewing.

"Have to give me an actual challenge next time. Comfort food is your favorite type of cuisine, though, isn't it?"

Another nod.

Could whip up some fried chicken next time. Not necessarily difficult to make, but rather to perfect. Just the right amount of crisp on the outside with a balance of seasoned sumptuousness on the in can be a difficult combo to achieve.

Honestly? Grants wants to make you everything on the whole damn menu.

Would certainly keep you coming back to him time and again if he did.

It's a tempting thought: feeding you every night when you come home from work. Especially from his own hand. He's replayed you taking a bite of macaroni from the fork he held the first time you met repeatedly.

He briefly considers how he could get you to suck melted chocolate off his fingers.

"What's yours?" you ask while dabbing at your lips with a freshly laundered napkin.

Grant leans back. Resting his tanned forearms atop the table, he thinks. "If you can believe it, I don't have one. When it comes to food, I make an effort to keep my options open. There's always something new to try. To make or taste. Guess I worry that if I develop a 'favorite' I'll start to limit myself by getting too comfortable with one particular food or handful of meals."

Makes sense to you. Hence your appreciation for cheap microwavable or oven-ready boxed food.

"Favorite thing to make, then?"

He grins. "Sort of the same answer. Convoluted dishes give me a challenge, but I still have an appreciation for the simple things in life," he states with a nod toward your slowly emptying plate.

"Seems like you enjoy keeping an open mind."

He leans in close while studying your lips with a smile. "I definitely do."

You're reticent to ask what tonight was. Why Grant seems to so enjoy watching you eat.

It's flattering, at least. A welcome change from past dates from long ago where you always wanted to order a salad, or turn away altogether so you couldn't be watched with a scrutinizing gaze as you ate.

Rocking onto the balls of your feet, you look up at Grant with a smile. "Thank you again."

He runs a rough palm down your arm. "Here to serve," he replies with a lopsided smile.

"Well... Goodnight," you chirp with a quick nod.

Leaning down, he brushes his lips over your soft cheek. "Goodnight, sweetheart."

"Sooo," Andrea drawls from the doorway of your bedroom. "Have you checked your email today?"

You pause Netflix and turn to her with furrowed brows. "This morning like I always do. Why?"

"Might wanna check it again," she states. "Grant asked me for your email today. Didn't say why, though," your roommate relays.

"Maybe it's just a recipe," you ponder. Grabbing your phone from the middle of the bed, you navigate to your email, find one from not quite two hours ago from the man in question, and when you open it, your jaw drops.

"Oooh, what is it? Dirty pictures involving whip cream and stacked donuts?"

You slam a palm against your forehead. "Oh God. He can't just—"

She pads around the side of your bed and takes the device from you before barking a ridiculous laugh. "A fucking grand?!" she cries.

You take the phone back from her. "It's for a local tech store." Your eyes scan the attached gift message. "For your time & your new computer. Remember that I get to read it first. — Grant"

Andrea folds her arms and frowns. "Does he mean your novel? Promised that privilege to me..." she pouts.

You stare at her. "You—Yes, you still can. But I—I have to send this back." Tossing off a throw blanket, you stand and begin to pace.

"Man, he wants that cookie bad."

You level her with a glare.

"Alright," she relents with raised palms of surrender. "No more food puns."

"Do you think it works like a check? Like, unless I use it the money stays in his account?" you ask while looking at her.

She shrugs. "Maybe. Sure wish he'd give me a damn thousand dollar bonus. What'd you do the last time you went a week ago?"

"I told you!" you shout hysterically. "He made me a cheeseburger. I ate it, then came back here. That's it."

"I eat in front of the old man every day. He's never wanted to reward me for it." She pinches her stomach, then shrugs. "Probably a good thing or you'd be rolling me out of here before long."

"I have to make him take it back or undo it," you say while heading in the direction of your closet so you can get changed. "This is too much."

"So he wants to be your sugar daddy—"

You narrow your eyes and jerk your head back in her direction.

"Not intended to be another pun. That's just the name for it," she mumbles. "As I was saying: I fail to see how it's a bad thing."

"I've been saving up. I don't—" You toss a loose ankle-length dress onto the bed. Something simple. You don't need to dress up. No, you need to get going before he locks up for the night. "That isn't me."

"Grant?" you shout into the empty restaurant. "Are you here?"

A smile curls lips lined by silver stubble and laugh lines bracket his mouth. Hanging his apron on a hook, Grant emerges from behind the kitchen door. Greeted by the sight of you in a simple, soft black dress that almost looks more like a comfortable nightgown, he grins. "Got your attention, huh?"

"You... You have to take it back. Cancel it or something," you plead.

Crossing the room to reach you, he reaches forward and brushes the pad of his thumb along your cheek. "No can do," he replies with a shake of his head.

"But—"

"You don't need to feel guilty," Grant tells you. "Guess just feeding you dinner wasn't enough for me." He shrugs. "Wanted to help take care of you another way."

Before this moment, you've only been around each other twice before. Two times. You absolutely refuse to believe that you made enough of an impression to justify him gifting you one thousand dollars!

You open your mouth to continue insisting, until he rests his palms heavily atop your shoulders. "You wanna repay me?"

You waver. "Yes..."

"Then let me teach you."

He begins tugging you along behind him toward the kitchen, and you gulp nervously.

Time for you to set the damn place on fire, apparently.

"Slow, sweetheart, slow," Grant mutters quietly against your ear. "Don't want to get it all over yourself or you'll be soaked."

After leading you back into the kitchen, Grant gathered all the ingredients required to teach you how to make an excellent traditional southern fried chicken recipe, which he said the pair of you could eat together.

At current, you're whisking together milk and lemon juice to prep your own homemade buttermilk.

With Grant pressed against your back, and his hands leading your own while he croons encouragement and instructions in your ear, you fear that this cooking lesson may soon end in disaster if you don't get yourself under control. And soon.

"Good," he coos. "Nice and smooth. Good girl."

You nearly whimper when you feel a fluttering start up between your legs.

"Alright, set that to the side, then grab the chicken next and we'll dip each section until it's dripping and coat them in flour."

You swallow thickly, nod, then slide the bowl across the counter to keep it far from you, lest you knock it over and make a mess. Grabbing a sheet of raw chicken, you pick up piece after piece and dip them in the liquid mixture, followed by dropping them into a thick paper bag and shaking until Grant tells you to stop. You then place each prepped piece of poultry onto a new sheet until you've completed the current step.

"Alright, wash your hands and I'll guide you on what to do next."

Without the heat of his body stationed behind you, you're made very aware of how a thin sheet of sweat has coated the back of your neck. As such, you take your time washing your hands. Enjoying the cold water, you don't stop scrubbing until your palms and fingers are sudsy and clean.

Grant motions for you to rejoin him once you've shut the faucet off.

Assuming your previous position, he stands impossibly closer. "Here," he whispers before pulling an apron on over your head. "Should've done this before we started. Sorry."

You stay silent as his hands trail just beneath your breasts to grab the ties at the front of the acorn-brown apron to circle them around your waist.

"There," Grant says while pressing a soft kiss to the back of your head. "I've got you covered."

"Now," he says while adjusting the burner. "Fill your skillet with vegetable oil. About a third of the way. I'll tell you when to stop."

Grabbing a glass bottle, you start to pour, but slowly. The oil spreads across the cast iron skillet, and after a beat, Grant speak again. "Alright, that's good. Plenty slick enough to cook with."

You draw in a deep breath, then eye the chicken. "How long do we—"

"Awhile," he interrupts while sliding his hands from your shoulders to your upper arms. "It needs to get hot." He turns his head. "Very hot," he rumbles against your ear. "Once the pieces are browned, we'll turn down the heat and let them simmer for awhile. About half an hour," he explains.

"What'll we do while we wait?" you ask breathlessly.

He chuckles. "Anything you like."

"Oh."

"I like this," Grant says while pulling the chicken closer for when the skillet is finally ready to be filled. "Teaching you. You're a good student."

Testing the waters, you lean back against his sturdy chest, and he doesn't move an inch. "I've got you, sweetheart. I'm right here."

Your eyes flutter closed for a moment. The silence is deafening—interrupted only the sound of his steady breathing, yours which has turned ragged, and quietly popping oil on the stovetop.

"Something I can do to help you while you work, besides leading you?" he asks.

Touch me, you think while rubbing your thighs together from beneath your dress.

"Hm?" he hums with a kiss at your temple.

"I dunno," you whimper.

"Grab your tongs and start arranging the chicken around the edges until the whole skillet is full," he directs.

The sheet of raw chicken is half empty when Grant finally brushes his thumb along the side of your clothed breast.

He notes how you forewent wearing a bra tonight.

"Your apron too tight?" he asks while tugging curiously against the front.

"M-Maybe," you stutter.

Moment of truth.

Cautiously, he slips his hands between your dress and apron and cups both your breasts in his large palms. You gasp sharply and nearly drop the utensil you're holding.

"Keep going," he orders. "You're almost there."

Yes, Chef, you muse.

Circling your nipples with his fingertips, he doesn't stop until they're pebbled. Grant begins to gently tug against their hardened peaks. "Good girl," he purrs. "You did perfect. Now, go ahead and flip the pieces over."

With vigilant determination, you turn the poultry from one side to the other.

After only three pieces, Grant maneuvers a hand past the neckline of your dress and grabs your naked breast with his bare hand.

"Oh God," you whine and your hips buck back against him.

"Just a few more and then we'll cover it and let it cook. Go on, sweetheart. Do what chef tells you to."

Unable to help yourself, you do as Grant says. But you sigh and whimper all the while as his callouses scratch pleasantly against and between your breasts.

Settling a lid atop the pan, you reach for a timer. "H-how long?" you pant.

"Half an hour. Should be enough time for us to finish."

Winding the dial, you point the arrow at 30, then set it down.

"Do you like this?" he rasps while shoving a second hand beneath the neck of your dress. "Does it feel good?"

You nod slowly. "Yes."

"Do you want more?"

"Please," you moan.

You almost sob when his hands retract. Until he gently spins you around to face him.

"How much more?" he asks while cupping your cheek comfortingly.

Your lips slightly part, but the thought of saying it... You don't always know how to be forward about your own desires.

"Because I want to taste you," Grant utters. "I have from the first."

Guiding you by the hips back to a sprawling, empty surface, he grabs you by the waist and hoists you up. "Is this okay?" he questions while trailing a palm from your calf to your knee.

"Yes," you whisper.

He goes higher, only stopping once his fingertips are prodding against the thin, slick material of your panties that're now sticking to your pussy. "Fuck," he curses. "You're so wet for me."

Rolling your dress up past your thighs, Grant hooks his fingers under the waistband of your panties. Kneeling on the floor, he stares up at you with reverence. "Do you want me to stop?"

You shake your head, then wiggle your hips. "More."

Leaning forward, he presses a firm kiss to your damp panties, drags his speared tongue along the soaked material, then tugs them down in one swift motion. Tucking them into his pocket, he encourages your thighs over his shoulders and swipes his tongue through your slick folds.

God, he's in Heaven. Here, with you now, he's exactly where he's supposed to be.

You suck in a sharp breath, then tangle your fingers in his silver hair to keep him close.

When you begin to rock your hips, he swirls his tongue over your swollen clit while easing two fingers between your warm, fluttering walls.

You taste better than he could've ever imagined. Are softer, wetter, and more needy than he anticipated you would be.

"You're so perfect," he mutters while kissing your inner thighs before returning to your fluttering cunt. "Better than I thought," he grates.

And he has one hell of a palate.

Planting a sweaty palm atop the cool countertop, you lean back and prop a foot atop it. You're sure the two of you are committing at least a dozen health-code violations right now, but you couldn't care less.

"O-oh my God," you stammer.

"Come for me," he demands while craning his head back. "Come on my tongue. Now."

Shoving his head back between your thighs, you squeal quietly when he returns to teasing your clit. When your walls begin to clench around his thick digits, he refuses to come up for air. You're so close and he needs to be the man to give you this.

Sucking your labia and fingering you with rapid abandon, your pussy squelches and leaves his palm and your ass both covered in arousal. Not even the finest fucking wine could compare to you. If he could bottle and drink you, he would.

Swear to God he would...

You bite your lip, tug against his sweaty curls, then shudder violently as your orgasm wracks through your body. "Oh my God, Grant," you cry while your mind circles and your arousal crashes through you.

He whimpers against your slick, swollen opening while palming himself over his black slacks.

Grant moans while kissing your pussy in thanks for what it's just given him in return.

Once you finally calm, you slide your leg back over the edge of the counter and go loose—your limbs now feeling weakened; like jelly.

Grabbing your face, Grant crushes his lips to yours. He makes wet smacking sounds while he fucks your mouth with his tongue—his saliva and your own slick pooling beneath your tongue. "You should know how good you taste," he pants.

Trailing kisses down your neck, you clutch helplessly at his chest as his coarse stubble scratches your sensitive skin.

"I wanna be inside of you," he rumbles while nudging your thighs further apart. Tilting your chin back, he stares into your eyes with feverish hunger. "Please let me have you."

Your jaw falls open and you grasp for words to explain. "I... I don't just—"

It's as if he can read your mind before you've even completed a thought. "After this, you're mine. I'm too old for playing games with the woman I want and have been waiting so long for."

"We'd be—"

"Together. Unless you ordered me away," Grant explains. "Fuck, Y/N, please. I'm begging you."

Reaching up, you tug the top of your dress down and let it pool around your waist, exposing your breasts to him.

And Grant drinks you in greedily.

Dipping his head, he sucks a taut nipple into his mouth, then laps at the opposite with his warm, wet tongue.

Grasping at his belt, you suddenly still.

Grant lifts his head and cups your cheek cautiously. "Do you wanna stop?"

"I'm not...on anything anymore. And I'm—" you gulp. "I'm ovulating right now."

He chuckles. "I might've guessed."

You raise a brow, questioning whether you should be offended by whatever he's implying.

"How wet you got for me," he continues. "I loved it. It was perfect."

You smile.

"I don't exactly keep condoms here in the kitchen," he says with a knowing look.

"I could... Wind up—"

"I know," he whispers while cupping the back of your head in one hand and wrapping the other securely around your naked waist. "And if that did happen, I'd take care of you. I—I want to anyway. I've been... I've been too married to my work. I don't regret it, but there are things I've missed out on." He kisses you tenderly. "Now here you are. Finally."

He pops a tine on his belt loose. "Do you want us to keep going?"

You nod slowly.

Grant unbuckles his belt, pops the button at the top of his pants, then unzips them. "Do you want me inside of you?" he questions while running a certain hand down your side.

"Yes," you sigh.

"If I do this, I can't pull out. It... It's you. I just can't, Y/N. I need you to understand what I'm telling you."

Wrapping an arm around his neck and another around his side, you cling to him. "I understand."

Shoving his pants and briefs down to his ankles, Grant takes himself in hand and pumps his cock a few times, runs the pad of his thumb over the leaking tip, then eases its girthy length between your slick, accommodating walls.

Once Grants has bottomed out against your perfect cunt, his hips stutter and he whimpers close to your ear while holding you suffocatingly close. "Fuck, sweetheart, I don't know how long I'm gonna last like this," he mutters while slowly rocking his hips.

Burying your face against his neck, your shake your head. "Do what you need to. I want you to finish."

Besides, you already have.

Pumping his thick, veiny cock between your stretchy walls, a whine crawls up Grant's throat, and halts there, until he gasps for air, and the breath his releases sounds more like a quiet cry.

Cradling the backs of each other's heads, his arm circles your waist while your hand claws at his covered back. Grant's naked skin slaps against yours while your legs gyrate on either side of his hips where they dangle over the edge of the counter. "O-Oh fuck," he moans. "I'm already close."

You kiss his neck. "Please, Grant," you whisper.

His cock twitches. "Feel's good?" he asks while thrusting his hips.

"So good," you mewl.

His testicles begin to tighten.

"Almost there," he rasps. "You're doing so well for me. But, baby, I'm—fuck, it's gonna be deep."

You nod. "It's okay. It's okay, you can cum inside me."

He sniffles quietly. "Thank you for finding me," he mutters.

Planting a palm against his naked ass, you encourage him to keep rocking his hips.

Rolling them to get impossibly deeper inside you, his thrusts become hard and fast. So fast that a metallic pounding begins from where his thighs are knocking against the steel countertop. A bowl clatters to the floor, but Grant holds firm when you jolt. "Don't," he barks. "Stay still." He shudders. "Good girl. That's my good little girl. Almost—almost—"

A container of utensils falls over next, but it doesn't even phase him.

Meanwhile, you keep him close. His arms have tightened like coils now. You're surrounded by his muscled limbs.

"Fuck!" he shouts suddenly. "I'm gonna—I'm gonna cum. Fuck, I'm gonna cum so deep inside you, baby girl."

"Please, Grant," you plead. Your clit is so overstiumlated that with only a few more thrusts—

"Oh God," he groans. "Oh God, sweetheart."

Pressing his lips to the curve of your shoulder, his cock spasms between your walls and his balls twitch as he empties a load of built-up semen inside of you. Scooting closer, he angles his hips upwards toward your cervix while thick, hot ropes of cum spurt and coat your fleshy walls.

You twitch repeatedly in his arms while your cunt contracts tightly around his member. Your orgasm is silent, and less eventful, but feels just as good as it washes over you.

Once it's all over, you continue holding one another. "Did you cum again?" Grant asks quietly, while massaging the base of your scalp with trembling fingers.

"I did," you murmur before yawning.

"Good," he says with quiet relief. "Such a good girl."

He stays inside of you, but leans back just enough to capture you in a slow, passionate kiss. "Tell me you belong to me," Grant demands between brushes of his lips over yours.

"I'm yours," you assure him. "I'm yours, Grant."

He swipes a thumb over your sensitive clit—just above where he still has you stretched open. "Yes, you are."

Dinner is mostly silent. Grant sits close to your side as the two of you steadily snack on a mountainous plate of delicious fried chicken. Between your thighs, you can still feel his cum leaking out of you.

Lying your sleepy head atop his shoulder, Grant kisses the crown of it. "I've wanted you since the first time I saw you," he states after taking a sip of ice water. "And heard your voice."

You snuggle against his side. "Really?"

The first rule of pediatrics was that fear moved faster than pain. You had learned that early.

Pain made kids cry. Fear made them bolt.

Eli Mereiter had been trying very hard not to do either for almost twenty minutes.

He sat in the center of the peds exam bed with his knees tucked under the thin blanket, his left wrist cradled against his chest, his cheeks blotchy from the effort of pretending he was fine. His mother stood near the head of the bed, one hand on his shoulder and the other twisting the strap of her purse so tightly her knuckles had gone white.

“You’re doing great,” you told him.

Eli looked at the IV tray and swallowed. “No, I’m not.”

You crouched beside the bed so you were closer to eye level.

“You are. Great doesn’t mean you aren’t scared. It means you’re still here with me even though you are.”

His eyes flicked to yours.

The honesty helped. It usually did. Kids could smell a lie faster than adults could dress one up.

“It’s gonna hurt,” he said.

You nodded.

“It’s going to pinch. I won’t call it nothing.” You rested one hand on the mattress, close but not touching him without warning. “But it’ll be fast, and you don’t have to watch.”

His mouth trembled once before he pressed it flat. “I don’t want it.”

“I know.” You gave him a serious nod. “That’s fair. We can hate it together.”

Eli looked at you like that was suspicious. “You hate it?”

“I hate it when kids have to do scary things,” you said. “But I like when they get through them and realize they were braver than they thought.”

His mom made a quiet sound behind him.

You glanced up at her and gave a small, reassuring smile before looking back at Eli.

“How about this,” you said. “You pick where you look. Mom’s face, the ceiling tile that kind of looks like a potato, or me.”

Eli’s brows pinched together. “The ceiling tile doesn’t look like a potato.”

You looked up. “It absolutely does.”

He glanced up despite himself. For one second, his attention shifted. Not enough to make him calm, but enough to give him somewhere else to put the fear.

“That one?” he asked.

You nodded. “Very potato.” His mom gave a wet little laugh.

The nurse beside you finished prepping the IV with practiced quiet. You saw Eli clock the movement anyway. His eyes cut to the tourniquet. Then the alcohol wipe. Then the catheter.

His breathing changed. You leaned in slightly. “Eli. Look at me.” His gaze snapped back to yours.

You kept your voice low and even. “Can you breathe in with me?”

He tried. His breath caught halfway.

“That’s okay,” you said. “Again. Smaller this time.”

The nurse reached for his arm. Eli saw the flash of the needle. Fear got there first.

“No,” he said.

His mother tightened her hand on his shoulder. “Eli—”

“No!” He jerked backward, fast and hard, trying to get away from the tray, from the nurse, from the whole room.

“Hey, hey.” You moved with him. “You’re okay.”

But he was already twisting. His sneaker slid against the paper sheet. His hip caught the edge of the mattress. The bed rail was down on your side because you had been sitting there with him, and his small body tipped toward the open space between the bed and the floor.

You moved before thought could catch up.

Your hand caught the back of his gown. Your other arm shot across his chest, bracing him before he could fall.

For half a second, you had him. Then his weight hit your shoulder wrong. Something shifted. Not cracked. Not snapped.

Slipped.

White-hot pain tore through your shoulder and down your arm so violently that the room went gray at the edges. You made a sound you did not recognize.

Someone grabbed Eli from the other side.

“I’ve got him,” the other nurse said. “I’ve got him.”

Good, you thought. That was good.

You went down hard on one knee, your right arm hanging wrong, breath gone from your chest.

Eli was crying now. Not the scared kind. The guilty kind.

“I hurt her,” he sobbed.

You tried to lift your head. Bad idea. Pain slammed up the side of your neck and behind your teeth.

“No,” you forced out. Your voice sounded thin. Far away. “No, honey. You didn’t.”

A hand touched your back. “Don’t move,” someone said.

You tried to breathe through your nose. “Is he okay?”

“He’s okay,” she repeated, firmer this time. “We have him.”

Eli’s mother had him against her now, both arms wrapped around his shaking body. His face was turned toward you, wet and horrified.

You managed to focus on him. “Eli.”

His crying hitched. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.” You swallowed down nausea. “I know you didn’t. You got scared. That’s different.”

His face crumpled harder. You looked at his mom. “Tell him I’m not mad.”

“We will,” she said quickly.

You closed your eyes for half a second. “Please tell him.”

“We will,” the nurse said beside you. “But right now, we need to get you downstairs.”

You opened your eyes. “No, he needs—”

“He has his mom,” she said gently. “And he has Megan. We’ve got him.”

You wanted to argue. Your shoulder pulsed once, deep and sickening, and the rest of the sentence disappeared. Someone called down to the ED before they moved you. You heard pieces of it through the pain and the blood rushing in your ears.

“Staff injury coming down from peds.”

“Likely right shoulder dislocation.”

“Caught a pediatric patient who panicked during IV prep.”

“Vitals stable.”

“Severe pain.”

Nobody said your name. Or maybe they did, and it got swallowed somewhere between the exam room and the elevator. Either way, by the time they got you into a wheelchair, your scrubs were damp at the collar, your vision kept narrowing at the corners, and your arm had become a separate, terrible country you refused to look at.

You hated being the patient.

You hated it so much you almost missed the part where you were terrified. Almost.

The elevator ride downstairs felt both too fast and too slow. Someone kept telling you to breathe. Someone else kept asking your pain number. You gave a number that was probably too low because saying the real one made it feel more real.

The ED doors opened.

The familiar noise hit first. Monitors. Shoes. Voices. The distant roll of a cart.

Robby was already at the mouth of a bay when they wheeled you in, tablet in hand, chief-of-the-ER face on. Dana stood beside him with gloves already pulled on, calm and unsmiling in the way that meant she had already cleared the room in her head. Santos hovered just behind her like she could smell a procedure from three bays away. Princess was at the computer, and Javadi stood near the supply cart, trying very hard to look like someone who was not internally rehearsing every step of a shoulder reduction.

“Peds called down,” Robby said. “Likely right shoulder disloca—”

Then he saw your face. The chief of the ER expression dropped clean off.

For one second, he was not chief of anything. He was just your friend. “What the fuck, dude?”

You tried to glare at him. “Great bedside manner.”

Robby was already moving. He came to your side, one hand bracing the wheelchair arm, his eyes sweeping over your face.

“Look at me,” he said. “You with me?”

You blinked at him through the pain. “No, Robby, I thought I’d dissociate recreationally.”

His jaw tightened. “Answer me like less of a pain in my ass.”

You sighed. “I’m with you.”

“Good.” He glanced at the peds nurse behind your chair. “They called down a peds nurse. They did not say it was you.”

“Would that have changed your medical plan?” you asked.

“No.” His eyes flicked to your shoulder, and the doctor came back into him all at once. “It would have given me thirty more seconds to emotionally prepare for both my friend being injured and Jack killing me.”

“Jack is not going to kill you,” you replied.

Dana made a quiet sound. Robby pointed at her without looking. “Do not contribute.”

Dana lifted both gloved hands. “I said nothing.”

“You thought loudly.”

Santos leaned slightly to see your arm better. “Is it anterior?”

You swallowed through the pain. “Is Eli okay?”

Robby’s attention snapped back to you. Then he looked to the peds nurse. “Eli is the kid?”

The peds nurse nodded quickly. “Eight-year-old. Wrist injury. He’s okay. Megan stayed with him and his mom.”

Your eyes closed. “Did someone tell him I’m not mad?”

Robby went still for half a beat. His expression changed again. Softer this time. Worried in a way he could not hide behind sarcasm fast enough.

“Yeah,” he said. “They told him.”

“He won’t believe them,” you murmured.

Robby looked at you. “He might.”

“He’s eight.” Your voice thinned around the pain. “Eight-year-olds think everything is their fault.”

Robby looked at you for one second too long. Then he nodded once, like he was putting that away for later. “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to get you on the bed. Slow. Dana, support the arm. Javadi, do not look terrified.”

Javadi straightened. “I’m not terrified.” Robby looked at her.

Javadi swallowed. “I’m appropriately alert.” Robby nodded once. “Better.”

You hated how many people it took.

You hated the careful hands and the count of three and the way pain still broke through your teeth when they moved you.

You hated that Robby’s face stayed calm. That meant it looked bad.

Once you were on the bed, Dana slid a pillow under your arm with the clean precision of a woman who did not waste motion. Princess clipped a monitor to your finger. Javadi asked about allergies, her voice only a little too bright. Santos hovered at the foot of the bed, watching your shoulder with open interest until Dana glanced at her.

Santos lifted her hands. “I’m not touching anything.”

“Correct,” Dana said.

Robby looked up from your shoulder. “Pain number.” You hesitated.

He gave you a look. “Do not make me ask like I don’t know you.” You told the truth.

Robby’s mouth tightened. “Thank you for not lying to me twice.”

“I lied once,” you admitted.

Robby shook his head. “You lied badly once.” Your breathing hitched. “Did someone tell Eli?”

The peds nurse, still lingering near the curtain, nodded. “Megan did. His mom did too.”

“But did he believe them?” you pushed.

Robby braced one hand lightly on the bed rail. “Do not try to sit up.”

You looked at him. “I wasn’t.”

“You thought about it,” Robby replied.

Your eyes narrowed. “You can’t prove that.”

“I’m chief of emergency medicine,” he said. “I can prove anything if I chart creatively.”

A laugh tried to escape you. It did not make it past the pain. Robby saw that too. His voice shifted.

“IV, x-ray, then pain meds before we reduce it,” he said. “Let’s get films and make sure we know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

“Love being discussed like a broken chair,” you muttered.

Robby leaned over you, penlight in hand. “I have never met a chair this mouthy.”

Princess found a vein in your good arm. You looked away while she taped the line down. That felt ridiculous, considering you had started hundreds of IVs yourself, but today your body had decided to be dramatic, and you were not giving it more material.

Robby watched your face. “You okay?”

“No,” you answered honestly.

Robby almost smiled. “Good answer.”

Princess glanced up from your IV. “Do you want us to call someone?”

“Yes,” you said immediately.

Robby’s eyes narrowed like he already knew where this was going.

Princess kept her hands near the computer. “Who should we call?”

“Jack Abbot.”

The room did not stop. Not yet. Princess typed, then paused.

Her eyes moved from the screen to you. “Dr. Abbot?”

You breathed through your teeth. “Yes.”

The room went a little too quiet. You opened one eye. “What?”

Santos looked from you to Robby. “Night-shift Abbot?”

“How many Jack Abbots do you know?” you asked.

Javadi made the mistake of whispering, “Dr. Abbot is her emergency contact?”

“He’s my husband,” you said, like that explained the entire universe.

It did, actually. Just not to the room. Santos stared.

Javadi looked like someone had changed the laws of physics in front of her.

Princess’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. Dana, somehow, did not move at all.

Then her eyes narrowed. “The sandwich.” You closed your eyes. “Dana.”

Santos looked at her. “What sandwich?”

Dana didn’t look away from the monitor. “Shift change. Three weeks ago. Abbot was coming off nights. She was passing the desk with a stack of peds charts.”

Princess leaned around Javadi. “I remember that.”

“He had half a sandwich in his hand,” Dana said. “Tore the crust off without breaking conversation, held it up, and she took it on the way by.”

You breathed carefully through your teeth. “I was hungry.”

“You said thanks,” Dana added.

Santos blinked. “That’s it?” Dana finally looked up.

“That’s the point.” A beat passed.

Then Princess pointed toward you. “Wait. The parking lot.”

You opened one eye. “Please don’t.”

“I saw you two by the employee parking last month,” Princess said. “He switched sides with you near the cars.”

Javadi blinked. “Switched sides?” Princess looked at her like this was obvious. “The sidewalk rule.”

Javadi’s brows pulled together. “The what?”

“When the guy walks closer to the street,” Princess said. “Protective thing. Old-school. Very romantic if he’s hot.”

Santos made a face. “That sounds fake.”

Dana adjusted the pulse ox cord. “It’s not fake.”

Princess pointed at Dana. “Thank you.”

You stared at the ceiling. “Can we not analyze my husband’s walking patterns while my shoulder is in another fucking zip code?”

“And he had your bag,” Princess added.

“It was heavy,” you said.

She looked at you. “It had little strawberries on it.”

Robby’s mouth twitched. “Jack carried a strawberry bag?”

You gave him the best glare you could manage while lying flat with your arm attempting secession. “You are supposed to be my doctor.”

Santos’s face changed. “Oh, my god. The fire alarm drill.”

“No,” you said.

“You had his jacket,” she said.

“It was cold.”

“No.” Santos pointed, too delighted to stop herself. “He put it around your shoulders before you asked.”

Dana’s gaze sharpened with recognition.

Santos nodded hard. “And took your clipboard so you could get your arms through the sleeves.”

Princess looked at Robby. “You knew?”

Robby held up one hand. “I was at the wedding.”

The room shifted again. Javadi whispered, “There was a wedding?”

You stared at the ceiling. “I’m starting to think day shift needs hobbies.”

Robby looked at you, and this time his humor was gentle around the edges. “You married a night-shift attending and then wandered around this hospital accepting crustless sandwich halves like that was normal.”

“It is normal,” you replied.

“For married people,” Dana said.

Santos looked personally offended. “I am usually very good at noticing things.”

You swallowed through another pulse of pain. “Sorry my marriage was inconvenient for your brand.”

Robby pointed at you. “Pain has not made her less mean. Excellent prognostic sign.”

Princess was still looking at you like she had discovered treasure. “So Dr. Abbot is your husband.”

“Yes.”

“And he brings you coffee,” Princess added.

You inhaled. “Yes.”

“And the sandwich,” she continued.

“Yes.”

Princess’s eyebrows rose. “And the parking lot.” You closed your eyes. “I would like drugs now.”

Robby’s smile faded enough for his concern to show again. “Soon,” he said. “We’re moving.”

Then he held out his hand toward Princess. “I’ll call him.”

You looked at him. “You don’t have to.”

“I do, actually,” Robby replied.

“Why?”

Robby’s face softened around the edges, just enough that your chest hurt for reasons that had nothing to do with your shoulder.

“Because he’s going to be worried,” he said. “And if a stranger calls him, he’s going to scare somebody.”

You sighed. “Jack doesn’t scare people.”

“No,” Robby said. “But when he’s worried about you, he gets very concise.”

Dana hummed. “That’s true.”

You closed your eyes. “Tell him not to speed.”

Robby shook his head. “I’m not promising that.”

“Robby,” you said, trying to sound reasonable.

He sighed. “I’ll suggest moderation.”

Robby stepped a few feet away from the bed and tapped Jack’s contact. You watched him through the pain, sweat cooling at the back of your neck. He pointed at you without lowering the phone. “Try not to dislocate anything else while I’m gone.” The call rang once. Twice. Three times. On the fourth ring, Jack answered.

His voice came rough with sleep and irritation. “What, Robby?”

Robby glanced back at you. You were pale on the bed, jaw tight, your good hand fisted in the sheet while Dana adjusted the monitor.

“Your wife is in the ED,” Robby said. “She’s fine. I’ve got her.”

The line went silent. Then Jack’s voice came back low and awake. “What happened?”

“Right shoulder dislocation,” Robby said. “Peds incident. She caught a kid before he fell and took the force the wrong way. She’s conscious, stable, and pissed off, which I’m taking as a good sign.”

Another pause. Jack breathed out once, sharply. “Of course she caught the kid.”

“Yeah,” Robby said, softer. “That was my reaction too.”

You lifted your head an inch off the pillow. “Tell him not to speed.”

Robby looked over his shoulder. You stared back, sweaty and serious.

“She says not to speed.”

Jack was already moving. Robby could hear it through the phone: sheets, a drawer, something hitting the floor. “Tell her I’m coming.”

“Jack,” Robby said carefully.

“I heard her,” Jack said sharply.

Robby nodded once. “Good.”

“Thanks, brother. I’m on my way,” Jack replied.

Robby’s mouth softened. “Yeah,” he said.

He ended the call and came back to the side of the bed. “He’s coming.”

You let your head fall back against the pillow. “Good.” The word came out smaller than you meant it to. Robby heard that too. For a second, he was quiet.

Then he nodded to Princess. “Now give her the good stuff before she remembers she’s trying to be reasonable.”

Princess pushed medication into your IV. Warmth moved up your arm a few seconds later, strange and soft. The pain did not vanish, but the edges of the room began to loosen. The lights blurred a little. The monitor beep sounded farther away.

You blinked. “Wow.”

Santos leaned closer. “How’s that?”

You turned your head toward her slowly. “You have two faces.”

Robby’s mouth twitched. “Better?”

You inhaled. “I can still feel my skeleton making bad choices.”

“So, somewhat.” Robby grinned.

You looked toward the curtain. “Did someone tell Eli I’m not mad?”

Robby exhaled. “Yes.”

“I’m not mad,” you repeated.

“I know.”

You blinked hard. “No, but he needs to know.”

“He knows,” Robby replied gently.

You frowned. “You’re just saying that.”

“I am saying many things,” Robby said. “This one happens to be true.”

You tried to sit up. Every person in the room reacted.

Dana touched your good shoulder. “Nope. Stay back.”

“I should tell him,” you told her.

“You should keep your shoulder still,” Robby said.

You frowned at him. “You’re being bossy.” Robby shrugged. “It’s on the mug.”

“Jack has a mug that says World’s Sexiest Doctor,” you replied without thinking. The pain meds were softening things too much now. Words had started wandering into places you had not invited them.

Robby slowly turned his head. “I’m sorry. He has a what?”

You winced. “It was a joke. I got it for him when we were dating.”

Princess looked delighted. “And he kept it?”

You breathed through another pulse of pain. “He drinks out of it every morning.”

Santos stared. “Abbot drinks coffee out of a World’s Sexiest Doctor mug?”

Dana, dry as dust, added, “That explains more than I wanted it to.”

Robby pressed his fingers to his mouth like he was trying to hold in actual joy.

You glared at him. “You’re supposed to be my doctor.”

“I am,” Robby said. “And this is healing me.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. The ED lights drifted above you. Your body felt heavy against the bed, but your mind kept circling the same places. Eli crying. Your shoulder slipping. Jack coming. You blinked slowly. “Did someone tell Eli?”

Dana adjusted the blanket around your legs. “Yes.”

“Did someone tell Jack?” you asked.

Robby’s mouth twitched. “Yes.” You nodded, satisfied for exactly one second.

Then you frowned. “Which one is coming to see me?”

Robby stared at you. “What?”

“Eli or Jack?” you asked.

Princess turned toward the computer with suspicious speed. Santos looked openly delighted. Robby’s expression brightened with pure, terrible affection.

“Oh,” he said softly. “This is going to be a great drug for you.”

You frowned. “Don’t be weird.”

Robby patted the bed rail. “Try not to say anything incriminating before your husband gets here.”

Your eyes closed, but you could still hear the smile in his voice. “Jack already knows everything.”

Robby made a thoughtful sound. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s test that.”

Robby stayed beside the bed after Princess pushed the medication. One hand rested on the rail. His eyes moved from your face to the monitor, then to your shoulder, then back to your face again. He was not joking as much now.

You hated that. “Stop looking worried,” you said.

His mouth twitched, but it did not quite become a smile. “Stop giving me reasons.”

You blinked at him, the lights blurring softly around the edges. “Rude.”

“Consistent,” Robby said.

Dana adjusted the blanket over your legs, brisk yet careful. “That’s one word for it.”

The medication had made the room strange. Softer, but not kinder. The monitors sounded farther away, and the overhead lights had started to bloom at the edges. Your shoulder still hurts. Not as sharply as before, maybe, but it was there under everything, pulsing and wrong. You tried to shift away from it. Your body disagreed. “Bad,” you muttered.

Robby leaned in a fraction. “Pain?”

You shook your head. “Existence.”

He nodded once. “Fair.”

Dana checked the line of your IV, then glanced at him.

Robby’s eyes returned to yours, and something in his face softened. “Hey,” he said. “World’s Sexiest Doctor.”

You frowned. “What?”

“The mug,” Robby said, voice lighter on purpose. “You said he drinks out of it every morning.”

Your face softened before you could stop it. “He does.” Princess turned from the computer with immediate interest. Santos, who had been pretending not to hover near the foot of the bed, stopped pretending. Dana’s expression did not change, but her eyes flicked toward you.

Robby leaned one forearm against the rail. “Still can’t believe he committed to the bit.”

“It’s not a bit,” you said.

Robby’s eyebrows lifted. “No?”

You looked at him like he was missing the obvious. “It’s true.”

Santos’s mouth curved. Dana looked down at the monitor. Princess pressed her lips together like she was holding something very large behind her teeth. You blinked at the ceiling, dreamy and annoyed all at once. “He is the sexiest doctor.”

Robby drew back like you had slapped him. “Rude.”

You turned your head toward him slowly. “You’re right.”

His expression softened. “Thank you.”

“Ellis is pretty hot, too,” you murmured happily.

Robby froze. Princess made a sound and turned sharply toward the computer. Santos whispered, “Wow.”

Dana closed her eyes. Robby stared at you. “That was not the correction I was requesting.”

You considered him through the pleasant fog around your thoughts. “You have nice hair.”

Robby’s hand went to his chest. “That was devastatingly lukewarm.”

“It is nice.”

“Nice hair,” he repeated, wounded. “That’s what I get after years of friendship.”

“You’re my friend,” you said.

His expression shifted. For one second, the joke left his face. “I know.”

You watched him through the blur. “You’re a good doctor.”

Robby’s hand tightened slightly on the rail. “You’re on excellent medication.”

“I mean it.”

“I know,” he said, quieter.

Dana looked away first. Santos suddenly found the supply tray very interesting. Robby cleared his throat and straightened. “Okay,” he said, his voice returning to a steady tone. “Let’s get ready.”

The words landed wrong. Your smile faded. The room shifted back into medicine too quickly. Gloves. Positioning. Dana adjusting the bed. Santos watching Robby’s hands intently. Javadi standing too still by the supplies, trying to look prepared. Your stomach dropped through the medication. “Wait.” Robby looked back at you. “Yeah?”

Your good hand tightened in the sheet. “You’re doing it now?” His expression softened. “Soon.”

“No.”

Dana’s hand settled lightly near your good shoulder. Not holding you down. Just there.

Robby stepped closer. “I know.”

“No, Robby.” Your voice stayed even, but barely. “I don’t want to do it.”

Robby did not flinch. “I know you don’t.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you mean it.”

You swallowed hard, throat suddenly tight. “I don’t want it to hurt.”

Robby’s face changed again, not much, just enough to show you he hated this part too. “I’m going to be as gentle as I can.”

You frowned. “That’s what people say before they do stuff that sucks.” Santos muttered, “Accurate.”

Dana looked at her. Santos lifted both hands. “I’m validating.”

Robby ignored her and kept his eyes on you. “It is going to suck,” he said. “But the longer it stays out, the worse it’s going to feel. I want to get it back where it belongs.”

Your breathing went shallow. The medication had made everything loose except the fear. That stayed sharp. Clear. Mean. You looked toward the hallway. “Fine.” Robby waited. You glared at him, sweaty and medicated and angry enough to hide behind it. “I’ll do it if Jack is my doctor.”

The room paused. Dana looked at Robby. Princess looked at the hallway. Javadi looked like she had just realized this was not covered in any textbook.

Robby let out a slow breath. “Yeah,” he said carefully. “That’s not how this works.”

You frowned at him. “He’s a doctor.”

“He is.” Dana’s voice stayed calm beside you. “He’s also your husband.”

You looked at her like she had helped your case. “Exactly.” Robby’s mouth twitched despite himself.

Before he could answer, Jack’s voice cut through the department. “Where is she?”

Your head turned. Completely. All the thoughts in your brain scattered like startled birds. Jack was halfway down the hall, moving fast and trying not to look like he was moving fast, a hoodie under his unzipped jacket. His hair was sleep-rough on one side. His jaw was tight, his eyes already searching, already locked on the room. The second he saw you, his pace changed.

Your good hand lifted off the sheet. “That one.”

Robby followed your gaze. For the first time since the reduction tray came out, true humor broke through his worry. “Oh,” he said softly. “Okay.”

Jack stepped into the bay. You pointed at him, certain now. “I want that one.”

Jack froze for half a second. His eyes moved over you. Face. IV. Monitor. Shoulder. Robby. Dana. Back to your face.

Then he was at your side. “Baby.”

The word hit the room like a dropped instrument. Santos stared very hard at the floor. Princess pressed her lips together. Javadi’s eyes went wide, then wider, like she was watching hospital folklore become sentient.

You smiled up at him. “Hi.”

Jack took your good hand, his palm warm and familiar around yours. “Hi.”

His thumb moved once over your knuckles. You exhaled. You felt it happen before you could stop it. Your shoulders did not relax, not really, but your breathing changed. Your grip loosened from the sheet. The sharp edge of panic moved back by an inch.

Robby saw it. His eyes flicked to the monitor, then to Jack’s hand. “Interesting.”

Jack did not look away from you. “Don’t.”

“I’m observing.”

“You observe too loudly.”

Robby’s mouth curved. “I am her physician.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “You are enjoying being her physician too much.”

“I was worried,” Robby said.

The joke thinned for a second. Jack looked up. Robby held his gaze. “Still am.”

Jack’s face shifted.

You squeezed his hand. “Don’t do serious faces.”

Jack looked back down at you. His thumb moved again. “Sorry.”

You studied him, hazy and affectionate. “You came.”

“Of course I came.”

You turned your head toward Dana, solemn and proud. “I picked that one.”

Dana’s mouth twitched. “So I’m hearing.”

Jack closed his eyes. “What did you give her?”

“Pain control,” Robby said. “Not enough to explain all of this.”

You tugged lightly on Jack’s hand. “He’s being rude.”

Jack looked at Robby. “Stop being rude.”

Robby pointed at him. “You weren’t even here.”

“I believe my wife.”

Princess turned toward the computer again, but not fast enough to hide her smile.

Santos murmured, “That was hot.”

Dana said, “Santos.”

“What? It was,” Santos replied with a shrug.

Jack ignored all of them and leaned closer to you. “How bad?”

“Bad.”

His face softened. “Yeah?”

You nodded, then regretted it. “Don’t let me do head stuff.”

“I won’t,” Jack promised.

You frowned. “Having a head is bad.”

“I’ll make a note,” Jack said with a soft smile.

Robby stepped closer to your injured side. “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to try Cunningham.”

“No.” Your response was immediate.

Jack’s hand tightened around yours. Robby did not react like the word surprised him. “I know.”

“No, I don’t want Cunningham. It sounds smug,” you told him.

Robby’s brow raised. “It’s a reduction technique, not a man at a country club.”

You frowned at him. “Still smug.”

Jack’s thumb brushed your knuckles. “Look at me.”

You turned your eyes back to him. “No.”

Jack’s eyes softened. “You’re already doing it.”

You glared. “That’s annoying.”

His mouth almost smiled. “I know.”

Robby looked between you and Jack. Then his eyes moved to the monitor again. A thought entered his face.

Jack saw it immediately. “No.”

Robby blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”

Dana adjusted the bed so you were sitting up more, angled slightly back against the raised mattress. The movement sent a pain-sparking sensation down your arm. “Fuck.” Your eyes squeezed shut. “Fuck, this is worse than my fucking IUD insertion.”

The room went silent. Jack’s thumb stilled against your hand. “Okay,” he said carefully.

You opened your eyes and glared at the ceiling. “I thought I knew pain. I was wrong.”

Dana’s mouth twitched near the monitor. Princess turned very deliberately toward the computer.

Jack leaned closer. “Baby.”

“No.” You turned your glare on him. “This is your fault.”

His brows pulled together. “My fault?”

“Yes.”

Jack blinked once. “How is this my fault?”

“Because,” you said, furious and medicated, “if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t know this was worse.”

Robby looked up. Jack did not move.

“I was doing fine,” you continued. “I was in my celibate phase. I was at peace.”

Jack’s face changed by exactly one dangerous millimeter. “You were not at peace.”

“I was close.” Your eyes narrowed. “Then you came along with your stupid handsome face and your stupid arms, and then I got the stupid IUD, and I thought that was pain. But no.”

Robby nodded slowly. “That is a clinically fascinating chain of blame.”

Jack did not look away from you. “So your shoulder hurts because I’m handsome.”

“And slutty with your forearms,” you added.

Jack’s jaw flexed. Santos whispered, “Slutty forearms.”

Dana did not look away from the monitor. “Do not repeat Mrs. Abbot.” Your face softened immediately.

Jack noticed. His eyes dropped back to yours, something warm cutting through the mortification. “What?”

You blinked up at him, drug-soft and suddenly pleased. “She called me Mrs. Abbot.”

Jack’s thumb moved once over your hand. “Yeah, baby.”

A small smile pulled at your mouth. “That’s me.”

Robby looked from you to Dana. Dana adjusted the pulse ox cord with perfect neutrality. “What?”

“You’re enjoying this,” Robby said.

“I am maintaining room discipline.”

“You called her Mrs. Abbot.”

Dana’s mouth barely moved. “That is her name.” Your smile widened.

Jack looked at Dana, then back at you, and his face softened despite himself. Dana glanced at the monitor. “See? Therapeutic.” Robby’s eyes dropped to Jack’s sleeve.

Jack saw it happen. “No.”

Robby smiled. “I didn’t say anything.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “You looked at my sleeve.”

“Clinically,” Robby replied.

Jack shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

You blinked up at Jack, still angry, still hazy, still betrayed by the entire medical system. “He does have nice forearms.”

Jack stared at the ceiling. Robby nodded toward Jack’s arm. “Roll up your sleeve.”

Jack looked at him. “Excuse me?”

“She’s tensing.”

Jack gave Robby a look. “You want me to roll up my sleeves.”

“I want patient compliance,” Robby corrected.

Jack looked at Dana. Dana glanced at the monitor, then at you. “It would probably help.”

Jack’s face went flat. “Not you too.”

Dana shrugged. “I’m practical.”

Robby looked delighted. “See? Medicine.”

Jack exhaled through his nose, then dragged one sleeve of his hoodie up his forearm. Your eyes followed the movement immediately. You hated yourself a little. Not enough to look away. His forearm flexed as he pushed the fabric past his elbow, tendons shifting under skin, the veins at his wrist standing out when his fingers curled once around the bed rail. Your mouth went soft.

Robby pointed at you. “There.”

Jack’s eyes cut to him. “Do not point at my wife while she’s objectifying me.”

“I am pointing at a response to treatment,” Robby replied with glee.

You looked at Jack’s arm. “Treatment is good.”

Princess made a strangled sound. Javadi stared straight ahead like a resident determined to survive rounds with her soul intact.

Jack leaned closer to you. “You are making this very difficult.”

You blinked. “Me?”

“You.” His thumb brushed your cheek. “Very stubborn. Very pretty. Extremely bad at being a patient.”

The giggle came before you could stop it. Soft. Helpless. Embarrassing. Jack’s eyes warmed. Robby looked like he had just discovered a new antibiotic. “Oh, that’s excellent.”

Jack did not look away from you. “Ignore him.”

“You think I’m pretty,” you said.

“I married you,” Jack replied.

“That’s not an answer.”

His mouth curved. “Yes, baby. I think you’re pretty.”

You melted. Completely. It was humiliating. It was also his fault. Robby adjusted your injured arm, careful and slow, guiding your hand toward his shoulder. The position made pain spark hot and immediate. “No.” You tried to pull back. “No, fuck this.”

Jack’s face sharpened. Robby’s tone stayed calm. “I need thirty seconds.”

“I don’t want thirty seconds,” you said, frowning.

Robby’s expression softened, “I know.”

“No, I want that one to do it,” you said, looking from Robby to Jack.

Jack leaned closer. “You have that one.”

“I want that one to doctor me.” Your lower lip jutted out.

Robby, far too cheerful, said, “We’ve covered the conflict of interest.”

You frowned at him. “Sexy doctor husband.”

Jack looked at Robby. “Fix her shoulder.”

Robby looked at Jack’s hoodie. Jack saw it. His whole body went still. “No.”

Robby lifted both hands. “I didn’t say anything.” Jack stared at him.

Robby smiled. “She responded well to forearm.”

“Forearm is not a drug,” Jack shot back.

Robby shrugged. “It is today.”

Jack dragged a hand down his face. “Fuck me.”

You, who had been blinking hazily at the ceiling, turned your head with alarming speed. “Yes.”

The room stopped. Completely. Jack’s hand froze halfway down his face. “No.”

You frowned, offended. “Rude.”

Princess turned toward the computer with the focus of a woman fighting for her life. Santos stared at the floor, shoulders shaking.

Dana checked the monitor. “Heart rate response noted.”

Jack looked at her. “Dana.”

She did not look up. “I report data.”

Robby pressed his lips together. “For the record, that was the fastest she’s oriented to verbal stimulus since the medication.”

You reached weakly for Jack’s hand. “Sexy doctor husband.”

Jack looked down at you. Your eyes were glassy from medication and pain, your good hand tight around his, your face still trying so hard to stay mad because scared was too vulnerable, and both of you knew it. His irritation lost some of its shape. “Fine,” he muttered. Robby brightened. Jack glared at him. “Don’t look so happy.”

“I’m a scientist observing results,” Robby replied, delighted.

Jack stood beside the bed and reached back, fingers catching the sweatshirt at the back of his neck. Your eyes locked onto the movement. He pulled it over his head in one smooth drag, the hem catching for half a second on the white T-shirt underneath. The shirt stretched across his chest and shoulders when he lifted his arms. His biceps shifted under the fabric. His forearms flexed as he dragged the sweatshirt free.

The room went very quiet. You stared. Completely gone. Jack paused with the sweatshirt in one hand. Just for a second. Long enough to let you look. His mouth tilted, barely. “Better?”

You nodded slowly. “Wow.”

Robby made a sound that might have been spiritual.

Jack dropped back into the chair beside you and took your hand again. “Eyes on me.”

You obeyed immediately. “Sexy doctor husband.”

Jack closed his eyes. “Good Lord.”

Robby looked at the monitor, then at Jack. “That was outstanding.”

Jack’s eyes opened. “Do not compliment me.”

“Clinically outstanding,” Robby corrected himself.

Jack’s gaze didn’t leave you. “Still no.”

Robby grinned. “You removed clothing, and her heart rate stabilized.”

“That is not what happened,” Jack replied with a sigh.

Dana glanced at the monitor. “It sort of is.” J

ack looked betrayed. “Dana.”

She shrugged. “I report data.”

Robby gestured toward you, far too pleased with the entire clinical situation. “Magic Mike: ED Edition.”

Jack’s head snapped up. “No.”

Robby’s grin spread slowly. “I don’t know, brother. You danced at your wedding. Pretty risky, if memory serves.”

Jack’s stare went flat. “Robby.”

“There was a certain Eminem song involved,” Robby continued.

Your head turned on the pillow. “Shake That.”

Jack closed his eyes. “Do not help him.”

Robby pointed at you, delighted. “That’s the one.”

Dana looked up from the monitor. “You danced to ‘Shake That’ at your wedding?”

“No,” Jack said immediately.

You turned toward him with surprising speed. “Jack.”

His eyes opened. “Baby.”

Your brow furrowed, “Don’t you dare deny that.”

Princess pressed both lips together and turned toward the computer as if it had suddenly become fascinating. Santos stared between you and Jack, openly thrilled. You lifted your good hand as much as the IV allowed and pointed at him. “That moment changed my brain chemistry.”

Jack looked toward the ceiling. “Good Lord.”

Robby nodded solemnly. “For the record, I was there. It changed several people’s brain chemistry.”

Jack’s head turned slowly. “You cried during the father-daughter dance.”

“You and your wife offended decent people everywhere with that dance,” Robby said.

You nodded, glassy-eyed and completely unashamed. “Yep. My grandma left.”

Jack looked down at you, horror flickering across his face. “Your grandmother left?”

You blinked up at him. “You didn’t know that?”

“No,” Jack said. “I did not know that.”

“She came back for cake,” you added.

Jack looked at you. “That does not make it better.”

Robby’s grin widened. “I’m just saying. It was a lot of wedding.”

Jack’s eyes cut to him. “You ended that night with half your shirt unbuttoned because a bridesmaid took your tie off with her teeth.”

Santos’s head snapped up. “With her teeth?”

Dana did not look away from the monitor. “Do not repeat wedding lore.”

Princess turned from the computer, delighted. “Did he go home with her?”

Robby pointed sharply at your shoulder. “We have a patient.”

Jack’s mouth curved, barely. “He did.”

Robby stared at him. “Betrayal.”

Jack shrugged. “You started this.”

“I started a medical discussion,” Robby defended.

Jack narrowed his eyes. “You called me Magic Mike.”

Robby frowned. “In a medical context.”

You looked between them, soft and dreamy now, the medication turning the memory warm around the edges. “It was perfect.”

Jack’s expression shifted. “Our wedding?”

You nodded. “You danced. I danced. Robby got slutty.”

Robby pointed at you. “For the record, ‘Robby got slutty’ is not medically relevant.”

Your eyes drifted back to Jack. You studied him for one long, medicated second. “You got slutty.”

Jack’s brows lifted. “I did not.”

You gave him a look. “Tell that to your hips.” You kept looking at Jack, still dreamy and deeply serious. “And hands.”

Jack closed his eyes again.

Santos made a tiny sound. “He got slutty.”

Dana did not look away from the monitor. “Do not repeat Mrs. Abbot.”

Your face softened immediately. Jack noticed. Of course, he noticed. His thumb moved once over your hand. “She called me Mrs. Abbot.”

“I heard,” Jack said, quieter now.

A small smile pulled at your mouth. “That’s me.” Jack’s expression softened before he could stop it.

Robby looked from you to Dana. “You’re enjoying this.”

Dana adjusted the pulse ox cord with perfect neutrality. “I am maintaining room discipline.”

Jack looked at you slowly. He looked down at you, and something in his expression changed. Not embarrassed now. Worse. Amused. “You know, baby,” he said, voice low, “I didn’t hear you complaining that night.”

Your mouth parted. For one blessed second, the medication actually managed to quiet you.

Robby looked delighted. “Oh, that worked.”

Jack did not look away from you. “Don’t.”

You blinked up at Jack, soft and glassy-eyed and deeply sincere. “I was thoroughly enjoying it.”

Dana closed her eyes. Princess turned fully toward the computer.

Robby pressed a hand to his chest. “That is a lot of marriage for a workplace.”

Jack’s jaw flexed, but his thumb moved over your hand again. “Trouble.”

You smiled faintly. “You started it.”

Robby pointed at Jack. “She’s right.”

Jack looked at him. “You started it.” Robby nodded. “Also true. Still worth it.”

Dana adjusted the bed, then looked at both of them. “Shoulder now. Wedding crimes later.”

You frowned. “They’re not crimes if everyone had fun.”

“Your grandmother left,” Jack said.

“She came back for cake.”

Robby nodded. “Strong recovery.”

Jack looked at him. “You are done.”

Robby smiled. “Brother, I have barely begun.”

Dana’s voice cut through, calm and final. “Robby.”

Robby lifted both hands. “Shoulder now.”

Jack leaned closer to you, resigned and soft all at once. “Eyes on me, trouble.”

You looked at his white T-shirt, then his face. “I am looking,” you said. “That’s the problem.”

For half a second, he looked like he might say something that would make the entire situation worse.

Robby must have seen it coming, because he clapped once, sharp and quiet. “Okay,” he said. “Shoulder.”

Jack’s eyes stayed on yours. “You heard the man.”

You frowned at him. “I don’t like the man.”

Robby adjusted his gloves at your injured side. “The man is hurt by that.”

Dana moved closer to the bed, one hand resting near your good shoulder. “Mrs. Abbot,” she said, calm and even. “We’re going to sit you up a little more.”

Your face softened immediately. Jack saw it again. His thumb brushed over your knuckles. “You like that.”

You blinked at him. “Like what?”

His voice went quieter. “Mrs. Abbot.”

A small, helpless smile pulled at your mouth. “That’s me.”

Jack’s expression changed. Not enough for anyone else to call him out on it, maybe, but enough for you to feel warmer than the medication could explain. “Yeah, baby,” he said. “That’s you.”

Robby looked at Dana. Dana kept her face neutral. “Therapeutic,” she said.

Robby nodded solemnly. “Marital nomenclature. Noted.”

Jack did not look away from you. “Do not note that.”

Robby shrugged. “I have a whole mental chart now.”

“Delete it,” Jack shot back.

Robby grinned. “HIPAA doesn’t apply to my thoughts.”

Dana raised the bed before Jack could answer. The motion sent your shoulder into a hot, mean pulse. Your good hand tightened around Jack’s. “Nope.”

Jack stepped in closer immediately. “I’ve got you.”

“Nope,” you said again, sharper this time. “I changed my mind.”

Robby’s voice stayed steady from your side. “You can hate it.”

“I do hate it. I hate the concept. I hate whoever invented Cunningham,” you groaned.

Robby nodded once. “Probably fair.” You went on, “I hate that his name is Cunningham.”

“It is a useful medical procedure,” Robby replied.

You turned your glare on him. “Don’t defend Cunningham to me right now.”

Jack leaned into your line of sight. “Look at me.”

You looked at him. Mostly because he was very close. Also, because the T-shirt was still doing hateful things across his chest. Jack’s eyes narrowed faintly, like he knew exactly where your attention had gone.

“My face,” he said.

You sighed. “Your face is also a problem.”

Robby glanced at the monitor. “Problem appears effective.” Jack turned his head a fraction. “Robby.”

“Data,” Dana said.

Jack gave her a betrayed look. Dana’s brows lifted. “I report it.”

Robby slid your injured hand carefully toward his shoulder. The second your arm shifted, pain sparked bright and fast down your side.

“Fuck.” Your eyes squeezed shut. “No, no, no, fuck that.”

Jack’s free hand came to your cheek. Warm palm. Steady fingers. No pressure, just contact. “Hey.”

You shook your head. “No, Jack, I really don’t—”

“I know.”

Robby paused, his hands still supporting your arm.

Jack’s thumb moved once beneath your cheekbone. “I know, sweetheart.”

You opened your eyes. His face was right there. Close enough to blur at the edges. Worried in that contained way that made your chest hurt. Soft in the places no one else knew to look.

“I don’t want it to hurt,” you whispered.

Jack’s expression gentled. “I know.” Your throat tightened. “I’m being so stupid.”

“No,” he said immediately.

Robby’s voice came from your side, quieter now. “You’re not.”

Dana’s hand stayed light near your shoulder. “You are allowed to be in pain, Mrs. Abbot.”

Your mouth trembled. That was rude of her, honestly. Using the name like that.

Jack watched your face, and something in him settled. “Be mad,” he said softly. “Swear at Robby. Insult Cunningham.”

Robby lifted one hand. “I would like to opt out of one third of that.”

Jack ignored him. “But keep looking at me.” You swallowed. “You’re bossy.”

“I know.” Jack smiled softly.

You narrowed your eyes. “You like being bossy.” His mouth curved, barely. “With you?”

Your eyes widened a little. Jack’s thumb moved along your cheek. “Yeah.”

The room went dangerously still. Robby’s face brightened. “Oh, that was good.”

Jack’s eyes cut toward him. “Do not grade me.”

“I’m not grading. I’m appreciating the technique.”

Dana looked at the monitor. “Heart rate improved.” Jack exhaled through his nose. “Good Lord.”

You stared at him, caught between pain and medication and the unfair fact of him. “Sexy doctor husband.”

His jaw flexed. “Apparently.” Robby moved your elbow another careful inch. You tensed immediately.

Jack’s hand slid from your cheek to the back of your head, fingers threading gently into your hair. “Eyes on me.”

You tried. You really did. Your gaze dropped to his mouth first.

Jack noticed. His mouth twitched. “My eyes, trouble.”

“I’m trying,” you groaned.

He smirked. “You’re doing terrible.” You made a small, offended sound.

Jack’s thumb stroked lightly at the base of your skull. “But you’re very pretty while you do it.”

A giggle escaped you before you could stop it. It came out wet, shaky, and ridiculous.

Robby froze. Dana glanced at the monitor. Princess made a tiny sound near the computer.

Santos looked like she might need to sit down. Jack’s eyes softened. “There she is.”

You frowned at him. “You’re flirting medically again.”

“I am not,” Jack replied.

Robby adjusted his grip on your elbow. “You are.”

Jack kept his face angled toward you. “No one asked you.”

“I did,” you said.

Jack looked back at you. “You did not.”

“I spiritually asked,” you said with a sigh.

Robby pointed at you. “She gets me.”

Jack’s hand tightened carefully at the back of your head. “That is what worries me.”

The laugh that tried to leave you broke into a gasp when Robby began working at the muscles around your shoulder.

Pain rose again, deep and threatening. “No,” you said, voice thin now.

Jack’s teasing vanished. Just gone. His face steadied. “Breathe with me.”

“I don’t want to breathe.”

He raised a brow. “Do it anyway.” You frowned. “That’s mean.”

“I know,” Jack agreed.

“Fuck, Jack.”

His eyes held yours. “I’ve got you.”

Robby’s voice came low and focused. “Good. Just like that. Try not to fight me.”

You turned your eyes toward him in outrage. “Try not to fight you?”

Jack’s hand at the back of your head guided you back. “Me.”

You sucked in a breath. “Robby is saying stupid things.”

“I know.” Jack nodded.

“I can hear you,” Robby said.

Jack’s thumb swept once under your eye. “Ignore him.”

“He’s touching my shoulder,” you said, miserable.

Jack tilted his head closer to you. “Because he’s fixing it.”

“I don’t like him,” you said with a frown.

Jack smiled softly at you. “You love him.”

“Not right now,” you said, brows furrowed.

Robby nodded without looking up. “Temporary friendship suspension. Accepted.”

Dana looked at you. “Hold still, Mrs. Abbot.”

The name hit exactly where it had before. Your breathing hitched, but this time it hitched softer.

Jack saw it. Robby saw it. Dana absolutely saw it. Robby looked at Dana. “You’re good.”

Dana didn’t look away from the monitor. “I know.” Jack leaned closer. “You’re doing good.”

You stared at him. “I am?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

Your eyes burned. “I’m making this difficult.” Jack nodded once. “You’re scared.”

“I’m swearing,” you continued.

He shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve heard worse.”

“I told everyone about our wedding crimes.” Your lower lip wobbled.

His mouth moved like he was fighting a smile. “That one we’ll discuss later.”

“You got slutty.”

Jack closed his eyes. “Not now.” Robby’s shoulders shook once.

Jack’s eyes opened. “Do not laugh during my wife’s reduction.”

Robby’s expression snapped back into focus. “Guilty.”

Pain flared again, sharper this time, and your whole body tried to pull away.

Jack’s hand held steady at the back of your head. Not forcing you. Keeping you with him. “Look at me.”

You blinked away tears. “I am.”

“No.” His voice dropped. “Really look.”

You did.

His eyes were dark and close and worried. His thumb moved against your cheek, slow and sure.

“There you go,” he murmured. “Stay right there.”

Your breath shook. “This fucking sucks.”

“I know,” Jack murmured.

You went on. “Cunningham is a bad man.”

“Probably.” Jack nodded with a soft smile.

Robby glanced up. “Cunningham did not personally do this to you.”

You glared at him through tears. “He knows what he did.” Robby nodded. “I’ll allow it.”

Jack’s mouth brushed the edge of a smile.

You caught it. Even through pain. Even through fear. Even through the medication making the room swim around the edges. “You’re laughing.”

“I’m not,” Jack replied.

You glared at him. “You are.”

“Only because you’re mean on drugs,” he said, smiling softly at you.

You inhaled sharply. “I’m allowed to be mean right now.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, impossibly soft. “You are.”

Robby’s hands shifted. The pressure changed. Your body knew before your brain did.

You went rigid. “No.” Jack’s face sharpened. “Baby.”

“No, no, no, I don’t want—” You shook your head despite the pain.

His hand cupped your face more firmly. “Look at me.” Your eyes found his. “I am looking.”

“Good,” Jack said, his voice low and steady.

Your eyes burned as you stared up at him. “Jack.”

His hand stayed firm at the back of your head, fingers threaded carefully into your hair. “I’ve got you.”

You swallowed hard, trying not to pull away from Robby’s hands. “I hate this.”

“I know.” Jack’s thumb moved along your cheek.

Your breath hitched, half pain and half panic. “I hate your stupid face for helping.”

His mouth curved just enough to ruin you. “Use it.”

“What?”

“My stupid face.” His thumb brushed beneath your eye. “Look at it instead of your shoulder.”

You stared at him. “I hate that that works.”

“I know,” Jack murmured.

You glared at him. “Your face is medically annoying.” Robby murmured, “Groundbreaking terminology.”

Jack did not look away from you. “Not now.”

Robby’s hands shifted again. You felt the pressure build. Slow, careful, awful.

Jack saw you brace. Of course he did. His voice dropped. “Be good for me.”

Your face went soft immediately. “Oh, that’s unfair.”

Jack’s thumb brushed beneath your eye. “I know.”

“You’re cheating.” You tried to glare at him, but the medication and his hand in your hair made it a weak attempt.

His mouth curved, barely there and deeply unrepentant. “I know.”

Robby, without missing a beat, said, “Cheating is medically allowed right now.”

Jack’s jaw flexed. “Do it now.”

For one suspended second, there was only Jack’s face, his hand in your hair, his thumb on your cheek, and Robby’s steady pressure on your arm.

Then the joint shifted. Not violently. Not with a dramatic crack.

Just a deep, sickening slide, followed by sudden release. You gasped.

The wrongness vanished all at once. Your whole body folded toward Jack on a broken little sob.

He caught you carefully, one hand still cradling your head, the other braced at your good shoulder. “I’ve got you,” he said immediately. “I’ve got you.”

Robby exhaled. “Shoulder’s back.”

You breathed hard against Jack’s white T-shirt, your face pressed into the warmth of his chest, tears leaking more from relief than pain now. “Holy shit.”

Jack’s mouth brushed your hair before he seemed to remember there were witnesses. “Yeah.”

“That was awful,” you breathed, tears falling.

Jack kissed your head. “I know.” You turned your face enough to look up at him. “You were helpful.”

His expression softened. “Yeah?”

You nodded, still floating, still furious, still very much on drugs. “Sexy doctor husband.”

Robby pulled off his gloves with great satisfaction. “For the record, Cunningham with targeted husband exposure: wildly effective.”

Jack did not look away from you. “Document that and die.”

Robby smiled. “Brother, this is medicine now.”

You blinked up at Jack, wet-eyed and dazed. “I picked that one.”

The room went quiet around the softness in your voice. Jack’s thumb moved once along your cheek. “Yeah,” he said. “You did.”

You stared at him for another long, drug-soft second. “I picked good.”

His face changed. Not a lot. Enough. “Yeah, baby,” he said quietly. “You did.”

Robby pressed a hand to his chest. “I need everyone to know I am handling this with incredible maturity.”

Dana looked at him. “You are not.”

“No,” Robby agreed. “But I almost did.”

Jack’s hand stayed against the side of your face for another second before he seemed to remember the rest of the room existed.

“Post-reduction films?” he asked, glancing toward Robby.

Robby pulled his gloves off and dropped them into the trash. “Already ordered.” Jack nodded once.

Robby gave him a look as he stepped back to your injured side. “Neurovascular was intact before. Checking again now.”

“I know you are,” Jack said.

Robby lifted his brows. “Do you?” Jack’s mouth flattened. “I’m standing right here.”

“Great,” Robby said. “Then stand there husbandly and let me be her doctor.”

You turned your head slowly against Jack’s palm. “You’re both doctors.”

Robby leaned closer, careful as he checked your hand. “Only one of us is currently allowed to practice medicine on you.”

You looked at Jack. “I vote that one.” Jack closed his eyes. “Baby.”

Robby did not look up from your fingers. “Your vote has been received and rejected by the ethics committee.”

You frowned at him. “I don’t like the ethics committee.”

“The ethics committee is me,” Robby said.

You blinked at him. “That tracks.”

Santos made a tiny sound near the foot of the bed. Dana glanced at her. Santos pressed her lips together and looked at the floor.

Robby touched your fingers gently. “Can you wiggle these for me?” You wiggled them.

Robby nodded. “Good. Any numbness or tingling?”

You stared at him, still dazed. “Just in my dignity.”

“That is not innervated by the axillary nerve,” Robby said.

You blinked. “Show-off.”

Jack’s thumb moved over your cheek again. The motion was small. Your body noticed anyway.

Robby saw that too, because of course he did, but for once he did not comment.

Dana adjusted the sling on the tray beside the bed. “We’ll get her immobilized once Robby’s done checking you,” she said. Jack’s attention shifted to the sling. His jaw tightened by a fraction.

You saw it even through the medication. “You’re doing the face.”

Jack looked back down at you. “What face?”

“The face,” you said.

Robby glanced over. “Oh, I know the face.” Jack did not look at him. “No one asked you.”

Robby’s voice stayed light, but not careless. “It’s the face he makes when he wishes he could make it easier for you.”

Jack went quiet. So did you. Your fingers tightened around his. “You did,” you said.

Jack looked down at you. “What?” Your smile was small and drug-soft. “You made it easier.”

His thumb moved once over your hand. “Yeah?”

You nodded, eyes glassy and sincere. “Yeah. Because you’re hot. And a doctor. And smart. And sexy. And my husband. And I love you.”

The room went very still. Jack’s face softened all at once.

Then you added, very seriously, “And you’re hot.”

Robby’s mouth opened. Dana looked at the monitor like it had become essential to her survival.

Jack brushed his thumb over your knuckles. “Is that all?”

You blinked up at him, exhausted and earnest. “No.” His mouth curved. “No?”

You shook your head once, barely. “But I’m tired and drugged.”

Jack’s expression warmed into something painfully fond. “Okay, baby.”

Robby pressed a hand to his chest. You swallowed, the edges of the room still warm and watery.

“And Eli?”

Robby’s expression gentled before the joke could get there.

“Megan called down while we were getting the films ordered. He’s okay.”

You stared at him. “She told him?”

“She told him,” Robby said. “His mom told him. He knows you’re not mad.”

You blinked hard. Jack’s hand tightened around yours.

Robby leaned a hip lightly against the counter, his voice quieter now. “He drew you a picture.”

Your throat closed. “He did?”

“Apparently it’s you with a cape,” Robby said.

Princess smiled from the computer. “And a very large arm.”

You made a sound that tried to be a laugh and almost became something else. “Is it anatomically correct?”

Robby looked at Princess. Princess shook her head. “Not even close.” You closed your eyes. “Good.”

Jack brushed his thumb over your knuckles.

Your eyes burned again, but softer this time. “He doesn’t think I’m mad?”

Robby shook his head. “He thinks you’re a superhero.”

You went very still. Jack felt your hand tighten around his. Then your face crumpled. “Oh, no.”

Jack leaned in immediately. “Baby?” Your eyes filled too fast for you to stop them. “I’m leaking.”

Jack’s expression softened all at once. “You’re crying.”

“I know.” Your mouth trembled. “I don’t want to.”

“That’s okay,” he murmured.

You shook your head. “It’s embarrassing.”

“No, it isn’t,” Jack replied, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead.

You sniffled. “It is in front of the day shift.”

Robby’s face softened from the counter. “Day shift can handle feelings.”

Santos looked suspiciously focused on the floor. Princess turned toward the computer, blinking too much.

Dana adjusted the sling on the tray without looking up. “Mrs. Abbot,” she said evenly, “day shift has seen worse.”

Your smile wobbled through the tears. “She called me Mrs. Abbot.”

Jack’s thumb brushed beneath your eye, catching a tear before it reached your cheek. “Yeah, baby.”

You looked up at him, wet-eyed and overwhelmed. “He thinks I’m a superhero.”

Jack’s face changed. Not a lot. Enough to make you cry harder. “He’s right.”

Your chin trembled. “Jack.”

“He is,” Jack said, voice low. “You protected him.”

A tear slipped hot down your cheek. “I scared him.”

“You helped him.”

The words landed so gently that they hurt. You made a broken little sound and tried to wipe your face with your good hand, but Jack caught your fingers before you could tug at the IV.

“I’ve got it.” He brushed another tear away with his thumb.

You sniffed. “I’m leaking a lot.”

His mouth softened. “I know.”

You exhaled. “I hate this drug.”

“No, you don’t.” He smiled gently.

You thought about it, tears still sliding down your cheeks. “I kind of love this drug.”

Robby nodded from the counter. “There she is.”

Jack did not look away from you. “Let her leak.”

Dana smiled gently. “Mrs. Abbot,” she said, crisp and even, “I’m going to help support your arm while we get this situated.”

Your eyes opened the rest of the way. A smile pulled at your mouth immediately, even through the tears.

Jack looked down at you. “There it is.” You blinked at him. “What?”

He brushed one knuckle lightly along your jaw. “That smile.”

You looked toward Dana, pleased and hazy. “She called me Mrs. Abbot again.”

Dana did not look up from the sling. “That is your name.”

Robby pointed at her. “You’re doing it on purpose.” Dana kept her hands steady. “I am doing my job.”

“You are weaponizing legal marriage,” Robby said.

Dana fitted the strap carefully behind your neck. “I am supporting patient cooperation.”

You sighed happily. “It is working.”

Jack’s mouth twitched. “Clearly.”

Dana adjusted the sling around your injured arm. “This may pull a little.” Your smile vanished.

Jack saw it instantly. “Hey.”

“Nope,” you said.

His hand found your good one again. “Look at me.”

You frowned. “I already did that.”

“Do it again.”

You looked at him.

His eyes stayed steady on yours while Dana adjusted the last strap. There was a brief tug, a hot little spark of discomfort, and then your arm was held against you, supported and still.

You exhaled shakily. Jack’s thumb brushed once over your hand. “There you go.”

You swallowed. “I swore a lot.”

Jack’s mouth softened. “You were allowed.”

You leaned and whispered poorly. “In front of Dana.”

Dana stepped back from the sling. “I’ve heard worse, Mrs. Abbot.” Your smile came back immediately.

Jack glanced at Dana. “Therapeutic.”

Dana picked up the chart. “Accurate.”

Robby checked the sling with a quick glance, then nodded to Dana. “Looks good.”

Dana stepped back. “It’ll do until ortho tells her the same thing in a more expensive voice.”

Princess laughed under her breath. Santos rocked back on her heels.

“So she’s going home?” Santos asked.

Jack looked at Robby before Robby could answer, the same question reflected in his eyes

Robby lifted his brows. “You asking as her husband or as the night attending who has forgotten he is not on shift?”

Jack stared at him. “Husband.”

Robby smiled. “Good choice.”

Jack’s jaw flexed. “Robby.”

“We’ll watch her a bit after the follow-up films, make sure pain is controlled, then yes,” Robby said. “Home. Ice. Sling. Ortho follow-up. No lifting. No heroic catching of children for a while.”

You frowned at him. “That feels targeted.”

“It is,” Robby confirmed.

Your frown deepened. “Eli was falling.”

“And you caught him,” Robby said. “And now your shoulder is in a sling.”

You looked away. Jack’s voice softened. “You did good.”

You looked back up at him. “I broke myself.”

Jack shook his head. “You protected him.”

You pressed your lips together. “That sounds like something you say when I broke myself.”

Jack held your gaze. “It can be both.”

You considered him through the medication. “You’re very pretty when you’re reasonable.”

Robby made a wounded sound. “Not this again.”

Jack did not look away from you. “Thank you.”

Your smile went soft. “Sexy doctor husband.”

Jack lowered his head for half a second like he was gathering strength.

Dana picked up the chart. “Do not repeat Mrs. Abbot.”

Santos closed her mouth so fast her teeth clicked.

Princess turned toward the computer, shoulders shaking. Robby looked between Dana and the monitor.

“Therapeutic and preventative.”

Dana’s eyes flicked to him. “Exactly.”

Jack gave her a long look. “I don’t know whether to thank you or be concerned.”

“Both is usually safest,” Dana said.

A little while later, after the films confirmed what Robby already knew, after Princess brought discharge paperwork, after Santos was banished from asking any more questions about the wedding, the room finally thinned out.

Dana left with one last check of your sling and one more calm, devastating, “Take it easy, Mrs. Abbot.”

You smiled so hard your eyes closed.

Jack watched Dana go, then looked down at you. “She did that on purpose.”

You leaned into the pillow. “She likes me.”

“She likes making me suffer,” Jack said.

You nodded solemnly. “People contain multitudes.” Jack huffed a quiet laugh.

Robby came back with the discharge papers and a pen. “Okay,” he said. “Because apparently I am the only person in this room still committed to medicine.”

Jack was sitting beside your bed now, his sweatshirt back on but unzipped, one hand wrapped around yours. “You loved every second of this.”

Robby held up the paperwork. “I loved several medically relevant seconds of this.”

“You called me Magic Mike,” Jack said.

Robby nodded. “In a medically relevant context.”

“You threatened to chart targeted husband exposure,” Jack added.

“I still might,” Robby said.

Jack stared at him. Robby smiled. “I won’t.”

“You better not,” Jack warned.

“I’ll save it for the group chat,” Robby said with a shrug.

Jack’s expression went blank. “There is no group chat.”

Robby looked at you. “He thinks there’s no group chat.”

You turned to Jack, horrified. “You think there’s no group chat?”

Jack looked between you and Robby. “I hate this family.”

Your smile went dreamy. “You said family.”

Robby’s expression softened before he covered it with a cough.

Jack looked down at your joined hands. “I did.”

The air warmed around that. For one second, nobody ruined it.

Then Robby clicked the pen. “Anyway,” he said. “Sling stays on. Ice twenty minutes at a time. Pain meds as prescribed, not as creatively interpreted by the patient. Ortho follow-up within the week. No work until cleared.”

You opened your eyes. “No work?” Jack’s hand tightened.

Robby looked at you. “No work.”

“But peds is short,” you replied.

“Peds will survive,” Robby said.

You frowned. “You don’t know that.”

Robby leaned closer, his sarcasm gone soft around the edges. “I know you cannot care for children with a freshly reduced shoulder.”

You looked at Jack for backup. Jack shook his head. “No.”

“You didn’t even let me ask,” you said, brows furrowed.

Jack just gave you a look. “I know where you were going.”

“You always know where I’m going,” you sighed.

Jack shrugged. “Usually because it’s somewhere you shouldn’t.” Robby nodded. “Marriage.”

You sighed again and let your head fall back against the pillow. “This is oppressive.”

“This is discharge planning,” Robby said.

“Oppressive discharge planning,” you mumbled.

Jack stood slowly, keeping hold of your hand. You looked up at him. “We’re leaving?”

He nodded. “Soon.”

“Are you taking me home?” you asked, hopefully.

His expression softened. “Yeah, baby.”

Your whole face relaxed. “Good. I want that one.”

Robby pressed the paperwork to his chest. “She’s still doing it.”

Jack took the papers from him. “She’s on medication.”

He folded the paperwork and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

Robby watched him for a moment, the humor easing out of his face. “You good to get her home?”

Jack looked at you. You were blinking slowly, exhausted now, the adrenaline finally draining out of your body.

His voice gentled. “Yeah.”

Robby nodded. “Call me if anything changes.”

Jack met his eyes. “I will.”

The two men looked at each other for half a second longer than the words required.

You noticed even through the fog. “You two are having feelings.”

Robby looked down at you. “We are absolutely not.”

Jack’s mouth twitched. “No feelings.”

“Lies,” you murmured.

Robby pointed at you. “Pain meds have made her too powerful.”

Jack helped you sit up carefully. The room tilted as soon as you moved. You made a small sound and grabbed for him with your good hand.

He was already there. One arm came around your waist, careful not to jostle the sling, his body solid beside yours. “I’ve got you.”

You leaned into him. “I know.”

That seemed to hit him somewhere. His hand spread warm at your side. Robby stepped closer, but Jack had you steady.

“Slow,” Jack said.

“I am slow,” you grumbled.

The room tilted. You caught Jack’s shirt with your good hand, and his arm came around your waist before you could wobble any farther.

His mouth twitched. “That’s why I said go slow.”

You rolled your eyes. “Smartass.”

Robby nodded from beside the bed. “Fair assessment.” Jack shot him a look.

“Supportive environment,” Robby said.

Jack eased you carefully off the bed. Your knees felt uncertain, and the room stayed too bright, but his arm held you steady.

Dana reappeared at the curtain like she had sensed movement. “You good?”

Jack nodded. “I’ve got her.”

Dana looked at you. “Mrs. Abbot?”

Your smile came back, sleepy and immediate.

“I’m good.”

Dana’s mouth barely moved. “Clearly.”

Robby narrowed his eyes at her. “You did it again.”

Dana checked the hallway. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You absolutely do.”

Jack adjusted his hold at your waist. “Can we leave before anyone learns anything else about my wedding?”

Princess, still at the computer, lifted one finger. “I have follow-up questions.”

“No,” Jack said.

Santos leaned against the counter. “I have several.”

Jack shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

Robby grinned. “I have photos.”

Jack went still. You gasped softly. “You have photos?”

Robby’s grin widened. “And videos.”

Jack pointed at him. “Delete them.”

“Never,” Robby responded immediately.

“You have videos of the dance?” you asked, unable to contain your excitement.

Robby gave you a look. “You think I would witness neurological history and not document it?”

Your eyes went glassy again. “Can you send them to me?”

Jack looked down at you. “Baby.”

“What? I was there. I should have them,” you defended yourself.

Robby tapped his phone. “Already sent.”

Jack closed his eyes. “Good Lord.”

Your phone buzzed somewhere in the plastic belongings bag.

You looked up at Jack, delighted. “Brain chemistry.”

Dana held up one hand before Santos could speak. “Do not repeat Mrs. Abbot.”

Santos sighed. “I didn’t even say it.”

Dana looked at her. “You thought loudly.”

Jack shook his head and started guiding you toward the hallway. “We’re going home.”

You leaned into him, warm and sore and still floating enough that the ED lights looked like stars smeared across glass. “Home with you?”

Jack glanced down. His face softened. “Yeah.”

You smiled. “I picked good.”

This time, there were no monitors beeping too loud, no hands at your shoulder, no room full of witnesses waiting for the next outrageous thing you might say.

Just Jack’s hand at your waist, his body steady beside yours, his voice low near your ear.

“So did I.”

This isn't the first time you've been paired up with him, nor would it be the last, you're certain. However, tonight's forecast called for snow and plummeting temps; accurate as ever as the evening grew near, with grey-white clouds blanketing the skies, flurries fluffing up by the minute.

You tried warning the others about the weather, understanding that crawls were usually non-negotiable, keeping flexible to the military's burn schedules, unbeknownst to them.

It still had to happen; any chance to find and defeat Vecna is a chance to end this nightmare, once and for all.

And that's never your call to make.

Creaking the passenger side door open, the first greeting that hits you is a miffed grumble, "Jesus, took you long enough."

"Yeah, hi to you too, Steve," you deadpan, careful to climb in backwards, kicking as much snow off your boots as you can before shutting the door.

He gives you a once-over, poorly stifling an ill-fitted chuckle.

Rolling your eyes, you glare over at him. "What?"

"You look like that kid from A Christmas Story with all those layers."

"Ha-ha, very funny." You struggle to cross your arms, puffed up and padded down with your winter coat.

"There's heat in the van, y'know." Glancing over his shoulder, he throws a thumb to the back of the van. "That box of stuff is back there, too, but… kinda just a waste of space, don't you think?"

"Oh, for the love of—" you crawl between the front seats, shoving Steve's shoulder in the process. Reaching the medium-sized cardboard box, you drag a well-loved and worn blanket out. "We've been over this, Steve."

"We get it, your circulation sucks, or whatever. I don't see how that's anyone else's problem."

"If I have to put up with you leaving all those goddamn Boppers wrappers around, you can deal with the emergency box." Holding a hand up, you add, "Which, is for everyone, by the way."

"Yeah, well, a sleeping bag's a little much. And extra socks? A sweatshirt? C'mon—"

"Last week Dustin was glad I packed that sweatshirt when it dropped to 40 degrees at night," you settle in the back, unlocking the wheel on the ceiling. "Because you refused to shut your window."

Exasperated, he throws his arms up. "The cold keeps me awake! Sue me!" Steve turns around, lip curled upward in disgust. "Also it's gross you just… leave socks for other people to use."

"They're new and I wash them if they get used! I wash everything in here, you fucking mor—"

"Hey, guys, you good to go?" Robin's voice through the tinny speaker of the walkie disrupts the insults you had on standby for Steve.

Glaring at Steve while he reflects his own sharp stare, you respond, "As good as we're gonna get."

There's no room for Steve to bite back; you're already tugging the headphones over your ears, focused as you fidget with the knobs. Your main concern isn't him, it's tracking Hopper to keep this as successful and safe of a crawl as possible.

Steve's gaze lingers, but it softens, deflates into one of dejection. You feel his eyes on you, but ignore it, thinking he's still trying to hold out on the sign of animosity; it's not that.

Despondency plagues him whenever you're around, and he resorts to cynicism, trapped in its ugly cycle. You hate him, why should he play nice in return?

It's easier to allow bitterness to keep distance between the two of you. Easier to forget how you and Steve were just in reach of something more.

Until you just… left. 

 Friendship break-ups are sometimes harder than romantic ones.

No one ever talks about that weird gap, suspended between acquaintances and beyond, falling into potential friendship, drifting back off into something bitter, a bond you only shared, tip-toeing along a jagged edge.

You'd drift in, drift out.

Grew close, just enough for hope to thrive, only to push him away.

In, out.

All while longing for something more, desperate to ride out a wave that drifts back and builds momentum, only to crash ashore into nothing.

So you cough up water, take a few deep breaths, and dive back in again.

Turns out, that shit gets exhausting over time. Especially when you discover a grim truth, hidden from the start.

When you're not treading water to stay afloat, it's swimming through a naval minefield in murky waters; drift into one, and you're blasted into overthinking what went wrong, what stopped the bond from blooming. And all it takes is one 'what if?' to shift course and bump into one these mines, ruining your day completely.

What if you hadn't moved away after Starcourt's explosive demise, deciding on a fresh start by leaving this nightmare of a town behind?

What if you and Steve were able to become more, if not stay friends, and he had just been honest about the Upside Down from the beginning?

What if you allowed that friendship to swell into something more? Standing him up on a date that could've changed everything; a wave ready to ride out naturally, only to retreat. Withdraw like the ocean before returning full force as a tsunami; why follow the tide out just to trap yourself in the path of imminent destruction?

If you stayed… would it have been worth it?

The two of you were star-crossed; Steve was still hung up on Nancy when you discovered your feelings for him. When he moved on, you found someone else. It almost turned into a sad, little game; when one was ready, the other had been redirected elsewhere.

It was even pitiful, the way you two barely had a friendship to build on, because one wasn't ready, and the other got tired of waiting.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Your time outside of Hawkins brought you steps away from turning fully into stone; get hurt enough times, you refuse welcoming anyone and everyone in so easily. One too many soured relationships had you settled on the idea that maybe you just weren't meant to share love like that.

That hurt transforms your body as a shield for your heart, ribs hardening into steel cages as an added last line of defense; you were one heartbreak away from adding electric barbed wire for good measure.

No one would get in again. Not if you could help it. Not like that.

Coming home wasn't an easy choice, but it was the only one that felt right. Your friends were still here, who you loved as family— bonded through unholy tragedies rather than blood, still family all the same; you had to check on them. You couldn't leave them hanging again.

Because your first thought upon hearing of the destruction, was what if any of them died?

Then you return to find out the worst what if came true: someone among the group died; Eddie's gone. And Max? Well… she's closer to a tragic ending than most of you.

You suffocated yourself in distractions, helping your parents to pack up and move out, promising you wouldn't be too far behind, that you needed to check on your friends immediately.

Unfortunately, coming home right before the town went into quarantine was not part of the plan.

Time away had you forget how downright stubborn Steve could be if he set his mind to something, and all he wanted was to break your walls down, at least to find common ground.

That was still far too much give, and not enough take for you. They're not uncharted waters, you just know you're not meant to navigate them, and know damn well Steve would just stand by and watch you sink.

Those what ifs of your past resurfaced, pulling you under, taunting you to open your mouth when there was nowhere to breathe.

The last place you needed to drown in emotions you couldn't afford was in a town under quarantine. Locked in, fenced off from the rest of the world, with someone you barely had a chance to build a friendship with. Someone you always yearned for more with, yet royally fucked up any chances with.

That more, those chances, they're thousands of meters below a rough, choppy surface, down to the pitch-black depths of the abyssal zone; it's just not in reach, and you've protected your heart this long, you didn't need all that effort to go to waste within a impulsive dive, head first into what would certainly make your heart implode.

You can only tread water for so long, though.

"Hop's going as slow as possible tonight, so we don't have to speed, alright?"

Steve only shoves an aggressive thumbs up over his head, tongue prodding into the side of his cheek.

"I mean, it'll pick up if he hitches a ride on a military truck for a while, but—"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Don't go fast unless necessary." He grumbles under his breath, "I'm not stupid."

And that stings, because you genuinely weren't insinuating that. In fact, you're certain you've never insinuated that before.

"Steve, I wasn't trying to—"

"Don't." His shoulders tense up, grumbling out, "Unless it's about this crawl, I don't wanna talk. You focus on your job, I'll focus on mine."

His flat tone and curt demeanor makes your stomach churn. Nights like these where you're forced together have you longing for the past. Before you knew of the Upside Down, before he was trapped in a bunker below Starcourt, before you left like a goddamn coward.

Ever since you returned to Hawkins, it's like he resents you for protecting yourself. Your peace. Your sanity.

What the hell was the point of continuing to stick around, pour your heart into a friendship that only opened if you brought the crowbar?

Despite the mutual loathing, you and Steve make a pretty solid team when kept strictly to business.

Keeping up with a telemetry tracker while stuck in a snow storm is tricky, to say the least. Neither of you have a problem blaming the other for what's outside of your control, though.

"Jesus, Steve, slow down." It's hard to sit upright as he keeps his speed— a speed that normally wouldn't be a problem, if it weren't for the slick roads. You hiss under your breath,"Fucking lead-foot."

He hears you, snapping back, "You wanna drive? Huh?" His eyes stay fixated on the road. The windshield becomes more obstructed as the snow gains momentum, falling heavily onto every surface within reach. "By all means, be my guest."

"God, you're such a bitch."

"Me?! Have you ever heard yourself talk for even, like, five seconds?" Steve's tempted to turn around to shout at you, but he keeps whatever cool he has left— which isn't much— and continues driving safely. "You're so fucking rude, and- god- you're so annoying, so fucking annoying."

"That's bold, coming from a pain in the ass like you…" you grumble, trailing off as the signal on the tracker drops; Hopper stopped moving. "Steve. Steve!"

"What?! Christ, can't you shut up—"

"Stop!"

"How come I have to stop, but you can keep bitching and moaning—"

"I meant the van, asshole!"

Steve slams on the brakes, hoping to skid to a stop, but the van keeps moving.

Gliding. Coasting. The van's skating on the slick road, completely out of control.

You throw the headphones aside, scrambling to the front to peer around Steve's seat. "Dude, what the fuck?!"

"Shit, shit, shit!"

Steve's death grip wraps around the wheel, knuckles turning white; he's ready to turn it toward the shoulder to get off the road, but you grab his arm and hold him in place. Eyes darting to the floor, you see his foot is still weighed down on the brake pedal.

"Wait— watch it! Harrington, keep the wheel straight!" Voice trembling from the frenzy. Steve's about to slam his foot down onto the brake when you panic, "Fuck, get your foot off the brake!"

Despite sliding, you don't spin. Snowfall rushes around the van, limiting visibility to just a few feet ahead. Even as the van slows, it fishtails. Steve frantically switches into low gear, breaths heavy and jagged as he releases control.

His right arm shoots out, bridging between the seats to brace himself and create a barrier to hold you back. Alarmed, he shouts, "Stay down!"

You don't move in time before impact, but you're projected into his arm with force, restraining you from hurtling over the seats and into the dashboard. The van's wheels rumble as it veers off the road, the ditch finally slowing you down to a halt.

Adrenaline rushing, you pant as you're frozen against his arm, processing that absolute disaster.

"Shit…" Steve gasps, trying to catch his breath. "… You okay?" Scanning over your figure, unable to find immediate concern beyond the fear on your expression, his shoulders begin to relax.

"Uh-huh," you rasp out, glancing up at him. "You?"

He nods firmly and swallows. "M'okay."

Static harshly shoves into the van, with Robin's voice following close behind.

She drones out, "Angry Lovebirds, do you copy? Hellooooo? Where the hell did you two go?"

You cringe at the code name, wishing you could shrink on the spot and disappear.

"Why the hell does she still call us that?" Steve gripes, running his hands over his face. "We've never— I don't even—"

Her voice drops to a mutter and cuts Steve off, asking as if the others aren't on the same channel, "Please tell me you two didn't kill each other."

"Oh my god," Steve rolls his eyes with a groan, head falling back against the seat.

In reluctant favor of answering Robin, you leave the warmth of Steve's side to grab the walkie. You curse yourself inwardly at the misplaced feelings.

Thumb jabbing in the talk button, you exhale a winded response, "We're good, we, uh…" Your eyes meet Steve's before darting away. "We hit black ice, though."

"Shit! Can you make it back safely?" She adds, "We were trying to get a hold of you guys, 'cus we had to call off the crawl. It didn't work out."

So the two of you slid on black ice… for nothing.

Fantastic.

"Um, hang— h- hold on." Turning to Steve, you noticed smoke rising on the other side from the van's hood. "Oh, fuck."

Steve jerks his head up, jumping into action. He kills the engine, immediately cutting off the warmth from the janky heater. Throwing his jacket on, he flings the driver's side door open and jumps out. Snowfall drifts sideways from the wind, and he winces as it pelts into his face.

"Guys?" Nancy's voice takes over now, concerned with the delay. "What's the status on the van?"

"Uh- well, it's actually—" You forget to release the talk button, shouting after Steve. "Wait! I'm coming with!"

Releasing it, a booming voice immediately floods through the speaker. "What the hell is going on out there?"

Hopper.

Oh, boy.

Meanwhile, Steve stands firm, shouting over the brutal, howling wind, "No, you're staying put!" He bites back on his own shivers, already creeping down his spine as he slams the door shut.

Well, can't say you didn't try.

Flicking your thumb against the talk button, your explanation comes to life with nervous laughter. "Hop! Hi. Soooooo… we're stuck in a ditch."

You can just imagine the drawn out sigh he lets out before responding, pinching the bridge of his nose, and all.

"Okay, where are you exactly?"

The glass of the back door window is freezing as you try to peek out. You huff your breath onto the glass, rubbing your sleeve against it to clear it up. It barely helps, with snow and frost beginning to coat it completely outside.

You squint through the narrow opening between patches of snow, gaze landing on the landmark in the near distance.

Groaning, you punch the talk button with your thumb. "The fuckin' cemetery."

"Language."

"Hey, I'm an adult! Last thing on my mind right now is censoring myself," you grumble into the walkie.

"How the hell did you two end up out there? That's not where I was in the Upside Down."

So, not only did the van throw you and Steve around like rag dolls on a failed crawl, but the tracker was off.

Way off.

"I- I don't know."

A frustrated shout cuts through the whistling squall outside. The van rocks as Steve kicks the bumper, cursing wildly at the shoddy engine.

"I thought you said you could handle tracking?"

Your blood begins to boil. Now's not the time for some trivial debate, not when you're possibly stranded in what's shaping up to be one of the worst snow storms Hawkins has seen yet.

There's no chance to respond when another voice, congested and hoarse, cuts in. "She can, she's actually good at this."

Dustin Henderson is a goddamn good egg, even while battling the flu.

You wish Hopper could see the smug grin on your face right now.

"I personally think Hop lost the tracker—" silence cuts in for a second, returning with Hopper scolding him; they have to be fighting over the damn walkie. "Watch it, kid. I didn't lose shit."

You slam your thumb down onto the talk button within another pause, mocking back, "Hey, Hopper? Language."

Another pause draws itself out, and eventually Robin returns with an exasperated huff. "You and Steve did nothing wrong. Hopper definitely lost the tracker."

"I didn't lose the fucking—"

The talk button is released on her end, abruptly interrupting Hopper's rant.

"Anyway… we're not that far from the station, right?"

"Five miles an hour in that van might take way longer, but you're not making it here on foot in this weather. It's not safe."

Woven into the wind is a muffled "son of a bitch!". The hood slams shut, jostling the van before Steve yanks the van door open, gracelessly stumbling inside.

Snow sticks to his hair, his clothes, slowly melting to leave him like a freezing, wet dog.

"This is fu- fuck, it's cold—!". Steve huffs out a mirthless chuckle, appearing nowhere near amused. "S'fucking ridiculous." His teeth chatter as he gripes, eyes falling on you, then to the walkie. "Give m- me that."

Steve's hand brushes against yours as he snatches the walkie from you, frigid and stiff. It takes a few tries to hit the talk button and hold it in successfully.

"Can anyone come get us? The van's f- fucked." With his jaw this tight, he's about to crush his teeth to dust. For a second, his eyes flicker to you, and you swear there's a flash of something genuine within the hazel. "Leaving the engine run is a d- disaster waiting to happen, so we can't use the h- heat."

There's silence on the other end; lack of an instant answer usually never fares well for any of you.

Scouring through the emergency box, you pick out a small, rolled towel, handing it over to Steve. For once, he doesn't look at you like you're nuts for keeping the damn box stocked.

He accepts it with a trembling hand, murmuring a both grateful yet defeated "Thanks".

"It's too dangerous for anyone to drive out, and way too dangerous for you two to try walking back. The nearest tunnel is at least a mile out from you, give or take on where you two ended up exactly in the cemetery."

Steve exhales roughly through his red, wind-bitten nose, handing the walkie back to you. "You t- take it. M'too pissed off to be nice ri- right now."

Nodding solemnly, you grab it back, responding to everyone. "Okay. We'll just… tough it out. I got some stuff to stay warm, so we should be okay for a few hours at least." Sighing, you glance up at Steve, laying out the now damp towel on the dashboard. "But the second it's safe enough, someone needs to come get us."

Hopper presses the talk button early, releasing a weary sigh first. "We'll try when we can."

That's not good enough, not for you, and not for Steve; the two of you cannot be stranded here overnight.

Together.

Alone.

"No, you'll do it when you can. I warned y'all the weather would be shit. You get us out of this mess the moment this storm slows down. Got it?"

A lengthy pause begins to irritate you the longer the seconds pass.

"Yeah, kid. I got it."

In defeat, you chuck the walkie aside, swallowing down the urge to scream.

It's no use to be angry now; best to bury those emotions and redirect that energy into something useful. Like helping Steve.

Even if he doesn't really deserve your help to begin with.

"Okay, Harrington, here's what's gonna happen." He turns slowly, heavy-lidded with fatigue settling into his expression. "I think the clothes in here are your size—"

"How the hell do y- you know what size clothes I wear?"

Would it kill him to be nice? Or quiet? For just five fucking seconds?

"To keep this shit on hand if we need it, and you're welcome, by the way." You toss a t-shirt with the radio's logo on it, wool socks, and sweatpants his way. "There's a reason I asked everyone what their sizes were months ago."

Steve catches it all, just barely, but he's left dumbfounded. Through chattering teeth, he snaps, "Wh- why the hell do I want these?"

"Are you kidding me? Dude, you can't stay in those clothes. You're gonna get hypothermia."

"Whatever," he starts peeling off his clothes, and you take that as a cue to turn around. A faint comment slips under his breath, "It'd be better than being stuck here."

It's still audible enough to you, clear enough to sting. You feel like a damn fool for thinking Steve was finally presenting something other than hatred, for once.

"You're not the only one who doesn't wanna be stuck here." Rubbing your eyes, you sigh.

There's no way you can last the night in here without killing one another; it's too long to put up with his bullshit.

Unless…

There might be one shred of hope left. And okay, sure, it's more a thin, fraying thread that could lead to nothing, but you won't know until you try.

You bundle yourself back up, zipping up your jacket, winding the scarf around your neck tightly, tugging your hat over your head. Steve notices when you're slipping your hands into a pair of mittens.

"Hey, whoa—" Now comfortably changed, he clambers to the back, a little too close for comfort. "No. What are you doing? You're not going out there."

But you ignore his concern, if it's even real to begin with. "That gas station's still down the road, right?"

"Maybe? I don't— that's not—" Frazzled, he stumbles over his thoughts. "You're not walking down there in the snow." His fingers fight against stiffness, winding around your wrist shielded under your coat. "You need to be safe."

"Why? So you don't get the blame if something bad happens?" Irritated, you yank your hand back. "Just… wait here. I'll be quick."

"Quick? Yeah, right. It's not that close by foot." Steve, still stiff from the cold, clumsily shoves in front of you to block the back doors. "Your circulation sucks, remember?"

His attempted smartass comment fails miserably as concern seeps through the cracks of his tone.

"And you said it wasn't your problem," you retort, shoving him aside. "Look, it's right down the road. Maybe we'll be lucky and they'll have coffee, or something hot. We both could use something like that right now—"

"You brought your thermos! I haven't seen you use it once." He runs a hand through his damp hair, sighing. "And even if they did have coffee, it'd be ice cold by the time you got back."

"Oh, you watching my every move now, Harrington?" Your voice drops low, dry, sick of this conversation. "That's precious."

He doesn't react, only argues, "What if it's closed?"

Your eyes dart away from him, faltering. "T- there's a pay phone outside," you really thought it'd be easier to shake him. "I can call someone to get us out—"

"No. Now you're just being ridiculous." One hand perches on his hip, while the other waves wildly as he speaks. "Who the hell's coming out after curfew? Especially in this?"

You shrug, shrinking into yourself with a weak lie. "… I might know a guy?"

"Cut the shit, what's out there that's worth freezing to death for, huh?"

"I'm trying to leave you the fuck alone, Steve!" Seething, the explosion silences Steve, guilt and shame softening his expression. "I'm not thrilled to be stranded here with you either, but I was willing to play nice! I was willing to get along, but you don't want that, and that—" You bite back tears, ones born of anger, maybe even a hint of rage. "That's fine. Just trying to make it easier for us both, give some space."

"Wh… what?" He's dumbfounded. "When I said I didn't want to be stuck here, that wasn't about you—"

"Oh, please. Like I buy that for a fucking second."

"I wish you would!" He exclaims, voice fracturing with panic. "You really think I want you to freeze to death 'cause we can't get along? That's the last thing I'd want."

"Yeah, well…" your hand lingers over the handle, glaring back at him, returning the jagged comment to sender. "It'd be better than being stuck here."

It's tempting to tack on "with you" at the end, but you bite your tongue. You're not even sure if you'd mean that.

Eyes set forward, you miss his sullen, wounded stare, etched into his features when you exit the van. You're plunging head first into regret once your boots hit the snow. Instead of swallowing your pride and climbing right back in, you feign indifference as you slam the doors shut without looking back.

The doors never reopen, and he never calls for you; it's clear how much of a relief the space is for both of you.

If you tell yourself enough times that it's better than being stuck in that doomed ice box on wheels with Steve all night, maybe you'll begin believing it.

Before the Upside Down, before losing his friends, losing Nancy, losing the cheap crown on his head in his fall from grace— Steve could fall asleep with ease. His head could hit the pillow and he'd be out.

The typical high school blues were enough to send any teenager into stress-induced sleep loss, but the Upside Down's daunting reminder that the fight was only dormant, forced full blown insomnia to become his closest friend.

Exhaustion would lead him to eventually sleep, but he'd fight it off as long as he could; you can only handle the bloodcurdling screams and cries of your friends dying in your dreams so many times before giving up on sleep completely.

Every creak in his house on nights home alone— loneliness all too common in that house— had him holding his breath, waiting for sudden movements to echo out again. Every light bulb, flickering on its way out for good, froze him in fear of who, or what, lay in wait on the other side. And if a detail, no matter how small, is enough to keep him from sleep, that's an open invitation for his mind to spiral.

Tonight, trying to rest in the van, he notices a gap; it's thin and barely noticeable, between the flimsy plywood floorboards underneath the shag carpet. Steve feels it every time he tosses and turns; it always digs into his left hip, slightly uneven from the other board it should be snug against.

He flips to the right, but no, that feels wrong; he's not a right side sleeper. That changed after '84, and he's not exactly sure why, but he sleeps better on the left side.

And on his back? He doesn't even dare, not after a sleep paralysis episode after those fucking bats attacked him. That one and only episode he felt pinned to the bed, like a bat was choking him all over again. His scars ached for hours after, the one around his throat singed through his skin like some god-awful, hellish rope-burn.

So, yeah, Steve can't sleep, clearly not from the cold; turns out, that sleeping bag of yours was a good idea. He won't outright admit that though. Or, how your emergency box actually was, and continues to be, useful.

He tries to rest, flip-flops between sides to get comfortable, but the minutes you're gone only accumulate in his mind to a concerning degree, like the heavy snowfall outside. Every second that ticks past is a second too long without you.

By car, the gas station is a few minutes away. By foot, in weather like this, bundled up in excessive layers? Shit, even he'd struggle to move quickly. He'd definitely get sick, too.

Time passes, snow builds, and Steve continues to overthink. Eventually, he wonders, Am I really that fucking awful to be stranded in the snow with?

What the answer would be to you, he already knows. You think he doesn't give a fuck, and it's not like he's done much to prove otherwise.

To you, Steve's fears to let you go out into the cold were only linked to the clear concept of: if you got hurt, he'd be to blame.

To Steve, though, it goes beyond blame; he's scared, now rueful, that he didn't fight harder to make you stay, because the thought of losing you more than he already had terrifies him.

The possibilities of what could go wrong were endless: you, losing your way, disoriented from the blizzard. What if you froze to death out there? Or got caught being out past curfew? Though, Steve's pretty sure the military doesn't give a fuck about two idiots stranded in the snow.

The wind howls and whistles, whipping around the van as the snow falls diagonally. Every now and then, he opens each door to slam it again, shaking off the snow outside; there's too much buildup to keep an eye out for you.

He checks his watch; you left about an hour ago. The footprints that trailed behind you are now covered over with fresh snow.

Steve's tempted to radio everyone at the station— assuming they stayed in for the night with the storm— but that means admitting he didn't stop you. He didn't protect you.

You're your own person, though. You don't need to be babied, or protected.

Sure doesn't stop Steve's protective side from caring about you.

It's not like anyone could come out to rescue either of you in the first place. But if you're gone and he says nothing, he'd never forgive himself if you got sick. Or worse.

Jesus, what if you're already freezing to death?

In the midst of internal panic, a thud! with fierce force slams against the van outside. Steve jolts upright, startled enough that it clears his damn sinuses while his heart races.

There's another thump, with a few more to follow, inching towards the passenger side door. It flings open, snow sprinkling in as you flop forward, face against the seat.

"Jesus Christ," is all Steve can manage to say, because he's grateful to see you, alive, but also, you're such a fucking idiot.

You crawl into the van, collapsing onto the floor. "'Idn't wanna get th'carpet wet," you mumble through your teeth, jaw rigid, struggling to close the door as the handle slips through your weak grip.

"C'mon, sit up for me." Steve guides you into the seat while you struggle, clumsy like you're intoxicated, yet your limbs are stiff. Under your freezing wet clothes, he can feel you shiver, practically vibrating uncontrollably.

When you're settled up right, he shoots an arm between the seat and wall, barely managing to grab the door handle and slam it shut.

"Ow… S'loud," you groan.

"Shit, sorry." He drags the box over, rummaging through it haphazardly. A pair of sweats and a sweater lay at the bottom, warm and ready to wear. He lays them aside, leaning over the seat to unzip your coat.

"D- damn, a'least flirt with me first," you slur, lips a muted shade from their normal lively color.

It's a joke, but not an invite for playful banter; Steve bites his tongue, quickly helping you out of your coat. He unwinds your scarf and tugs your hat off, dropping all of them to the driver side's floor.

Your clothes are soaked underneath, too. Though you're still pretty covered, he can see how strained your muscles are from stiffening.

Steve peels your puffy vest, hoodie, and sweater off next— Jesus, he forgot how layered you were. And it still didn't help.

"You're an idiot, you know that?" The fondness in his tone sneaks through the disapproval. When the air hits your skin, damp and frigid, gasp, face twisting from discomfort; it feels like sharp needles prickling along your arms.

"M'fine," yet you look far from it— hair tangled and soaked, frozen in spots, skin dull of its usual shine and shade, lids weighed down like you're drunk and sleepy, even a little puffy.

Funny how concerned you were of him getting hypothermia earlier, when you're already there.

And by funny, it's fucking scary, because there's no way to get you to a hospital tonight.

Really, he doesn't think it's that severe, but at any stage, hypothermia's nothing to fuck with; you're still suffering no matter what, and he hates to see you in pain.

Hates that he just admitted that to himself, too.

"Bullshit," he contends as he pulls another small towel from the box— seriously? You thought of everything with this box.

He'll thank you later. Maybe even apologize for being such a dick about it if it saves your asses.

Steve lays the towel over your head, gently tousling your hair against the fabric to help it dry. You shiver violently, "Hey, the sooner you get changed, the sooner you'll feel better."

"Said m'fine," you grit your teeth, attempting to shove him away, but your arms are still weak and stiff. "Jus' put the heat on."

"We can't run the engine, remember?" Steve throws the towel onto the driver's seat; that's a problem for future him. "C'mon, you can't stay in your clothes."

The moment the words leave his lips, he cringes, waiting for you to snidely remark, insinuate he's a pervert, but you're quiet.

Yeah, you're worse than he thought.

"I'm gonna help, okay?" There's no protest from you. He reaches down to the hem of your shirt, tugging up, but pausing before it passes your belly button. "This alright?"

"M'yeah, s'kay."

If you weren't tumbling into a life threatening condition, he'd poke fun at how wasted you sound.

Steve's perceptive, keeping an eye on your reaction, ensuring he's not hurting you. Prioritizing your safety doesn't make the reveal of you, half naked, any easier to deal with.

Shirt thrown to the side, Steve scrunches his eyes shut, scolds himself internally to behave, don't be a creep. He leans from behind the seat, over you to unbutton your jeans— Jesus Christ, why the fuck did you wear jeans? They're practically painted onto your form after all the ice and snow sunk into the denim.

He sucks in a breath, "Uh… can you get them off yourself?"

"S'okay, jus' leave 'em like this."

"It's really not," he sighs, climbing between the front seats and sliding down to the floor before you. The space is limited, incredibly limited, and he's contorting in a way he's never folded before, just to fit here. And for you, of all people.

He finds the chair's lever, shoving it back as far as it can go, though not much of a difference exists.

"Okay, c'mon, boots first."

Steve undresses you with care, tries not to notice the position you're both in, how close his face is to your core. How he's imagined on lonely, late nights, him kneeling for you, while he strokes himself, cock twitching as always while wondering what you taste like.

Every last ounce of self control is gathered up to keep his composure. You're in your underwear. Nothing else.

And your underwear? Yeah. That's wet, too; bra sticking flush to your chest, nipples peaked enough to reveal their shape through the fabric. He dares to take a lower peek when your eyes flutter shut as you sigh— out of concern, not pleasure, he reminds himself— and the fabric against your core is damp, hugging to the shape of your puffy lips.

He scrunches his eyes shut, runs a hand down over his mouth as he thinks … fuck me.

You shiver and twitch and whimper as the near-numbness finally settles into fucking freezing. It shatters whatever trance Steve was falling into.

"Honey," he frowns at himself immediately, because where the fuck did that come from? "You need to warm up."

There's no way to suggest sharing heat without sounding like a total pervert. Every choice of words could definitely be taken as suggestive, at best.

At worst? Steve's coming off as Hawkins' biggest douche-bag.

"Don't wanna," you whine, petulant and pained.

"It's this or freeze to death," he forces himself to deadpan, afraid of coming off as too concerned.

"You'd— bet that'd make y'happy."

He's not sure if he should file that comment under the usual banter the two of you have, or something worse.

"It wouldn't." Steve crawls up, hands gripping the sides of your seat as he tries respecting your space— the little bit left, at least. And still, he stumbles, catching himself right before he headbutts you. "Shit. Ah— shit, I- I'm sorry."

If he makes eye contact with you right now, it is game over. The whine you just released, though likely in pain, doesn't help his already wound-up, touch-starved thoughts.

"Okay. Okay," he sighs, more to himself, finding his balance again. "C'mon, we're gonna use that sleeping bag of yours to stay warm."

You're slow, painfully, agonizingly, moving at a snail's pace, while Steve moves you out of the seat. He's patient, cautious, already trying to press his body against yours to share warmth from the moment you begin trembling.

"Slow, take it easy," he guides you to the carpet while he murmurs softly. It's a miracle you make it to the back safely, considering how frozen stiff your joints are. "Doing okay?"

That's a dumb fucking question.

"Other th- than my t- t- tits freezing off, m'f- fine."

When you flash a curl of a smirk, just the tiniest one, Steve still feels relief. It's a speck of relief, but he'll gladly accept.

About to sit from your kneeling position, he grabs your hips to stop you. Steve clears his throat, awkwardly releasing you.

"Sorry, just, uh… your, uh… the—" he nods vaguely to your chest, eyes lingering for a second too long, wondering how soft you'd feel. By the time he peels his eyes away to drift lower, he gulps. "Those need to come off."

"Wh- why?" You pout, body violently trembling the longer you go without warmth.

"Just work with me, okay? Dry clothes aren't gonna warm you up enough on their own." He huffs, kneeling near you. "M'not trying anything funny, I promise."

Leaning close, Steve's face is near yours while his hands reach around your torso. His fingers skate up your cold skin, bringing about his own shivers, finding your bra clasp and unhooking it.

Poorly strangling a gasp, it still manages to slip past your lips, and he's almost certain it's because you're in pain. Nothing else.

But it sure sounds like it stems from another source.

Hovering his touch, he halts, eyes wide as they dart to meet yours. "Did I hurt you?"

"N- no, just co- c- cold." Teeth chattering, you grab onto his shoulders weakly as he removes your underwear. He bites back the urge to yelp from how bone chilling your touch is.

You hold your balance against him while shifting onto one knee, then the other, to step out of the soaked garment. "'Vry'thing hurts."

He hears you, knows you're hurting, but your panties, soaked and bunched up in his grip, make his cock twitch. The fabric is nowhere near his face, but your scent is dizzying; he wonders if they're only soaked from the snow, or yourself, too.

What stands between him and dirty thoughts is your fragile state; you need help, not him as… some horny creep.

Steve pushes past the tempting thoughts, for your sake.

"I know," he murmurs, heart aching, wishing he could take that pain away instantly. "It's gonna be okay, promise."

He guides you into the sleeping bag, eyes off and away from your figure out of respect. When you're settled, he rips his clothes off, save for his boxer briefs. One glance down his body and he's reminded how scarred he still is. He falters, swallowing thickly; what if you notice them? What if you're disgusted by him?

That's not like you, though; you've never been shallow like that.

Your teeth clatter together so loudly, it breaks him from those looming insecurities. With a deep breath, he finally slides in next to you.

Steve zips the sleeping bag up, arms hooking around your torso to pull you flush against him. He weaves his legs between yours, careful not to press his thigh against your core. He has to throw his thoughts as far away from you as possible; the last thing either of you need is a poorly timed hard-on.

He thinks of the time he broke his arm in sixth grade, falling off the seesaw at recess. Tries focusing on the concept of race cars and the specific tires they use. Forces himself to wonder how broccoli grows, or if it really matters to separate the dark garments from the lights when doing laundry.

That tangled trail of curiosity leads him to wonder what life outside of Hawkins must be like these days, and if they're forgotten to the rest of the world.

The last one's bleak, so he redirects to thinking about aquariums, and if fish sleep— they sleep, right?

God, he really wished he paid more attention in school. Did they even talk about any of this stuff? What the hell does he care if race cars use specific tires?

Whatever.

It's a challenge to keep his thoughts on a steady path away from you, because every time you breathe, your bare chest pushes against his, and that's— no. Just no.

The plush of your breasts squish up against him, nipples poking through his chest hair and into him like an accusing finger, shaming him for fighting off a natural response to a naked figure entwined with his own.

Doesn't make it any easier that your breaths are shallow, because logically, he knows it's because you're freezing. But every so often, you make these faint gasps as you shiver that sound closer to pleasure than pain.

That's not the case, and he feels guilty for letting his mind wander that far.

Okay, focus. Think about… concrete. Sure. That. Must be fascinating to pour that shit for sidewalks and—

"How come your underw- wear is on but not mine?"

Well, that's not fucking helping when you just out right ask it like that.

Steve's face burns up, rushing out, "Didn't wanna make you uncomfortable."

Your heart is pounding so viciously, he can feel the thumping against his own body.

Which, yeah— you have hypothermia. Of course your heart is working overtime. Just from that. Only that.

He reaches outside the bag to throw a worn, knitted blanket over your bodies, hoping for extra warmth while he's zipping the bag back up.

"Please tell me this shit is helping," he murmurs, fighting the urge to gently rub your back; this isn't supposed to be some kind of cute, intimate moment. And rubbing to create heat isn't helpful for hypothermia.

He doesn't remember why, just that it's unsafe for a situation like this.

"S'helpin'," you shudder against his skin, face tucked into the curve of his neck. Your lips brush against one of his sensitive spots, and he gulps, praying you don't notice. "I sh- shouldn't have lef-f- ft."

Steve doesn't scold you, but he doesn't disagree. "I really wish you didn't." He shivers, nowhere near as violently as you have, but exchanging body heat with someone in this state isn't all rainbows and sunshine. "I wish I didn't let you go. I should've gone with you, or had you stay here while I went out."

The words ache with more desperation than he intends.

"I'm a b- bi- big girl, s'my choice," your body involuntarily twitches, rutting into his bulge.

"A- ah—" Steve manages to swallow down the breathy moan before it can fill the van.

"Sor- sorry. Did I h- hurt you?"

He's quick to shush you, gently, rushing out, "I'm fine." One hand wanders to your head, delicately threading your damp hair through his fingers. "How are you feeling?"

"Fu- fucking cold."

"No shit," Steve dryly retorts. "You have hypothermia, dumbass."

You hum out what he thinks was a shaky hum. "Surprised y'even kn-know anything about i- it."

"At least something good came from me being a Boy Scout for one year," he snorts. "That, and I know how to start a fire... which, not very helpful while snowed into a van. Don't know much more than that."

You don't respond. Whenever he's shared something personal of his past, even just a passing comment, you groan and fuss about "learning Harrington lore against your will". The lack of that snarky response is just another sign of how unwell you're feeling.

Shifting cautiously, your arms bend slowly, snaking between the two of you. Steve's breath hitches, wondering what the fuck you're doing.

Your hands travel north, both to his relief and disappointment, cupping over your chest. "M'sorry, m- my tits hurt." And sure enough, the attention is brought to your stiff nipples, harder than minutes ago, brushing up against him through the gaps between your fingers.

Steve doesn't have the chance to panic, not when he fails to stifle a chuckle before it slips out. That comment was the last thing he expected to leave your lips.

"Be n- n- nice!"

"Sorry, sorry!" He relaxes against you again, tries not to dwell on how much of your figure he can feel against his. "Are you getting any warmer?"

"Why? You h- hate this?" Your tone is dry, but he can feel the curve of your smirk against his neck. "Want me to go back outside?"

The lighthearted energy drains quickly; Steve feels his heart drop just at the mere thought of you enduring the blizzard.

Like a fucking fool.

"Don't joke about that," he mutters, daring to speak aloud, "I thought you were dead."

The shrill, whistling wind draws out the lapse in conversation.

"… Didn't th- think you c- cared."

"I do, it's just—" Steve huffs, pausing. "We can talk about it when you're feeling better. Deal?" You nod slowly, sighing. "Do you think you could sit up? Just for a few seconds?"

You were feeling warmer, still cold, still aching, but nowhere near the severity you felt before your return. "Um… I g- guess?"

"Just hang tight okay? Where's your thermos?"

"S'up by th'cup h- holder," you nod to the front. As soon as Steve moves, you begin to harshly shiver again.

He's quick to snatch it, unscrewing the top to pour out whatever you had inside into it. The warm aroma hits him head on. "Hot cocoa? Damn, if I knew that, I woulda' stole some."

"You could h- have some f'ya' want."

"Maybe later, but you need to drink something warm." Steve slides a hand under your back, arm curling around to lift you upright. He tries to ignore the sleeping bag falling off your chest, leaving you exposed. "C'mon, just a few sips."

"N- no, m'cold, wanna get back in."

"I know, honey, I'm sorry." There it is again, a slip up without warning. Like it's natural, familiar.

You manage to sit up, resting against a crate on the shelf behind you. Reaching a shaky hand out, Steve gently pushes it aside. "I got you, try to keep still for me."

He eases the mug top to your lips, cautiously tilting it while you sip on the hot cocoa. It's slow, but Steve's relieved you're not at the severe stage, where you wouldn't be able to drink anything at all. "That's it, a little more… s'good for me."

Oh god. He's one step away from praising you with a 'good girl, and now is not the time or place for that.

"Promise it'll help," he assures, feeling horrible for dragging you out of the warm cocoon of the sleeping bag. Yet he's desperate to try everything, anything, as long as it brings your temperature back up.

You finish off the mug with a gasp. Steve takes it away, watching as that muted tone in your lips begin to fade. It's subtle, but it's a change for the better, nonetheless. A step in the right direction.

"Can't say th- that shit to me," you pant, forcing an airy, uneasy laugh. "I'm gonna start thinkin' y- you're— you like me, or something."

Oh, if only you knew.

"C'mere," Steve murmurs as he gently brings you close. Guiding you back into the sleeping bag, he slides in cautiously next to you, zipping it shut around the two of you. "Don't make this weird, okay?"

"Make wh- what weird?"

Arms winding around your waist, he reels you in, body flush against your own. It's like every goosebump on your skin brushing up along his he can feel. Every shiver runs out of you and into him, like an electrical current.

The gasp that leaves your lips is unexpected and sharp. "Fu— fuck, Steve, m'so c- c- cold."

"I know, sweetheart." He tangles his legs between yours, large hand reaching up to cradle the back of your head. You bury your face into his shoulder, shivering violently. "Just stay close to me."

"M'tryin'," you whimper as your hips shift closer. If Steve didn't know any better, he'd think you were trying to rock your hips against him, as if you're aching for relief, release.

The airy, shattered, "oh, god", sure doesn't help his imagination either. His cock twitches again.

"You're okay," he reassures, not just for you, but for his filthy mind to chill the fuck out. When you roll your hips again, he seizes them, grip tightening to end the attempt. "Don't— hey." You huff as he firmly holds you in place. "Hey, listen to me. No sudden movements."

"S- sorry, jus'thought friction would help," your teeth chatter as you force you words through them. "… Oh my god. Wait. Oh my god, no, wait."

You sound mortified.

"What?" Steve defaults to panic once more. "What's wrong?"

"I- I swear to go- god I didn't mean it like that." You untangle yourself from him, limbs haphazardly knocking into his own with the limited space in the bag. "I just— friction causes he- heat, and I didn't— I wasn't tr- tr- trying to—"

He nervously chuckles, not at you, just— well, shit. How should anyone react in a situation like this?

"S'okay, you're okay." The reassurance seems to help; you relax against him once more, still trembling from the cold in your bones, though. "Can't warm you up too quickly, it could make you feel worse."

"Well that's fu- fucking stupid."

He chuckles, taunting, "You're starting to sound more like yourself again." It's much more endearing than he wanted to sound.

There's no response, just your steady breaths in spite of your jitters. You hum, winding your embrace around his torso, burying your face into his neck again.

Steve's about to lose it; you've got to stop resting your lips on his skin.

Talk about something else. Anything.

"Hey… thanks for helping earlier," he mumbles. You lean back to meet his stare with a perplexed one of your own.

"Hm? Wi- with what?"

"The black ice," he clarifies. "I panicked and blanked out, forgot how to handle it. I could've fucked up real bad… could've wrapped us around a tree, or something."

"We still ended up in a ditch—"

"Alive. It sucks, being stranded in the storm sucks, but we're alive, thanks to you."

You shake your head, cuddling closer to him, still shivering, still unable to shake the cold. It's not warm in the van anymore, but it'd be more tolerable if you weren't recovering.

"You know how to dr- drive this damn t- thing," you quip, shuddering and clinging closer to Steve. "S'like a fuckin' boat."

Steve laughs heartily, tightening his embrace around you. "Guess we make a pretty good team."

"When we're n- not trying to ki- kill each other."

Emboldened, Steve's lips brush against the top of your head; it's not quite a kiss, but it's enough to be noticed. Enough to mean something. They linger as he takes a deep breath, voice rumbling low against your scalp.

"… We don't have to fight all the time," he suggests, fingers skating along the length of your spine. You arch your back, pushing the hardened peaks of your nipples against his chest. He swallows down a moan. "We don't have to hate each other."

"S'jus'easier," you slur, though, he's not sure it's from the cold.

"Yeah? Why's that?" Face still buried into his shoulder, you shake your head. "No, c'mon," he hopes the low, gentle rasp in his voice is enticing. "You can tell me."

It's quiet for a moment, swirling gusts of wind providing filler noise among your shallow breaths.

"'Cus liking you means letting you in," you're shuddering as the van sways, wind strong enough to sneak into the drafty vehicle. "Letting you in m- me- means this is real, and that's just a set up to be let down— be a let down to you, eventually."

He has to be hallucinating from the cold. Or maybe you're still delirious. There's no way you just said that.

"… What?"

Because since when do you care about letting him down?

"You've been hurt enough, I didn't want to add to that hurt." Steve feels you shift with a whimper, has to swallow back the cocky remark he'd make if you felt better. "Your heart's always g- gonna be elsewhere, anyway."

Steve would do anything— hike through this blizzard, move mountains, face a swarm of demo-bats— if it meant he could use a time machine, return to the moment things shattered before they could flourish. He'd do anything to fix it all.

"Even when it was elsewhere, it—" Your trembling brings him to a pause, a reminder how real this all is. After hoping for so long that you'd return, dwelling too much on the anger of you just… leaving, fleeing so quietly, so abruptly— you're here, in his arms. "You were always in it, but I didn't want hurt you, either."

And look where that got the two of you.

Steve's stunned into silence by your confession, tumbling out in unstoppable waves.

You trail off with a huff, tensing up; Steve's unsure if the cold's at fault, or if teasing went too far. "It's hard to… to trust. It scares the hell out of me."

"Scares me too, but look at you. You're trusting now."

"It was that or freeze to death, Harrington."

"Still chose to trust me after everything between us." His voice softens, moving on autopilot— courtesy of his heart— as he cradles the side of your face. His cheeks grow warm as he whispers your name, just loud enough to be heard over the howling winds outside. "Thank you. For trusting me."

The pads of your fingers press into his skin as you tighten your hold around him. "Thanks for not letting me die."

We're not out of the woods, yet, he thinks. But you should be able to keep warm now.

"I used to hate that you couldn't relate to what Robin and I went through last summer," Steve's got no reason to hide this anymore. "Truth is, I was relieved you called out sick that day."

An aching warmth bleeds through his chest with the confession, one that he hopes is enough to warm you up, even a little.

Or, maybe that's just because Steve's bare chest is pressed up against yours, still generating heat like a human furnace for you.

"I still have nightmares, and I—" He chokes up, arms tightening around you. You return the squeeze with reassurance, leaving patience and silence for him. "Sometimes, in them, they're hurting you, too… and I- I can't do anything but watch."

It feels like is heart is caving in all over again; he had done so well ignoring the hurt, but now…

Now he realizes he only bottled it up, shelved it away for darker times.

And dark times have arrived; here you both are, trapped in a goddamn, broken down, radio station van in the middle of a blizzard.

"Then you just… you left. You stood me up. You were gone not even a month later. We were finally getting close—"

"And I f- fucked it up." A sigh rumbles out of Steve; he doesn't agree or disagree, just… acknowledges it. "This is gonna sound so dumb, but I felt… guilty, for calling out that day. I should've been th—"

"No. I mean it. It's a relief you never went through that shit. And then in the spring…" Except, you came back. Right after the destruction, but you came back. Colder, yet braver than you left. "I get it. I don't blame you for leaving. You were scared." He swallows thickly. "… But so was I."

Scared is an understatement.

He's feared for his life before, the year prior, and before that. He was scared for Nancy, hell, even Jonathan, the night they tried to trap the Demogorgon in the Byers' home.

He was terrified in the junkyard, plastering on a brave face for the kids. No way in hell would he let them down; he was gonna succeed or die trying— to Steve, no other choices existed.

He was convinced he'd die down in that cursed bunker with Robin, and if it weren't Erica and Dustin— two children— that anticipated fate would've played out to truth.

And the Mind Flayer— Jesus Christ— that fuckin'… thing. A grotesque terror on monstrous legs; too many damn legs, arms, everything, if you ask Steve. He can't think too hard about what exactly it was made up of, who specifically turned essentially into human jam and—

Yeah. No. He really can't stomach it. Just like the nightmares of losing you leave him shaken for the rest of the waking day.

Most nights, Steve has to double, sometimes triple check the locks on the doors before he goes to sleep. He latches all the windows. Sometimes unlatches just to re-latch, jiggling the window's frame, just to be certain it's closed. Every room, every hallway, holds a night-light's subtle glow for peace of mind.

Peace of mind from what, exactly? A Demogorgon? Demodogs? The Mind Flayer? The Russian guards, and flayed former classmates? All this time later, he hasn't been able to pinpoint which exactly he wants peace from the most. They're all equally fucked up, all royally fucked him up.

Steve knows his efforts are not enough to stave off these fears forever. They never are.

And Vecna? He's still processing that. After all, it hasn't even been one year since it all happened.

Less than one year since Eddie died, slowly killing Dustin with each day that passes without him; the more Steve tries to be there for the kid, the more he's pushed away. It's taking a toll on Steve, trying to be mindful of Dustin's grieving, trying to remind this kid he's not alone.

Less than one year since Max technically, in clinical terms, died, for over a minute; even a second considered dead is way too fucking long, and for a kid her age? Too damn soon. If it weren't for El reviving her, the party would be in shambles— yet they're on the verge of crumbling while Max is in a coma, anyway.

If anything happened to any of these kids, it'd devastate the rest of them. It'd devastate anyone in this little, yet forever growing, found family Steve's tripped and fallen into years ago.

And you.

You— he can't even stomach the idea of your safety being threatened. It only circles back to the nightmares he still has of you. He fears one of these days losing you will come true, and… and—

It hits him like a nuclear missile, dead on.

He didn't want you to leave earlier, to go out into the storm, because he was afraid one of his greatest fears, losing you, again, would come true. This chance to fix everything, at least make peace with what never came to be, has been right in front of you both for months since you got home.

Instead, it's been spent stuck in a cycle of hate, giving and taking sharp glares and words only dripping in venom.

So much wasted time—

"Steve?"

Reality settles in around him again, eyes focusing on you, remorse taking hold of every thought crossing his mind.