don’t delete the kisses

It’s hot as balls outside. You’re covered in sweat, which mingles in a sticky and unpleasant mix with the sunscreen you’ve been dutifully applying since the afternoon to avoid frying like an egg. When the sun finally set, you no longer had to worry about the burgeoning threat of skin cancer, but the heat doesn’t break. In fact, it almost seems to get worse, because more and more people arrive to crowd you as night descends and the bigger names with larger fanbases grace the stage.

You’re waiting for Beth outside of the bathroom facilities. She's been ingesting a steady stream of margaritas since sundown, so she leaves you holding the bag, literally. At least it's a nice excuse to separate yourself from the throng of jumping, sweaty bodies gathered by the stage.

It’s nearly two in the morning. You’re hungry. Your feet are killing you. You have a headache from the festival’s sugary cocktails. You’re sweating through the top Beth lent you. And on top of everything else, your ovulation cramps are kicking in like a motherfucker.

Growing desperate, you dig through Beth's bag, searching for the little Altoid tin that she always keeps her pain meds in. At long last, your hands make contact with the metal tin at the bottom of her tote. Nearly crying with relief, you pop an aspirin in your mouth and wash it down with the tepid bottled water you’ve been clutching for the last hour.

Beth's voice rings out from behind you, talking over the din of the nearby DJ set. “What are you doing?”

You turn towards her, and see Beth staring at the tin in your hand. “I have cramps,” you explain, and just as you’re about to shove the tin back in her bag and hand it to her, she grabs your wrist.

“…please tell me you didn’t just take one of those,” she says urgently.

You raise an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because those are not aspirin, babe.”

Your blood runs cold. Your brain quickly does the math — Beth had told you how much she’s looking forward to meeting up with her rave friends tomorrow for the second night of Pitt Fest. Beth has always been quite the partier. And she often partied with her good friend Molly.

Your eyes widen in horror. “Oh no.”

Pitt Fest, as always, is a huge pain in the ass for the night shift.

Handoff gets messy. There's a shit ton of substance cases, even more of heatstroke. Robby stays longer than he should and snaps at everyone, clearly in his feelings remembering last year’s Pitt Fest. Understandable, yes, but it also makes everyone’s life that much harder when they’re within sniping distance of him.

Needless to say, Jack is already over this shift, and it’s not even halfway done. It doesn't help that his favorite resident happens to have the night off, which deposits his mood firmly in the hospital basement. Which, coincidentally, happens to be the location of the morgue.

Now that Robby has been politely ordered to go the fuck home, Jack feels like he can finally focus on his job instead of doing damage control with the med students. As he walks down the hall, Lena catches his attention from the hub desk.

“We have an ambulance two minutes out with a mid-20s female, collapsed at Pitt Fest,” she informs him. “Probable dehydration, likely drug-related, because, well… Pitt Fest.”

This festival truly is the gift that keeps on giving. Jack cracks his knuckles and eyes the ambulance bay doors. “All right. Let's get ready to receive the party girl.”

A few minutes later, the gurney is wheeled in by two paramedics and received by Lena and Parker. Parker shoots an alarmed and confused look over her shoulder at Jack, who steps forward to supervise.

“Dr. Abbot!"

Of all the things Jack expected to see tonight, this is at the bottom of the list. You're strapped to the gurney, scantily clad and gleaming with sweat, a goofy smile on your face and your pupils blown so wide they nearly swallow your irises.

Jack scrubs a hand through his hair. “You're shitting me.”

This is quite the surprising turn of events.

After Lena sets you up in South 16, Jack discreetly shoos away Parker so he can handle your examination himself. He doubts you would be comfortable with one of your fellow residents seeing you like this, considering your condition and your current state of dress.

Jack closes the door behind him and saunters over to you. His eyes snag on your tight, strappy top, and the strategically placed cutouts baring sections of your midriff and chest. He’s holding onto his professionalism by a thread, especially with the way you’re shifting around on the exam table, causing the hem of your miniskirt to ride up.

He has no choice but to focus up. You need medical attention, not the kind of attention his brain and body really want to give you right now. First, Lena takes your temperature and shows him the number on the display. 100.2 degrees F. It's coming down from what the paramedics recorded in the ambulance, and not so high that he’s still worried about heat stroke. But you’ll need cooling down regardless.

“That’s quite the outfit you got on,” he mutters as he gently raises your chin and shines his penlight into your pupils.

“Do you like it?” you ask, beaming up at him even as you squint. “I borrowed it from my friend. She’s so nice.”

Your pupils are so dilated that your eyes are almost completely black.

“Yup.” Jack clicks off the light and sighs, turning to Lena. “She’s rolling, all right. Let’s get a tox to make sure there’s nothing else to be worried about.”

You don’t seem to even register the pain of the needle prick, but you let out a delighted little hum when Lena smooths a bandage over your arm and adds gentle pressure over top of it.

“That feels good,” you murmur with a lazy smile.

“I bet.” Jack crosses his arms and tries to give you a stern look. “Can I ask what my best resident is doing taking ecstasy at a music festival?”

“I didn’t take it on purpose, I swear,” you protest, your eyes widening in a brief panic. “It was my friend’s. I thought it was aspirin, for my cramps.”

“You’re menstruating?” he asks, picking up his tablet and sitting in the edge of the exam table next to you to amend your chart.

You shake your head and say matter-of-factly, “Ovulation cramps.”

His eyebrows shoot up towards the ceiling in surprise. 

You continue babbling, unaware of the grenade you just lobbed at Jack. “She tried to get me to throw it up, but I couldn’t because I don’t really have a gag reflex.”

Jack takes a deep breath to prevent his brain from completely short-circuiting. 

Your face breaks into a sheepish smile, and you giggle, “Oops. Sorry, that was probably too much information.” Leaning forward on the exam table, you bring your face inches away from his and observe with a sigh, “Your eyes are really pretty.”

From behind him, Jack hears Lena snickering under her breath. He clears his throat and straightens up to standing.

Avoiding Lena's eyes, he instructs her, “Let’s, uh, get her some fluids and cooling packs, huh? Maybe a Saf-T-Pop, too. Keep her mouth occupied, so she won’t say any more nonsense she’ll regret in the morning.”

Lena just shoots him an amused look and heads off to gather supplies. Nurses, he thinks ruefully to himself. They see everything.

Movement and sound draw his attention back to you. You're laid back on the exam table, eyes fluttering closed. And you’re running your hands through your hair, letting out a pleased little noise like the sensation is better than sex. 

Jack breathes carefully through his nose. He needs out of this room with you, before this becomes mortifying for everyone involved. His phone buzzes in his pocket, giving him the perfect excuse for escape.

His voice is thin when he speaks, and for a moment, he’s glad you’re too high to notice. “You sit tight, sunshine.” 

As he turns to leave the room, your hand catches the edge of his scrubs.

“You’re leaving?” your mouth turns down into a pout, those huge eyes shining up at him. He very nearly gives in, very nearly reaches out a hand to stroke a thumb across your cheek just to hear the kind of sound it would pull from you. But his phone buzzes insistently, so he briefly pats your knee instead.

“I have other patients to see. But I'll be back before you know it,” he assures you, pulling open the door and diving headfirst back into the glorious chaos.

At least it’ll be a convenient distraction from the thought of you, eagerly waiting in south fifteen for him to return.

He shakes his head in disbelief. Ovulation cramps. You’re gonna be the death of him.

An MVA, a ketamine overdose, and a cardiac event later, the Pitt finally slows down enough for Jack to breathe. Enough to check your tox screen and sigh with relief that the MDMA you mistakenly took wasn’t cut with anything. Alcohol is the only other thing in your system, in levels not high enough to be concerning. Although, combined with the ecstasy, it means you probably won’t remember much of this exciting little escapade.

At long last, he manages to find some time to check on you. 

In his absence, Lena had set you up with a gown to preserve a little more of your modesty. You’re laying on the exam table amongst the cooling packs, an IV attached to your arm and a Saf-T-Pop in your mouth that’s turning your tongue red. 

A smile breaks like sunrise over your face as soon as you see him.

“Hey there, sunshine,” he greets you, approaching you with a little more warmth now that Lena's sharp eyes aren’t here to observe.

“Hi. I missed you,” you sigh.

Jack smirks. “Did you now?”

You nod happily. “Mm-hmm.”

“How are you feeling?” he asks, his gaze attentive, checking you over.

“Cold,” you answer, wrapping your arms around yourself.

He reaches up a hand to feel your forehead. Still warm, but still steadily coming down over time. He’s satisfied enough with your progress. You'll be out of here in no time.

The prospect disappoints him just a little.

“Yeah, your body is having trouble regulating its temperature,” he explains, his thumb stroking delicately along your hairline. “We’ll need to keep these cool packs on you a little while longer.”

Just as his hand retreats, your hand catches his wrist. You press his palm to your cheek, almost nuzzling into it like an affectionate kitten.

“Your hands are so warm,” you murmur, eyelids slipping shut as you revel in the sensation.

The gesture catches him off guard, but he doesn’t pull away. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, and he certainly doesn’t want to.

“Easy there, gorgeous,” he chuckles softly. “I need that hand for doctoring.”

Your eyelids flutter halfway open, and you look up at him with a lazy grin, clearly pleased as punch. “You think I'm gorgeous?”

Jack freezes for a moment. The word had slipped out without him even registering it, familiar and endeared and entirely too revealing. 

“I plead the fifth,” he replies, warmth creeping up his neck.

You giggle again. God, that sound does things to his heart that are medically concerning.

“I think you’re gorgeous,” you mumble dreamily.

Jack blinks in surprise.

He’s been a little too fond of you for a while now, been staring a little too long when you brush past him in the halls. And he’s suspected before that it might not be completely one-sided. He sees how you receive his attention and praise differently than the other attendings, how you look at him with more than just the admiration of a mentor. But suspecting it and having it be confirmed are two different things. Especially since you wouldn’t be saying any of this if you were sober.

He tries to laugh it off before his ego can run away with the compliment. “I think you’re high.”

You shrug. “Maybe. But I always think you’re gorgeous.”

Removing his palm from your cheek, you examine it with fascination, running a finger along the deep set lines. “I think about these,” you say thoughtfully. “All the time.”

Jack is a little ashamed at how quickly that comment goes straight to his cock. His favorite resident, fantasizing about his hands, maybe even touching yourself to the thought of them, wishing your own fingers were his—

He drags his free hand over his face and mutters, "Jesus Christ."

“Can I tell you a secret?” You peer up at him again, that goofy, starstruck smile returning. “I’ve got, like, the biggest crush on you.”

Unfortunately for Jack, there is very little time to process this very interesting information before his phone buzzes again. Just beyond the doors, he can hear the familiar sound of what is likely a high-priority trauma heading into the bay. Voices overlapping in urgent tones, gurney wheels on tile floor, grunts and yelps of pain from a patient.

Jack crosses to the door in two steps, and speaks over his shoulder to you. “Hey, baby, I gotta handle something. Stay out of trouble, okay?”

As the door swings shut behind him, he just manages to catch the sound of you happily mumbling to yourself, “He called me baby.”

Which is how he heads into Trauma 1 with a smile on his face, entirely too cheerful for a man facing down a compound femur fracture. 

The shift that would never fucking end is almost fucking over. And all Jack can think about is you. You and your moony, lovey-dovey eyes and your wide, childlike smile. You gazing up at him and crooning I have the biggest crush on you. You giggling and telling him point-blank that you’re ovulating.

As he rolls out of yet another demanding trauma, Lena updates him on your condition. You’re rehydrated and back to a normal temperature, pretty much ready for discharge if you can be released to someone who will take care of you. He returns to your room, finding you unhooked from your IV and cold-pack-free, happily set up with another lollipop.

“Jack, you’re back!” you exclaim, and then laugh at your accidental rhyme.

Still rolling, he thinks. He checks his watch. According to your best guess of when you took the ‘aspirin’ in your friend’s purse, it’s been about four hours. You'll be due to start coming down anytime in the next two hours or so. He's due to head out, but he can’t bring himself to go home until he knows you’re leaving in capable hands.

“Hey, sunshine.” He offers you a tired but warm smile. “Seems like you’re in pretty good shape here, and you should be tapering off pretty soon. You got anybody to take you home, keep an eye on you?”

A little crease forms between your brows as you think hard. “I don’t know where my friend went when the ambulance came. And I think my phone died,” you add pathetically, gesturing to the device in your lap and its terminally black screen.

Jack pinches the bridge of his nose. He can’t in good conscience leave you to your own devices, especially when you’ve never taken ecstasy before. At worst, there’s still a chance you could have some kind of reaction. At best, the comedown is sure to knock you on your ass. 

He can only think of one thing to do. It's not the best idea. It might not even be a good idea. But his brain is too addled from the long shift to come up with anything better. And you need someone to take care of you.

“Jesus. Okay,” he mutters to himself, then sits on the edge of the exam table, bringing his face level to yours. “Listen up, sunshine.”

You gaze at him intently, attention vacillating occasionally between his eyes and his mouth. Jack has a feeling that what he’s about to say will go in one ear and right out the other. But there’s a chance you’ll retain it, so he says it anyway.

“You're gonna have a pretty serious crash when you come down. All those happy little chemicals that are making you feel good right now?” He gives you a soft little tap against your temple, and you giggle softly. He continues, “They’re gonna go on vacation for a day or two. I don't want you dealing with that on your own. So I'm gonna take you to my place, just to watch out for you until you’re feeling a little more like yourself.”

You’re quiet for a minute, your brain catching up and computing the meaning of what he just said. When it finishes, the lightbulb goes off behind your eyes, and you ask excitedly, “We’re having a sleepover?”

Of course that would be your takeaway. 

He chuckles as he helps you to your feet. “That's right. You got it.”

When Jack drapes his hoodie over your shoulders and guides you out of the Pitt to his car, he’s reminded of all the reasons that this is probably a terrible idea.

He sees the watchful eyes and the knowing smirks of the nurses. He sees Parker and Crus snickering behind their hands. He sees Shen counting up his winnings from the betting pool, because he wrote down molly and tripsitter Abbot.

And he feels your hand clinging to his bicep, sees how you gaze up at him with a dreamy expression as he walks you out to his car. He’s knows he’s really going to need to behave himself for a few hours, because there’s a very good chance that you won’t, and Jack doesn’t want to accidentally take advantage of your… impaired judgement.

You spend most of the ride with your face by the cracked car window, feeling the wind on your face, eyes blissfully closed. Jack thanks his lucky stars that he thought to give the apartment a once-over before shift, so he isn’t bringing you into a total mess.

He walks you into his bedroom and gestures to the en-suite. “Bathroom’s there, if you want to take a shower. I'll find you something a little more… comfortable to wear,” he adds, peeling his eyes away from your tiny little shirt and how you’re already fussing with the straps.

As he turns to his bureau to find you a t-shirt, he feels arms wrapping around his middle, your body molding to his back as you embrace him with a sigh. “Thank you for being so nice to me.”

Jack swallows and delicately removes your hands, stepping out of your embrace and ushering you in the direction of the bathroom.

“Go on, then,” he instructs you. “While you’re still upright.”

You barely even register it as rejection, heading towards the shower and wiggling out of your top before Jack even has the chance to close the door behind you. Which he does, quickly and with his eyes glued to the floor.

His instincts were right. He will very much need to behave himself while you’re here.

He busies himself while you shower by changing out of his scrubs and assembling a meal. It's a humble offering — just a couple of sandwiches and frozen french fries heated up in the oven, but it’s better than nothing. 

After about twenty minutes, you emerge from the bedroom with damp hair and your face scrubbed clean, clad in one of his t-shirts and a pair of his boxers, smelling like his soap. You lean on his kitchen island with a contented little sigh. 

Jack repeats it to himself like a mantra — behave yourself.

“Time to eat something,” he says, sliding one of the plates toward you.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I know. But I'm trying to set you up for success here, so you don’t feel as awful when this is out of your system. When's the last time you ate?” he asks.

You rest your chin on your hand as you think back. “I had… lunch.”

“Thought so.” He puts the plate into your hands and steers you in the direction of the couch with a hand on your lower back. “You and I are gonna eat these sandwiches, drink some water, and watch Planet Earth.”

You gasp in delight and plop down onto the couch. “I love Planet Earth!”

He knows you do. You'd gushed about it being your favorite docuseries at work, and he’d bragged about owning the box set. It had been the first day you and he had really started to bond.

Once the tv is on, it thankfully keeps you occupied. You chew your food slowly, enraptured with the beautiful imagery on the screen. Managing a decent effort with the meal, you eat half the sandwich and most of the fries before you start to lose a little steam.

You abandon your plate on the coffee table, then take Jack completely by surprise as you lean over to lay your head in his lap.

He goes still for a moment, unsure if he should be allowing this. But he doesn’t have the heart to push you away, so he puts his plate aside and lets a hand come to rest on your shoulder.

You sigh happily and snuggle closer.

It's been so long since Jack has taken care of someone like this that he’d almost forgotten what it feels like. How good it feels to be needed. The easy intimacy of sharing a space, sharing a meal, of letting someone melt against you after a long night.

Affectionately, he brushes a stray lock of hair out of your face, and you practically purr in response, leaning into his hand. So Jack keeps doing it, keeps gently stroking his fingers through your hair, preferring to watch your relaxing form instead of the polar bears on screen.

The two of you spend nearly an hour like that, until your breath starts to take on that even, drowsy quality and Jack’s own brain starts calling for rest. He gently eases you off his lap to sit up, takes you by the hand and leads you to bed, already resigning himself to the aching back that a couch nap is going to earn him.

Jack sets you up with a glass of water and the best blankets in the linen closet. As he turns to head back to the living room, your hand grabs his arm, pulling him back.

“Stay.”

Your voice is low and warm. You're sitting up in his bed, his sheets pooled around your knees. Your eyes are dark, tempting, pleading.

Jack knows dangerous territory when he sees it.

Still, your serotonin is due to start dropping any time now, and hurt feelings are only going to be worsened once it does. Jack sits carefully on the edge of the bed, maintaining a few inches of distance, his other hand gently cradling your cheek.

“Sorry, sunshine. Not a good idea.”

You move closer, your gaze fixed firmly on his mouth. “Why?”

Best behavior, Jack. 

“Because you’re still tapering off. Plus, I just worked a long shift and I need to sleep.” He takes in a deep breath as he feels your hand slide across his shoulders. “And I've got a feeling I won't be getting much rest next to you.”

In a move so surprising that Jack is momentarily powerless to stop it, you rise up onto your knees and shift to straddle one of his thighs.

“What if I promise to be really, really good?” you murmur sweetly.

Jack knows he should stop you, and he almost does. But then you rock your hips on his thigh, the tiniest little life-ruining movement, and you let out the softest, neediest little sound. Suddenly, Jack is hanging onto his sanity and self control-by a thread. And that thread is fraying rapidly.

“Baby,” he whispers, half warning and half plea. His hands come to your hips, torn between stopping you and spurring you on.

Your hips rock again, more purposeful this time. “Please,” you beg quietly, so close now that your lips just barely brush against his.

For a few shameful moments, Jack forgets about his fatigue and the ache in his leg and he wonders… how morally reprehensible would it really be to just let you get off on his thigh? You’d said yourself that you’re ovulating, probably making you even needier. Fuck, he can feel how badly you want it, wetness soaking through the boxers you’re wearing and Jack’s sweatpants. Would it really be so awful of him to sit passively as you hump his leg to get the relief you’re clearly so desperate for? To take pity on you and let you use him for your pleasure? 

But he knows it would be wrong, because he’d be getting off on it even if you didn’t touch him. You're not in your right mind, and he doesn’t want to make you come for the first time when you’re whacked out on MDMA.

Summoning the will from deep inside himself, he stills your hips and eases you off of his thigh, ignoring your whines as he nudges you back onto the pillows.

“It wouldn’t be right. I'm not touching you until you’re sober,” he says firmly.

Jack gets to his feet and tucks the blankets around you. “I’ll see you in a few hours. Wake me if you need anything.” He laughs softly at the pointed pouting look you shoot his way. “Other than that.”

“You’re no fun,” you call after him as he retreats into the living room.

Once the bedroom door is shut behind him, he collapses on the couch and wrestles off his prosthetic, punching a throw pillow a few times to soften it before going horizontal. Even after what felt like the longest shift he’s had in months, he’s unsure how much sleep he’ll actually manage to get knowing you’re in the next room. Probably snuggling one of his pillows as if it’s him, probably squeezing your thighs together until the last of the drugs leave your system.

He groans and rolls over, willing his body and his still half-hard cock to go to sleep.

You wake feeling like death warmed over.

You’re in a bed that doesn’t belong to you, but smells familiar and comforting. Same with your clothes. A few memories make it through the fog, blurry and out of order. Planet Earth. Jack’s hand, warm and pleasant on your cheek. An ambulance ride. Lena ruffling your hair and handing you a lollipop. A shower with a chair and a grab bar and soap that smells like Jack.

You’re at Jack's apartment, you realize with a start.

Checking the time groggily, you observe that you've slept from the early morning until late afternoon. Thank god you’d asked for tonight off as well, anticipating you’d need recovery time after Pitt Fest. 

You can vaguely recall the warm, fuzzy feelings you’d experienced last night. In the abstract, at least. Now, you feel mostly guilt and shame and embarrassment and anxiety. How could you have been so stupid?

Sounds of life echo from the kitchen, which means Jack has woken up ahead of you. Your guilt sharpens. Jack is spending his hard-earned downtime taking care of you, because of your own carelessness.

Fatigue clings to your bones as you shuffle to the bathroom. The reflection in the mirror is less than kind. Dark shadows frame your eyes, worse than the usual bags worn by the night shift crew. Your hair is a mess, and you sigh as you comb your fingers through to tame it.

Time to face the music.

You trudge out into the kitchen, where Jack is wearing an apron over a t-shirt and sweats and cooking an omelette, looking awfully chipper for having slept seven hours on the couch. He looks so good that it briefly makes you angry. Fuck him for looking so good, while you look and feel like utter dogshit.

Of course, that annoyance turns to guilt again when he looks up and smiles.

“Hey, lover girl,” he greets you warmly as you lean on the kitchen island. “How are you feeling?”

You rub your eyes and groan, “Like I got hit by a Mack truck.”

He squeezes your shoulder fondly and grabs a plate from an overhead cabinet. “Let’s get some food and water in you.”

“Thank you,” you mutter sheepishly. “I’m sorry about… all this.”

“Don't even worry about it, sunshine.” 

Jack hands you a glass of water and starts making you a plate. You accept it with a grimace. “I'm not feeling very sunshine-y right about now. I can't remember half of what happened after I went down at the concert.”

“I hope we’ve learned not to go digging for meds in that particular friend’s purse.” He smirks and sets a plate in front of you. A vegetable omelette and buttered toast. Your appetite hasn’t yet returned to its normal levels, but your doctor brain knows that you really need to eat, so you reach for the toast first.

“Never again,” you vow as you take a bite.

In the light of day and out from under the influence of Beth's ‘aspirin,’ you get a good look at Jack's apartment for the first time as he assembles his own plate. It's not spotless, but it’s generally tidy, and it’s a very nice place. Good furniture, great windows with better blackout shades, a nice floor plan. Its niceness only makes you feel smaller.

You poke at your omelette, stewing. “Jack?”

“Yes?”

“Don't take this the wrong way, but…why am I here?”

He plates his own omelette and leans a hip against the kitchen island. “You’d never taken MDMA before, and I knew you’d be in for a hell of a drop. I didn't want you to be on your own.”

You resist the urge to frown. This whole saga is doing nothing to remedy your tragic crush on him. Did he have to be so nice and caring on top of everything else? It feels a little unfair at the moment.

“That’s… very considerate,” you mumble.

“What can I say? I'm a considerate guy.” He pops a bite of omelette into his mouth with a wink.

A thought occurs to you that briefly makes your stomach turn. “Does the whole Pitt know?”

Jack's expression tells you everything you need to know before he even speaks. “There… might have been a betting pool on the subject. Shen cleaned up.”

You drop your face into your hands. “Awesome. That's really awesome.”

Every single one of your coworkers knows that you spent the night rolling. Tears prick at your eyes beneath your palms, which only worsens your humiliation. The last thing you need right now is to cry in front of Jack Abbot. Even if it’s just because the chemicals in your brain are out of whack, it doesn't make it any less embarrassing.

“Hey.” Jack's hand finds your shoulder again. “Don’t worry about it. They're good people, no one is judging you.”

Despite your best efforts, a mortifying little sniffle slips out at the kindness in his voice. 

 “Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “Come here.”

You can’t bear to look up, but your breath hitches in surprise when Jack pulls you into his arms. Instantly, your brain begins to quiet, focusing on the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheek, the reassuring weight of his arms around you, the slow arc of his thumb rhythmically stroking your shoulder blade.

It's medicine. Oxytocin and dopamine, feel-good chemicals produced by physical touch, bolstering your brain against the sapped well of serotonin the ecstasy left in its wake. It also makes your heart flutter pathetically in your chest.

He holds you for a long moment, his grip tightening when you finally loop your arms around his waist and return the embrace.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” you whisper, allowing the comfort to sink into your skin and fill your lungs. 

“Of course.”

Jack only pulls away when you do, gently swiping a calloused thumb underneath your eye to banish the straggling tear that managed to escape. 

“Let’s get comfortable on the couch,” he says, a hand settling on your back to guide you. “You’re still on the comedown.”

You worry you might be overstaying your welcome. But Jack seems to be in no rush to get you out of his apartment, content to let you rot on his couch as long as you need to. Surely he must have better things to do on his night off than take care of you, but he sits sentry at your side without complaint.

After some consideration, Planet Earth is tabled for the time being — even if you’ve seen it before, animal death is sure to bring back the waterworks in your current state. Flipping through channels, you settle on a cheesy mid-2000s rom-com that you’ve seen before and snuggle back into the couch cushions. 

Through it all, you feel the comfort of his steady presence, his hand rubbing idle circles on your back, like an IV drip of Vitamin Jack straight to your brain. You give into the feeling, too worn out to fight it, curling into his side. Eventually, you feel a gentle graze at your scalp as he idly plays with your hair. It surprises you for a moment, but you’re not complaining in the slightest. You melt into it, eyes fluttering closed until you’re slipping in and out of a light doze.

Afternoon fades to evening, to dinnertime, to nighttime, to bedtime. Even after your intermittent sleep, your fatigue is still bone deep, and Jack insists you can stay the night. You really try to convince him to let you take the couch, but he refuses, insisting that your body needs proper rest to return to baseline. At the end of the night, he sends you off to bed with a smirk.

When you wake up in Jack's bed for the second time, it’s much less disorienting. It helps that you’re much clearer than you were seventeen hours ago. The clock reads 9:05 am — you have the whole day ahead of you to shower, change, and steel yourself for the humiliation ritual that is bound to be your shift tonight.

You stumble into the living room, bleary-eyed. Jack is reclined on the couch with a laptop and readers perched on the end of his nose. Ugh, fuck him again for looking so good.

His eyes find yours over the edge of the screen. “Hey there. You sleep good?”

“Mm-hmm,” you reply, stretching. “I'm feeling much better, I think.”

His mouth curves at the corner. “Good.”

Leaning on the edge of the couch, you sigh and glance at the clock on the wall. “I should probably head home soon, get my life together before shift tonight. Would you be able to drive me home?”

“Sure thing, sunshine.” 

After you eat breakfast and shower off the cast of bedrotting from the day before, you change back into the clothes you arrived in, which Jack took the liberty of washing for you. As much as you appreciate the gesture, you blanch at the idea of Jack handling your underwear, and try very hard not to think about that mental image.

As the quiet car ride progresses, you ponder your looming fate, mentally preparing yourself for the teasing you’ll get from the nurses and other residents. It's disorienting to not know what you’re walking into, to have been mentally absent for most of it.

You can’t resist the urge to ask anymore. “Was I a total mess?”

He nods, amused. “Yes. But a very cute mess.”

“God, this is so embarrassing,” you groan. “What did I say?”

“Are you sure you wanna know?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.

That makes you pause, glancing at him warily. “…was it bad?” 

“You got a little fixated on hands for a while.” Jack pauses, like he isn’t sure how much to reveal, if you’re ready to handle it. “Said you think about mine all the time.”

Suddenly, you feel a bit sick, even though the car is headed in a straight line down the road. If that's just where it starts… if that’s not the worst of it, then what is?

“Oh god,” you whisper in horror. 

“You said you think I'm gorgeous,” he continues, voice thick with amusement. “And that you have a big ol’ crush on me. And… you might’ve tried to seduce me a little at bedtime.”

Your cheeks flare hot. This is quite possibly the worst outcome of the situation aside from death. At the moment, death feels preferable.

You stare straight ahead, sinking in your seat and pressing your hands to your forehead to try and keep your brain from exploding. “Excuse me, I'm just gonna open the door and go lay down in traffic.”

He laughs, the sound warm and fond and doing absolutely nothing to temper your embarrassment. “It's okay.”

“It is completely not okay, Jack,” you protest, turning your body away from him and towards the passenger side door, like that will save you from this conversation.

Jack places a hand on your thigh.

All the systems in your brain go down simultaneously.

His palm rests just above your knee, not high enough to be too inappropriate, but it’s intimate. Especially because your choice of garment for Pitt Fest leaves your leg bare and exposed to his touch. Never once does he take his eyes off the road.

“It was flattering,” he says coolly, his thumb rubbing soothing circles over your knee. “And extremely cute.”

He lets the assertion hang in the silence, and he doesn’t move his hand, letting it rest warm and comfortable against the soft skin of your thigh.

After some considerable effort, you remember how to breathe. Once the oxygen makes it to your brain, you manage to peel your hands away from your face and peek sideways at him. 

“…really?” you ask, because you need the confirmation. Does Jack Abbot — your mentor, the object of all your desires, and the man who just babysat you through an unwitting MDMA trip — really think you’re cute?

He gives your thigh a gentle squeeze. “Really.”

There isn’t much else to say for the rest of the car ride. Jack keeps his hand on your thigh until he turns down your street and throws the car in park. You try and fail to suppress a smile the whole way, and allow him to walk you up to your building’s front step, palms tingling with anticipation.

“I’d like to do this again sometime,” he says as you unlock the main entrance. “Minus the party drugs.”

You grin up at him, slightly emboldened by the revelations that occurred in the car. “You wanna have another sleepover?”

“Very much.” His eyes crinkle at the edges when he smiles back. “See you tonight?”

“See you tonight.”

You turn to head inside, but Jack catches your elbow. “Hey. One last thing.”

Before you have time to register his closeness, a hand slides along your waist, another cupping your jaw, and Jack is kissing you.

A warm, pleasant feeling floods you from top to toe, a high rivalling the chemical one you’d experienced twenty-eight hours ago. He kisses you like he’s been thinking about it that entire twenty-eight hours. It's tender and hungry at the same time. By the time he pulls away, your lips follow after his and you almost stumble forward into his arms.

You open your eyes and blink up at him, feeling a little dazed and starstruck again.

“Had to wait until you were level,” Jack murmurs. He gives you a lingering peck at the corner of your mouth and descends down the front steps to his car.

You beam after him.

Jack Abbot was too old for this.

The thought arrived somewhere between the third pulse of purple light across the ceiling and the moment Santos threw both hands over her head on the dance floor like she had personally invented birthdays.

Beside him in the booth, Robby sat with one arm stretched along the backrest, drink in hand, expression fixed in the grim neutrality of a man enduring a hostage situation with decent whiskey.

Jack looked out over the crowd.

Santos had somehow convinced half the department to dance under flashing lights. Mel was laughing with her, bright and easy, one hand wrapped around a sweating glass. Cassie stood near the edge of the floor, amused and observant, watching Whitaker attempt to clap on beat with the same tense concentration he brought to difficult procedures. Javadi was near him, awkward but committed, moving like someone had explained dancing to her from a textbook. Dana hovered near the bar, pretending to supervise while absolutely failing to hide the fact that she was enjoying herself.

Jack took a slow drink.

Robby watched Santos spin in a circle and said, “You know, this is nice.”

Jack turned his head just enough to look at him.

Robby stared at the dance floor for another beat, then amended, “For them.”

Jack looked back toward the crowd. “I’m too old for this.”

Robby lifted his glass. “I’m older than you.”

Jack said, “That wasn’t an invitation to compete.”

Robby took a sip, unimpressed. “You’re here because I’m here.”

Jack looked at him. “I’m here because you lied about the volume.”

Robby glanced at the speakers as if they had betrayed him personally. “I said there would be drinks.”

Jack raised his glass slightly. “There are lights on the ceiling.”

Robby nodded once. “That was not in the briefing.”

Jack huffed and turned back toward the dance floor, trying to settle into the kind of resignation that could get him through another hour. Maybe forty-five minutes, if Santos stayed distracted. Thirty, if Robby remembered how friendship worked and developed a convincing emergency.

It was his night off. That was the worst part. Jack did not get many of those, and somehow he had spent this one in a club with music loud enough to rearrange his organs, watching his coworkers behave like people with functional knees and no sense of self-preservation. He should have been home. He should have been on his couch, showered, clean, half-asleep with a game on low and his prosthetic off.

Instead, he was here, trapped in a booth, wearing a black T-shirt Robby had looked at earlier and called “acceptable,” which Jack had understood to mean, You look less like you were dragged here against your will.

Robby leaned slightly closer and said, “You could try looking less miserable.”

Jack kept his gaze forward. “I could also leave.”

Robby’s mouth twitched. “You won’t.”

Jack looked at him. “Watch me.”

Robby nodded toward Santos, who had just caught sight of Jack and waved at him with both hands, delighted and entirely too sincere. Jack stared back at her. Santos pointed at him, then at the dance floor, then made an exaggerated come here motion. Jack lifted his drink in a flat salute. Santos booed him from across the room.

Robby smiled into his glass. “She likes you.”

Jack said, “She has poor judgment.”

Robby’s laugh got lost beneath the bass. Jack looked away from Santos before she decided to physically drag him out of the booth.

That was when he saw you.

At first, it was not even a whole thought.

Just red.

The color of your top caught under the lights as you leaned close to the woman beside you, laughing at something she said. You had one hand wrapped around a drink and the other resting briefly on your friend’s arm, your head tilted to hear her over the music. The club moved around you in a blur of bodies and noise, but you looked like you belonged to the night in a way Jack absolutely did not. Warm. Confident. Bright.

Then you smiled, and the thought landed before he could stop it. Beautiful.

Jack’s grip tightened around his glass. No. The correction came fast and hard. No.

He looked away. He did the smart thing. The grown thing. The decent thing. He looked at Robby. He looked at the table. He looked at the condensation sliding down the side of his glass like it had suddenly become the most important thing in the room.

Too young, Jack thought. Not for you. Absolutely not for you. He told himself.

Robby said something beside him. Jack did not hear it. Because your laugh rose through the music again, bright and easy, and his eyes went back before he gave them permission. You were still near the bar, half-turned toward your friend now. Your red top caught the light every time you moved, the fabric clinging just enough in the room’s heat. Your jeans fit like they had been made to ruin men who were trying very hard to mind their own business. The club lights skimmed over your throat, your collarbone, the line of your top, and Jack’s mind, usually so good at triage, chose that moment to abandon him entirely.

His gaze dropped. Only for a second, not even that. Too long.

He looked back up, and you caught him. Dead-on. Across the room, your smile faded by degrees. Not gone or nervous. Just focused. Your eyes met his through the moving lights, and Jack felt the hit of it low in his ribs. Caught.

You had seen him. Worse, you looked like you liked knowing he was looking.

Jack should have looked away immediately. He did not. Neither did you. The room went strange around the edges. The music kept pounding. Santos kept laughing somewhere near the dance floor. Dana was probably still pretending she had not lost control of the night. Robby was probably still talking.

None of it reached Jack for one full, dangerous second.

There was only you. Your eyes. Your mouth. The faint curve of your lips when you realized he was not recovering as quickly as he should have been.

Then Jack forced himself to look down at his drink. Robby stopped mid-sentence. Jack felt it happen. He did not have to look over to know Robby had followed his gaze.

Robby said, “No.”

Jack stared at his glass. “I didn’t say anything.”

Robby’s voice went dry. “Your face did.”

Jack lifted his drink and took a slow swallow. “Shut up.”

Robby looked across the room again. “She saw you.”

Jack’s jaw flexed. “I know.”

The admission came out rougher than he liked. Robby turned back to him, and Jack could feel the amusement sharpening beside him.

Robby asked, “And?”

Jack kept his eyes on the table. “And nothing.” 

Robby made a thoughtful sound. “Convincing.”

Jack looked at him then. “Don’t start.”

Robby lifted one hand. “I’m not starting anything.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed.

Robby looked toward you again and added, “Looks like she might, though.”

Across the room, you were still watching him. Not openly enough to be obvious to anyone else, but obvious to him. That was worse.

Liv leaned into your shoulder, saying something near your ear, but your eyes stayed on Jack for half a second longer.

Then your mouth curved, slow and knowing.

Jack looked away before he forgot himself completely.

Beside you, Liv followed your gaze.

She had been mid-sentence, one hand tucked into the pocket of her oversized leather jacket, the black fabric of her dress catching the light beneath it. Her boots made her look taller than she was, sharper somehow, like trouble with good posture.

She looked across the room. First, the man in the black T-shirt. Then at the man beside him. 

Her eyebrows lifted. Liv leaned into your shoulder and asked, “What?”

You took a sip of your drink to give yourself a second. It did not help. The man in the booth looked down at his glass like that could save him. Black T-shirt. Broad shoulders. Forearms bare below the sleeves, one hand wrapped around his drink with enough tension in his fingers to make your stomach flip.

You should not have been so pleased. You were.

Liv followed your gaze again, slower this time. Her mouth curved. “Oh.”

You did not look away from the booth. The man in black lifted his glass to his mouth again, controlled and tense and visibly trying not to look at you. He failed, and his eyes found yours over the rim.

Your pulse kicked hard.

Liv watched that happen and made a quiet sound of appreciation. “That one?”

You let your gaze drop to his arms, then back to his face. “That one,” you said.

Liv’s eyes flicked to the man beside him, older, dark-eyed, tired-looking in a way that should not have been attractive and unfortunately was. He was holding his drink like he was mad at the concept of music and half a second away from saying something cutting.

Liv smiled. “Good.”

You glanced at her. She kept her eyes on Robby and said, “I’ll take the other one.”

You looked back across the room. The man in black was listening to the other one now, his body angled away from the chaos, but his attention kept betraying him. Every few seconds, his gaze returned to you like he hated that it had somewhere to go.

You said, “Forearms.”

Liv blinked, then looked at him again. The nickname landed. Liv laughed under her breath. “Accurate.”

You nodded toward the other man. “And him?”

Liv tilted her head, studying the man beside him.

The man with dark eyes said something to the man in the black shirt, and his mouth curved faintly when he shot him a look. The lights caught on his face just enough for Liv to see the dark depth of his eyes, the exhaustion, the amusement, the quiet, handsome irritation of a man who had been through too much and still knew exactly what he was doing.

Liv said, “Brown Eyes.”

You looked at her. “Really?”

Liv lifted one shoulder. “Look at him.”

You did. Brown Eyes was watching Liv now. Not the way Forearms was watching you. Forearms looked like he was fighting a losing battle with himself. Brown Eyes looked like he had just noticed the night might be worth his time after all.

Liv smiled slowly. You laughed. “Oh, you’re already gone.”

Liv glanced at you. “Says the woman eye-fucking Forearms from across a club.”

Your face warmed. “I am not.” 

Liv gave you a look. You took a sip of your drink. Liv’s grin widened.

 Across the room, Jack watched you laugh, and the sight did something unreasonable to him. It should not have. He did not know you. He had not heard your voice. Not really. Not over the music. He did not know your name, your age, whether you were here with someone, whether you were trouble, whether you were the kind of woman who smiled like that because she knew exactly what men thought when they looked at her.

Actually, Jack thought, jaw tightening, he was starting to suspect the answer to that last one.

You turned toward Liv, still smiling, and the movement shifted the line of your body. Your hips moved with the bass, easy even though you were not on the dance floor yet, and Jack’s mind supplied a thought so vivid and inappropriate it almost made him set his drink down.

What would they feel like under his hands? His eyes closed briefly. Fuck.

Robby noticed immediately, “You all right?”

Jack opened his eyes. “Fine.”

Robby looked at Jack’s glass. “You’re gripping that like it owes you money.”

Jack loosened his hand on purpose. That somehow made him feel more ridiculous.

Robby glanced back toward you and Liv. “They’re looking over here.”

Jack did not follow his gaze. “I’m aware.”

Robby’s mouth curved. “The one in red keeps looking at you.”

Jack stared forward. “Also aware.”

Robby took a slow drink. “The one in black keeps looking at me.”

Jack looked at him. “My condolences.”

Robby’s smile sharpened. “Don’t be jealous.”

Jack snorted. “Of what? A midlife crisis?”

Robby leaned back. “I prefer opportunity.”

Jack muttered, “Of course you do.”

Before Robby could answer, Santos appeared at the end of the booth like a glittering, determined storm system. Her cheeks were warm from dancing, her eyes bright, and she was holding a drink Jack was certain Dana had not approved.

Santos planted one hand on the table and said, “You two are depressing.”

Jack looked up at her. “Happy birthday.”

Santos pointed at him. “Do not weaponize politeness.”

Robby lifted his glass toward her. “We’re celebrating from here.”

Santos looked between them, unimpressed. “You’re sitting in the dark like divorced vampires.”

Jack said, “That’s very specific.”

Santos ignored him and looked toward the bar. Her whole face lit up. “Oh! New friends.”

Jack followed her gaze before he could stop himself.

You and Liv were at the bar now, closer than before. That was his first mistake. Because closer was worse. Jack could see more of you now. The red top. The curve of your waist when you shifted your weight. The way your jeans hugged your body. The way you smiled at the bartender, warm and easy, and then turned slightly like you could feel him looking.

Your eyes found his again. Jack’s stomach tightened. You smiled. Not big, not sweet. Just enough.

Robby made a quiet sound beside him. “Oh, that’s unfortunate.”

Jack did not look away from you. “Don’t.”

Santos looked at Jack, then across the room, then back at Jack. Her eyes widened.

Jack said, “No.”

Santos’s smile appeared all at once. “Interesting.”

Jack pointed one finger at her. “No.”

Santos was already backing away. “I’m getting birthday shots.”

Robby called after her, “Dana said one.”

Santos turned around, walking backward toward the bar. “Dana says a lot of things.”

Jack watched her go with dread settling over him.

Robby leaned closer. “She’s going to bring them over.”

Jack said, “I know.”

Robby looked at you again. “You could leave.”

Jack took another drink. “So could you.”

Robby’s eyes stayed on Liv. “I’m reevaluating.”

Jack looked at him with disgust. “Pathetic.”

Robby smiled faintly. “Flexible.”

At the bar, someone slid between you and Liv with the immediate familiarity of a woman who had decided the night needed more people in it.

She smiled at your red top and said, “Okay, you look incredible.”

You blinked, then laughed. “Thank you.”

Liv glanced at the woman’s birthday sash, crown, or whatever the club lights had turned into glitter on her outfit, and smiled. “Birthday girl?”

She put one hand to her chest. “Trinity Santos. Officially twenty-eight, spiritually twenty-one, emotionally somewhere around seventy-eight.”

You laughed harder. Liv lifted her glass. “Liv.”

You gave Trinity your name.

She looked between you both, then toward the booth. Her smile changed. You followed her gaze even though you already knew where it would land.

Forearms was watching. Again. This time, he did not look away fast enough.

Trinity looked back at you with delighted suspicion. You tried to look innocent. Liv did not bother.

Santos asked, “Do you two want to do birthday shots with us?”

Liv looked at you. You looked at the booth. The man in black had gone very still.

You smiled into your drink. “Sure.”

Santos lit up. “Perfect.”

Liv leaned closer to you as Santos turned toward the bartender. Liv murmured, “Subtle.”

You kept your eyes on Forearms. He kept his eyes on you.

You said, “I’m not trying to be subtle.”

Liv laughed softly. “Thank God.”

Santos collected the shots with the triumphant focus of someone completing an important medical intervention. Then she looked at the number of glasses on the bar and paused.

“Okay,” Santos said. “I need hands.”

Liv reached for two without being asked. “I’ve got these.”

You picked up another two. “Lead the way, birthday girl.”

Santos looked between you and Liv like you had just passed some private test. “Oh, I like you.”

Liv smiled. “Eventually.”

You glanced across the room. The man in the black T-shirt was watching. Again. This time, he did not look away fast enough.

Santos’s smile widened. “Interesting.”

“Shots,” you reminded her.

“Right,” Santos said, turning toward the booth. “Shots first. Bad choices later.”

Liv leaned close to your ear as the three of you started across the club. “You heard her.”

You kept your eyes ahead. “I’m being helpful.”

Liv looked toward the booth, where the man in the black T-shirt had gone very still. “You’re being something.”

You smiled into the noise. “Helpful.”

Across the room, Jack saw the exact moment Santos recruited you and your friend into her birthday operation. His shoulders sank by half an inch. Robby noticed and smiled like a bastard.

Jack said, “Don’t.”

Robby lifted his glass. “I didn’t say anything.”

Jack watched you walk closer, a shot glass balanced carefully in each hand, Liv at your side, Santos leading the way as if she had personally engineered the collision.

Every step made it worse.

You were smiling, amused by Santos, your shoulder brushing your friend’s as you moved through the club. The lights moved over your face, your throat, the red of your top. Your eyes stayed on Jack just long enough to make it clear you knew exactly where you were headed. Jack set his glass down. Robby leaned back in the booth, looking far too entertained for a man in imminent danger himself. Santos reached the table first. 

“Birthday shots,” Santos announced.

Dana appeared beside her immediately, eyes narrowing. “Santos.”

Santos handed her a shot. “Dana.”

Dana looked at the glass, then at Santos. “You think saying my name back to me helps your case?”

Santos smiled. “I think it creates rapport.”

Dana took the shot with a sigh. “That is not what that does.”

Santos turned to you and Liv with unnecessary ceremony. “This is Dana. She’s in charge.”

Dana said, “Against my will.”

Santos pointed toward the others. “That’s Cassie, Mel, Whitaker, and Javadi.”

Cassie lifted her glass in greeting. “Hi.”

Mel smiled warmly. “Hi, random club friends.”

Whitaker accepted the shot you handed him carefully. “Thank you.”

Javadi took hers a beat late, then smiled like she was relieved to have caught the rhythm of the interaction. “Thanks.”

Santos leaned closer to you and Liv, lowering her voice with absolutely no subtlety. “We’re doctors. They’re less weird at work.”

Dana said, “I’m a nurse, and no, they’re not.”

Javadi blinked. “I think I’m slightly less weird at work.”

Whitaker glanced at her. “I don’t know if I am.”

Mel patted his arm. “You’re doing great.”

Santos turned back toward the booth like she had saved the most dangerous introductions for last.

“This is Robby,” Santos said, pointing to the man beside Jack.

Robby looked at Liv. Liv looked him over once, slow and cool. Robby’s mouth curved like he appreciated being assessed.

Santos pointed at the man in black. “And that’s Jack.”

Your eyes returned to him. Jack. The name fit him. Unfortunately. It made him real in a way Forearms had not. Forearms had been safe across the club. Forearms had been a joke you could murmur into Liv’s ear, something low and private and ridiculous enough to make her laugh into her drink. Jack was not safe. Jack was close. Jack had a voice. Jack had hands. Jack was looking at you like he had already tried to talk himself out of wanting you and was furious that wanting you had won anyway.

Santos smiled, entirely too pleased with herself. “And this is Liv.”

Liv lifted her glass slightly. “Hi.”

Robby’s eyes stayed on her face. “Liv.”

Liv tilted her head. “Robby.”

His mouth curved. “You say that like you’re deciding whether it fits.”

Liv looked him over once more, slower this time. “I am.”

Robby huffed a quiet laugh. Santos turned toward you next and gave Jack your name. Jack looked at you when she said it. Not like he was hearing it. Like he was keeping it.

Your pulse kicked hard. You said his name before you could decide whether that was a bad idea. A slow murmur, testing the syllables. “Jack.”

His jaw flexed. It was small, barely anything, but you saw it. The reaction moved through you like heat. Jack took one slow breath through his nose, and for one wild second, you wondered what he would look like if you said his name somewhere quieter. Somewhere darker. Somewhere with his body pressed closer and his mouth near your ear.

His eyes dropped to your mouth. Then back to your eyes. Jack said your name. His voice was worse than you imagined. Lower than you expected, rougher.

The kind of voice that made you wonder how it would sound against your skin. Against your throat, or lower.

You hated him a little for that. You hated him more for standing there like he had no idea what he had just done to you. Santos shoved a shot into Jack’s hand, then into Robby’s, then lifted her own.

Jack knew he should look away. He knew it with the same grim certainty he had carried from the moment he first saw you near the bar. It had been difficult from across the room. It was worse now. Up close, there was nowhere for his attention to go that did not make him feel like a worse man.

Your mouth. Your neck. The red of your top beneath the moving lights. The way your eyes had dropped to his arms before snapping back up, like you had been caught somewhere you did not regret going.

He had seen it.

And now his mind was doing things it had no business doing in the middle of Santos’s birthday party. He thought about your hands in his shirt. His hands at your waist. Your hips under his palms. Your body close enough that he would not have to imagine the heat of you anymore.

Jack’s fingers tightened around his glass. Fuck. He needed to stop. Immediately.

You were standing two feet away from him in a red top and jeans, looking at his mouth like you had already imagined what it could do to you, and Jack was trying very hard not to imagine anything back.

Robby leaned slightly toward him, voice low enough that only Jack could hear. “You look calm.”

Jack did not take his eyes off you. “Shut up.”

Robby hummed into his drink. “Noted.”

“To me,” Santos said, delighted, raising her glass.

Dana sighed somewhere beside her. “Of course.”

Everyone drank.

The shot burned warm and sharp, and for one brief second, everyone made the same face.

Santos recovered first.

“Perfect,” she said, setting her empty glass down with the satisfaction of someone who had made several excellent decisions in a row.

Dana looked at her. “That is not the word I would use.”

Cassie smiled into her drink. “It’s her birthday. Let her have delusion.”

Mel leaned toward Santos, already bright with the next idea. “They’re playing your song.”

Santos’s head snapped toward the dance floor. “Oh, absolutely not without me.”

Whitaker looked alarmed when Santos grabbed his wrist. Santos tugged him toward the music. “Come on, Huckleberry.”

Whitaker went with her, careful and resigned. “I don’t think I know this one.”

Javadi followed a beat later, clutching her drink with both hands. “I can learn by watching.”

Dana sighed and looked at Cassie. “We’re keeping them alive?”

Cassie lifted her brows. “Apparently.”

Mel smiled warmly at you and Liv as she backed toward the dance floor. “You should come dance too.”

Liv’s mouth curved. “We might.”

Santos pointed back at you from the edge of the crowd. “Don’t disappear. I just found you.”

You laughed. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Then the crew slipped back into the crush of the dance floor, taking the birthday noise with them and leaving the booth suddenly, horribly, wonderfully less crowded.

Robby looked at Liv. 

Liv looked at Robby. 

You looked at Jack. 

Jack looked at you.

For a moment, the four of you stood there with empty shot glasses, warm mouths, and absolutely nowhere safe to put your eyes.

Jack set his glass on the table first. “You friends with Santos now?” 

You glanced toward the dance floor, where Santos had already pulled Whitaker into another doomed attempt at rhythm. You looked back at Jack. “Apparently.”

Jack’s gaze stayed on yours.

“She moves fast,” you said.

Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth for one devastating second. Then he looked back up. “I noticed.”

The words were innocent, his voice was not.

Your pulse kicked hard as you tilted your head, letting your smile curve just enough to make his eyes narrow. “You notice a lot?”

Robby made a quiet sound into his drink. Liv’s smile sharpened.

Jack held your gaze. “When it’s worth noticing.” 

The bass hit low through the floor, and the room kept moving around you.

Jack’s mouth barely curved.

You felt the answer in your stomach. Across from you, Liv turned her attention to Robby like she had finally decided to stop being polite about it.

“So,” Liv said, lifting her empty shot glass slightly. “Robby.”

Robby looked at her. “Liv.”

Liv’s eyes moved over his face. “You always this cheerful at birthdays?”

Robby glanced toward Santos, then back at Liv. “This is me being festive.”

Liv smiled. “Tragic.”

Robby’s mouth curved. “You judging me already?”

Liv took one small step closer to the table. “Efficiently.”

Robby looked at her as if he were deciding whether to be annoyed or interested. It appeared to be both.

“That working for you?” Robby asked.

Liv’s smile turned slower. “So far.”

Jack heard Robby’s quiet laugh and looked briefly pained. You noticed. Jack noticed you noticing.

His eyes came back to yours.

You looked at his mouth before you could stop yourself. Barely. Just once, but Jack saw it. His expression did not change much, but his gaze sharpened, and your pulse kicked. Jack leaned back a fraction, still watching you like he was deciding whether to let you get away with that.

“You do that on purpose?” he asked.

Your smile came slowly. “Do what?”

Your eyes dropped to his mouth. This time, you let him see it. Heat opened low in your body, slow and dangerous.

Jack’s voice dropped. “That.”

Before you could answer, Santos’s voice cut through the music from the dance floor. “New friends!”

You looked over. Santos had both hands cupped around her mouth and absolutely no shame. She pointed at you and Liv, then stabbed one finger toward the dance floor. “Dance floor! Now!”

Dana, standing near her with her arms crossed, said something you could not hear. 

Santos yelled, “Dana says please!”

Dana’s expression clearly said she had said no such thing. Mel waved brightly from beside them. Cassie lifted her drink in invitation. Whitaker gave a small, helpless shrug like he had already accepted his fate. Javadi smiled gently.

Liv looked from the dance floor back to Robby and Jack. Her eyes gleamed.

“Do either of you dance?” Liv asked.

Robby looked at the crowd like it had personally disappointed him. “Not voluntarily.” 

Jack did not even look away from you. “No.” 

You lifted your brows. “Just no?”

Jack’s eyes stayed steady on yours. “Just no.”

You smiled like that answer had not bothered you at all. 

“Okay,” you said.

Jack’s gaze narrowed. That was worse than if you had argued.

Liv looped her arm through yours. “Their loss.”

Robby’s eyes followed the movement before he could stop himself. Liv noticed, and her mouth curved as she turned away. You let her pull you toward the dance floor, aware of Jack behind you with every step. You did not look back right away.

You gave him time to wonder if you would.

The music changed as you and Liv found space in the crowd, something heavier now, slower through the bass. Bodies moved around you, warm and close, the lights cutting over the floor in flashes of purple and blue.

Liv leaned toward your ear. “He said no like he thought that was going to help him.”

You laughed, letting the beat settle into your body. “He’s optimistic.”

Liv’s eyes flicked past your shoulder. “He’s watching.”

Your stomach tightened. You did not turn yet. “Already?”

Liv smiled. “He never stopped.”

That should not have done what it did to you. It did anyway. You let your eyes close for half a second, your body finding the music as Liv moved with you. The club was loud enough to blur the edges of everything, but somehow you could still feel Jack across the room like a hand at the back of your neck.

You turned with the beat, slowly. Not too much. Just enough.

Your eyes found him over the moving bodies. Jack was still in the booth, still trying to look like a disciplined man. But his jaw was tight, his glass untouched, his gaze fixed on you like looking away had stopped being an option.

Good.

You wanted him to look. You wanted him to regret saying no. You wanted that careful mouth to go rough and that controlled hand to finally find your waist.

Jack watched you turn away from him again. His hand tightened around his glass. He told himself not to look lower. He did. Your hips moved with the music, easy and unhurried, the denim hugging you just right when you shifted closer to Liv. You laughed at something she said, tipping your head toward her, and now the heat of the room had touched you properly, a thin shine catching at your throat, your collarbone, the line of your chest beneath the red top.

Jack swallowed. Fuck. This was worse. Across the room had been bad. Up close had been worse.

But this, watching you dance after he had refused you, watching you move like you knew exactly what he had denied himself, was going to kill him.

His mind went right back where it had no business going. 

Your hips under his hands. His fingers digging into denim. Your body pulled back against his. Your breath catching when he pressed his mouth to your neck and fucked you from behind, slow enough to make you impatient, hard enough to make that confident little smile disappear.

He wondered what sounds you would make. Whether you would try to be quiet. Whether you would moan his name like you had tested it earlier, only softer, messier, ruined.

Jack’s jaw clenched.

He looked down at his drink like a better man might be hiding at the bottom of it. 

Beside him, Robby had gone quiet. That was never a good sign.

Jack did not look over. “Don’t.”

Robby exhaled through his nose. “Brother.”

Jack’s eyes cut toward him. “No.”

Robby was staring at Liv. Liv danced like she knew she was being watched and had no intention of rewarding him too quickly for it. She moved with cool, sharp confidence, black dress skimming her thighs, leather jacket slipping off one shoulder as she leaned toward you with a smile.

Robby dragged a hand over his mouth.

Jack said, “No.”

Robby picked up his drink. “Don’t hate me.”

Jack’s expression flattened. “Fuck no.”

Robby downed the rest of his drink.

Jack sat up slightly. “Robby.”

Robby set the empty glass down and stood. “I’m weak.”

Jack looked at him like he had betrayed the country. “You’re pathetic.”

Robby smoothed a hand down the front of his shirt. “Both can be true.”

Jack watched him step away from the booth with open disgust.

On the dance floor, Liv’s eyes lifted over your shoulder. Her mouth curved. 

“Brown Eyes is moving,” Liv said.

You turned just enough to look. Robby was making his way through the crowd, focused on Liv like the rest of the club had become background noise. Your gaze slid past him.

Jack was still in the booth, still watching you. Still pretending he was not dying there. Your eyes met his across the room. You raised one brow. Barely. But Jack saw it.

Your look said, Really?

Jack looked down at his drink. Robby had already abandoned him. You were still watching. Your brow remained lifted, your mouth curved with the kind of challenge that made every responsible thought in his head take one careful step back.

Jack muttered, “Fuck.”

Then he downed his drink.

He set the glass on the table with more control than he felt and pushed to his feet. Across the room, your smile changed. Smaller. Hotter. Victorious. Jack saw that too. His eyes narrowed.

Then he pointed one finger at you as he started toward the dance floor.

A warning. A reprimand. A promise.

You smiled wider.

Jack’s mouth tightened like that had not helped him at all. It had not. He kept walking.

You did not move toward him. You made him come all the way to you. The crowd shifted around him, bodies moving between you in flashes, but Jack’s eyes stayed locked on yours like the rest of the room had become an inconvenience.

Robby reached Liv first. He slid into her space with the confidence of a man who had decided shame was not useful to him. Liv did not stop dancing. She looked up at him, mouth curved, eyes bright beneath the shifting lights.

Robby stopped in front of her. “Changed my mind.”

Liv’s eyebrows lifted. “That was quick.”

Robby’s gaze moved over her face, then dropped briefly to her mouth before returning to her eyes. “You looked persuasive.”

Liv smiled. “And here I thought you didn’t dance.”

Robby stepped closer, close enough that his voice lowered for her alone. “I’m versatile.”

Liv laughed once, low and pleased, and let him put a hand on her hip.

You barely caught it.

Because Jack had reached you, and the air changed.

That was the only way you knew how to name it. The club was still loud. The bass still moved through the floor. Santos was somewhere behind you, yelling over the music, and Liv was beside you, looking entirely too pleased with the consequences of her own actions.

But Jack stopped in front of you, and the noise thinned. He did not say anything. Neither did you. He stood close enough for you to see the heat in his eyes, close enough to catch the faint scent of whiskey and clean soap underneath the club air. His hand was empty now, his glass abandoned at the booth, his fingers flexing once at his side before going still.

That should not have made your stomach flip. It did. You let your hips move with the next beat, slower than before, your eyes still on his. Jack’s jaw tightened. And there it was. The answer.

He had not come over because he wanted to dance. He had come over because sitting still had finally become impossible.

You smiled, and Jack’s eyes narrowed. His gaze moved over your face, then lower for one brief, controlled second before coming back up.

The look was not innocent.

You shifted closer by half a step. Jack did not back away. The music dragged warm and heavy around you.

A few feet away, Robby bent his head toward Liv’s ear. Whatever he said made her grin and shake her head, as if she were refusing him and enjoying it at the same time. Liv’s fingers touched the front of his shirt once, light and warning. Robby looked down at her hand. Then back at her. His mouth curved.

Bad decisions were forming quickly over there.

Jack noticed too, just barely. His eyes cut toward Robby and Liv for half a second, then came back to you with something dry and resigned in his face. 

You tilted your head.

Jack shook his head softly. “Of course.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself. The sound caught him. You saw it land. His expression shifted by a fraction, like your laugh had done something even worse to him than your body had.

You moved with the music again, and Jack’s eyes dropped to your waist. This time, he let them stay. Heat moved through you so fast it almost made you miss the beat. His gaze lifted, and you looked at his hands. Then back up at his face.

Jack saw that too. His voice came low beneath the music. “You want something?”

Your pulse kicked. You could have played innocent, but you did not. You let your eyes drop to his hands again, then lifted them slowly. Jack’s jaw flexed. His attention sharpened until it felt like his focus had become a physical thing, warm and heavy against your skin.

You said, “You came all the way over here to keep your hands to yourself?”

Jack stared at you. For one second, he looked almost offended by how well that landed. Then his mouth curved. Barely. Dangerously.

“No,” Jack said.

Your breath caught.

His hand came to your hip. Just one. Careful at first, warm and solid. Heavy enough to make every thought in your head trip over itself. His palm settled against the side of your jeans, fingers spread just above the curve of your hip, respectful enough to be infuriating and intimate enough to make your body go hot from the inside out.

You felt every inch of his hand. Jack felt your reaction. His eyes sharpened. You hated him for noticing. You loved him for noticing.

The song shifted lower, bass pulsing through your feet, and you let your body move into the shape of his hand. Jack’s fingers tightened once. Not much, but enough.

Your breath changed, and his eyes dropped to your mouth. You smiled like you were handling this better than you were. Jack looked like he knew better.

“That all you’ve got?” you asked.

Jack’s thumb moved once against your hip, and your stomach tightened.

His mouth barely curved. “You in a hurry?”

You held his gaze. “You took a while getting over here.”

Jack leaned in just enough for his voice to reach you beneath the music. Not close enough to touch anywhere else. Not close enough to give you what you wanted. Close enough to ruin the air between you.

“I was making a bad decision,” Jack said.

Your pulse stumbled. You looked at his mouth before you could stop yourself. Jack saw it. His hand stayed at your hip. Only there. Nowhere else.

That almost made it worse.

“You always take that long?” you asked.

Jack’s eyes stayed on yours. “Depends on the decision.”

You smiled slowly. “And this one?”

His gaze moved over your face. Slow. Controlled. Hot enough to make your skin feel too tight.

“This one,” Jack said, “got complicated.”

You breathed out a laugh. “Because of the dancing?”

Jack glanced down at your body. Then his eyes came back to yours.

“No,” Jack said.

Your mouth went dry. Jack’s hand flexed at your hip again, still the only place he was touching you, still careful enough to make you want to scream.

“Because I’m old enough to know better,” Jack said.

You should have stepped back, but you didn’t.  Instead, you moved a little closer, not touching his chest, not pressing into him, just taking one more inch of space until his hand had to settle more fully at your hip. His jaw tightened.

You looked up at him. “That working for you?”

Jack stared at you for one beat. Then another.

“No,” Jack said. The answer hit low. 

A few feet away, Liv laughed.  You looked past Jack’s shoulder. Liv had her back pressed to Robby’s chest now, her leather jacket loose off one shoulder, her head tipped slightly to the side as he leaned down to say something near her ear.

No. Not say.

His mouth brushed her neck. Just once. Light enough to pass for a whisper if anyone wanted to lie about it. Liv’s smile went slow. Robby’s hand settled at her hip, and she moved back against him with the beat like she had already decided exactly where the night was going.

You huffed a soft laugh. Jack followed your gaze. His expression went flat immediately.

You looked back at him, amused. “They’re leaving together.”

Jack’s eyes returned to yours. “You know that from one look?”

You glanced over again. Liv had turned her face just enough for Robby to speak against her ear, and Robby looked entirely too pleased with the angle he had been given. His fingers flexed at her hip. Liv’s hand came up, sliding briefly into his hair before dropping again like she had remembered there were people around.

You looked at Jack. “I know her.”

Jack’s eyes flicked toward them again. Robby’s mouth brushed Liv’s neck a second time. Jack sighed through his nose. “Unfortunately, I know him.”

Your laugh slipped out before you could stop it. Jack looked at you when you laughed. Not at your mouth this time. At your whole face. The attention landed differently. Warmer. Still dangerous, but warmer. You felt your smile soften. Jack noticed that too. His hand at your hip gentled for half a second before settling again.

Then Liv appeared beside you, cheeks warm from dancing, lipstick still perfect, expression entirely too calm for someone who had just had Robby’s mouth at her neck. Robby came with her, one step behind, his hand resting at the small of her back like he had earned the privilege recently and intended to keep it until told otherwise.

Jack looked at him. Robby looked back. Neither of them said anything for half a second.

Then Jack’s mouth flattened. “Really?”

Robby lifted one shoulder. “Apparently.”

Liv turned to you and smiled brightly. “We’re leaving.”

You looked at her. “Shocking.”

Liv’s smile widened. “I know. No one could have predicted this.”

Robby glanced at Jack. “I was blindsided.”

Jack stared at him. “Were you?”

Robby’s mouth curved. “No.”

Liv squeezed your hand once. “I’ll text you when we get there.”

You held her gaze. “And location stays on.”

Liv nodded. “Already is.”

You looked at Robby. Robby’s brows lifted slightly, but he did not look offended. Good.

You smiled sweetly. “Bring her back alive, Brown Eyes.”

Robby’s grin came slow. Jack’s eyes flicked to you. Liv laughed. 

Robby looked between you and Liv. “Brown Eyes?”

Liv patted his chest. “Before I knew your name.”

Robby looked pleased with himself. “And now?”

Liv looked him over once. “Still accurate.”

Robby’s grin widened.

Jack closed his eyes briefly. “Jesus Christ.”

Liv leaned in and kissed your cheek. “Be smart.”

You said, “You too.”

Liv’s eyes flicked toward Jack. Then her smile turned evil.

“Make Forearms work for it,” Liv said.

You froze. Jack’s gaze sharpened. Robby’s grin appeared immediately. “Forearms?”

Liv tugged him toward the edge of the dance floor before you could stop her. “Goodnight.”

Robby followed her, still laughing. Jack did not say anything. You did not look at him. That felt safer. 

Behind you, Robby called, “Good luck, brother.”

Jack’s voice came flat and dry beside you. “Fuck off.”

Robby’s reply came without missing a beat. “That’s the plan.”

Liv’s laughter disappeared into the crowd with Robby’s.

For a second, you did not move. The music filled the space they left behind, bass low and heavy, lights cutting over the dance floor in deep blue flashes. Jack stood beside you. Too quiet. Too close. You did not look at him. That felt safer.

His voice came low near your ear. “Forearms?”

Your eyes closed. “Don’t.”

Jack stepped closer. Not touching. Not yet.

“No,” Jack said. “I think I’m going to need to hear about that.”

You turned your head and found him watching you with the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth. It was not a full smile. That would have been easier. This was worse. This was Jack, knowing he had caught you and deciding to enjoy it.

“It was before I knew your name,” you said.

His gaze held yours. “And now?”

Your eyes dropped before you could stop them. Down his shoulder. His arm. The bare forearm below the sleeve of his black T-shirt. Jack saw it. His mouth barely moved.

“Still?” Jack asked.

You looked back up at him, but the damage was done. Jack’s eyes were darker now, amused and heated in a way that made your stomach tighten. You could have made a joke. You could have lied.

Instead, your hand moved. Your fingers found his forearm. Jack went still. Not completely. Not enough for anyone else to notice. But you felt it beneath your fingertips, the faint lock of muscle under warm skin as your touch settled over him. You traced one finger slowly down the inside of his forearm, following the raised line of a vein toward his wrist.

Jack’s hand flexed at his side. Your pulse kicked. His voice came lower. “That an answer?”

You kept your eyes on your finger because looking at him felt like a mistake.

“Maybe,” you said.

Jack’s jaw shifted. “Maybe?”

Your fingertip paused over his pulse. It jumped. Barely. But you felt it. Your eyes lifted to his. His control looked different now. Thinner. Hotter.

You said, “You heard the nickname.”

Jack stepped closer, and the heat of him cut through the club air. “I heard it.” 

Your finger was still resting against his wrist. His pulse beat beneath your touch. Steady. Not as steady as he looked. You smiled.  His eyes narrowed slightly, but his mouth curved.

“Careful,” Jack said.

Your hand stayed on his arm. “You keep saying that.”

Jack’s gaze dropped to your mouth. This time, he did not pretend it was an accident.

“You keep needing to hear it,” Jack said.

The music shifted into something slower. Heavier. The kind of song that gave people permission to make bad choices and call it dancing. Jack looked at you. You looked back.

For a second, neither of you moved.

Then you lifted your brows. “I thought you didn’t dance.”

Jack’s mouth barely curved. “I changed my mind.”

Your stomach dipped. You should have said something smart. You should have made him work for it. Instead, you stepped closer. Jack’s hand found your hip again. This time, when your body moved with the beat, his moved with yours.

Barely at first. A shift. A sway. A controlled little give that should not have felt as intimate as it did. But then your chest brushed his. Just once. Your breath caught. Jack’s hand tightened. The contact disappeared with the next beat, then came back again, slow and warm and impossible to ignore.

Your body against his.

His body answering yours.

The space between you narrowed until dancing stopped feeling like the right word for it.

Jack looked down at you, and the heat in his eyes made your skin feel too tight.

You wondered what it would feel like if there were nothing between you. No denim. No shirt. No careful inch of public restraint. Just his skin against yours, sweat slicking between your bodies, his hands dragging you closer instead of holding himself back, his mouth rough at your neck while you moved together with nothing left to pretend.

Jack’s thumb pressed into your hip like he had followed the thought somehow.

Like he knew exactly where your mind had gone.

Your eyes lifted to his. His jaw was tight. His control looked thinner now. More fragile. You were not the only one imagining it.

Jack was trying not to think about your body under his.

Trying not to think about your thighs spread around him, your back arching off his bed, your voice breaking because careful had finally become impossible. He was trying not to picture your hands in his hair, your mouth near his ear, telling him exactly how you liked to be fucked.

Harder. Slower. There.

Jack’s jaw clenched. Fuck. He wanted to know. He wanted to hear it in your voice. He wanted to feel the exact second your confidence turned into begging, wanted your body pinned beneath his while you asked for more like he had not already lost his mind giving it to you.

Your hand moved over his forearm again. Slow. Deliberate. You traced the raised line of that vein toward his wrist and felt his pulse jump under your finger. Jack’s eyes darkened.

You smiled softly. “You okay?”

Jack stared at you. “No.” 

The answer went straight through you. Your smile faded. Not because you were scared. Because you felt it too. Because the careful press of his hand at your hip had turned into something impossible, something that made you wonder what he would feel like inside you. Whether he would go still at first, jaw tight, eyes fixed on yours while he tried to let you set the pace. Whether he would let you climb on top of him and take what you wanted.

Whether he would last.

You pictured it too clearly. Your knees on either side of his hips. Your hands braced on his chest. Jack beneath you, watching you like restraint had become a physical ache, letting you move until his patience snapped and his hands found your hips. Guiding you. Moving you. Taking over because watching you ride him had finally broken whatever discipline he had left.

Your breath changed.

Jack heard it.

His hand slid from your hip to the small of your back, still decent enough for the dance floor, still controlled enough to count as restraint. But it brought you closer. Fully this time. Your body pressed against his, and Jack inhaled once, sharp and quiet.

There. There it was. The thing both of you had been circling all night.

The heat. The shape. The fit.

The terrible, perfect knowledge that this would be worse without clothes.

Better. Worse. Impossible.

Jack leaned down until his mouth was near your ear. His voice came rough beneath the music.

“If I stop being careful,” Jack said, “I’m not stopping here.”

The words moved through you like heat. Your fingers tightened around his forearm. Jack felt it. His hand spread wider against your back, not forcing, not taking, just holding you close enough that your next breath had nowhere to go except against him.

You turned your face slightly toward his. Your cheek almost brushed his. Almost.

“Who said I wanted you to stop?” you asked.

Jack went still. You felt the question land in his body. His control did not disappear. Not yet. But something in it shifted. Something low and dangerous unlocked behind his eyes. He drew back just enough to look at you. The lights moved over his face, cutting along the hard line of his jaw, catching on the heat in his eyes.

“You know what you’re asking for?” Jack asked.

Your pulse kicked. You did not know all of it. Not really. Not the exact weight of him. Not the sound of his voice in a quiet room. Not how his hands would feel when he stopped using restraint like armor. But you knew enough. You knew you wanted him closer. You knew you wanted his mouth. You knew you wanted to hear him lose that careful tone and find something rougher underneath it.

You looked at him. “I’m asking you to dance.”

Jack’s mouth barely curved. It should have looked amused. It looked hungry.

“That what we’re calling this?” Jack asked.

Your body moved with his again, slow and close, the friction of fabric and heat making your thoughts blur around the edges. Your hand slid from his forearm to his wrist, your fingers curling lightly there. His pulse beat hard beneath your touch.

“For now,” you said.

Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth. The space between you changed again. Thinner now. Hotter. His hand at your back pressed once, just enough to guide you with the beat, and your body followed before your mind could catch up.

You saw him notice that. The way you gave. The way you let him move you. The way your breath went shallow when he took even that much control. Jack’s gaze lifted back to yours.

“There it is,” Jack said.

Your stomach tightened. “What?”

His thumb moved once against your back. Slow. Deliberate.

“The part of you that likes being told what to do,” Jack said.

Your breath caught so sharply you could not hide it. Jack’s eyes darkened. You should have denied it. You should have laughed. You should have done anything except stand there with your hand wrapped around his wrist, and your body pressed to his, letting him feel the truth of it.

But Jack already knew. His mouth came closer to your ear again.

“You can argue if you want,” Jack said. “I’ll still know.”

Your eyes fluttered. “Cocky,” you said.

Jack’s hand tightened at your back. “Observant.” 

The word dragged over your skin. Your body moved with his again, and this time, Jack guided it. Not much. Nothing anyone else would notice. Just a subtle pressure at your back, a shift of his weight, a controlled movement that made you follow.

It should not have made you think of his bed. It did. It made you think of his hands on your hips again. Of him watching you from underneath, letting you think you were in charge until your rhythm started to falter. Until your thighs shook. Until you got too needy and impatient and he finally sat up, pulled you down hard, and did the work himself.

Your hand tightened on his wrist.

Jack’s voice lowered. “Where did you just go?”

Your eyes snapped to his. He was watching you too closely. Too carefully. Too well.

“Nowhere,” you said.

Jack’s mouth curved. “Liar.”

The word should not have done anything to you. It did. You looked at his mouth. Jack looked at yours. The dance slowed until it was barely a dance at all. Just bodies close together. His hand at your back. Your fingers at his wrist. Your breaths tangling in the narrow space between you. The club was too loud. Too crowded. Too public.

And somehow none of that felt like enough to stop this.

Jack’s gaze dropped again, slower this time, to your mouth. Then your throat. Then back up.

When he spoke, his voice was rough. “You keep looking at my mouth.”

Your lips parted. Jack’s eyes tracked the movement. 

“You keep noticing,” you murmured.

His thumb pressed into your back. “Hard not to,” Jack said.

Your body swayed into his. His jaw flexed. For a second, you thought he might kiss you right there, in the middle of the dance floor, with Santos and Dana and everyone else somewhere in the crush of bodies around you.

For a second, you wanted him to.

Then Jack looked past you. Not away. Just enough to remember where you were. His restraint came back visibly, and you hated it. You hated how much you liked it too. Because it was not rejection. It was control. It was him wanting you badly enough to need it. Jack looked back at you. His hand slid from your back to your hip again, slower than necessary, like he needed one more second of you before he made himself behave.

“Not here,” Jack said.

Your stomach dropped. For one sick second, you thought he meant no. Then his thumb moved once against your hip, and his eyes dropped to your mouth like leaving it alone was hurting him.

Oh. Not here. Not no. You swallowed.

“Then where?” you asked.

Jack went very still. His gaze lifted to yours. The heat there made the answer unnecessary. He gave it anyway.

“My place,” Jack said.

Your breath caught. The music kept moving around you, heavy and careless, but Jack had gone still in front of you. Waiting. Not assuming. Not taking the answer from the look on your face, even though you knew he could read it.

You held his gaze. “Only if you’re sure.”

Jack looked at you like that was the last decent thought either of you had left.

“I’m sure,” Jack said.

His eyes moved over your face, focused and sober enough to make your pulse trip for an entirely different reason.

“You drive here?” Jack asked.

You shook your head. “Liv and I Ubered.”

Jack nodded once. Decided. Simple. “I’ll drive.” 

Your stomach dipped. It should not have sounded like that. Practical. Certain. Like he had already made room for you in the rest of his night.

“Okay,” you said.

His hand slid from your hip to the small of your back. Steady. Warm. Guiding, not pulling.

“Come on,” Jack said.

You went with him. The walk out of the club felt longer than it should have. Jack stayed close at your side, his hand at your back as he guided you through the moving bodies, through the pulse of music and spilled neon light, past the bar where Dana glanced over and immediately looked like she had made a very informed decision not to ask.

Santos saw you, and her eyes widened. Her mouth opened. Dana caught her by the arm and said something sharply into her ear. Santos shut her mouth. Barely. Jack did not look over. You did. Santos lifted both thumbs with the subtlety of a fire alarm. You pressed your lips together and faced forward again before you laughed.

Jack leaned closer without slowing down. “Do I want to know?”

“No,” you said.

His mouth curved faintly. “Figured.”

Then the door opened, and the night air hit your skin. Cool. Sharp. A shock after the heat of the club. The music dulled behind you as the door fell shut, becoming nothing more than a low thump through the walls. The parking lot was dimmer, quieter, broken by streetlights and the distant hum of traffic. Your skin felt too warm. Your lips felt too empty. Every place Jack had touched you seemed to remember the shape of his hand.

He kept his palm at your back as he walked you toward his truck. Not low. Not wandering. Still careful. Still Jack. That somehow made it worse. The truck sat near the edge of the lot, dark and solid beneath the yellow wash of a streetlight. Jack stopped beside the passenger door and finally let his hand fall away from your back.

Careful again.

You turned to face him. He had his keys in one hand, his jaw tight, his eyes on you like the walk outside had not cooled him down at all. If anything, the quiet made it worse. There was no music to hide behind now. No crowd. No Liv and Robby. No Santos yelling from the dance floor.

Just Jack. Just you. Just the space between you, shrinking by the second.

You swallowed. “Still think this is a bad decision?”

Jack looked at you for a long moment. His eyes dropped to your mouth. Then lifted.

“Worse than I’d like,” Jack said.

Your stomach flipped. You smiled before you could stop yourself. “That didn’t answer the question.”

“No,” Jack said.

He stepped closer. Your back met the truck door. The metal was cool through your top, and Jack was warm everywhere he came near you. He did not crowd you all at once. He gave you one last breath of space, one last chance to step away, one last second to pretend either of you was going to make a different choice.

You did not move.

Jack’s hand came to your jaw. Firm. Certain.

Then his mouth was on yours.

Not polite. Not careful. Not like the man who had spent all night pretending he knew better.

He kissed you like restraint had been a punishment and this was the first second of relief.

Your hand caught his shirt, fingers curling in the fabric as your body arched into him. Jack made a rough sound against your mouth and pressed closer, one hand braced beside your head against the truck, the other sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck.

His thumb angled under your chin.

He tilted your face exactly where he wanted it.

The thought should not have made you weak.

It did.

You opened for him, and Jack took the invitation with a low sound that went straight through you. His mouth turned hotter, deeper, his tongue sliding against yours until your grip tightened in his shirt and your knees threatened to become a problem.

Jack pressed you more firmly into the door.

Not hard enough to hurt.

Hard enough to make sure you felt him.

His body lined up with yours, solid and warm, one thigh shifting between yours just enough to make your breath break against his mouth.

You felt him smile. Barely.

The bastard.

You nipped his lower lip.

Jack’s hand tightened at your neck.

“There she is,” Jack murmured against your mouth.

Heat rushed through you.

You pulled him back in.

He came willingly.

Too willingly.

His hand left the truck and found your waist, then your hip, then the curve of you like he had been trying not to touch you all night and had finally run out of reasons. His palm dragged over denim, fingers spreading, gripping once when you rocked into him without meaning to.

Jack broke the kiss on a sharp breath.

His forehead hovered near yours. “Careful.” 

You were beginning to hate that word. You were beginning to love it.

Your hand slid up his chest, over his shoulder, then down his arm until your fingers found his forearm again.

Jack went still.

You traced the vein there, slower this time.

Meaner.

His eyes darkened.

You looked up at him. “You first.”

Jack stared at you.

Then he kissed you again.

Harder.

Hungrier.

His hand slid to the small of your back and dragged you closer until there was no polite space left between you, no careful inch, no pretending this was anything other than what it was. Your body pressed into his, and the sound he made into your mouth was so rough you felt it in your stomach.

You wanted him inside you.

The thought arrived fully formed, sharp and desperate.

You wanted his control turned loose.

You wanted his hands on your hips, moving you, guiding you, taking over.

You wanted to hear that careful voice go ruined.

Jack’s mouth moved to the corner of yours, then your jaw, then just beneath it.

Your head tipped back against the truck before you could stop it.

Jack froze for half a second.

Then his mouth touched your throat.

Once.

Open and hot.

Your breath caught so sharply it almost sounded like his name.

Jack heard it.

His hand tightened at your waist, and his mouth brushed your neck again, slower this time, like he wanted to learn exactly where the sound had come from.

“Jack,” you breathed.

He pulled back like the name had hit him in the chest. His eyes were dark. His mouth was wet. His breathing was no longer even.

Good.

You wanted him like that. You wanted him worse.

Jack looked down at you, pinned between his body and the truck, and something in his face shifted.

Not regret. Not hesitation. Control. Barely. Painfully.

He closed his eyes for half a second.

“Fuck,” Jack said.

You tried to catch your breath. “What?”

Jack opened his eyes. His hand was still at your waist. His body was still too close. His gaze dropped to your mouth, then dragged back to your eyes like the movement cost him something.

“We need to go,” Jack said.

Your fingers tightened in his shirt. “We are going.”

His mouth twitched, but it did not become a smile.

“No,” Jack said, voice rough. “We need to go now.”

Your pulse kicked. Jack leaned in until his mouth brushed your ear.

“Because I’m trying to do this properly,” Jack said. “And if you keep making those sounds, I’m going to fuck you in the back seat.”

Your entire body went hot.

Jack pulled back just enough to look at you.

His jaw was tight. His restraint was hanging by a thread, and you could see every inch of it.

“Understood?” Jack asked.

You swallowed. Then, because apparently you had no survival instinct left, you looked toward the back seat. 

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t.”

Your mouth curved.

Jack’s hand tightened once at your waist. His voice dropped. “Get in the truck.”

You looked back at him. “Bossy.”

Jack opened the passenger door behind you. His gaze stayed on yours.

“You have no idea,” Jack said.

You looked up. Not guilty — you never looked guilty — but something close to it. "I've been here for three days. Besides, the doctor said you're fine. Also the President asked me directly to go with him."

Jack opened his mouth. Closed it.

The President.

He couldn't fight that. There was absolutely no universe in which that was a reasonable argument to counter. He looked back at his book. "Fine."

A knock at the door saved both of you from the silence that followed. It opened without waiting for an answer — Robby's particular brand of entry — and he leaned against the frame with the expression of a man who had been looking forward to this moment.

"Look at that," Robby said, taking in Jack flat in the hospital bed, book in hand, thoroughly stationary. "The most restless man I know, horizontal and staying that way." He shook his head with theatrical sadness. "Adrenaline junkies really do crash hard."

"Tell him," you said, already sliding your phone into your jacket pocket. "Oh, it feels good not being a patient this time. "By the way, Robby, do you want new medical tools? Japan has a lot."

Robby blinked, he looked at Jack. Then looked back at you. "It's your call."

"Great." You pressed a brief kiss to Jack's temple, your hand resting on his shoulder for just a second. "I'll bring more toys."

And then you were gone. The door clicked behind you. The room resumed its suspended quiet.

Robby stayed where he was, listening to the sound of heels on the corridor floor until they faded. Then he turned to Jack with a specific expression. "Did she realize Japanese medical equipment runs to millions?"

"Don't," Jack said. "That logic doesn't resonate with her."

Robby huffed a quiet laugh and pushed off the doorframe, pulling a chair closer to the bed. He sat down, the amusement settling into something more genuine. "She never left your side," he said. "Three days, Jack. I had to practically order her to sleep."

"I know," Jack said.

He did know. He had woken up twice in the night and she had been there both times — not hovering, just present. Working quietly on her laptop or simply sitting, like being nearby was something she had decided and didn't need to explain. He had watched her for a moment each time before closing his eyes again. He hadn't told her he'd noticed. He wasn't sure why.

Robby huffed a quiet laugh and pushed off the doorframe, pulling a chair closer to the bed. He sat down, the amusement settling into something more genuine. "She never left your side," he said. "Three days, Jack. I had to practically order her to sleep."

"I know," Jack said.

He did know. He had woken up twice in the night and you had been there both times — not hovering, just present. Working quietly on your laptop or simply sitting, like being nearby was something you had decided and didn't need to explain. He had watched you for a moment each time before closing his eyes again. He hadn't told you he'd noticed. He wasn't sure why.

Robby reached into his coat and pulled out a folded set of papers. "Speaking of which." He held them out. "Administrative update. Everyone's redoing emergency contacts and next of kin. Yours are blank."

Jack took the papers without comment.

Robby stood, patting the back of the chair. "Oh — and before I forget. You're not allowed to work. Not for at least three weeks."

Jack looked up from the papers. "Hmm."

"I thought you'd fight me on that."

"I promised her I wouldn't work for a while," Jack said. "And I'm going to try golf again."

Robby stared at him. "You hate golf."

"Yeah," Jack said simply. He looked back down at the papers.

Robby shook his head slowly. "She's done something to you, Abbott." He said it without any edge, just quiet observation. "Something permanent."

He left without waiting for an answer.

Jack sat with the papers in his lap for a moment. Then he uncapped his pen and started filling them out. Name, position, department — the routine information moved quickly. He turned the page.

Next of kin.

He stopped.

The line sat there, blank and official, and he looked at it for longer than made sense. He thought about the hallway outside the OR. The way Robby had said your girl is here and the words had reached him through the fog of blood loss like something physical — a rope thrown into dark water. He thought about the limits that existed because of what you weren't, technically, legally, on paper.

If something happened again — another callout, another surgery, another night where it all went wrong — you would be back in that hallway. Waiting. Powerful enough to move governments and helpless in the one moment it mattered because there was no form with your name on it.

He looked at the blank line.

Your name should be here, he thought. Your name should be the first one written.

He finished the rest of the form. Left next of kin blank for now. Folded the papers and set them on the nightstand.

Outside the window Pittsburgh was gray and ordinary and moving without him. Somewhere above it, a private jet was climbing toward Japan.

He picked up his book. Didn't read it.

He had three weeks and a golf course he hated and a next of kin line he couldn't fill in yet.

He thought about that for a long time.

The next morning Robby appeared in the doorway, hands in his pockets.

"She bought the Pitt a hinotori system," he said.

Jack looked up from his book.

"Japanese surgical robot," Robby clarified. "Medicaroid. The director got the shipping confirmation an hour ago. He's been sitting very still ever since." A pause. "And an AI endoscopy suite. For the ER specifically."

Jack said nothing.

"The endoscopy system isn't even widely available in the US yet," Robby continued, with the measured tone of a man reading from a fact sheet he was still processing. "She apparently went directly to the manufacturer. In Tokyo." He paused. "While accompanying a head of state."

Jack looked at him for a moment. Then back to his book. "She mentioned the equipment there was good."

Robby stared at him. "That's what you got from that."

"Robby."

"Yeah."

"She bought it for the ER," Jack said quietly. Not a question.

Robby was quiet for a second. "The endoscopy suite, yeah. Specifically." He watched Jack's face. "She didn't tell you."

"No."

"Hm." Robby pushed off the doorframe. "You should probably figure out that next of kin form."

Jack didn't answer. He looked back at his book.

He didn't read it.

**********

When He Helped You Make A Business Deal

Jack had been following you around for two weeks.

In those two weeks he had probably covered more ground than most people did in a year. Singapore on Monday, back by Thursday, Dubai the following week, and somewhere in between a twenty minute video call conducted from the back of a moving car that apparently closed a nine figure deal. Your schedule was insane. He worked twelve hour night shifts in a trauma bay and your schedule made his look leisurely.

But Greg had pulled him aside on day three with the quiet satisfaction of a man whose prayers had been answered. "The schedule is better since you've been here," he said. "There's time to eat now. Actual meals. And she slept eight hours last Tuesday. Eight. I almost cried."

Jack had said nothing. But he started showing up earlier.

He also learned quickly that almost none of your real business happened inside an office. The office was for paperwork and appearances. The actual work happened elsewhere. Golf courses, private clubs, invitation-only dinners where the menu was secondary to the conversation. Your world operated on proximity and leisure dressed up as relaxation.

Like today.

"I hate this," you said, looking at the building in front of you.

Jack looked at the sign above the entrance. A private shooting range. Clay shooting, from the look of the equipment visible through the glass. "Why? I thought you liked hunting."

"I don't."

Greg appeared at your other shoulder without looking up from his tablet. "She can shoot you dead with a balance sheet from three continents away. With an actual gun?" He tilted his head toward the sky with the expression of a man searching for diplomatic phrasing. "I believe the last bullet she fired is still out there somewhere. Wandering. Lost. Looking for purpose."

"Shut up, Greg," you said.

Jack looked at you. The specific look of a man filing away new information with great interest. "That's why you mentioned the hunting week with the King of Britain."

"I'm bad at sports," you said, with the dignity of someone refusing to elaborate.

"Most sports," Greg murmured.

"Greg."

"Yes, boss."

You turned to Jack and pointed through the glass at a broad, silver haired man already positioned at the range, waiting. "That man has been making fun of my aim for three years. Every single time." You looked at Jack. "Could you do it for me?"

Jack looked at the range. Then at you. "Of course." He straightened slightly, something shifting in his posture. "Let's shut him up."

The three of you walked in together.

Your business partner turned at the sound of the door, his face opening into a wide, familiar grin when he saw you. He was the kind of man who filled a room without trying, the sort that had shaken hands with presidents and still preferred to conduct business outdoors. "Ah. Trying to beat your previous record?"

"Not today," you said smoothly. "I hurt my fingers." You held up your hand as evidence, the picture of regret. It was an absolute lie and everyone in your immediate vicinity knew it. "My boyfriend will be shooting for me."

Your business partner's eyebrows rose with genuine interest. He looked at Jack with the assessing curiosity of a man who had spent years wondering what kind of person had managed to become important to you. "So. Finally I meet the famous surgeon boyfriend." He extended a hand and Jack shook it. "I heard they're good with their hands." He held out the gun with a grin. "Show me what you've got, doc."

Jack took the gun.

He checked it first. Quietly, efficiently, with the automatic habit of someone for whom this was never casual. He tested the weight, checked the sight line, settled his stance. Not performing. Just preparing.

"One at a time to start," your business partner said to the operator, nodding toward the clay trap machine at the far end of the range.

"Throw five at once," Jack said.

The range went quiet.

Your business partner looked at him. "I'm sorry?"

"Five," Jack said. "At once."

Your business partner looked at you. You looked back at him with an expression that said you had absolutely no idea what was about to happen either, which was the truth.

"You're sure," the operator said.

"Do it," Jack said.

The operator shrugged and reset the machine. Everyone took a small, instinctive step back.

Five clay discs launched into the air simultaneously, scattering across different angles and heights, the mechanical crack of the trap cutting through the quiet of the range.

Jack fired.

Five shots. So fast the sound bled together into something almost continuous. Clean, precise, no hesitation between them.

Five fragments rained down.

Nobody spoke.

Greg started clapping. Slowly at first, then with genuine enthusiasm. "New record. And that concludes our portion of the meeting."

You stared at the empty sky where five clay targets had been approximately four seconds ago. Then you started clapping, and you were not a person who clapped easily.

Your business partner let out a laugh that came from somewhere genuine. He turned to you with an expression of absolute delight. "What kind of surgeon is he?"

"He's a war veteran," you said.

The man stopped laughing. He looked at Jack with an entirely different quality of attention. Then he stepped forward and shook Jack's hand again, slower this time. "You should have told me that before." A pause. "That is genuinely impressive. I mean that."

"Thank you," Jack said simply.

Your business partner shook his head, still smiling, and turned back toward the range. "Alright. I'll admit it. I'm not following that." He glanced at you sideways. "Your fingers healed fast."

"Remarkable recovery," you agreed.

He laughed again and waved you both toward the seating area. "Come on. Let's talk business. Your boyfriend just bought you at least an hour of goodwill."

You fell into step beside Jack. Quietly, low enough that only he could hear: "Thank you."

Jack handed the gun back to the operator. "You owe me a vegetable at dinner."

You gave him a look.

"One," he said. "Your choice."

You considered this. "Fine."

Greg, two steps behind you both, looked at the sky again. This time with an expression of complete peace. Then he leaned slightly toward Jack and lowered his voice. "You just helped close a billion dollar deal."

Jack stopped walking.

You were already three steps ahead, already in conversation with your business partner, already working.

"What?" Jack said.

"One clean shot at this range means ten minutes of his time," Greg said, with the calm of someone explaining a rule everyone else already knew. "That's the tradition. He established it years ago. Nobody gets more than that unless they impress him." He paused. "You shot five in one go. Nobody has ever done that." Another pause. "Ever."

Jack looked at you across the room. You were laughing at something the man had said, easy and genuine, the meeting already moving at a pace that suggested it would run well past ten minutes.

"So that's why she wanted me to shoot," Jack said.

"She didn't know it would go like that," Greg said honestly. "She just didn't want to embarrass herself again." He straightened his jacket. "The billion dollar part was you."

Jack stood there for a moment.

He had thought it was a simple favor. A business lunch dressed up as a day at the range. The kind of thing her world did instead of conference rooms. He had picked up a gun because she asked him to and because shutting up a man who made fun of her for three years had seemed like reason enough.

He had not considered that five clay targets might be worth a billion dollars.

**************

The Time He Met Your Family (He Hates Them)

It wasn't planned.

The private jet had just landed in London, the car moving through the grey afternoon toward the hotel, when Greg looked up from his tablet with the specific expression of a man who had been waiting for the right moment and had decided this was it.

"Your cousin is getting married tomorrow," he said.

You looked up from your phone. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because if I told you earlier you wouldn't have come," Greg said simply. "And your father would have called me. For a long time. Loudly."

You looked at him for a long moment. Then you exhaled the sigh of a woman who had lost this particular battle before it started and knew it. "My aunt. Is she going?"

"She said she'll attend if you do," Greg said. "I've already ordered the dress. Doctor Abbott's suit. My suit." A brief pause. "And the makeup artist is booked for eight."

You looked at him.

"I also confirmed your seats at the family table," Greg added, returning to his tablet. "Next to your aunt. Away from the three cousins you don't like."

"Which three?"

"All of them, technically, but I've narrowed it to the worst three."

You hummed and looked back at your phone. The matter apparently settled in your mind, one way or another.

Jack watched this exchange from the seat beside you. He waited until Greg had gone back to typing. Then he asked, quietly, "Is this normal?"

You glanced at him. "Greg planning my life without telling me?"

"Greg planning your life without telling you and you accepting it."

You considered this for a second. "He's been doing it for four years. I just write the cheque." You turned a page on whatever document you were reading. "He always wins."

From the front seat Greg said, without looking up, "Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment," you said.

"I know," Greg said. "Thank you anyway."

Jack looked out the window at London moving past. Grey skies, familiar chaos, the kind of city that felt like it was always in the middle of something.

"Your father's side," he said.

"Yes."

"You don't like them."

"Most of them."

"But you're going."

You were quiet for a second. "My aunt will be there." Something in your voice shifted, just slightly. The professional register dropping a degree or two into something more honest. "She was close to my mother. She's the only one from that whole side who ever." You stopped. Started again. "She shows up. That's all. She just shows up."

Jack nodded. He didn't push.

The car moved through the city. Greg typed. You read. Jack watched the streets and thought about a woman who flew across the world for business without blinking but needed a reason — one specific aunt who showed up — to walk into a room full of her own family.

"What do I need to know?" he asked.

You looked at him.

"About the family," he said. "Before tomorrow."

Something crossed your face. Not quite surprise. Something softer than that. You lowered your phone.

"How long do you have?" you said.

"We're twenty minutes from the hotel."

You looked at Greg. "Greg. Brief him."

Greg straightened with the energy of a man who had been waiting for this exact assignment. He turned slightly in his seat, tablet already open.

"Right," he said. "So. The father's side. Here's what you need to know."

Jack settled back in his seat.

It was going to be a long twenty minutes.

***********

At The Wedding 

The church was beautiful in the way that only old money could produce — flowers along every pew, light coming through stained glass in warm fractured colors.

You and Jack sat toward the middle. Close enough to see clearly, far enough from both sides of the family to breathe.

At the altar your cousin stood in white, holding the hands of the man beside her. You studied him briefly. Steady. Unhurried. Different from the others. You had lost count of the engagements somewhere around the fourth one. But this felt different.

Good for her, you thought. Finally.

Beside you Jack went still in a specific way. You recognized it immediately.

Then, from three rows back, just loud enough to carry:

"Three months, I'm telling you."

"I say eight. He looks committed."

"Committed or not, fifty says they don't see a second anniversary."

"I'll raise you a hundred. One year maximum."

Quiet laughter. The sound of money changing hands during a wedding ceremony.

Jack turned to you slowly. "Did they just make a bet?"

"Yes," you said.

"On how long the marriage lasts."

"Yes."

"During the ceremony."

"It's tradition," you said. "It started after my father's third wedding." You kept your eyes forward. "I hate it."

Jack looked at the group once more. Then back at the altar. His jaw had that specific set to it — not anger exactly. Just a man filing something under wrong and leaving it there.

"The Pitt makes bets," he said quietly. "Not like this." He found it disrespectful. Making bets on someone's wedding day, in the middle of the ceremony, while the couple stood at the altar believing the people behind them were there to wish them well. 

He Meets Your Family

At the wedding reception, Jack met your aunt from your mother's side. Warmer than your father's family but with a different kind of intrusiveness — the kind that wraps nosiness in affection so you can't object without seeming rude.

She takes both of Jack's hands when she meets him, which visibly surprises him, and looks at him with the searching intensity of someone conducting an evaluation.

"So you're the doctor," she says. "She never brings anyone. Not once. Not in years."

"Auntie—" you start.

"I'm talking to him." She doesn't release Jack's hands. "Do you love her?"

The question lands in the middle of the conversation like a dropped glass. Around you, a few nearby relatives go slightly quiet.

Jack doesn't hesitate. Doesn't perform. Just looks at the aunt steadily and says "yes."

She studies him for another long moment. Then she releases his hands, pats them once, and says to you: "Keep him."

She walks away. You stare after her. Jack watches her go with something like genuine respect.

"I like her," he says.

"She's the only one," you looked at your aunt back. She actually doesn’t want to come here, but she’s here because of you. 

********

He saw your aunt really nice, but only her. Because the rest of them are… He saw why you don’t want to come within the first ten minutes.

"Is that really him? The doctor?" A short scoff. "I thought she was smarter than that."

You had heard it. Jack could tell by the specific quality of your stillness as you stepped into the corridor. You walked toward your cousin with an unhurried pleasant expression that didn't reach your eyes.

"Cousin," you said warmly.

He turned. Smiled. "I was just—"

"I know." You stopped in front of him. "I was thinking about you recently. About the race car team."

The smile began its retreat.

"Ten million," you said, conversationally. "No conditions. No timeline. No expected return." You tilted your head. "Do you know what I recorded it as internally?"

He said nothing.

"Charity," you said. "I watched ten million dollars finish fourteenth and filed it under charity and never mentioned it again. Not because I forgot. Because I decided you weren't worth the conversation."

You stepped closer. Your voice dropped.

"I have a favorite hobby. Finding a business that deserves to be taken apart and doing it so quietly the owner doesn't realize what happened until there's nothing left to sell." You held his gaze. "I have never pointed that at family. Family is a courtesy I extend by choice." Another step. "So the next time you want an opinion about who I bring into my world, ask yourself whether your current ventures could survive my full attention."

The corridor was very quiet.

Your cousin looked at Jack. Really looked this time. Not the dismissive scan but the look of a man recalculating everything. Jack sat with his coffee, watching with the calm of someone who knew exactly how this ended.

"I'll watch my words," your cousin said. Smaller than he intended.

You patted his shoulder once. Light. Final.

"Good. Very good."

But, it seems like your warning to stop looking down at Jack is still not clear enough. Your uncle found you during the cocktail hour, glass in hand, with the particular energy of a man who had been waiting to say something and had decided now was the moment.

"So," he said, looking Jack over with an undisguised assessment. "He's the one who made you cancel the meeting with the Prime Minister."

"Because he's my top priority," you said simply.

Jack heard it land before he had time to prepare for it. Something moved through his chest, quiet and immediate. You had said it the way you said everything that was simply true — without ceremony, without softening, without looking to see how it was received. Just a fact you had already decided on.

He kept his expression neutral. But he felt it.

Your other cousin found Jack near the drinks table forty minutes later.

He was the kind of man who wore his ambition loudly, the sort who treated every social event as a pitch opportunity and every new face as a potential investor. He had a startup. He always had a startup.

"I'm developing an AI system," he said, sliding into the space beside Jack with rehearsed casualness. "Hospital efficiency. Faster processing, smarter scheduling, reduced overhead." He smiled the smile of someone who had given this speech many times. "The kind of thing that could transform how a place like the Pitt operates."

Jack went still in a specific way.

Your cousin read the stillness as interest. He leaned in slightly, already calculating. If Jack was interested then perhaps you would be interested. The investment practically walked itself in.

"The ROI projections are significant," your cousin continued. "We're talking about real transformation. Smarter systems, better data, faster throughput—"

"Throughput," Jack said quietly.

"Exactly, faster patient—"

"You're not saving time," Jack said. His voice was level and unhurried, the voice he used when he had already assessed a situation completely. "You're clearing the schedule so the board can push five more patients into every shift. That's not efficiency. That's how you burn out a doctor." 

He tilted his head slightly. "And the patients? They're already being squeezed by insurance on every side. Now you add licensing fees on top of that. Then the hospital spends a fortune on cybersecurity to protect the database your system runs on." He paused. "You get richer. The hospital looks efficient on paper. And the patient gets a bill they can't afford at the end of it." A beat. "Don't call it care. It's just better math."

The space around them had gone quiet.

Your cousin stood very still with the expression of a man whose rehearsed speech had been taken apart with surgical precision and handed back to him in pieces.

Jack picked up his drink and took a calm sip.

You had caught the last half of it from three feet away. You looked at Jack with an expression you rarely wore in public. Genuine, unguarded surprise.

"How do you know all of that?" you said.

Jack glanced at you. "Being with you twenty four hours a day teaches you things."

From your left your aunt appeared, materializing the way she always did, at exactly the right moment. She looked at Jack. Then at your cousin's retreating back. Then she leaned close to your ear.

"He's a doctor," she whispered. "He understands business. And he just made that smug boy very quiet." A pause. "I like him."

************

The Kids

You didn't see them coming.

Suddenly there were small hands grabbing your dress and a chorus of voices saying your name with the shameless urgency that only children under ten could produce.

Three of them. Your cousin's kids. Dressed in miniature formal wear that was already coming undone — a loosened tie, a flower crown slightly sideways, a jacket abandoned somewhere entirely.

"Auntie!" The oldest grabbed your hand with both of hers. "We didn't know you were coming!"

"Auntie, Star cleared the oxer last week!" she continued, squeezing your hand. "Papa said she might be ready for junior circuit next year."

"She better be," you said. "I didn't pick that bloodline for leisure riding."

The middle one tugged your sleeve. "Can we get another one? For competitions?"

"Let's see if you can stay on the first one before we discuss a second."

All three erupted in protests simultaneously.

Jack leaned toward you. "Star?"

"I bought them a horse," you said simply, patting the oldest one's head. "He joined equestrian. Wants to be in the Olympics."

"Yes!" The youngest grabbed your arm and started pulling toward the dessert table. "They have the little cakes. Come on, come on!"

You looked back at Jack over your shoulder. The expression on your face was something he had never seen in a boardroom or a hospital. Pure and unguarded and completely unaware of itself.

Jack held up a hand. Go.

You disappeared into a wave of small formal wear.

He watched you go. The woman who had once calmly asked if hackers should be neutralized was currently being dragged toward a dessert table by a five year old and letting it happen. Willingly. With something that looked unmistakably like joy.

He stood there with his drink and thought quietly that there were entire rooms inside you that most people never got to see. The world knew the shark, the CEO, the woman who made boardrooms go quiet. Almost nobody knew this.

He wanted to be the person who always knew this.

"The doctor."

Jack turned. Your father had materialized beside him with the unhurried ease of a man who moved through rooms on his own schedule.

"The father," Jack said.

They stood side by side. A silence settled between them, not hostile, just two people deciding how much to say.

"I heard you were shot," your father said.

"I survived."

Your father looked at him properly, with the measuring gaze of a man who rarely updated his conclusions. Something in it seemed to satisfy him. "You have more balls than any man in this room." A short genuine laugh. "No wonder my daughter likes you."

Jack said nothing. He took a quiet sip of his drink.

Across the room you reappeared from the dessert table, the three kids still orbiting you like small overdressed satellites. The youngest held a miniature cake. The oldest was telling you something with elaborate hand gestures. You were listening with the same full attention you gave boardrooms and crises.

Your father watched this. "Where is their nanny," he said, less a question than an observation.

You rolled your eyes without looking at him. The gesture was clearly decades old.

Your father glanced at Jack and tilted his head toward you. "This is why the children have no respect for her."

The kids shuffled immediately behind your back, using you as a shield. The youngest peered around your hip at your father with enormous eyes.

"And this," you said pleasantly, "is why they're afraid of you."

"They need structure," your father said. "A proper nanny. Boarding school when they're old enough."

"That's how you did it," you said. "And look how well that turned out."

"I will hire help when I need it," you continued. "But I am not sending my children to boarding school."

"Your children."

"Hypothetically."

"You're already decided."

"That's why I turned out more human than the others," you said quietly. "Because my mom was there for me."

The words landed with the weight of something long overdue.

Your father went still. Not the boardroom stillness. Something older. He looked at his glass for a moment, then at you. The sharp edges of his expression shifted into something that looked briefly like a man confronting an accounting he had been avoiding for years.

"She was," he said finally. Just that.

It wasn't an apology. You both knew that. But from him, in this room, it was the closest thing to one you had ever received.

"Regardless," he said, voice returning to its usual register. "You cannot run a company and raise children without proper structure."

"I didn't say it without help," you said. "I said without shipping them off so I don't have to look at them."

"That is not what boarding school is."

"It's exactly what it is for people like us and you know it."

"It builds character."

"It builds distance. I've seen enough of the results to know the difference."

"You are so."

"Like you," you finished. "I know."

He pointed at you. "That is not the compliment you think it is."

"It wasn't meant to be one."

Greg appeared quietly behind Jack, materializing from nowhere the way he always did.

Jack looked at him. "How long are they going to argue like this?"

Greg considered this with apparent sincerity. "Oh, this is actually them getting along."

Jack stared at him.

Then he looked back at you, still holding the youngest child's hand, still squaring up to your father with complete calm, the other two kids peering around your back like you were a personal fortification.

Jack thought about the blank line on the next of kin form. He thought about it for the rest of the evening.

**************

After The Wedding

The car was quiet on the way back.

Jack was looking out the window, and you recognized the particular quality of his silence. He was processing. Filing things away in the careful methodical way he processed everything that mattered to him.

"I realized something tonight," he said finally.

You looked at him.

"It's not just your father who talks down to you," he said. "It's most of them."

You were quiet for a moment. Outside the city moved past in the dark. "They have loose mouths," you said. "Always have."

"How did you live through that?"

You considered the question honestly. "Spite," you said. "My spite toward them fueled me to be better. Every time one of them wrote me off or talked over me or bet against me, I went back to work." You shrugged one shoulder. "It was useful."

Jack crossed his arms slowly. "It'll destroy you."

"It already destroyed my appendix," you said.

He looked at you. You looked back at him with the calm of someone stating a simple fact.

He shook his head. Then he reached over and pulled you into him, his arm coming around your shoulders, steady and certain. You let yourself lean in without making a thing of it.

"I don't like it here," you said against his shoulder. "But with you here it's bearable. A bit."

Jack rested his chin lightly against your hair. "Next time just send Greg."

********

The Proposal 

After months of traveling, Jack finally came back to the Pitt.

He found Robby between cases, the way he always found Robby, leaning against the nurse's station with a coffee and the expression of a man with five minutes before the next thing arrived.

Jack told him everything.

The wedding. The betting. The cousin and the ten million dollars and the way you had dismantled him in a corridor without raising your voice. Your father and the conversation that was somehow both a confrontation and a consolidation. The kids grabbing your hand at the cocktail hour, dragging you toward the dessert table, and the look on your face when you let them. The way you stood at the back of the reception watching the couple on the dancefloor with something quiet and unguarded in your expression.

The way you had said, almost to yourself, "somewhere like that."

Robby listens to all of it. Then sets down his coffee.

"Marry her."

Jack is quiet.

"You already know," Robby says. "You've known for a while. So stop thinking about it and do it."

That's it. That's the whole conversation. Jack doesn't argue because there's nothing to argue. Robby is right and they both know it.

He goes home that night and calls Greg.

******

The Night He Asked

It was quiet on the drive home.

That was the first sign something was off. Greg was never quiet. Greg filled silence the way other people filled paperwork — efficiently, continuously, without being asked. But tonight he drove without commentary, his eyes on the road, his tablet conspicuously closed on the seat beside him.

You looked out the window. The road wasn't the way home. "Where are we going?"

"There's a firework event," Greg said. "At the park."

You checked your watch. At least half an hour to spare. You didn't want to keep Jack waiting too long at home. "There's time."

Greg had been driving you here for years when the pressure built past a certain point. You didn't always ask him to. He just knew. The walking helped. The trees helped. The fact that it was a place with no conference rooms and no agendas helped most of all.

He pulled up to the entrance and you got out without waiting, already feeling the tension in your shoulders beginning to ease just from the smell of the air. Grass and evening and something cooling after a long day.

You walked.

The park was quieter than you expected for a firework event. The path was lit softly, small lights threaded through the trees on either side, and you followed it without thinking, letting your mind go through its usual process of unwinding. A problem here, set it down. A meeting tomorrow, noted and released. The accumulated weight of the week, item by item, left on the path behind you.

Then you stopped.

Ahead of you, where the path curved toward the open space near the water, there was a flower arch. Your favorite — white and soft and full, lit from within by small warm lights that made the whole thing glow against the darkening sky. More lights were strung between the nearby trees, catching the last of the evening and turning it into something else entirely. A small table. A musician sitting quietly to one side, an instrument in his lap, not yet playing.

You stood there for a moment just looking at it.

You had wondered why the firework event felt romantic. You understood now that it was not a firework event.

And then you saw Jack.

He was standing at the center of it, under the arch, in a suit you recognized because you had watched Greg pack it three weeks ago and hadn't thought anything of it at the time. He was watching you with the expression he used when he had made a decision and was completely at peace with it.

Your feet carried you toward him before you consciously decided to move.

"You did all this," you said. It came out quieter than you intended.

"Greg helped," Jack said.

You looked around at the arch, the lights, the musician, the table set for two. Then back at him. "Greg helped," you repeated.

"Significantly," Jack said. "He cried twice during the planning process."

"He cries at everything."

"He cried at the flower selection," Jack said. "Specifically."

A breath of a laugh escaped you. Unexpected and unguarded, the kind that came out when your armor was already gone without you noticing. You looked at him and felt the full weight of the moment settling around you like something physical.

"Jack," you said softly.

"I know you don't need anything I can give you," he said. His voice was steady but there was something underneath it that you had never quite heard before. Something he was choosing to let out. "I know that. I've always known that. You have everything. You've built everything. You don't need someone to take care of you financially or professionally or in any of the ways people usually talk about when they talk about partnership."

He paused. Not because he lost the words. Because he was choosing the next ones carefully.

"But I've watched you carry things that nobody else sees," he continued. "The weight of your name and your father and a company you've been fighting for your entire life. I've watched you sit in hospitals and boardrooms and cars and planes and I've watched you hold all of it together without ever once asking anyone to help you hold it."

His voice dropped slightly.

"You came back from Japan when I was in surgery," he said. "You left a head of state. You sat in a hallway where they wouldn't tell you anything because you weren't family and you stayed anyway." He looked at her steadily. "I don't want you to ever be in a hallway again where you're not family."

You were very still.

"I can't give you what you can give yourself," Jack said. "I know that. I'm not going to pretend otherwise." He took a breath. "But I can give you somewhere to put it down. All of it. I can be the place where you don't have to hold anything. Where you don't have to be the CEO or the shark or your father's daughter or anyone's successor." He held your gaze. "I can be your person. Permanently. Legally. Completely."

He reached into his jacket pocket. The ring caught the light from the arch as he held it out — and you recognized it immediately. Your mother's ring. Your grandmother's before that. The one that had never belonged to your father's story.

Your hand came up to cover your mouth before you could stop it.

"I went to your aunt," he said simply.

"She cried," you managed.

"Twenty minutes," he said. "Before she said yes."

You let out a sound that was almost a laugh and almost something else entirely. Your eyes were doing things you would never normally allow in front of anyone. Jack had seen them before. He was the only one who had.

He went down on one knee.

"You're the most capable person I have ever met," he said, looking up at you. "And you deserve someone who sees every part of you. Not just the part that runs rooms." A pause. "I see all of it. I want all of it."

A beat.

"Marry me."

Not a question. A statement of intent from a man who had already decided and was simply informing you of the facts, the way he always did, the way that had somehow always worked on you more than anything else ever had.

You looked at the ring. At him. At the ring again.

Your aunt had kept it all these years. Jack had found it. He had gone quietly and carefully and found the one thing that connected you to the version of love that hadn't been ruined yet, the version that existed before your father made a mess of everything, and he had brought it here and gotten on one knee in your favorite park under your favorite flowers and said the truest thing anyone had ever said to you.

You took the ring from him. Slid it onto your own finger, which made him exhale something that was almost a laugh.

"Yes," you said. Your voice was steady. Mostly. "Obviously yes."

Jack stood. He took your face in both hands, careful and certain, and kissed you once. Quiet and complete.

Behind you, at a distance he had calculated to be respectful but not so far he couldn't see, Greg lowered his phone from recording position. His other hand was pressed flat against his mouth. His shoulders were shaking.

The musician began to play.

Somewhere above the park the first firework went up — a real one, as it turned out, because Greg had arranged that too — and the light broke open across the sky in a wash of gold.

You didn't look up at it.

You were already looking at Jack.

*******

The Preparation

It started with a question, the way most things between you did.

Jack had been leaning against the kitchen counter, coffee in hand, watching you work through your morning emails with the focused efficiency of someone who had already mentally scheduled the next six months. He waited until you looked up.

"Where should we have the wedding?"

You went quiet. Not the thinking quiet, not the calculating quiet. Just still for a moment, like the answer had been sitting there already and only needed to be collected.

"Pittsburgh," you said.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "That was fast."

"We could do it abroad," you said. "But it would take a lot of work. And I want the Pitt crew there." You looked at him. "I want people who will actually wish us well. Not people who will bet on how long we last."

Jack was quiet for a second. Something moved across his face that he didn't try to hide. You had said it simply, practically, the way you said most things. But the fact that his people, his second family in their scrubs and their chaos, were the ones you wanted around you on that day, that you had chosen Pittsburgh not for convenience but for them. It settled in his chest like something permanent.

"There's a hotel we own," you continued, already reaching for your phone. "I'll have Greg reserve it for three days. Full building."

"We?" Jack said.

You looked up. "You own my business, Jack Abbott." A small, certain smile. "You married into this. No turning back. Welcome to the board."

He stared at you. "I didn't sign anything."

"Greg will send the papers."

"Of course he will."

You were already typing. "Have you told your family?"

"Yup. Have you told yours?"

You didn't look up. "I only want my father and my aunt. That's it."

"Perfect," Jack said. He picked up his coffee. "I was this close to preparing sleeping pills for the rest of your relatives anyway."

You looked at him.

"Medically appropriate dosage," he said pleasantly. "Nothing they wouldn't wake up from."

"Jack."

"They'd miss the wedding. Feels terrible about it. Send very expensive gifts out of guilt." He took a sip. "Everyone wins."

You stared at him for a long moment. Then you looked back at your phone. "I'm pretending I didn't hear that."

"That's probably wise," he agreed.

The Wedding

The guests arrived through the afternoon.

There were not many of them. That was the first thing people noticed. No sprawling guest list, no industry names, no faces borrowed from a networking spreadsheet. Just people who actually knew them. The room felt like breathing space rather than performance, and everyone in it seemed to understand, without being told, that this was intentional.

The Pitt crew arrived together.

This was not a surprise. They had carpooled from the hospital with the coordinated chaos of people who spent twelve hour shifts in close proximity and had stopped pretending they needed personal space. They came through the hotel entrance in a cluster, still mid-conversation, and then stopped collectively as the lobby registered.

Mateo turned a slow circle, taking in the ceiling, the floors, the fresh flowers arranged at every surface. "She rented the whole hotel," he said. "For three days."

"Yeah," Shen said.

"The whole hotel."

"That's what three days means, Mateo."

Ellis was already moving toward the front desk with the focused energy of a woman who had been promised a spa and intended to locate it immediately. "We have free rooms," she said, mostly to herself. "Free spa. I cannot wait to see my room." She paused at the desk and looked back at the group. "Do you think the robes are the good kind?"

"They're her hotel," Dana said. "They're the good kind."

Mateo found the coffee machine in his room twelve minutes later and sent a photo to the group without comment. The photo was of the machine. Just the machine. Centered. Well lit. It required no caption.

Shen sent back a single word. Same.

*******

Down the corridor, in the room set aside for the groom, it was considerably quieter.

Jack was standing at the window in his shirt and trousers, jacket hanging on the back of the chair, tie not yet on. He was looking out at Pittsburgh with the stillness of a man who was not anxious exactly but was feeling the full weight of a moment.

Robby came in without knocking, which was his way, and closed the door behind him. He looked at Jack. Jack looked at the city.

"You good?" Robby asked.

"Yeah," Jack said.

Robby crossed the room and stood beside him. They were quiet together for a moment, the way they were quiet in the Pitt between cases, comfortable and unhurried.

"She reserved the whole hotel," Robby said. "For the crew."

"I know."

"She didn't tell anyone. It was just ready when we got here."

"That's how she does things," Jack said.

Robby nodded slowly. He looked at Jack's profile for a moment. "You nervous?"

"No," Jack said. Then, after a beat. "Maybe a little."

"Good," Robby said.

*************

Upstairs, in the suite at the end of the east corridor, the morning had been considerably more emotional.

Your aunt had cried three times before the makeup artist finished the first eye. She had been escorted out gently but firmly after the second round of damage, still dabbing at her face with a handkerchief, still trying to say something coherent through the tears, and told that she could come back when she had collected herself.

She had not yet collected herself.

The room was quiet now. You stood in front of the mirror in your dress and looked at yourself for a long moment. Not checking. Just looking. The person looking back at you was the same one who had walked into a trauma bay years ago clutching her stomach, refusing surgery, convinced that stopping for even a day would mean losing everything.

She had been wrong about that. It had taken a night shift doctor and a plastic chair and a prescription slip to show her how wrong.

A knock at the door.

"Come in," you said.

Your father stepped into the room. He was dressed impeccably, as always, not a detail out of place. But he stopped when he saw you and something happened to his face that you had seen perhaps twice in your entire life. The careful architecture of his expression simply came apart for a moment, undone by something he hadn't expected to feel this strongly.

"What?" you said.

"You look beautiful," he said. Quietly. Like the words surprised him on the way out.

"Thank you," you said. The two words came out softer than you intended.

He moved further into the room. He looked at you the way people looked at things they knew they were about to let go of, taking inventory, trying to hold the image.

"Is he the right one?" he asked. "There's still time. If you have any doubt at all."

You turned to face him fully. "You should have asked yourself that question. Approximately three marriages ago."

He had the grace to absorb that without deflecting. "I went through it," he said. "Those were my mistakes. I know what they cost." He paused. "You're my only daughter. I don't want you to go through any version of what I put your mother through."

You had not expected that. Not the words and not the look that came with them, something tired and honest and stripped of the usual performance. He was not making a point. He was not positioning. He was just a father standing in a hotel room looking at his daughter on her wedding day and meaning what he said.

"He's the one," you said.

Your father was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded once, the nod of a man who has updated a position and will not revisit it. "Good," he said. "I believe your judgement. I always have. Even when I made it harder than it needed to be."

He offered his arm.

You looked at it for a second. This man who had turned your inheritance into a competition, who had made you fight for every room you walked into, who had driven you to a hospital bed and a stranger's plastic chair and accidentally, unknowingly, to the best thing that had ever happened to you.

You took his arm.

It had never once crossed your mind that you would walk down the aisle with your father. Too much history, too many rooms where you had stood on opposite sides of everything. But here you were, his hand over yours, moving together toward the doors at the end of the corridor.

"You're not going to cry, are you," you said.

"Absolutely not," he said.

A pause.

"Your aunt has cried enough for both families," he added.

"She has," you agreed.

The doors opened.

The hall was warm and full of light, flowers arranged along every surface, candles burning in rows that turned the whole room golden. And the faces. You saw them before anything else. The Pitt crew, cleaned up and dressed in their best, looking like a completely different set of people from the ones you usually found in scrubs over a trauma bay. Mateo in a suit that actually fit. Ellis with her hair done, sitting straight and bright-eyed. Shen looking quietly emotional already and trying not to show it. Dana watching the door with an expression she would later describe as composed and which was not composed at all.

Your aunt in the front row, handkerchief already raised.

Greg, three rows back, recording everything on his phone with the focus of a man documenting history.

Lilly, standing at the front, who had been holding herself together all morning and was now very clearly not holding herself together.

And Jack.

He was standing at the altar in his suit, hands clasped in front of him, and he was watching you walk toward him with an expression that had nothing held back in it. No clinical neutrality, no careful composure. Just him, fully present, completely undone in the quietest possible way. His jaw was tight. His eyes were bright.

Robby, standing beside him as best man, noticed. He leaned slightly toward Jack and pressed a folded tissue into his hand without a word, with the efficiency of a man who had come prepared.

Jack took it without looking at him.

You kept walking. Your father's arm steady under your hand, the room warm around you, every face you passed a person who had genuinely wished for this.

When you reached the altar your father stopped. He looked at Jack for a moment. The two men regarded each other with the particular understanding of people who had already said the hard things and arrived somewhere on the other side of them.

"Take care of her," your father said. Not a command. Not a warning. Something quieter than either.

"I know," Jack said.

Your father took your hand and placed it in Jack's. Then he pulled you into a brief, firm hug, the kind that said more than he would ever find words for, and stepped back to take his seat.

You turned to Jack.

He was looking at you the way he had looked at you in the ER the very first time, like you were the clearest thing in the room. Like everything else was background.

"Hi," you said softly.

"Hi," he said.

His thumb moved once across the back of your hand. Steady and certain and very him.

The priest began to speak.

The room settled into a hush, warm and full and held by everyone in it. Outside Pittsburgh moved through its ordinary afternoon, entirely unaware that in a hotel ballroom two people who had found each other in an emergency room were making it permanent.

Inside, it was everything you had said you wanted.

Small. Real. People who knew you.

The rest of it, the rings and the words and the moment the priest said what he said and Jack looked at you and you looked back at him, that part belonged only to the two of you.

Some things don't need an audience to be true.

They just need to happen.

And this one did.

*************

The Reception and The Morning After

The reception was everything a wedding should be and nothing it didn't need to be.

The food came out in waves, each one better than the last, the kind of meal that made people stop mid-conversation just to acknowledge what was happening on their plate. The DJ read the room perfectly, pulling the energy up and letting it breathe at exactly the right moments. A singer came on after midnight and the dancefloor, which had started cautiously, became something genuinely joyful.

It was loud and warm and real in the way that only happens when every person in a room actually wants to be there.

But the moment that made the hotel truly erupt was later.

When the guests finally made their way upstairs, full and happy and slightly overwhelmed by the evening, they found their rooms waiting. The coffee machine they already knew about. The massage gun they had discovered earlier. But on the desk beside them was something else. An envelope. Inside, a cheque.

Each one different, each one specific. Some covered rent. Some cleared medical school debt that had been sitting quietly for years. Some handled bills that people had stopped mentioning out loud because mentioning them had stopped feeling useful.

The calls started within minutes. Room to room, corridor to corridor, voices spilling under doors and through walls. Mateo's laugh was audible from two floors down. Someone, nobody admitted who, started crying in the stairwell. The hotel, which had been built for quiet luxury, handled the noise with grace.

Greg, sitting in the small office he had commandeered near the lobby, listened to the sounds traveling down through the building and allowed himself exactly one minute of satisfaction before going back to his tablet.

******

The next morning the hotel restaurant was warm and unhurried, sunlight coming through the tall windows, the kind of breakfast that had no agenda attached to it.

You and Jack came down together.

The crew was already there, spread across two tables that had been pushed together at some point without asking permission. They looked up when you walked in and the table got louder immediately.

Dana stood first. She crossed the room and hugged you before you could say anything, properly, with both arms, the way Dana did everything when she decided to do it. "Thank you," she said quietly, close to your ear. "For all of it. The room, the cheque, everything." She stopped. Started again. "Just. Thank you."

Ellis was next, which surprised you because Ellis expressed warmth in precise, careful doses. She took your hand in both of hers and looked at you with the direct, steady gaze she used when she meant something completely. "You deserve every good thing," she said simply. "Both of you."

Mateo bypassed formality entirely and hugged Jack first, which Jack endured with the expression of a man who had accepted that this was happening. "Best wedding I've ever been to," Mateo said, pulling back. "And I've been to eleven. This was the best one. It wasn't close."

Shen raised his coffee cup from across the table without getting up, which was entirely Shen. "Congratulations," he said. "Long marriage. Many years. And please keep the coffee machine coming."

Then Robby stood up.

The table went quiet on its own, the way it always did when Robby had something to say. He was holding an envelope in one hand, different from the others, thicker. He had not opened it at the table. You knew he had opened it last night, alone in his room, because Greg had told you so in a single text message. Just the words: he sat with it for a while.

He looked at Jack first. "You're the best doctor I've ever worked with," he said. "And I've worked with a lot of doctors. Most of them insufferable." A beat. "You're only occasionally insufferable. That counts for something."

Jack said nothing. But something in his face shifted quietly.

Then Robby looked at you. He held up the envelope slightly. "Round the world tickets," he said. His voice was steady but carrying something underneath it. "For two." He paused. "You didn't have to do that."

"I know," you said.

"She mentioned she wanted to see more of the world," Robby continued, and you knew without asking that he meant his girlfriend, the cardiologist who had borrowed your jet and changed everything. "I don't know how you knew that."

"She mentioned it to me," you said simply.

Robby let out a breath that was almost a laugh. He looked down at the envelope for a second, then back at you both. "I've watched a lot of people come through the Pitt," he said. "Patients, staff, families. You learn pretty quickly who people actually are when things get hard." He looked at Jack. Then at you. "You two are the real thing. Anyone who's been paying attention knows that." He raised his coffee cup. "Long marriage. Many years. And maybe some kids who inherit her bank account and his patience."

"Hear hear," said Mateo immediately.

"Strongly seconded," Ellis added.

You looked at Jack. He looked back at you. "I told you," you said. "I told you they would wish us well." You felt it settle in your chest, warm and certain. "Not a single bet. Not like my family."

Jack pressed his lips together. Something in his expression shifted in a way you recognized.

"Jack," you said slowly.

"Hm."

"They're not making bets."

A pause. Brief. Telling.

"Jack Abbott."

He leaned toward you and lowered his voice so it landed only at your ear. "The bet," he said carefully, "is on how many kids we're going to have."

The heat reached your ears before your brain finished processing the sentence. You turned to look at the table. Mateo was studying the ceiling. Shen had become very interested in his orange juice. Dana had her coffee cup raised high enough to cover most of her face. Ellis was the only one who met your eyes, completely unashamed, with the expression of a woman who had put money on a specific number and felt good about it.

The laugh came out before you could stop it. Sudden and real and completely unguarded, the kind that turned heads at the neighboring tables.

Jack watched you laugh with the quiet, settled expression of a man who had gotten exactly what he wanted.

"How much?" you managed finally.

"The pot is considerable," Jack said.

"Who started it?"

Everyone at the table found something else to look at simultaneously.

"Greg," Jack said.

*********

The Abbott Kids

Just like the Pitt crew had wished, you and Jack had two kids. Robby, Dana, and Ellis won the bet. Their names were Nora Abbott and Leo Abbott. 

By the time Nora turned six and Leo turned five, the Pitt staff had collectively accepted that the Abbott children were simply part of the hospital's ecosystem now.

Nora was yours in every way that mattered. She had your energy, your confidence, and your absolute refusal to accept any situation she hadn't personally approved of. She walked into rooms like she already owned them or was actively considering the purchase. She could negotiate her way out of anything and expressed her opinions with a directness that made grown adults briefly reconsider their positions. She was six years old and she already had a preferred table at two restaurants in Pittsburgh.

Leo was a different story.

He had Jack's eyes. Jack's quiet. Jack's way of standing slightly apart from a situation and watching it fully before deciding to enter it. He followed Jack to the Pitt on weekends with the focused dedication of someone who had already picked a direction and was simply gathering information. He was five and had already correctly identified two ear infections and one case of strep throat among the neighborhood kids. Jack confirmed all three without comment, but something in his expression each time suggested he was filing it away carefully.

They were nothing alike. Except that both of them were completely certain of themselves.

Jack said this was good. You said it was inevitable. You were both right.

************

Leo had been following Jack around the Pitt since he could walk fast enough to keep up.

He was quiet about it the way Jack was quiet about everything. He watched the nurses with careful attention, sat at the station with a juice box and said very little, but his eyes moved constantly. The staff had adopted him completely. Mateo taught him card tricks. Ellis let him listen through her stethoscope. Shen had made the mistake of explaining blood pressure readings and now Leo checked his own wrist with two fingers every morning at breakfast.

He was five and the Pitt already felt like home.

Which meant he had opinions about it.

"Dad," Leo said, falling into step beside Jack between bays, small legs working double time. "You could be the director."

"No thanks," Jack said.

"Mom doesn't officially own the hospital. But you're her husband. You have authority."

"I've seen your mother run things," Jack said. "I know what it costs. No thanks."

Leo considered this for two seconds. "Then why stay if you could have more power?"

Jack stopped. He looked down at his son and gave him the real answer, because Leo always knew the difference.

"Because the director gets nervous when I'm around," he said. "And I find that extremely entertaining."

Leo stared at him. Then came the slow quiet smile — Jack's exact smile.

Robby appeared from around the corner. He looked at Leo. Then at Jack. "What kind of vocabulary are you teaching him?"

"His kindergarten is already teaching him to buy gold," Jack said.

Robby looked at Leo. "Is that true?"

"Next week we learn about stocks," Leo said seriously.

Robby patted his head slowly. "Good job."

Leo accepted this with a small dignified nod and kept following Jack down the corridor.

Robby watched them go and shook his head.

"He's going to take over this place someday," he said to nobody.

From the nurse's station Ellis didn't look up. "He already knows which attending to avoid and where the good coffee is." A pause. "He's halfway there."

*************

Nora had been following you to work since she was four.

It started because you had a breakfast meeting, the nanny called in sick, and Greg said with complete confidence that it would be fine. It was fine. Nora sat at the corner of the conference table with a juice box and a coloring book and didn't make a single sound for two hours. Three board members commented afterward that she had better meeting presence than most of their junior executives.

She was six now and Greg had stopped pretending she needed supervision.

She walked beside you through the office with the proprietary ease of someone who had decided this was also her domain. Occasionally her small hand would reach up for yours in a crowded corridor, but otherwise she moved with complete independence.

"Greg," she said, passing his desk without stopping. "The eleven o'clock ran over yesterday. It shouldn't run over."

Greg looked up from his tablet. Then at you. Then back at Nora. "You're right," he said seriously. "I'll adjust the buffer."

"Thank you," Nora said, and kept walking.

You looked at Greg over your shoulder. He was already typing, completely unbothered.

You caught up to Nora. "You're six," you said.

"The meeting ran over," she said simply.

You had nothing to argue with that.

The harder moments came at family events.

Your father's side had not entirely adjusted to the fact that you were no longer available to be pressured into financial decisions. Most had learned this the hard way. But there were always one or two who tried again at gatherings, convinced that the presence of children would soften you.

They had not accounted for Nora.

At a family lunch one of your cousins cornered you near the drinks table, already three sentences into a pitch, when Nora appeared at your side.

She looked up at him. He looked down at her with the instinctive softening people had around small children. First mistake.

"My mom is busy," Nora said.

"I'm just having a conversation—"

"She's busy," Nora said again. Final.

He looked at you. You looked back with the neutral expression of a woman genuinely curious how this would resolve.

He tried again. "I just wanted to discuss a small opportunity—"

Nora's face crumpled. Carefully. Gradually. The lip wobble, the glassy eyes, one single tear tracking down her cheek with impeccable timing.

"I just wanted to spend time with my mom," she said, at exactly the frequency that activated guilt in every adult within ten feet. "But someone always takes her away."

Your cousin looked like he had committed a crime. He muttered something about catching up another time and retreated quickly.

Nora watched him go. The tears stopped with the efficiency of someone turning off a tap.

You looked down at her. "Where did you learn that."

"Learn what?" she said.

You studied her face. It gave you nothing.

Later you stood in Greg's doorway. "Did you teach my daughter to fake cry."

Greg maintained eye contact with the composure of a man who had prepared for this. "I taught her that emotional intelligence is a valuable tool in high pressure social situations."

"Greg."

"She asked," he said simply. "She was very specific. I provided educational support."

You stared at him. Then left without responding because you didn't entirely disagree.

That night at dinner Jack watched Nora  and Leo eat their vegetables unprompted. Unlike you, they like to eat veggies.

"What did she do?" he said quietly.

"Made a grown man feel guilty for existing," you said. "Using tears."

Jack looked at Nora. Nora looked at her plate. The picture of innocence.

Jack looked at Nora. Nora looked at her plate. The picture of innocence. 

"She took it seriously," Jack said. 

"It was you?.” 

"I told her to guard you when I'm not there," he said simply. He picked up his fork. 

You turned to Nora. She looked up and caught you both watching her. She smiled. Your smile, arriving with complete confidence, knowing exactly what it was doing. 

"She's yours," Jack said. 

"She really is," you agreed. 

*********

It started at the dinner table, the way most things in the Abbott household started — without warning and with complete commitment from both parties.

"Doctors don't make as much money as CEOs," Nora said, with the casual authority of someone stating a fact she had verified personally.

Leo looked up from his rice. "Doctors save lives."

"CEOs create jobs," Nora said. "Which also saves lives. Indirectly."

"That's not the same thing."

"It's related."

Leo put his chopsticks down, which in Abbott family body language meant he was taking this seriously. "Dad pulled someone back from a flatline last week."

"Mom pulled three companies back from bankruptcy last month," Nora said. "That's three sets of employees who still have income. Which means they can afford healthcare." She tilted her head slightly. "Which means they can afford doctors."

Leo stared at her. "You can't put a price on saving someone's life."

"You can't run a hospital without funding," Nora said. "Who do you think pays for dad's equipment?"

A brief silence.

"Mom," Leo said.

"Exactly," Nora said.

You and Jack had stopped eating approximately thirty seconds into this exchange. You were both sitting very still in the way of people who had recognized something extraordinary was happening and did not want to interrupt it.

Jack looked at you. You looked at Jack.

Leo picked his chopsticks back up, regrouped, and tried a different angle. "Dad works nights. He misses sleep. He misses dinners. He does it because people need him." He paused. "That's noble."

Nora considered this genuinely, which you recognized as a dangerous sign. It meant she was about to say something that would end the argument.

"Dad is noble," she agreed. "Mom is powerful." She picked up her glass. "Noble people make the world better. Powerful people make it possible for noble people to do that." She took a sip. "They need each other."

Leo was quiet for a moment.

Then he looked at Jack. "Dad."

"Yeah," Jack said.

"She's right."

Jack picked up his chopsticks. "I know."

"That's annoying," Leo said.

"Yeah," Jack said again. "Get used to it."

Nora said nothing. She returned to her dinner with the composure of a woman who had made her point and saw no need to elaborate.

You pressed your lips together very hard.

Jack nudged your foot under the table without looking at you.

You nudged back.

Above the table your two children ate their dinner in the temporary peace of people who had reached a conclusion and were already, quietly, preparing for the next disagreement.

After a moment Jack leaned slightly toward you. Low enough that it stayed between the two of you. "Noble and powerful," he said.

"She's six," you said.

"She quoted supply chain logic at dinner."

"She learned it from me."

"She applied it correctly," Jack said. "That part was her."

You looked at Nora, currently eating with perfect posture and the satisfied energy of someone who had filed the evening under completed business. Then at Leo, who was asking Jack something about blood pressure with the focused intensity he brought to everything that interested him.

"We made interesting kids," you said quietly.

Jack considered this for a second. "Terrifying kids."

"Same thing," you said.

Jack picked up his glass. "Yeah," he said. "Same thing."

His arm was draped loosely across your waist, a steady, grounding weight that felt like it had been there for a lifetime. He was breathing slow and deep, completely at ease in a way that made your own defenses crumble. You stayed still, watching the way the dawn light caught the rough stubble on his jaw. You didn't want to move; you didn't want this to be a one-time residency.

He shifted, his dark eyes opening halfway before settling on you with a quiet intensity. “You’re awake.”

“You snore,” you murmured, your voice still thick with sleep.

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“Barely,” he countered, a ghost of a smirk playing on his lips.

The air between you felt thick, charged with a gravity that went beyond the physical. You turned onto your side, propping your head up on one hand. “I slept well. I usually don't.”

“I can tell,” Jack said, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fraction of a second before meeting your eyes again.

The atmosphere shifted, turning a little more serious. “It would be annoying,” you said softly, “if this only happened once.”

Jack looked at you properly then, fully awake, his focus narrowing. “It doesn’t have to,” he said. He let the words hang there, heavy with implication. “Depends on how much effort you’re willing to put in.”

You narrowed your eyes, though there was no real bite in the look. “That sounds expensive. I’ve already donated enough to your hospital.”

“To the hospital,” he corrected, his voice dropping an octave. “Not to me.”

You let out a short, breathless laugh. “You’re unbelievable.”

“That’s what I’ve been told.” He sat up, the sheets pooling at his waist as he glanced at the clock. “I’m off today.”

“Lucky me.” You reached for your phone immediately, the "CEO" stirring back to life.

Jack watched your fingers fly across the screen. “What are you doing?”

“Telling Greg to book a restaurant.”

He blinked, then glanced at the time again. “It’s nine in the morning.”

“By the time we get there, it’ll be lunch.” You didn’t even look up.

There was a long, expectant silence. Jack leaned back against the headboard, watching the clinical efficiency with which you handled your life. “Where are we going?”

“New York.”

He stared at you, searching your face to see if this was some high-level tease. You were already typing the flight coordinates.

“…You’re serious,” he muttered, more to himself than to you.

You glanced at him over the edge of the phone, a small, knowing smile tugging at your mouth. “Very.”

******

A few hours later, Jack was sitting in a quiet, high-end restaurant in New York, still trying to process how quickly the day had shifted. One moment he was in bed, half asleep. The next, he was here, a plate set in front of him by a chef he vaguely recognized from somewhere.

He looked at you across the table. You seemed completely at ease, like this was just another normal decision.

His phone buzzed.

Shen: ‘didn’t you complain about gas prices yesterday? why are you in new york at some fancy restaurant? what did you even do?’

Jack glanced at the message, then typed back, ‘I just warmed up my patient’s bed.’

The reply came almost instantly.

Shen: ‘yeah right. billionaire bed.’

Jack looked at the screen for a second, then locked his phone.

“Yup,” he said under his breath. He didn’t bother denying it. Some things weren’t worth arguing.

And honestly, he wasn’t about to say no to the privilege.

**********

The time you walked into Jack’s world again

By the time Jack got back on shift, the teasing had already started.

Dana didn’t even look up from her chart. “So. New York.”

Robby leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “Fancy restaurant. Celebrity chef. That you?”

Jack put his stethoscope around his neck, “I ate.”

“That’s all you’re going with?” Dana asked.

“That’s all that matters.”

Robby let out a low laugh. “Didn’t even deny it.”

Jack didn’t. There wasn’t a point. He had enjoyed it. All of it.

“I heard she’s here,” Robby added, glancing toward the entrance. “That’s why I’m still around.”

“Yeah,” Dana said. “She wants to check the renovation.”

Robby nodded toward the front. “The director practically ran downstairs when security spotted her car. Hard to miss a black Rolls-Royce parked outside.”

*****

You hadn’t planned to stay long.

Just a quick visit. Check the progress, say hi, then back to the company.

But the moment you stepped inside, the hospital director was already there, greeting you like he had been waiting.

“Thank you for your donation,” he said, almost breathless. “It’s made a huge difference. The new air conditioning, the upgraded system… we couldn’t have done it without you.”

You gave a small, polite nod. “You helped me when I needed it. I’m just returning the favor.”

He hesitated. “That kind of support… it’s worth millions.”

You didn’t react. “It’s nothing.”

The director blinked, clearly not expecting that answer. Millions, and you called it nothing.

You shifted slightly, already moving on. “Excuse me. I’d like to see the E.R before I head back to the office.”

“Yes. Of course,” he said quickly, stepping aside.

You stepped further into the Pitt, slowing down just enough to take everything in. Nurses moved quickly between beds, voices overlapping, monitors beeping in uneven rhythm. It wasn’t controlled the way your world was. It was louder. Messier. But it worked.

Your gaze shifted across the room until it landed on Jack.

He was at the table, focused on a chart. One hand braced against the surface, posture relaxed but steady. He looked up like he felt you there.

You walked toward him.

“I thought I was an annoying patient,” you said as you stopped beside him. “Turns out there are much worse.”

Jack glanced past you briefly, then back. “Welcome to the Pitt. Especially night shift. It gets wilder.”

You let out a quiet breath. “Every day I deal with childish business partners. I almost lost my patience. How do you handle this?”

“Therapy,” he said. “And I like the adrenaline. I spend some of my time with a SWAT team.”

You blinked. “What?”

Dana, passing by, didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah. He spends his day off getting shot at.”

You hummed, like it was just another detail. “So… you’re good with guns? That’s great. I got an invitation from the King of the U.K. for a hunting week.”

Dana froze for a second. Jack looked at you, brows lifting slightly. Did you just mention the king like he was an old acquaintance?

“No,” he said. “That’s not the same thing.”

Before he could say more, Robby stepped in, clearly having waited for the moment. “Since you’re here,” he said, half-grinning, “do you want to give us orders? You did fund half of this place.”

You tilted your head slightly, almost tempted. Then you shook it. “I could. But I won’t. I’d ruin the system you’ve built. And I don’t feel like making more work for my doctor.”

Jack gave a small nod. “That's an improvement.”

Robby chuckled under his breath.

You stepped a little closer, eyes dropping briefly to his name tag. “Dr. Robby…”

“Yeah?” he said.

A small pause, then your expression shifted with recognition. “That’s why your name sounds familiar. You’re the reason my father’s cardiologist borrowed our private jet.”

Robby blinked. “What?”

“My company sponsored her seminar,” you continued. “She left right after her talk. Skipped the Q and A.”

Robby ran a hand over the back of his neck. “She mentioned something about that. Did it… mess things up?”

You shook your head lightly. “No. Everything was handled. She said someone close to her needed help.”

Robby’s expression softened. “Yeah. That sounds like her.”

“Well,” you said simply, “it worked out. For both sides.”

“Thank you,” he said, a little more sincerely now, before stepping away.

You glanced back at Jack. “Small world.”

“Thanks to your jet, he’s doing better,” Jack said. “He’s not alone anymore.”

You looked at him for a second. “That sounds poetic.”

“I heard it somewhere.”

You studied him, then said, “You should come to my office sometime. Different kind of chaos. You might understand why I’m stressed.”

Jack met your gaze, calm as ever. “I don’t need to see it to know you don’t slow down.”

A small pause.

“But I’ll come anyway.”

That landed.

You gave a faint smile, stepping back. “Good.”

Jack added, almost casually, “Robby’s been the main topic for a while. Someone flying across the world like that.”

You shrugged. “From what I hear, he needed it.”

Then your eyes flicked back to Jack. “You have access too, you know.” You leaned in, pressing a brief kiss to his cheek, before turning and walking away.

Dana stared after you for a second, then slowly turned to Jack. “Did you hear that, Jack?”

Jack didn’t move right away. His hand rested on the table, eyes still on the direction you’d walked out.

“Yeah,” he said.

Dana crossed her arms. “And?”

Jack finally looked back at her, calm as ever. “I’m not using a jet for groceries.” 

*******

The time you spoiled The Pitt (again)

The food arrived without warning. There was no formal announcement, no corporate explanation—just a mountain of boxes. Real ones. They were still radiating heat, the scent of charcoal and rosemary cutting through the sterile, metallic air of the hospital.

Mateo opened the first container and froze, the steam hitting his face. He let out a long, shaky breath. “God bless that woman,” he muttered, reaching for a portion of prime rib with the reverence of a man discovering gold. “I haven’t eaten a meal like this on a Tuesday in years.”

The ER staff didn't hesitate. They descended like a tactical unit, grabbing high-protein fuel between the chaos of incoming patients. Across the hall, a nurse from Radiology slowed down, her eyes widening at the spread.

“Is that… actual steak?” she whispered.

Mateo didn’t even look up from his container. “No. It’s oxygen. Keep walking.”

It didn’t stop with the food. A week later, the ER looked different. A new rest suite had been installed—not a lumpy chair in a dark corner with a moth-eaten blanket, but a sanctuary. It was soundproofed, temperature-controlled, and filled with clean beds and soft, recessed lighting. It was a space designed for doctors and nurses to actually recover.

There was no name attached to the donation. No brass plaque. But in the Pitt, everyone knew whose signature was on the check.

Then came the cafeteria. The mystery "vendor" had upgraded everything. The coffee no longer tasted like burnt rubber, and fresh pastries appeared every morning. Santos stood at the counter one afternoon, holding a ceramic cup and staring at it as if it might vanish.

“This is dangerous,” she said, inhaling the rich aroma. “I might never leave this department.”

Jack noticed. He noticed every single detail. But he didn't say anything, not even when the silence in the ER became a little more comfortable. Not until he walked into his own office one night and stopped dead.

The chair was new—ergonomic, high-tech, and perfectly fitted. The desk adjusted with a silent, expensive hum, and the lighting had been repositioned exactly where it needed to be to reduce eye strain. He stood there for a long minute, taking in the quiet luxury of it.

Dana leaned against the doorframe, watching him. “You mentioned your back once,” she noted.

Jack didn’t look at her. “I didn’t ask for this.”

She said with a soft smile. “You don’t have to.”

The rest of the hospital caught on quickly. The tension grew between floors. Surgery started complaining to the Chief; Radiology began asking pointed questions about budget allocations. Admin stopped pretending they were in the dark.

“Why does the ER get everything?” someone muttered loudly in the hallway as a new shipment of high-grade scrubs arrived.

“Because we survive the worst,” Mateo shot back, passing by with a grin. “And we have better friends than you.”

Later that night, the department was uncharacteristically still. Ellis leaned against the nurse’s station, watching Jack’s back.

“I pray that Dr. Abbott marries her,” she said under her breath, her voice full of sincere hope.

Shen didn't even look up from his charts, but he immediately held out a fist. “Amen to that.”

They bumped fists in a silent pact. Jack, halfway to his door, stopped just long enough for the words to register. He didn't turn around to acknowledge them, but the corner of his mouth quivered in the shadows.

“I’m still trying to get her to eat a vegetable that isn't a garnish,” he muttered to the empty hallway.

Mateo snorted from across the room, and Shen just shook his head.

“Man’s fighting the real battle,” Shen whispered. “Godspeed, Abbott.”

******

The time you handled the Hacker 

You didn’t expect to feel the tension the moment you stepped into the Pitt, but the air was thick with it. Phones were ringing incessantly, and the usual hum of the department had sharpened into a controlled panic. People were moving fast, their faces tight with a stress that had nothing to do with medicine.

“What’s going on?” you asked, already scanning the room with a practiced, analytical eye.

“Cyberattack,” Robby said, his fingers flying across a station that refused to respond. He didn't even look up.

Jack was a few feet away, pacing with a phone pressed to his ear. He glanced at you as you approached, his expression grim. “System’s locked. We’re switching to manual charting, but it’s a mess. They’re asking for a ransom.”

You blinked, your voice dropping into a low, dangerous calm. “A hospital? They’re hitting a hospital?”

“Patient records, emails, surgical histories,” Jack said, his jaw tight. “They’re threatening to sell the entire database if we don't pay by the hour.”

You exhaled slowly, the gears already turning. You didn't ask for permission. You just pulled out your phone and dialed. “Greg. Get our IT security team on this. Now.”

Jack lowered his phone, his brow furrowing as he studied you. “Why are we calling your office, exactly?”

You didn't look at him, your focus already on the next move. “Because we’ve dealt with this before. And since I’ve invested heavily in this facility, that makes this my problem, too.”

Jack studied you for a long beat, the weight of the situation shifting. He saw the shift in your posture—the way you stepped into a crisis not as a visitor, but as a commander. “…Thank you,” he said, his voice quieter, more private.

You glanced at him, the hardness in your expression softening just enough to press a quick, reassuring kiss to his cheek. “You’re welcome.”

It didn’t take long. Ten minutes later, your phone vibrated.

“Yeah?” you answered. You listened for a moment, your expression never wavering. “Oh. You found them already?” Another pause. “Drone is ready? Good.”

Robby slowly turned his head toward you, his eyes wide. You lowered the phone slightly, looking between him and Jack as if you were asking about the weather.

“Do you want them neutralized?”

The silence that followed was absolute.

“…Who?” Robby asked, his voice cracking slightly.

“The hackers,” you said, sounding almost confused by the question. “We have their physical location. It’s an apartment complex three towns over.”

Jack stared at you, his medical mind trying to reconcile the woman he knew with the cold efficiency of the question. “What exactly do you mean by ‘neutralized’?”

On the other end of the line, Greg’s voice was audible in the quiet room—calm, precise, and chillingly ready. “Target confirmed. Awaiting instruction.”

You tilted your head, your voice dropping to a lethal chill. “They’re using patient data. They’re holding sick and vulnerable people hostage for a paycheck.” You gave a small, elegant shrug. “I don’t like that. I don't like it at all.”

Robby looked at Jack, his face pale. “I don’t think we need to go that far—”

“Wait—hold on!” Dana’s voice cut in from across the room. She was holding a headset to her ear, a look of shock on her face. “IT says the encryption is breaking. The system’s coming back up. They’re regaining control.”

A beat of heavy silence followed. Jack didn’t take his eyes off you, his gaze searching yours. “No casualties,” he said firmly.

You held his stare for a second, measuring the line he wouldn't cross. Then, you nodded.

“Alright,” you said into the phone. “Stand down. Secure the data, then send the GPS coordinates and the identity logs to the police instead.” You paused. “And make sure the police have enough to make it a very loud arrest.”

“Tsked.” Greg clicked his tongue. “Understood. Aborting the strike.”

You hung up and slipped the phone into your bag as if you’d just finished a routine business call. Around you, the monitors flickered back to life. The rhythmic beeping of stabilized heart monitors returned, and the noise of the Pitt smoothed out into its normal, frantic rhythm.

You glanced at the nearest screen, then at the hospital director who had just rushed in. “Seems like it’s handled.”

The director nodded, breathless and clearly struggling to keep up with the pace of the last five minutes. “Yes… yes, it appears so.”

“You should seriously upgrade your IT security,” you added, your tone perfectly professional. “My team left a list of the vulnerabilities they found while they were in your system.”

“…We will. Immediately.”

For a moment, no one said anything. It wasn't because they didn't have questions—it was because they didn't even know where to start. Jack exhaled quietly, running a hand over his face. In his world, problems meant triage, protocols, and slow, steady procedures. In yours, problems simply disappeared before they could escalate.

He looked at you again, seeing something he hadn't fully grasped before. You weren't just powerful; you were dangerous. You were a woman who moved pieces on a board most people didn't even know existed.

Santos didn’t even look up from the chart she was typing, her fingers moving with renewed speed. “Badass,” she muttered under her breath, accepting the new reality as an established fact.

Robby leaned in closer to Jack, his voice dropping to a frantic whisper. “Man, whatever you do… don’t ever get on her bad side.”

Jack shifted, folding his arms across his chest. He watched you navigate the room, his gaze fixed on you with a mixture of pride and a deep, settled understanding.

“Don't worry, Robby,” Jack said, his voice steady and warm. “I’m always on her good side.

*******

The time the ER came first 

The charity event was everything it was supposed to be: polished, controlled, and obscenely expensive. Jack stood beside you, one hand resting loosely at the small of your back, listening more than speaking. He didn’t belong in a room full of venture capitalists and socialites, and somehow, that only made him stand out more.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it once, his eyes narrowing into that sharp, clinical focus you knew so well.

"ER," he said.

You didn’t hesitate. "Go."

He looked at you, searching your face to be sure. You tilted your head slightly, a small, knowing smirk playing on your lips. "They need you, Jack. And I don’t date a doctor who ignores his patients."

That was all the permission he needed. He leaned in just enough to press a brief, lingering kiss to your temple before turning and disappearing into the crowd without another word.

The Pitt was a symphony of chaos until the sliding glass doors hissed open.

For a second, the room went quiet. It wasn't a total silence, just a collective pause as the staff realized who had just walked onto the floor. Jack stepped through the doors still in his midnight-blue suit, the tailored lines of the fabric looking impossibly sharp against the sterile, white-tiled background.

"What’s the status?" he asked, his voice cutting through the noise like a blade.

Shen blinked, momentarily stunned as he looked Jack up and down. "Where the hell did you come from? A Bond movie?"

"Charity gala," Jack muttered, already moving toward the trauma bay.

Ellis answered immediately, her professional rhythm kicking in. "Male, mid-thirties. Penetrating trauma, left abdomen. Hypotensive. FAST exam is positive."

Jack was at the bedside in seconds, his hands moving with practiced ease even as he stood there in silk and wool. "Vitals?"

"BP eighty over fifty. Heart rate one-thirty," she said.

He nodded once, his gaze fixed on the monitor. "He’s bleeding internally. We don’t have time to wait for a CT."

He began peeling off his suit jacket, tossing it toward an empty chair with a flick of his wrist. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled the sleeves up past his elbows, revealing the toned, scarred forearms of a man who spent his life in the trenches. A nurse stepped in, whisking the jacket away, while another tied a surgical mask into place over his face.

"Let’s move," Jack commanded. "Prep for an exploratory lap. Type and cross, start the blood."

Mateo, prepping the tray, muttered under his breath, "I bet that shirt costs more than my annual salary."

Jack didn’t even look at him as he snapped on his gloves. "Then let’s not ruin it, Mateo. Scalpel."

They moved fast. There was no hesitation, no wasted motion. Jack guided the team through the hemorrhage control, his voice staying level and rhythmic as he clamped and repaired. It was a high-stakes dance, and Jack was the lead.

"Pressure’s stabilizing," Garcia announced, her voice filled with relief.

"Good. Keep it there."

Minutes stretched, then finally settled into a steady hum. The bleeding stopped. The patient held.

"He’s stable," Garcia confirmed.

Jack stepped back from the table, pulling off his gloves with a sharp snap. "Nice work, everyone. Get him up to the ICU."

By the time he walked out of the scrub room, his sleeves were rolled down and his suit jacket was back in place. He looked like he’d just stepped off a yacht, not out of a bloody abdomen.

"I have to go," he said, heading toward the exit. "Can’t disappoint my date."

Shen huffed, shaking his head as he watched him go. "Yeah, go. Before she decides to upgrade another department out of boredom."

Outside, the night air was cool and quiet. And there it was, the black Rolls-Royce, idling at the curb like it had been part of the pavement the whole time. Jack walked up, opened the heavy door, and paused.

You were sitting in the back, the soft glow of the interior lights catching the diamonds at your throat. He raised a brow slightly. "You left the party?"

"The gala already got my money," you murmured, leaning back against the leather seat and watching him with a predatory sort of admiration. "And my date needed a ride home. I figured I should come pick him up."

Jack slid into the seat beside you, the scent of the hospital fading as the door shut out the world. He looked at you, truly looked at you, and the adrenaline of the ER was replaced by a different kind of heat. He hadn't expected you to wait, let alone come to his doorstep.

You let your fingers trace the sharp line of his jaw, your voice dropping to a flirty hum. "And I have much better plans for that suit than a hospital trauma bay."

Jack caught your hand, his thumb grazing your palm as he pulled you closer, his eyes dark. "Is that so?"

"Consider it a reward for your service," you whispered.

*******

The time Jack’s day didn’t get interrupted 

“Cherry blossoms should be in full bloom next week,” you said, your thumb gliding over the vibrant displays on your phone. “Japan. I think we need a change of scenery.”

Jack didn’t even look up from the chart in his hands, his pen moving in a steady, rhythmic scratch. “I can’t go with you.”

You glanced at him, the luxury of the suggestion hanging in the air. “Why?”

“I have a deposition.”

You paused, your fingers going still. The word carried a weight that didn't belong in a casual conversation. “…You got sued?”

“A patient case,” he said, finally closing the chart with a heavy thud. “She wanted a free birth at home. Complications arose. She had a stroke, and we had to rush her into surgery to deliver the baby.”

You frowned, your mind already dissecting the liability. “Did she survive?”

“Yeah.”

“The baby?”

“Also fine.”

That made you blink, the logic of the situation failing to meet your standards of reality. “…Then why are you being sued?”

Jack exhaled, a sound of weary resignation. “Battery. Lack of consent for the intervention. It happens more than you’d think.”

“And you have to be there personally?”

“I have to be questioned.”

You tilted your head, your eyes narrowing as you processed the inefficiency of it all. To you, a problem like this wasn't a hurdle; it was a nuisance to be cleared. “You need a better lawyer.”

“I have the hospital’s legal department,” Jack began.

“No,” you cut in, already reaching for your phone with practiced precision. “You need a better one. Someone who doesn't just defend—someone who ends it.”

Jack watched you, a mixture of amusement and concern crossing his face. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Too late.” You pressed the phone to your ear, your voice dropping into that low, authoritative register. “Greg. I need the best litigation team available. The ones who make people reconsider their entire life path.” A pause. “Yes. For him. I want it handled by noon.”

You hung up and looked back at Jack, the matter settled in your mind. “Done.”

A week later, the sterile white of the hospital was thousands of miles away. Jack was standing under a canopy of pale pink, the air cool and smelling of spring.

Petals drifted slowly through the air like organic confetti, catching in your hair and brushing against his sleeve. The Kyoto park was quiet, an almost surreal contrast to the frantic, metallic noise of the Pitt. You walked beside him as if this was perfectly normal—as if whisking a trauma surgeon across the ocean in the middle of a legal battle was just another item on the week's agenda.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to see a string of messages from Robby.

Robby: Abbott, what the hell?! The plaintiff’s firm just called and apologized. APOLOGIZED. How did you get that lawyer? That guy is a shark in a three-piece suit.

Jack glanced at you. You were watching a group of children near a koi pond, looking entirely peaceful. He looked back at his phone and typed a single line, “Perks of the job.”

A second later, the reply came back.

Robby: Fuck you. Bring me back some sake.

Jack’s mouth curved into a slow, genuine smirk as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. You turned to him, noting the shift in his expression. “What?”

“Nothing.”

He reached out, his hand steady and warm as he brushed a stray petal from your shoulder. His fingers lingered for a second, a silent acknowledgement of the world you had cleared for him.

“Just… good timing,” he said.

And for once, his day didn't get interrupted. No pagers, no depositions, and no one to answer to but the woman who made the impossible look effortless.

*********

The time Jack walked into your world 

Greg saw Jack first and straightened his posture instinctively. “Hello, doctor.”

Jack nodded once, his focus already drifting past the assistant toward the glass wall. “How is she doing?”

“Like usual,” Greg replied, checking his watch with a frown. “She missed lunch again. Oh, and she still won’t eat vegetables.” 

“That can’t be good.”

Jack’s gaze shifted. Inside the meeting room, you were sitting at the head of the table, spine perfectly straight, expression a mask of controlled frost. Across from you, a young man in a tailored suit was talking fast, his hands moving in a desperate attempt to sell confidence.

Greg leaned a little closer to Jack. “She’s stuck in there. Son of one of the executive board members.” He glanced at the time again. “Give it a minute. She’s about to snap.”

Inside the room, you tapped your pen once against the mahogany table. It was a rhythmic, deadly sound.

“Turning trash into electricity,” you said, your voice deceptively calm. “That’s your pitch?”

“It’s a strong project,” he replied quickly.

“It is,” you agreed. “So I keep asking for one thing. Where has this worked?”

A pause. “We’re still collecting the waste. It’s in progress.”

“So there’s no real example yet.”

“It’s… developing.”

You tapped the pen again, slower this time. “You’re asking for investment without a working model. No proven results. No success rate.”

He straightened, trying to reclaim the room. “We have projections—”

“And you’re asking for how much?” you cut him off.

“Eight million.”

You nodded once, then folded your hands neatly. A small, polite smile touched your lips—the kind that never reached your eyes. “Sure. I’ll give you the money.”

His face lit up. “Thank you—”

“But,” you added. The single syllable acted like a physical barrier. “I want a guarantee. If you fail to deliver within one year, I want to double the investment back.”

His smile vanished. “What?”

“You came here expecting easy money,” you said, your tone leveling out into something cold. “I’ll give it to you. But easy money comes with a price. We have the capital. The question is, can you execute?”

Silence filled the room.

“If you can’t,” you added, leaning in just an inch, “we will chase you for it.”

The confidence drained out of him, his face pale. “We’ll… come back with stronger data.”

“Good.”

When the door opened, he walked out with his shoulders noticeably lower.

Inside, you finally leaned back and exhaled, the mask slipping. Your hand moved to your stomach, pressing lightly against the sharp discomfort of an empty, stressed-out system.

“Was that a bit too straightforward?”

You looked up, startled. Jack was standing there; you hadn’t even heard the door click.

“They offered me nothing,” you replied, brushing off the encounter as you tried to regain your composure. “Beggars shouldn’t ask for more.”

Jack stepped closer, stopping just beside your chair. He leaned down slightly, lowering his voice until it was a private rumble. “You don’t smile at anyone here.”

A beat passed.

“…But you do with me.”

You met his eyes, the hardness in yours melting. “Of course.”

His gaze dropped briefly to the untouched, pristine space on your desk. “You haven’t eaten.”

“No,” you said softly. “That’s why my stomach hurts again.”

Jack reached down and set a lunch box in front of you. You blinked, looking at the simple container. “Is it…?”

“Your lunch.”

You opened it, the steam hitting your face, and then you looked at him. “Did you make this?”

Jack looked suddenly, uncharacteristically uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “If there’s no flavor, ask Greg for salt. And eat the veggies.”

You laughed—a soft, real sound that echoed in the empty room—and took a bite. It was simple, warm, and better than any five-star meal you'd had in New York. You didn’t realize how long it had been since someone had looked after you this way.

“…Thank you,” you said, your voice quiet.

The door opened again. Greg stepped in, tablet in hand and ready for the next round. “Boss, your schedule—”

“She’s done for today,” Jack said flatly.

You looked up at him, stunned. “…I am?”

“You are.”

There was a pause. You looked at the lunch Jack had made, then at the mountain of work Greg held, and finally back to Jack’s steady, stubborn gaze.

“Alright,” you said, leaning back. “Clear my schedule today, Greg.”

Greg blinked. “Really?”

“Call the vice director,” you said, waving a hand dismissively. “We pay him enough. Give him more work. And you… you can go home.”

Greg broke into a wide grin, giving two thumbs up. “Yes. Absolutely.” He glanced at Jack, a look of pure gratitude on his face. “You’re welcome here anytime, Doc.”

Then he vanished before you could change your mind. In the sudden quiet of the office, you looked at Jack.

"So," you murmured. "Where are you taking me?"

********

Jack didn’t like golf.

He didn’t say it out loud, but it showed in the way he held the club—a little too stiff, like the polished graphite didn't belong in his hands. Still, he followed you across the rolling green without complaint. He was quiet and steady, his focus less on the game and more on the way you moved.

You, on the other hand, moved like you owned the place. Which, in a way, you did.

And as he thought. This golf course is also one of your businesses.

A man in a sharp black suit approached from the perimeter, stopping just short of stepping onto the manicured grass. He didn’t look at Jack; his eyes were fixed solely on you.

“Miss,” he said quietly, his voice carrying a practiced neutrality. “Your father is here.”

You didn’t react immediately. You adjusted your glove, your eyes still fixed on the horizon of the course. The air seemed to chill by a few degrees.

“Of course he is,” you said.

The atmosphere in the private lounge was heavy, the kind of silence that only exists in rooms where every piece of furniture costs more than a year of a surgeon’s salary. The moment the door closed, the pretense evaporated.

Your father didn’t bother easing into the conversation. He sat behind a desk of dark, polished wood, leaning back with a look of bored disapproval.

“A doctor?” he scoffed. “Out of everyone, you pick a doctor? At least choose someone with status. A hospital director. Someone who understands the weight of our name.”

You didn’t even blink. The clinical coldness you usually reserved for boardroom predators settled over your features. “No.”

He frowned, the skin around his eyes tightening. “No?”

“What about you?” you shot back, your voice smooth and dangerous. “Your mistress isn’t exactly qualified for our 'status' either.”

That made him pause, his posture stiffening. “She’s not part of this discussion.”

“Oh, she is,” you said calmly, taking a seat across from him without being asked. “You’re comparing standards, aren't you? Let’s be thorough.”

His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He looked toward the door, where Jack was waiting somewhere out of sight. “He’s not rich. He has nothing to offer this family.”

You almost smiled at that, but it wasn't a kind expression.

“My partner saves lives,” you said, your voice dropping to a low, lethal register. “Yours spends money. If you’re looking for a return on investment, I’d say I’ve made the better choice.”

Your father’s gaze shifted toward the window, looking for any lingering argument. “He only has one leg,” he said, his voice dropping into a tone of dull observation, as if he were pointing out a scratch on a vintage car.

You didn’t even hesitate. The defense was instantaneous, sharp and cold as a blade. “That’s not a flaw,” you countered. “That’s a scar of honor. He served his country while you were sitting in boardrooms.”

A small, heavy pause settled between you. You tilted your head slightly, watching him struggle to find a rebuttal. Your eyes remained locked on his, steady and unforgiving.

“I thought you were patriotic,” you added, the irony dripping from every word. “Didn’t you donate millions for new weapons last year? It’s funny how you love the machinery of war, but can’t stand the sight of the men who actually used it.”

That shut him up.

“I’m not asking for your permission,” you said. “You asked. I answered.”

Silence.

Then, quieter but sharper, “Besides, what do you actually care?”

He sighed because he hated where this conversation was going.

“You turned my life into a competition,” you continued. “You set me against your mistress. You turned half the board to her side. You pushed me to work day and night until I ended up in the hospital.”

“It was just a minor surgery,” he dismissed. “Gastric. You’re fine.”

Something in you snapped.

“For you, it’s entertainment,” you said, your voice tightening for the first time. “Watching me struggle.”

A breath, uneven.

“For me… it wasn’t.”

You held his gaze now. No distance. No control to hide behind.

“He was the one who made me stop,” you said. “He was the one who made me get treated. He looked at me like I was a person who needed help… even when I refused it.”

Your voice dropped.

“Even when I thought I didn’t deserve it.”

That hit harder than anything else.

Your composure slipped just enough to show it. The crack you never let anyone see.

The room went quiet.

You didn’t wait for his response. He doesn't have the right to see your tears. 

You turned and walked out before he could say anything that would make it worse.

*****

When you stepped out into the hallway, the heavy silence of the lounge followed you like a ghost. Jack was already there.

He was leaning against the wood-paneled wall, hands buried deep in his pockets, looking like a man who had nowhere else in the world to be. The moment he saw you, he straightened, his focus narrowing.

Jack didn’t just look at you; he saw through you. He caught the slight tension in your jaw, the way your eyes were just a fraction too bright. To anyone else, you were the picture of composure. To him, you were a woman who had just survived a war.

You didn’t say a word. You simply walked toward him, the distance between you vanishing until you stopped, just inches away. You stood there, suspended in the space between you, your breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches.

Jack didn’t wait for an invitation.

His hands came up, certain and slow, pulling you into his space. He gathered you in carefully, as if he already knew exactly where the bruising was. One arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you flush against him, while his other hand settled at the back of your head, tucking your face into the crook of his neck.

You let out a long, shuddering breath against his chest—a sound quieter than you expected, but heavy with the weight of everything you’d been carrying.

“You’re alright,” he said softly, his voice a low vibration against your temple.

A pause settled over you both, the luxury of the club fading into the background.

“Your father’s an idiot,” he murmured, his breath warm against your hair.

You let out a small, broken scoff against the fabric of his shirt. “The worst in the world.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, his hand moving in a slow, grounding pass along your back. “I figured.”

For the first time all day, the performance stopped. There was no need for control, no need to be the woman who ran empires. You stayed there, resting your forehead against his shoulder, letting his strength hold you up while you finally let yourself go quiet.

The crash came fast.

The moment the car door clicked shut, the adrenaline that had been keeping you upright evaporated. You didn’t argue about the next meeting or complain about the headache pulsing behind your eyes; you simply leaned your head against the cool leather of the seat and let the world go dark.

Jack, sitting beside you, felt the change instantly. As your head slumped toward his shoulder, the heat radiating from your skin was impossible to ignore. He reached out, his calloused palm grazing your forehead.

He didn’t even need a thermometer. “You have a fever,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, professional steadiness.

Greg, watching through the rearview mirror, gripped the steering wheel tighter. “It happens when the stress piles up. Her body just… shuts down.”

Jack’s jaw tightened, his hand lingering near your temple. “This isn’t just stress.”

Greg hesitated, then sighed, a dry, weary sound. “She’s been like this for years. Always pushing, always trying to prove something to that man. Always trying to make him… proud.”

The words landed heavily in the quiet of the car. Jack looked down at you—pale, fragile, and far away—then shifted his gaze back to Greg.

Greg let out a hollow breath. “Because this whole thing? The company, the pressure, the constant fights? It’s a test. The succession. He wants to see how far she can go before she breaks.”

Jack didn’t like the answer. He didn't like the cold, calculated cost of your inheritance. He looked back at your face, seeing the toll of a lifetime spent trying to win a game that had no finish line.

“That’s not how you measure someone,” he muttered, his voice thick with a sudden, protective heat.

He didn't care about the succession or the empire. He just shifted closer, pulling you more firmly against his side, offering the only thing your father never could: a place where you didn't have to prove a thing.

Jack didn’t explain much. He didn't have to.

"I’m going to meet him," he said.

Greg didn't need a map or a reason. He simply checked his watch and nodded. "He smokes cigars at five. Terrace level. You’ll find him there."

The terrace was a sanctuary of calculated isolation. It was quiet, expensive, and designed to make the rest of the world feel small. Your father sat in a low, leather chair, one leg crossed over the other with a cigar resting between his fingers. The smoke curled lazily into the afternoon air, controlled and deliberate. Everything about the man broadcasted power.

Jack stepped into that space as if the prestige didn't exist.

Your father barely spared him a glance, his eyes fixed on the horizon. "You’re the doctor."

"Yeah."

Jack didn't sit. He stood with his weight balanced, a soldier in a garden.

"As her doctor," Jack began, his voice dropping into a low, steady resonance, "I don’t ignore the source of the problem."

That pulled your father’s attention. He turned his head slowly to look at him properly.

"And you’re the reason she’s sick," Jack added.

A small, dismissive scoff escaped the older man. "She’s under pressure. In our world, that’s normal."

"No," Jack countered. "That’s damage."

Your father waved a hand, the cigar glowing bright for a second as he dismissed the air between them. "If this is a lecture—"

"It’s not," Jack cut in, his tone sharp and clinical. "I’m here to make sure what’s hurting her doesn’t keep happening. I’m a trauma surgeon; I don't just patch the wound. I stop the bleeding."

Silence settled between them, heavy and suffocating.

Your father shifted slightly in his seat. It was a subtle movement, but Jack’s eyes were trained for it. He caught the way the man's shoulders adjusted, the way his breath came just a fraction heavier than before. His fingers tightened briefly around the cigar, revealing a faint, rhythmic tremor.

Jack’s gaze sharpened. "You should get yourself checked."

The reaction was immediate. Your father’s brow furrowed. "...What?"

"Your blood pressure," Jack continued, his voice devoid of emotion. "You’re flushed. Your breathing isn't even. There's a slight tremor in your hand. You’re compensating, but your body is redlining."

Your father frowned, his posture stiffening. "I’m fine."

Jack didn’t argue. He just looked at him with the cold, honest stare of a man who had seen a thousand hearts stop beating.

"You’re not," he said simply.

A long pause followed. Your father shifted again, this time more deliberately, straightening his spine as if posture alone could override biology. But his breath still caught slightly on the exhale.

Jack saw the vulnerability through the expensive suit. Then, quieter, he spoke again. "You won’t last a year like this."

The air on the terrace changed. Your father stared at him now, his irritation edged with a flickering shadow of something else. "Is that supposed to scare me?"

Jack shook his head once. "No."

A beat.

"It’s supposed to give you time."

The silence returned. Jack stepped back, the conversation already over in his mind.

"Fix things with her," he said. "While you still can."

"Are you threatening me?" your father asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low register. "I could have you removed from here. From everything."

Jack didn’t react. Not even a flicker of doubt crossed his face. He simply stood his ground, immovable.

"Try it."

Your father went quiet. The threat hung in the air, empty and useless.

Jack held his gaze, a dark, knowing glint in his eyes. "I have her. And last I checked, you’ve already stepped down. She’s the one running everything now."

A brief pause.

"And she has lawyers who don’t lose."

Something in your father’s expression tightened. It was the look of a man realizing the board had been flipped while he wasn't looking.

Jack gave the smallest hint of a smirk—a cold, jagged thing—then turned and walked out, leaving the room as if it had never belonged to anyone else.

******

You woke up slowly, the dull ache of a fever still lingering under your skin. For a second, you didn't move. You knew this feeling well—the aftermath. It was the familiar tax your body collected after you pushed yourself too far, after another round of psychological warfare with your father.

You hated the weakness of it.

Your eyes shifted, and that’s when you realized you weren’t alone. Jack was beside you, half-leaning against the headboard, his presence a grounded, immovable weight in the quiet room. One arm rested loosely near your side, his posture suggesting he had been there for a long time.

He noticed the moment you stirred. “You’re up.”

Your voice came out softer, thinner than usual. “Did I just shut down again?”

“Yeah,” he said, his gaze steady on yours. “You didn’t even realize I carried you.”

You blinked, turning your head slightly to look at him. “Really?” A small pause followed as you processed the image of him effortlessly taking the weight you couldn't carry. “…I missed that.”

The corner of his mouth lifted just a fraction. “You were out cold. Didn’t miss much.”

You exhaled, letting your head sink deeper into the pillow. The room was calm—too calm compared to the storm of the afternoon. Then, the sharp buzz of your phone broke the silence. You frowned, reaching for it with a heavy hand. Your eyes scanned the notification on the screen and froze.

“What?”

Jack’s attention shifted immediately. “What is it?”

You turned the phone toward him, your thumb trembling slightly. “My dad.” A beat passed as you stared at the words. “He wants to have dinner.”

The silence that followed was heavier than before. Jack looked at the screen, then back at you, reading your reaction more than the message itself.

“He’s never asked first,” you said quietly, the disbelief clear in your tone. “Not once. It’s always a summons, never an invitation.” You glanced back at Jack, suspicion creeping in. “Did you do something?”

Jack held your gaze for a second, his expression unreadable.

“I made it clear that I don’t let my patient get put back in that condition,” he said, his voice as calm as a deep tide. He didn't blink. “And I don’t repeat myself.”

The weight of it settled in your chest. You looked at him a second longer than necessary, something shifting behind your eyes. Not a shock. Not confusion. Realization.

“…You went to see him,” you said. A beat. “And came back alive.”

Jack frowned slightly at that. “I told him you’re the CEO now.” His tone stayed even. “That was enough to shut him down.”

You let out a quiet chuckle, shaking your head against the pillow. “Yeah… you didn’t just shut him down. You pressed right where it hurts.” Your eyes flicked back to him. “He hates that I won.”

“He should start getting used to it,” Jack said. 

*******

The Time He Realized He Meant Everything to You 

Jack never got sick. He was the one who stitched the world back together, a man built on adrenaline and steady hands. But even the best armor has a chink, and during a high-stakes SWAT call-out, a stray round found the space the Kevlar didn't cover.

This time, the bullet hadn't just grazed him. It had torn through his upper quadrant, shattering a rib and nicking the hepatic artery.

This time, Jack was the patient.

The Pitt was a blur of controlled violence. Robby, Garcia, and Al-Hashimi moved with a frantic precision they usually reserved for strangers, their faces slick with sweat under the harsh fluorescent lights.

"He’s losing too much blood!" Garcia shouted. Her hands were buried deep in gauze, pressing down on the entry wound in his upper quadrant with every ounce of her weight. "Pressure! I need more pressure! The packing is soaking through!"

"We can’t move him to the OR like this," Robby grunted. His face was a ghostly shade of pale as he used both hands to squeeze a bag of O-negative, trying to force life back into Jack’s collapsing veins. "His systolic is dropping through the floor. Stay with me, Jack. Stay with me, buddy."

Inside the fog of shock, Jack was fighting a silent, losing war. Every time his heart thumped, he felt a sickening, hollow slide deep in his chest—the sensation of his own life spilling out onto the trauma table. The voices around him were beginning to warble, stretching out into a low, distorted hum that sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a deep well.

Don't close your eyes, he told himself. The command was a flicker of a thought, weak and flickering like a dying candle. If you close them, you don't wake up.

He tried to draw a breath, but his shattered rib grated against the pleura, a jagged spark of agony that nearly pushed him over the edge into the black. His vision was tunneling, the edges of the room turning into a frayed, gray vignette. He could feel the cold now—a deep, marrow-chilling frost that started at his fingertips and was rapidly claiming his heart.

"He’s in V-fib!" Al-Hashimi yelled, the sharp, rhythmic alarm of the heart monitor suddenly flatlining into a terrifying, continuous shriek. "Get the paddles! Charge to two hundred!"

The team scrambled. Garcia never let go of the wound, even as the air in the room seemed to vibrate with the sheer desperation of their effort.

"Clear!"

Jack’s body arched off the table, a violent, mechanical jolt that felt like a lightning strike to his soul. For a second, there was only the smell of ozone and the heavy metallic scent of blood.

Fight, he thought, his mind clutching at a single image—you, sitting across from him at lunch, laughing at a joke he hadn't finished. Not yet.

Suddenly, a heavy, rhythmic thrumming vibrated through the trauma bay walls. It started as a low growl in the floorboards and escalated into a deafening roar. Outside the glass, the unmistakable downdraft of a heavy helicopter flared, kicking up debris and rattling the medical instruments on their trays.

Robby glanced toward the window, then leaned down, his mouth inches from Jack's ear. "Look. Your girl is here." He gripped Jack’s shoulder, his voice thick with a raw, desperate hope. "She just landed a private bird on our roof, Jack. You can’t disappoint her, right? You know she’ll sue this entire city into the ground if you quit on her. You stay. You stay for her."

The flatline on the monitor stuttered. A single, weak blip appeared. Then another.

Jack’s fingers twitched against the cold metal of the rail. The darkness was still pulling at him, but the roar of that engine felt like a tether. You were here. 

You’re here? Jack thought through the fog. You were supposed to be in Japan. The Prime Minister... the meeting... 

You had moved heaven and earth to reach him, and he realized with a sudden, sharp clarity that he couldn't leave you alone in a world that didn't deserve you.

"I've got a rhythm," Al-Hashimi breathed, his voice cracking. "It’s faint, but it’s there."

Robby let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding for a lifetime. “Thank you, Jack.”

“I’ll take it from here,” Garcia said, her voice firming up. “Let's get him upstairs. Now!”

As the gurney disappeared into the elevator, Robby stepped out into the hallway. He found you standing there, still in your professional suit, your hair windblown from the heli-pad. You looked smaller than he’d ever seen you.

“How is he?” you asked, your voice trembling, a stark contrast to your usual command.

“We stabilized him,” Robby said quickly. “He’s going into surgery now.”

“But?”

“There’s no but,” Robby insisted, placing a steadying hand on your shoulder. “We have the best surgeons in the state in that room. I promise you, Jack is going to make it.”

The dam finally broke. You let out a jagged, broken sob, and Dana was there in a second, pulling you into a hug.

“I can’t lose him,” you whispered into her shoulder, the "CEO" completely gone. “I can’t lose him.”

*****

Four hours later, the world had gone quiet.

The chaotic violence of the trauma bay was a ghost of a memory, replaced by the steady, sterile rhythm of recovery. The soft hiss of the ventilator and the slow, reassuring beep of the heart monitor were the only sounds in the private room.

Jack opened his eyes.

For a second, everything felt distant, as if he were submerged in heavy water. Then, the reality of his own pulse hit him, sharp and grounding. He was alive. He had been on the absolute edge—he knew the physics of the wound too well to think otherwise—and yet, he was still breathing.

The next thing he saw was you.

You were sitting far too close to the bed, your posture uncharacteristically slumped. Your hand was wrapped tightly around his, your knuckles pale from the grip, as if letting go would mean letting him drift back into the dark.

Something in his chest eased, a sensation far deeper than any physical relief.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Japan?” he croaked, his voice a dry, jagged rasp.

You looked up immediately. Your eyes were red-rimmed and unmistakably shaken, stripped of the polished mask you wore for the world. “Is that the first thing you ask after four hours of surgery?”

“I thought it would be an icebreaker,” Jack murmured, a faint smirk pulling at his lips. “I swear I heard you crying in my dreams. It was loud.”

“Of course I cried, you idiot,” you said, your voice breaking despite your attempt to sound sharp. You shook your head slightly, a jagged breath escaping you. “Unbelievable. You wake up and that’s what you say.”

Jack let out a weak breath, something close to a quiet laugh. Even through the haze of the painkillers, he noticed the way you were trying to hold yourself together.

How come this man still tries to make a joke? you thought, staring at him. Even now.

He lifted his hand slowly. It felt heavier than lead, but you were already leaning in before he even finished the movement. His fingers brushed your cheek, rough and careful at the same time, wiping away a tear you hadn’t realized was falling.

He looked at you, really looked, past the exhaustion and the lingering panic. He looked right into the vulnerability you spent your life protecting.

“The meeting could be rearranged,” you said, your voice dropping to a whisper. “Being here with you is more important than any contract. Any of it.”

Jack’s chest tightened, a pull that had nothing to do with the surgical site. He understood the gravity of those words. You hadn’t just moved things around; you had walked away from the empire you spent every waking hour building. You had walked away for him.

“I made you afraid,” he said quietly, his gaze softening with a heavy, honest guilt.

You didn’t answer immediately. Instead, you rested your forehead against his arm, your grip on his hand tightening as if to anchor him there.

“Don’t leave me alone in this world,” you whispered against the sheets. “I need my night-crawl doctor. Who else is going to tell me I’m being ridiculous?”

Jack exhaled slowly, his thumb brushing lightly across the back of your hand. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. His voice was weak, but it carried a certainty that filled the room. “You’re stuck with me.”

He paused, a flicker of the old Abbott returning to his eyes. “And someone has to make sure you actually take care of yourself.”

You let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh, the tension finally beginning to drain from your shoulders. Your eyes drifted to the bandages wrapped around his torso, your fingers carefully tracing the edge of the gauze as if making sure he was solid, real, and still yours.

“It’s a battle scar,” you said softly. “A badge of honor.”

Jack closed his eyes for a second, leaning into your touch. “I’d prefer a quieter hobby. Golf doesn’t sound bad now. Maybe I’ll try tennis.” 

You shook your head lightly, but your hand didn’t leave his. For the first time in a long time, you didn’t feel like you had to be in control of everything. You didn't have to be the boss; you just had to be the woman who loved him.

And for the first time in his life, Jack didn’t feel like he was walking into the fire alone. He tightened his hold on your hand just slightly, the rhythmic beep of the monitor sounding more like a victory than a warning.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he repeated, his voice dropping to a low, intimate register. “I’ve still got to get you to eat those vegetables.”

You huffed quietly, resting your head against him again. “We’ll negotiate that.”

The double doors hissed open as a man swept in, draped in an expensive charcoal suit that was just wrinkled enough to suggest a long lunch that had devolved into several rounds of scotch. The scent of high-end whiskey trailed behind him like a physical wake, clashing sharply with the sterile, antiseptic air. He didn’t wait to be called; he marched straight to the triage desk, his lip curling at the sight of the linoleum floors.

“I’ve been waiting ten minutes,” he snapped, his voice booming across the quiet area. He adjusted his silk tie with a sneer. “Do you know who I am?”

Ellis didn’t look up from her monitor. Her fingers moved with practiced efficiency as she reached for a blood pressure cuff. “I don’t,” she said, her voice flat. “But I do know your blood alcohol content is likely higher than your IQ right now. Arm, please.”

He scoffed, yanking his arm back. “I don’t sit in waiting rooms with... these people. Move me to the front of the line. One call from me, and I can personally ensure the massive donation my company is about to make to this hospital disappears. I am from Ardentis Holdings.”

Ellis paused. Just for a second. She finally looked up, her eyebrows migrating toward her hairline. “Ardentis Holdings? Really?”

“Does that name sound familiar now?” he sneered. “I suggest you start acting faster.”

Ellis didn't look intimidated. If anything, she looked like she’d just found a very interesting bug on the sidewalk. She turned toward the doorway and called out, “Jack, could you come here for a second? We have a... VIP.”

Jack stepped into the room, his expression the picture of clinical boredom. He scanned the chart briefly before his eyes settled on the drunk man in the expensive suit. “Problem?”

“This gentleman is asking for priority treatment,” Ellis said, a small, dangerous smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “He says he’s from Ardentis Holdings.”

Jack’s eyebrows lifted. A flicker of recognition crossed his face, but it wasn't the groveling respect the patient was looking for. It was more like mild amusement.

“Oh,” Jack said, tilting his head. “My wife works there.”

The man let out a short, bark-like laugh. He looked Jack up and down—from his sensible shoes to his stethoscope—with pure disdain. “Your wife? What does she do, handle the filing? Clean the breakroom?”

Jack didn't flinch. “Y/N,” he said simply. “Do you know her?”

The man snorted, leaning back and crossing his arms. “Know her? She’s the CEO of Ardentis Holdings. She’s the most powerful woman in the sector. And you’re telling me you’re married to her?” He laughed again, a wet, arrogant sound. “Please. In what universe?”

Without a word, Jack pulled his phone from his pocket. He tapped the screen once and set it on the counter, angling it toward the man. The call connected almost instantly.

“Yeah?” Your voice came through the speaker—crisp, authoritative, and clearly focused on a dozen other things.

Jack leaned against the counter, looking completely relaxed. “Hey. Quick question. Do you happen to know a manager who is currently in my ER?”

There was a brief, sharp silence on the other end. “I know which one isn't at the board meeting he's supposed to be at,” you said, your voice dropping an octave. “He told my assistant he had a family emergency. Why?”

Jack turned the phone slightly, the camera capturing the man’s face.

The man went from flushed red to a ghostly, sickly white in three seconds flat. The smugness evaporated, replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated terror. He was looking straight at his boss—and she was looking back.

“Oh,” you said quietly. It wasn't a shout. It was worse. It was the sound of a closing door. “Did you forget this meeting only happened because of your mistakes?”

“Ma’am,” he stammered, his voice cracking as he tried to straighten his wrinkled suit. “Ma’am, there’s been a massive misunderstanding—”

“He also mentioned,” Ellis piped up from the corner, “that he could cancel the company’s donation if we didn't give him special treatment.”

“Did he?” you asked. The air in the room seemed to turn to ice. “Be in HR at nine a.m. tomorrow. Don't bother bringing your briefcase.”

The man sat paralyzed, his world crumbling into the glowing screen. Before Jack could pull the phone away, your voice drifted through the speaker one last time.

“Oh, and Jack?”

Jack brought the phone back to his face, his expression softening instantly. “Yup.”

“Since I’ve already found someone to take the blame,” you said, your tone losing its icy edge for something warm and intimate, “I’m coming home as soon as I can.”

A rare, genuine smile broke across Jack’s face. “Can’t wait,” he murmured, ending the call.

The man stared, breathless. He had seen you dismantle boardrooms with a single glance, but he had never heard the "shark" speak with such gentleness—let alone to an E.R. doctor.

The call ended with a definitive click.

Jack slipped the phone into his pocket, his face returning to clinical boredom as he clicked his pen. “Let’s finish your vitals.”

“Well,” Ellis said, breaking the quiet with a satisfied sigh. “That solved triage. You’re back to being a ‘Level 4’ priority. Sit tight.”

The man didn’t argue. He sat perfectly still, eyes fixed on the floor, while Jack checked his vitals with methodical precision.

“…How did you even meet her?” he muttered after several minutes, his voice small and defeated. “She’s a shark. She’s always working. No one gets close to her.”

Jack paused for a fraction of a second, his pen hovering over the paper. “She’s stubborn,” Jack said quietly. “A workaholic.”

He clicked his pen.

“So am I.”

********

Flashback

The first time Jack met you.

The ER was unusually quiet. Jack was at the station, flipping through charts, when a nurse waved him over. "Got a walk-in. Abdominal pain," she noted. Jack nodded and stepped into the exam room.

You were sitting on the bed, one hand pressed lightly against your stomach. Your posture remained rigid, as if you were refusing to acknowledge the discomfort. Jack glanced from your face to the clipboard. "What do we have here?"

"Stomachache," you replied, exhaling slowly. "Probably gastric. I don’t have medicine at home."

"Probably?" he echoed, snapping on his gloves. He stepped into your personal space, calm and focused. "When did it start?"

"A few days ago."

"Pain level?"

"Manageable."

He raised a brow. "That’s not a number."

You gave him a dry look. "Fine. Five."

Jack didn’t push, but his hands were already moving. "Any nausea? Vomiting?"

"A little nausea. No vomiting."

He pressed lightly on your abdomen. "Tell me if it hurts."

It did. Your fingers tightened against the bedsheet, but you didn't make a sound. Jack’s eyes flicked to your hands—he noticed. He always noticed. "You work?" he asked, continuing the exam.

"Yeah. Office work."

"Hours?"

"Flexible."

He glanced up, meeting your eyes. "That usually means long."

A small, weary smile touched your lips. "I work better at night."

Jack let out a quiet breath, a faint smile mirroring yours. "Same. Night shift."

The ease of the gesture caught you off guard. "...So you get it," you murmured.

"I do." He stepped back, pulling off his gloves. "And you rest during the day?"

"Yes," you answered, perhaps a second too fast.

Jack didn’t call you out. He just looked at you for a moment longer than necessary—not judging, just noting the truth you were hiding. "Alright. Sounds like gastritis, maybe an early ulcer. It can be serious if you keep ignoring it."

He began writing on a prescription pad. "I’ll give you something to reduce the acid. But you need to eat regularly. And actually rest."

"I'll try," you said, though the words felt hollow.

"You don't sound convincing," Jack remarked, handing you the paper.

You looked at him properly then, curious. "Are you always like this with your patients?"

"Only when I think they’ll come back," he replied.

A beat of silence passed between you. You slid off the bed slowly, smoothing your clothes. "I won't."

"Hope you're right."

You reached for the prescription, your fingers brushing his for a brief, unintentional second. The air in the small room suddenly felt heavy.

"Thanks, doctor," you said, stepping toward the door.

"Abbott," he corrected quietly. "Jack Abbott."

After you left. He never thought this first meeting could lead to another. 

The second time Jack met you

Same week. Different day.

Jack stepped into the exam room and stopped for half a second, the chart already in his hand. “You again.”

You were already sitting on the bed, one hand pressed to your stomach, your posture still stubbornly straight. “Don’t sound too excited, doctor.”

“I told you to follow the plan,” he said, his voice dropping into that calm, authoritative register.

“I did.”

Jack gave you a long, skeptical look as he pulled on fresh gloves. “No, you didn’t.”

You exhaled, shifting slightly to get comfortable. The movement cost you—a sharp flicker of discomfort that made your breath hitch—and he caught it. He always did.

“When did the pain get worse?” he asked, moving into your personal space.

“Last night.”

“Pain level.”

You hesitated, looking at the sterile white tiles of the floor. “…Seven.”

He didn’t comment, but his jaw tightened. “Lie back.”

You did as you were told. He pressed gently along your abdomen, his touch clinical yet oddly grounding. You flinched this time—not a subtle movement—and his hands paused for a fraction of a second before continuing.

“Still eating irregularly?” he asked, his focus entirely on the exam.

“Yes.”

“Sleeping?”

“A little.”

He exhaled through his nose, a sound of quiet frustration. He straightened up, snapping his gloves off. The movement pulled the fabric of his scrubs tight across his chest and forearms, revealing the quiet strength in his veins. It was annoyingly noticeable. You found yourself looking away first, clearing your throat.

“You need labs and imaging,” Jack said. “Blood work, and I want a CT scan. Now.”

You frowned. “That sounds excessive for a stomachache.”

“It’s not,” he replied calmly. “Your symptoms are progressing, and I’m not interested in guessing.”

“I just need stronger meds.”

He crossed his arms, leaning back against the counter. The posture was casual, but his eyes were sharp. “Is your boss the problem? We see a lot of patients who are scared to take time off because of a demanding superior.”

Shen, passing by the open door, leaned in with a helpful nod. “We can advocate for you if that’s the case. No job is worth a perforated gut.”

You blinked, caught off guard by the genuine concern. “Oh—no. It’s not like that. It’s… complicated.”

Jack didn’t move. “Complicated how?”

You exhaled, the weight of the company and the board meetings suddenly feeling very heavy. “…Family business.”

Something shifted in Jack’s expression. It wasn’t sympathy—he didn't seem like the type to offer pity—but it was a cold, hard understanding that this wasn't just about a paycheck.

Time passed in a blur of needles and the sterile hum of the CT machine. When Jack finally returned with the results, he didn't sit down. He didn't soften the blow.

“You have a peptic ulcer,” he said. “And it’s worsening. If this continues, it will bleed or perforate.”

A beat of heavy silence followed.

“You need surgery.”

You shook your head immediately, the instinct to protect your position at the firm overriding the pain. “Not now.”

Jack’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes darkened. “It’s not optional.”

“I can’t,” you said, your voice firmer, your eyes locking onto his. “I can’t risk my position. Not this week.”

Jack studied you, his gaze tracing the lines of exhaustion and defiance on your face. “If you delay this, it gets worse. The recovery gets longer. The risk gets higher.”

The irritation rose in your chest because he was right, and you hated being managed. “I’ll hold it,” you said, your voice tight. “Dr. Jack Abbott.”

That made him pause. Not because of the refusal, but because of the way his name sounded coming from you—a mix of a challenge and an acknowledgement.

Jack nodded once. “Then you’ll be back,” he said.

You didn't rebuke him. You couldn't, because deep down, you felt the truth in his words.

As you walked out of the Pitt, clutching your side, Shen watched your retreating figure. He turned to Jack, scratching his head. “Where does she even work? I wonder what kind of evil boss she has to be that terrified of taking a sick day.”

Jack didn’t answer. He just watched the doors close behind you, his thumb tracing the edge of your chart. “The worst kind,” he murmured to himself. “The kind that doesn't know when to stop.”

The third time Jack met you 

A sharp screech of tires shredded the night. Inside the pit, Mateo and Shen sprinted toward the sound while Jack stayed focused, his hands moving with surgical precision over a teenager’s arm.

Outside, a sleek black sedan was skewed across the ambulance bay. Your assistant, Greg, scrambled out and threw open the rear door. "Please, help her!"

You were slumped against the leather, knuckles white as you clutched your abdomen. When Shen reached for you, your eyes flickered open, hazy with pain. "Just... an injection," you whispered, the words strained. "I need to get back."

"You again?" Shen muttered, recognizing you. Mateo shook his head, already pulling out a wheelchair. "We can’t treat you in a car. Let's move."

Inside, the ER hummed to life. Vitals were taken, IVs started. Shen palpated your stomach, his expression darkening. "Pain level, one to ten?"

"Ten," you choked out, your usual composure shattered.

"We need a CT scan immediately," Shen said.

You looked up, eyes wide with genuine fear. "How long? I... I have a meeting. I just need to stop the hurting." You weren't barking orders anymore; you were desperate. "Please, just tell me if I can leave."

Greg hovered at the curtain, his voice trembling. "Boss, the paracetamol didn't work. You can't just keep going like this."

You didn’t look at either of them. Your gaze was fixed on the ceiling, your voice low and dangerously clear. “If I don’t get the results fast,” you said, “I will drive that car out of here myself.” A heavy pause hung in the air. Then, your eyes flicked to Greg. “And I’ll fire you before I hit the exit.”

There was an awkward moment. Shen didn’t waste time and went outside. “Abbott, I need you.”

Jack peeled off his gloves, his expression neutral. “What’s up?”

“Your gastritis patient is back,” Shen said, already mid-stride toward the trauma bay. “Same one. Still stubborn, still refusing surgery.”

Jack exhaled, a shadow of frustration crossing his face. Of course it was you. He followed, but Shen glanced back, a strange look in his eye. “I think you’ll be surprised by who she actually is.”

They reached the door where Mateo stood waiting, tapping a video on his phone. He held it up—a TikTok clip of fast cuts and aggressive headlines featuring your face. “The one percent,” Mateo said. “Executive Director of Ardentis Holdings.”

“Now I get the stress,” Shen muttered.

“It’s not just the job,” Mateo added, lowering his voice. “Succession rumors. Apparently, her father wants to hand the empire to his mistress.”

“It’s not a rumor,” a voice cut in. Greg stepped forward, looking frayed. “It’s happening. That’s why she won't stop.”

Jack remained silent, absorbing the information. He wasn't looking at the headlines; he was looking at the clinical reality. “Does she eat?”

Greg let out a dry, hollow breath. “Crackers and coffee. Maybe once a day if I’m lucky.”

“Sleep?”

“Barely.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. The damage finally made sense—it wasn't just an illness; it was a slow-motion collapse.

“Please talk to her, Doctor,” Greg pleaded. “I practically had to kidnap her to get her here.”

“Didn’t she just threaten to fire you?” Shen asked, raising a brow.

“She says that every Tuesday,” Greg waved it off. “I’m the only one who can deal with her.”

Ellis approached then, the CT results gripped in her hand. She handed the films to Jack. He scanned them once, then again, his focus narrowing until the rest of the room faded away.

“Yeah,” Jack said, his voice dropping into a grave, final register. “She needs surgery. Right now.”

A heavy silence fell over the group.

“Who’s telling her?” Shen asked, looking around.

No one spoke. They all just looked at Jack. He handed the chart back to Ellis, his expression hardening into the one he used when a patient’s life was on the line.

“Of course,” he said.

He reached out and pushed the door open.

*******

Jack stepped into the trauma bay. You were lying back now, looking smaller than you had in the car. You were paler than before, a light sheen of sweat across your temples. One hand was still clamped over your abdomen, your knuckles white with tension.

You looked at him immediately, your gaze sharp even through the haze of agony. “What’s the result, doc?”

Jack didn't tower over you. He pulled a chair closer and sat down—not rushed, not distant. Just steady. “You need surgery,” he said. “Appendectomy. Today.”

“I’ll accept the surgery,” you said, your breath coming in tight hitches. “But can it be postponed until next week? There’s a project I need to finish. A board meeting I can't miss.”

Jack leaned forward slightly, his forearms resting on his knees. “Look,” he said calmly, “I know about the internal conflict in your company.”

Your eyes narrowed. “My noisy assistant.”

“You need this surgery now,” Jack continued, ignoring the deflection. “If you delay it, it will rupture. Then recovery won’t be one week of light work.”

You held his gaze, trying to find a loophole. “How long?”

“Up to three months,” he said. “Especially considering you haven’t been eating properly or sleeping. Your body is running on fumes.”

You let out a quiet scoff, though the movement clearly cost you. “Eight hours of sleep is for weaklings,” you rasped. “I can’t lose everything to that mistress. If I’m not there, she wins.”

On the monitor, your heart rate spiked. The beeping picked up pace, a frantic rhythm echoing your internal panic. Your grip on your abdomen tightened as another wave of pain hit, sharper and more demanding than the last.

Jack moved immediately. “Alright,” he said, his voice dropping into a soothing, authoritative register. “Easy.”

He reached for the IV line, his hands moving with practiced grace. He adjusted the flow and added a medication to the line—controlled, precise. “A small dose of morphine,” he said. “This will take the edge off.”

As the drug entered your system, the world seemed to soften at the edges. You exhaled slowly, your shoulders finally dropping an inch. Silence settled between you for a long second.

Then, Jack spoke again.

“He’s an idiot.”

You blinked, the morphine making the words feel like they were coming from far away. “…Who?”

“Your dad,” Jack said, as matter-of-factly as if he were reading a lab report. “You’re clearly the better choice for the company. Safer than whoever he’s trying to put in. Any doctor can see you’ve put your life into that place.”

“Huh…”The comment caught you completely off guard. No hesitation. No platitudes. Just the truth, delivered by a man who didn't even know who your father was. Ruthless and heartless even to his own daughter. 

For the first time, the corporate mask cracked. It wasn't weakness that showed through, but a raw, startled realization. You almost laughed, but the movement pulled at your side, so you stopped, your breath catching in your throat.

“…Thanks,” you whispered instead, a small, genuine smile forming despite the circumstances.

Jack’s expression softened, just a fraction. “Yeah. Does she have the same mind for it that you do?” Jack asked, his tone casual, though his eyes remained sharp. “The mistress. Is she as smart as you?”

You let out a sharp, derisive scoff, “Yeah, right. The only way she made it into the executive suite was because she slept her way through the board. Strategy isn't exactly her forte.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. You have the brain. She doesn't.” he assured you that weirdly work on you “You could win the battle with your eyes closed.” 

“I suppose you’re right,” you murmured, your voice losing its defensive edge.

He straightened up, returning to his professional posture. “So, for the surgery—I need your consent. Do you want to proceed?”

You looked at him. Really looked this time. Not at the white coat or the stethoscope, but at the steady man sitting in the plastic chair.

“Fix me up, doctor.” you kinda dragging the doctor because you want to know his name. “I trust you.” 

That words was enough. Jack stood up, checked the monitors one last time, and stepped out of the room.

Greg was waiting right outside the door, pacing a hole into the floor. He stopped the moment Jack appeared. “Did she... did she agree? Did she want the surgery?”

Jack didn't stop walking toward the scrub sinks, but he gave a single, definitive nod. “Yup.”

Greg let out a breath so long it sounded like a deflating balloon. “Thank goodness.”

The fourth time Jack met you

By the time Jack made his way upstairs, the chaos of the ER had faded into the quieter rhythm of recovery floors. He hadn’t planned to come, or at least that’s what he told himself, but he still stopped outside your room.

The door wasn’t fully closed, and your voice slipped through, steady but impatient. “Greg, give me the laptop.”

“No,” Greg said, unusually firm. “Post-op orders. You just had surgery. You’re not working.”

A brief silence followed, the kind that meant you were deciding whether to argue or override him. Jack pushed the door open before you could.

You were propped up against the pillows, pale but composed, IV line taped to your arm. Even after surgery, you looked like you were still in control. Your eyes shifted to him, and for a second, you said nothing.

“You should be resting,” Jack said, glancing at the monitor, then back at you. “Eat, sleep, repeat. That’s how you recover faster.”

You went quiet.

Greg blinked. “See? I told you.”

Jack ignored him. His focus stayed on you. “You pushed too far,” he said, calm but firm. “Ulcers don’t get that bad overnight. Next time, you stop earlier.”

“There won’t be a next time,” you replied.

“Good.”

A pause settled between you.

“And don’t lose,” he added.

Your brows knit slightly. “Lose to what?”

“The pressure. Your father. The mistress.” His gaze stayed steady. “I put my bet on you.”

That caught you off guard.

“A bet?”

“Are you going to win or not?”

You leaned back, studying him. “Is this a challenge?”

He didn’t answer. Just checked his watch.

“My shift’s over. Focus on recovering.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, “I don’t like losing bets.”

He walked out like it was nothing.

The room felt quieter after he left. Greg lingered nearby, watching you like he was waiting for you to snap back and ask for the laptop again.

You didn’t.

You stayed where you were, one hand resting lightly over the bandage, your eyes still on the door he had just walked through.

A bet.

You let out a slow breath, then finally glanced at Greg. “Did he just challenge me?”

Greg gave a small shrug. “I guess?”

A faint smile pulled at your lips, almost against your will. “Oh, I’m going to show him.”

You adjusted your blanket to go back to sleep. "Send gifts to the doctors who handled my case in the ER," you commanded, your professional tone back in place.

Greg nodded, tapping into his tablet. "Yes, boss. Of course. All of them?"

You didn't look at him. "All of them."

A beat of silence followed. "And make sure it’s appropriate," you added. "Nothing over the top, but let them know the quality of care was... noted."

"Understood." Greg hesitated, his stylus hovering over the screen. "...Do you want to include Dr. Abbott separately? Maybe something personal?"

"No," you said, your voice steady. "Make it the same as the others."

Few days later, the discharge papers were signed. The hospital room, once a sanctuary of quiet, now felt too small, too restrictive. You stood by the window, dressed in a sharp, tailored suit that felt like armor. You straightened your sleeves, the familiar weight of your old life settling back onto your shoulders.

"Can I leave tonight instead?" you asked, checking your watch. "The evening air is better for travel."

Greg checked the itinerary. "If we want to land in Sweden and get ahead of her before the morning session, we really need to be on the afternoon flight."

You hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second, your fingers brushed the edge of the hospital bed—the place where you’d actually found a moment of peace.

"...Fine," you conceded.

Greg glanced at you, then added with a mischievous tilt of his head, "You know, if you want... I could probably get his number. For follow-up questions. Medical ones."

You turned your head sharply, your eyes narrowing. "Shut up, Greg."

"Yes, boss." But there was a hint of a smile he couldn't quite hide as he grabbed your bags.

As you stepped out of the room and headed toward the elevator, you didn't look back at the trauma bay or the quiet halls. But as you walked, your pace slowed—just a fraction. You weren't rushing. You weren't vibrating with the need to be somewhere else.

For the first time in a very long while, you weren't thinking about the company. Not entirely. Somewhere in the back of your mind, a steady, low voice lingered, grounding you.

Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

Back in the ER, the frantic energy of the night shift had smoothed out into the steady, mechanical rhythm of a Tuesday morning. The monitors hummed, footsteps squeaked against the polished linoleum, and the air smelled of fresh floor wax and stale coffee.

Shen looked up from a clipboard as Jack walked in, shrugging off his heavy jacket to reveal his scrub top.

“Your patient got discharged this morning,” Shen said, his voice carrying a teasing lilt.

Jack paused, one arm still caught in his sleeve. He hesitated for only half a second before continuing. “Hmm?”

“The princess of Ardentis Holdings,” Shen smirked, leaning back against the nurse's station. “Left in a motorcade about two hours ago.”

Jack let out a quiet breath, finally draping his jacket over the back of a chair and reaching for the chart rack. “She’s not a princess,” he muttered, his voice low and distracted.

Shen didn’t bother to argue the technicality; the smirk remained firmly in place.

“We got really good food the whole time she was here,” Ellis chimed in, leaning her elbows on the counter. There was a faint, satisfied look on her face. “Catering from places I can’t even afford to look at. The day shift was absolutely jealous of us.”

Mateo nodded in fervent agreement. “I had a lobster roll for a ‘snack’ at 3:00 a.m. I don’t think I can go back to vending machine granola bars, Jack.”

Jack flipped through a chart, his expression entirely unimpressed. “So that’s what you took from this case. A refined palate for seafood?”

Ellis shrugged, unbothered. “I’m just saying. High-standard patient, high-standard perks.”

“Don’t tell me you guys are hoping she comes back,” Jack said, glancing up briefly from his paperwork, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Ellis and Mateo exchanged a quick, knowing look before both letting out a chuckle.

“Not like that, doc,” Mateo said, holding up his hands in mock surrender as he began to back away toward a trauma bay.

“Relax, Doctor Abbott,” Ellis added with a wink, heading off to check on a fresh admission. “The drama was just a nice break from the usual drunks.”

Shen, however, stayed. He stepped a little closer, lowering his voice so it didn't carry across the pit.

“…Don’t you?” Shen asked.

Jack looked at him, one brow slowly crawling toward his hairline. “Don’t I what?”

Before Jack could press him, Mateo suddenly reappeared, his phone already out and glowing. “There’s an update,” he said, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. “Next week will be the decision. Swedish investors. Board control. It’s all going down right now.”

Jack frowned slightly, his pen pausing over a prescription pad. “How do you even know all of this, Mateo? Don't you have patients?”

Mateo rolled his eyes, as if the answer were obvious. “I follow an account. ‘The 0.1%.’ They track people like her—the moves, the scandals, the power shifts. It’s better than any soap opera.”

Jack didn’t comment. He just picked up his pen again, tapping it rhythmically once, twice against the edge of the metal clipboard. He looked back down at his work, his face a mask of clinical indifference.

“…So?” Jack asked quietly.

Mateo looked up, surprised by the prompt. Jack met his eyes, his expression as calm and steady as the day they’d met.

“Tell me when it’s decided,” Jack said, his voice barely audible over the hum of the ER.

A small, stunned pause followed. Mateo blinked once, a slow grin spreading across his face.

“Tell me who wins,” Jack added.

Mateo’s grin widened into a triumphant beam. “Yes, sir.”

The fifth time Jack met you

A few months later, the room was bathed in the glow of a hundred crystal chandeliers.

Soft gold lighting bounced off champagne flutes and silk gowns. It was a sea of people dressed in the kind of tailored luxury that signaled true power. Conversations were layered, voices kept to a practiced, elegant hum over the quiet swell of a string quartet. This wasn’t just a victory party; it was a statement.

The war was over. The board was yours, and the mistress had been removed—cleanly, efficiently, and without a single drop of blood spilled on the corporate carpet.

You stood at the center of the room, a glass of vintage sparkling water in your hand. You were calm, composed, and entirely untouchable.

Lilly, your closest friend and director of marketing, looped her arm through yours, a triumphant grin on her face. “You really did it. You actually pulled it off.”

You took a slow, deliberate sip. “Of course I did.”

Lilly laughed, ready to make a toast, but suddenly her posture stiffened. Her hand dropped to her stomach, her fingers digging into the expensive fabric of her dress.

“…Okay,” she whispered, her face draining of color. “That’s not good.”

You turned immediately, your focus shifting from the room to her in a heartbeat. “What’s wrong?”

She forced a tight smile, though her grip on your arm was becoming a vice. “Probably just the new diet. It’s brutal.”

You weren’t convinced. You had seen this look before—the pale sweat, the shallow breathing. You were already shaking your head. “We’re going to the ER.”

“What? No—this is your night,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “The things we do for beauty, right?”

“Greg,” you called out, your voice low but carrying that unmistakable edge of command. “Prepare the car.”

“I have medicine in my bag—” Lilly started.

“No,” you cut her off, already guiding her toward the side exit. “We’re going. Now.”

Greg, who had been hovering nearby with a watchful eye, squinted at Lilly. He looked from her to you, a slow, knowing expression crossing his face. “…Suspicious,” he muttered under his breath.

“Shut up, Greg,” Lilly groaned, leaning heavily into you as the pain spiked.

“Yeah,” you added, pushing through the heavy oak doors. “Shut up, Greg.”

The ER doors hissed open with that familiar, pneumatic sound.

The smell was the same—antiseptic and floor wax. The lighting was the same—stark and uncompromising. But this time, the reason was different.

Shen looked up from the nurse's station and immediately a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Oh. The queen is back.”

You frowned, not missing the irony. “What?”

“I’m dying here,” Lilly groaned beside you, her head lolling against your shoulder.

You pointed at her without a moment’s hesitation. “Stomach pain. High stress. New diet. Fix her.”

Shen was already moving, grabbing a wheelchair. “Of course it is. It’s always the diet.”

The machinery of the hospital picked up speed around you. Vitals were taken, questions were barked out, and Lilly was whisked toward a trauma bay. Then, the curtains parted, and Jack stepped in.

He looked exactly as he had months ago—sleeves rolled up, stethoscope around his neck, an expression of unshakable, quiet focus. He didn't react to your designer gown or the fact that you looked like you’d just stepped off a magazine cover. To him, you were just a person in a room.

“Ellis, IV line. Matteo, get me labs. Let’s not assume it’s the diet until we see the blood work,” Jack said, his hands already moving to assess Lilly’s condition.

“Yes, doctor,” Ellis replied.

Within seconds, the team had Lilly stabilized and moving toward imaging. The chaos receded, the curtains were pulled, and suddenly, the room felt much larger.

It was just you and him.

Jack pulled off his gloves, tossing them into the bin with a flick of his wrist. He turned to you properly, leaning back against the metal counter. A brief, quiet pause stretched between you.

“You look great,” he said. It wasn't a line. It was a clinical observation, delivered with a hint of genuine warmth.

You held his gaze, feeling the tension of the last few months finally start to ebb away. “Thank you.”

Another beat passed.

“Oh,” Jack added, as if it had just occurred to him. “And congrats. You won the battle.”

You tilted your head slightly, a flicker of amusement in your eyes as you remembered. “Right. So that means you won the bet too?”

“Yup.”

A real smile almost formed. “Glad I didn’t make you lose.” You paused, then added, “How did you even know?”

Jack shrugged lightly, leaning one shoulder against the counter, completely at ease. “Hard to miss,” he said, his voice dropping into that steady tone you remembered.

“After all… you were my patient.”

With a small nod, he pushed himself off the counter and walked toward the trauma bay, already shifting his focus to the next case.

You stayed where you were, silk gown catching the harsh fluorescent light, watching him leave. His movements were calm, unhurried, like none of the chaos around him mattered. Like your world didn’t touch his at all.

Without thinking, you caught your lower lip between your teeth, your gaze lingering on the doorway long after he disappeared.

Across the room, Lilly, still half-sprawled on the bed but far more awake now, exchanged a slow, knowing look with Greg.

They nodded at the same time.

“Yeah,” Lilly muttered, voice weak but satisfied. “I knew it.”

Greg adjusted his glasses, completely in agreement. “Exactly.”

The sixth time Jack met you 

A few weeks later, the ER felt different.

It was cooler. Literally. Even the patients were shocked and unprepared with the coldness. 

Mateo walked through the double doors, froze directly under a ceiling vent, and closed his eyes. He looked like a man who had just found religion.

“Is that... actual air conditioning?” he breathed, the faint hum of a powerful, brand-new HVAC system purring above him.

Ellis didn’t even bother to look up from her paperwork, though the lack of sweat on her brow spoke volumes. “Don’t question a miracle, Mateo. Just enjoy the fact that we aren't melting into our scrubs anymore.”

Shen leaned back in his chair, a rare, relaxed posture for a Tuesday afternoon. “The waiting room, too. Finally, No more broken chairs or flickering lights.”

Robby walked in, hands shoved deep into his pockets, glancing around at the subtle but expensive upgrades. The walls were freshly painted, the floors gleamed with a high-grade finish, and the equipment at the triage station was top-of-the-line.

“Donations came through,” Robby said casually, though his eyes were dancing with a certain knowing light.

Mateo smirked, finally stepping away from the vent. “Yeah. We know who.”

No one said your name. They didn’t need to. The precision of the renovation, the efficiency of the delivery, and the sheer quality of the materials had your signature written all over it.

Robby’s gaze shifted across the room, landing on Jack. As usual, Jack was leaning against the counter, focused on a chart as if the world hadn't just been upgraded around him.

Robby walked over and leaned against the opposite side of the desk. “We should thank her.”

Jack didn’t look up. “You’re the Head of E.R, Robby. You can.”

Robby shook his head, a small, knowing smile tugging at his lips. “No. It’s you who should thank her.”

That made Jack pause. Just for a second. The pen in his hand stilled over the paper. He slowly raised his head, his expression as unreadable as ever. “…Why me?”

Robby gave him a long, pointed look. “Don’t pretend you don’t know, Jack.”

Jack closed the chart. Slowly. Methodically. “I don’t.”

Robby let out a quiet breath, a sound somewhere between amusement and exhaustion. “Yeah,” he said, tapping the counter before walking away. “You do.”

Later that night, a rare, quiet moment descended upon the pit. The rush of the evening had bled out into a midnight lull.

Jack stepped out into the crisp night air to clear his head, but his gaze was immediately pulled to the parking lot. The black luxury sedan was back, and Greg was leaning against the hood. Greg caught Jack’s eye and gave a small, meaningful nod toward the hospital lobby.

He headed back inside, his boots echoing on the newly polished floors. He found you standing in the center of the lobby, head tilted back as you oversaw the progress of the renovation you had funded.

He approached, his steps unhurried and steady. “You’re doing inspections now?”

You turned toward him, showing no surprise at his sudden appearance. “Just making sure it works.”

His gaze flicked briefly to the new vents above—the ones currently pumping perfectly chilled, sterile air into the wing—then settled back on you. “It does.”

A beat of silence followed, the kind that usually felt awkward in a hospital but felt different between the two of you. “You didn’t have to do this,” he added, his voice a low rumble.

You held his gaze, your expression as calm and unreadable as ever. “It’s called gratitude, Dr. Abbott.”

Gosh. Every time his name slipped from your lips, it sent a sharp, electric tingle racing down his spine. He cleared his throat. “For the hospital?”

“For the people in it,” you corrected him. You took a half-step closer, the professional distance beginning to blur. “You helped me. And you helped my friend. Consider this a closing of the account.”

Jack studied you for a long second, his head tilted slightly as if he were deciding whether to accept that answer or look for the one you weren't saying. The silence that settled between you wasn't empty; it was close, heavy with the shared history of that frantic night in the ER.

“You’ve been eating properly?” he asked suddenly, falling back into the role of the doctor, though his eyes suggested he was looking for more than just a medical update.

You exhaled a light, weary breath. Of course he would bring it back to that. “Yes. Greg is a professional micromanager.”

“And sleeping?”

The question caused a pause. You shifted your weight slightly, your gaze drifting toward the darkened windows for a fraction of a second before returning to his steady, unblinking eyes. The air between you tightened, the hum of the new AC the only sound in the quiet lobby.

“I have trouble sleeping,” you said.

That got his attention. Jack’s eyes lifted from the chart, settling on you with quiet, undivided focus. “Since when?”

“Since a long time ago.” You tilted your head slightly, watching him. “Probably because my bed is too cold. Maybe you could fix that.”

Something in his expression shifted. He wasn't surprised or even particularly amused; he was just suddenly, intensely aware. “Cold bed,” he repeated, his voice dropping an octave. His gaze didn’t leave yours. “You're saying that’s the problem?”

“It’s one of them.” Your chin lifted a fraction, meeting his scrutiny.

He studied you for a long second, then gave a small nod, accepting the answer without pushing. “You don’t look like someone who waits around for problems to fix themselves,” he noted.

“I don’t.”

“Good.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. Instead, it seemed to tighten the space between you, pulling the air taut. You crossed your arms slowly, the movement deliberate this time. “Then what would you suggest, doctor?”

Jack didn’t answer right away. He just looked at you, steady and measuring, as if calculating a dose. “Warm shower,” he said finally. “Magnesium. No phone thirty minutes before bed.”

Your brow lifted. “That’s it?”

“That’s what works.”

You tilted your head, still watching him, refusing to let him off the hook. “And if I’m still not tired?”

There was a brief, heavy pause. His gaze dropped for a second, tracing the line of your throat before returning to your face. “You should have someone who makes you stop,” he said, his voice calm and certain. “Someone who drags you to bed.”

The words landed heavier than they should have. You felt it in the sudden hitch of your pulse. “Do you give that advice to all your patients?” you asked, your voice dropping to a whisper.

He shook his head once. “No.” He let the word hang there for a beat. “Just you.”

He turned slightly, acting as if he were done, as if the line had already been crossed and he wasn’t going to linger on the edge. “If it’s still a problem,” he added almost casually, “you know who to call.”

You watched him, the sharp edges of your corporate persona shifting into something softer, more intrigued. “I didn’t know you had this in you.”

That made him glance back, looking just over his shoulder. “You don’t know much about me yet.” He paused, his eyes dark. “But you could.”

Now he turned fully, stepping closer. He wasn't near enough to touch, but he was close enough to change the atmosphere between you. “There’s a bar down the street,” he said. “If you want to fix the sleep issue properly.”

You narrowed your eyes slightly, a flicker of surprise crossing your face. “You’re skipping your shift?”

His mouth curved, just a little. “I’m stepping out.” He took another step, his voice dropping into a low, private register. “I’m not letting the biggest donor of this hospital go home alone and pretend she’s fine.”

It wasn’t a tease. It was a statement of pure intention. You held his gaze for a second longer, the weight of the night and the hospital falling away, before letting a small smile slip through.

“Lead the way, Dr. Abbott.”

Since that night, it didn’t stay just one night.

What started as something simple turned into a pattern neither of you questioned. You showed up after his shifts. He started expecting you there. Some nights you waited in the car, some nights you walked straight into the ER like you belonged there.

People noticed. The quiet way you stood near him. The way he always looked up when you entered, even in the middle of work.

You stopped going home alone. He stopped leaving without you.

Somewhere along the way, it became natural.

You giggle.

“That was my intention.”

Then you put your arms on his chest, on those pecs and slowly rub circles with your thumbs, feeling the warmth and slightly sweaty skin.

He stills above you, arms locked on either side. A bead of sweat trails down the side of his head, down his neck.

“You’re so sweaty, honey,” you begin, trailing your hands up and up the planes of his chest, until they meet at the back of his neck. You pull him down slightly, and he lets you, surprisingly, curious for your next move.

You smirk before you lean up slightly, neck tilting up. Then you take your tongue out, and trail it up the side his throat, tasting the slight musk and tanginess.

His jaw clenches, lips pressing together.

Andrew wraps one beefy arm around your waist, the other holding him up. Then he turns you over with an ease that leaves you stunned.

“Oh my god,” you gasp, now on top of him. You reach out and place your hands on either side of his head, your knees on the ground, straddling him to keep your balance.

“Holy fucking shit. I cannot believe you just flipped us over like that.”

Andrew just stares at you, the corner of his mouth twitching as he fights back a smile.

“S’nothing,” he mumbles.

“No it’s not nothing,” you say as you run a hand through his curls. “You’re my strong boy.”

He blushes then, cheeks warming as he leans in again.

“Yeah? M’ good?

You nod, brushing your nose against his.

Then he presses your lips together, hard. You kiss, your tongue in his mouth, fighting for dominance.

Feeling his cock underneath you, hardening under his boxer shorts, your clit rubbing against him, hard, as you grind your hops against his, once.

“Fuck,” he grits out, grabbing your waist with both hands.

“Please Andrew, let me make you feel good.”

He nods, whimpering into your mouth.

“Keep goin’, pretty girl.”

And you do, rocking your hips back and forth, the friction of your clothes between you creating the perfect friction on your clit.

“Andrew, fuck! You feel- feel so good baby,”

He groans in reply, moaning into your mouth as he moves you back and forth, holding your waist.

You move faster, gripping the sides of his neck, mouth hovers above his.

“Andrew, fuck- m’gonna come,” you whine into his mouth.

He nods against you, egging you on. Not a man of many words, he just grips your waist tighter in his palms, rocking you against him faster.

“Just like that baby, m’gonna come too,” he groans.

As his tip slides against your clit under your shorts, pressing against you on the perfect way, the wave of pleasure breaks and you come - hard. Back arching, hips grinding, moaning his name.

Andrew just stares, all sweaty and lost in your body moving against him as you work through your peak.

“Fuck- fuck can feel you pulsing baby,” Andrew groans out lowly.

His hips jerk up once, then twice, jerkily, before he spills in his boxers, moaning against your mouth.

You both pant against each other, feeling your release in your underwear.

“Did so- so good for me, honey,” you praise against his lips, kissing him softly.

He only moans in reply, hips still slightly grinding up into you.

“Thank you,” he whimpers.

Yeah. There’s nowhere you’d rather be.

Disclaimer: YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO REPOST MY WRITING ANYWHERE ELSE WITHOUT MY CONSENT. REBLOGS ARE ENCOURAGED THOUGH. YOU MAY NOT FEED MY WORK TO ANY AI DATABASES OF ANY KIND, USE MY WORKS TO TRAIN AI OR USE AI TO TRANSLATE MY WORK. FUCK AI.

"Daddy!"

The shrill of childish excitement lights up the surgery department in an instant, eyes and ears cutting through the sterile floor towards the sound, eager for a reaction from someone, anyone.

It's even more satisfying when Brendon Park, the Shark of orthopedics, stops mid sentence, turning swiftly to the sound, his blank expression curling into a gentle smile as he bends down to pick up the three year old in his gigantic arms.

"What're you doing here, guppy?" he teases. Brendon Park jokes, and glances get thrown between residents, interns and nurses alike.

Ah gossip, the great equalizer.

"Wanted to see you."

The little girl manhandles him, pulling and squeezing his cheeks like he's not a great white but rather a pliable flounder, reducing him to nothing more than a sucker for his kid.

"Oh yeah, where's—?"

"Jesus trouble, how do you run so fast?"

The way Brendon Park lights up for the second time practically blinds everyone. Oh this is definitely making the rumor mill rounds today. So long boring ten hour surgery to come.

"I didn't run!" the child huffs. "I ski...skiddered."

"Skipped?" Brendon looks to you for confirmation.

You roll your eyes at her antics, nodding your head towards her father, gracing him with a smile that makes everyone understand exactly why their big, mean, scary boss is acting the way he is.

The floor returns to its normal shuffle after that, one more second of inaction and the Shark would've definitely snapped.

"Hey," Brendon greets you, a little reserved, definitely surgical in nature.

"Hey Mr. Park," you beam and he instantly stills.

"How many times do I have to tell you," he starts to chide. "At least call me doctor Park."

You sigh out a laugh at that, rolling your eyes playfully as you instinctively step closer. He can smell the faint sweetness of your perfume, the spilled apple sauce on your shirt, the hint of laundry detergent on your fingers.

"I'm glad we caught you," you tell him. "We didn't know if you'd started on time today."

"Just about to go in."

You nod, clinical, like you're absorbing information and processing how you're going to get out of his hair in the next twenty seconds.

"Gotcha, well, you got what you wanted trouble," you hum, moving to grab the child in his arms.

She knows what's coming and so she throws herself onto her dad, tiny hands fisting the purple scrubs, cheek pressed tightly over his chest.

"No! I wanna stay with daddy."

Brendon opens his mouth to speak, to defuse the situation before the guilt eats him alive. But you're no sucker, unlike him.

"Really?" you frown. "You wanna stay with your daddy while he does his surgery instead of going to the park to get ice cream with me?"

In all honesty, he stopped listening to you the second the word daddy left your lips. He's certain his kid can feel his heart beating uncomfortably fast, rattling against this ribcage and threatening to burst out of his chest.

All he registers is the toddler flinging herself out of his loose embrace, almost face planting against the sterile floors and practically buzzing with excitement.

"Brendon?" you turn to him, smile turning into a frown quickly.

He springs back into reality when your hand lands over his forearm, light and grounding, like an anchor he didn't know he needed.

"Yeah, yeah," he responds, pretends, shifts out of your touch like he's already late for something that isn't even remotely time for. "I'll see you for dinner, okay guppy?"

But she doesn't care anymore.

"Okay! Bye dad."

Instead, she grabs your hand, demanding and pushy, and pulls you down the hall.

"Bye doctor Park," you tease. "See you later."

And just like that, calm and cold return to the surgery department, and Brendon Park snaps back into the sharpness that defines him.

It's late by the time he makes it home.

Too late, too tired, too...everything.

He sneaks into his own home like a teenager, light steps, a soft touch as he turns the key, even takes off his shoes by the door before he even makes it into the house.

It's not the first time either, not gonna be the last.

He shouldn't feel bad, this is what he pays you the big bucks for at the end of the day.

It's when he peeks into his daughter's room, catching the two of you snuggled together in her tiny bed, butterfly printed comforter covering her and not you, a book forgotten, Mr. Stuffles the rabbit on the floor that it hits him.

Hard.

He'd been miserable that first year after his girlfriend left him. They'd been planning a wedding, the baby being just another blessing in the string of goodness that they had been experiencing.

At least it had been to him.

It took her a year to leave, to finally crack under the pressure and run away. He didn't know how to be a dad alone, much less navigate co-parenting with the woman who had torn his heart out of his chest with her bare hands.

If it hadn't been for his mother, sisters and brothers, Brendon would not have made it through it.

But even they could only get him so far. He needed to go back to work, needed to find something to keep him going, needed...help. Professional help.

And that's when he'd found you.

Frank Langdon's occasional babysitter, full time student looking for a summer job while you got yourself situated for your master's program.

The little guppy was two at that point and Brendon simply couldn't be there for her all the time. So he poached you away from the ED doctor.

To say the dynamic had started out a little toxic would be...an understatement.

Once Brendon returned to the OR with full force, he fell hard into it, into the love and thrill and control that he could exert over his patients, his work, his process.

All the control he'd lost, the scared man that he had become—frantic and powerless—disappeared the second he got back in those scrubs.

And so did the loving and caring father that had put his kid first.

You ripped him a new one about eight days after first meeting him, a night like this, one where he came back home buzzing from a procedure well done, pupils dilated and ego through the roof.

She was young enough to not remember then, but she was definitely old enough to hold onto broken promises now, and that is what tugged at his heartstrings.

Now, tea parties and recitals were just as, if not more important than getting to do a risky procedure no one at PTMC had done before.

Of course, this time around he'd texted, let you know there had been a complication with the surgery. The shaky intern typing out the message practically stopped breathing every time Brendon asked him to erase everything and start from scratch.

They all thought it was cute how he wanted it to be perfect and gentle for his daughter, but the truth is, he needed it to be for you.

Brendon steps into the room softly, bending down to pick up the stuffy and placing it in between his kid's arms before he closes the picture book and sets it on the nightstand.

Neither of you startle at the movement, the soft glow from the salt lamp casting shadows that you knew were never meant to harm you.

It's only when Brendon places a hand over your shoulder, squeezing gently that you blink awake.

"Hi," you whisper, barely turning back to look at him.

"Hi," he smiles softly. "Are you comfy?"

You scoff out a laugh, soft enough not to wake up the kid but loud enough to make his smile grow twice the size.

"Let's get you to bed then," he places a hand under your neck then, pushing you up by supporting your back with his forearm while you tangle your hands around his other arm and pulling yourself into a sitting position.

Certain you're awake enough not to topple over, he leans over you and places a kiss to his kid's temple, watching her nose scrunch ever so slightly before settling back into comfortable sleep.

You smirk at his antics, using his body as leverage to get up to your feet, hands clumsily digging into the muscles of his back.

He groans lightly, old man that he is, and quickly retaliates, holding onto you so that you'll hoist him up with you.

"So heavy," you joke, straining to keep the two of you upright.

Brendon shrugs. "Just full of love."

"Booo," you chuckle, making your way out of her room, Brendon's hands over your shoulders to steady you. "There's leftovers in the microwave if you want them."

He hums in acknowledgment, letting you go as you make it out to the hallway.

"Eat, then shower?" he asks you.

"I'll take advantage then."

He nods. "Yours is still busted?"

"Yeah, guy said earliest he could come is next week."

"Damn plumbers."

"Indeed."

He stares at you for a long second after the conversation settles.

He's...comfortable. Too comfortable with you.

The past year has been a whirlwind. One summer quickly turning into you deferring your master's program so you could finish out the year with them. Then one semester turned into two, into you moving in, into...this.

Don't get him wrong, Brendon knows where the two of you stand. It's not necessarily healthy, but it's innocent, it's professional, it's...just a pathetic crush, nothing more. A fantasy he'll never allow himself to indulge in.

And yet, he cannot stop himself every time his eyes fall on your lips, the plumpness calling to him, beckoning him forward, demanding attention, truth.

"Goodnight then," he manages, rough and exhausted, desperate yet...not enough. Never enough.

You smile dopily at him. "Goodnight Brendon."

It's his own fault really, he should've knocked. But it's his house for fuck's sake, why should he?

So that's how he gets a complete eyeful of you taking a shower the next morning.

He got a late start which meant making breakfast, taking his guppy to school and then going to the gym, all before nine.

Unfortunately for him, earbuds in, distracted as all hell, he completely misses all the warning signs, the closed door, the steam, your clothes on the floor, the music blaring from the speaker.

He's certain he's dead and this is both heaven and hell simultaneously when he finally dares to look up and—

Jesus fucking Christ.

He should look away, he needs to look away...but he physically can't, his hungry gaze taking in every inch of skin visible through the condensation of the glass shower.

If only he would've reacted a second earlier...

You turn in slow motion, your reaction catching up late. You yelp, hands coming up to wrap around your chest, only aiding in pushing your boobs up further.

He instantly snaps into action, blush taking over every inch of his face and neck as he curses out a long string of apologies, blood pumping through his heart and his...yeah, he needs to get the fuck out of there.

"I'm sorry, so sorry," he stumbles out of the bathroom ungracefully, fast enough that he doesn't catch your own reaction, the way your chest constricts, the way your legs rub together.

Brendon manages to hurriedly hide in the kitchen, heart hammering against his ribcage, eyes wide and mind absolutely running a million miles an hour.

He needs to forget he ever saw that, needs to erase it from his brain...but his stupid erection won't let him.

The tent in his pants becomes painful the second he gives it attention, the flimsy material of his work out shorts just not helping his case at all. He needs to take care of this, needs to stop being such a weirdo before you come out.

So he rushes into your bathroom, locks the door like a sane human being does, and pulls himself out of his boxers methodically.

This isn't pleasurable, no, not at all, never. This is necessity. Emotionless, cold and surgical. He spits on his hand, wrapping it around himself without much preamble, thinking of nothing, searching for only one thing, release.

But he looks down at himself and his brain betrays him.

Imagine her on her knees.

"Fuck no."

How beautiful does she look, skin wet, hair stuck to her neck, eyes wide, mouth open?

"Shut the fuck up."

Her mouth would be so hot, come on, Brendon, give into her—

"Go away."

And yet he groans, the mere thought of you knowing what he's doing two doors away, the way you pushed up your chest, the need to paint it—paint you—white with his spend—

He's biting down on his other hand quickly after as he cums loudly, making sure to aim for the toilet while does.

You're no longer in the shower when he comes back out, your movements confined to your room. He doesn't have the courage to seek you out, so instead he just showers in silence.

The two of you don't interact at all before he's making his way into work.

You left his food prepped on the dining room table, disappearing out of the house the second you did to run some errands.

The tinge of shame and embarrassment linger deep in his bones all throughout the day, following him around like an unwanted shadow.

How would he even start to apologize? You have to talk about it, there's just no other way around it, but...how could he ever tell you it was a mistake when a part of him wanted nothing more than for it to happen again—to get a better look?

Since he made it to work late, he leaves even later. As he makes his way into his home, the same stillness from the night before greets him, only this time, it's heavy, like a breath that's been held in too long.

He goes through his routine quietly, dropping his bag by the door, checking in on his kid before walking down the hallway towards his bedroom.

But before he can make it, something catches his attention.

A breath. A gasp. A moan.

He freezes in front of your closed door, body going rigid with goosebumps, head turning almost robotically as his senses sharpen.

Your light is still on, peeking through the bottom slit of the door. Not uncommon, you like staying up to wait for him before you go to sleep.

No, what catches his attention is the distant...humming.

He steps forward, tentatively pressing his ear to the wood. It's not just a humming, it's vibrations, soft and steady.

Another shaky breath escapes you, louder than you would've liked, and you readjust the toy.

A shiver passes through Brendon as realization hits.

His cock twitches painfully against his underwear. Fuck this cannot be happening right now.

His head falls against your door, stabilizing, grounding. He can't, he will not—

Another moan from you. You're close.

Whatever resolve Brendon has snaps as he pulls himself out of his pants, hot, heavy and leaking.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he whispers as he takes himself into his hand. He begins to pump quickly, the pace excruciating and borderline painful, but he doesn't care, he needs to—

"Brendon," you huff, a breathy moan curling around his name. "Please I'm—Motherfucker!" you curse through gritted teeth, the vibrations stopping abruptly.

Brendon's heart does a leap in his chest.

Oh my god.

He can feel how frustrated you are, can hear how you shift uncomfortably over your sheets, can practically taste how wet you are as you toss the toy with a thump on the mattress next to you.

And Brendon doesn't think. Can't think, can't process a logical thought to save his life as he lifts his unoccupied hand and—

Knocks.

Says your name in that soft, saccharine voice of his that he uses when his child is throwing a tantrum.

Oh how he wishes he could see your face pale in horror at the knowledge of your boss being on the other side of the door.

"Are you okay?" he keeps poking.

You swallow thickly, shame mixing with terror.

"Mhmm."

"Can I come in?"

A broken sound leaves your chest, unprompted and definitely surprising you just as much as it does him.

"Um...no?"

He says your name again, stern and fatherly. He hears you moving around frantically, hiding all evidence of what you were just doing.

"Okay."

"Okay." A Cheshire smile curls at his lips, a thrill of satisfaction coursing through him as he tucks himself into his pants, the outline of his still rock hard dick on full display.

It's now or never.

He opens the door. You never seem to lock it, fucking adorable.

He has to physically hold himself back from pouncing on you as his eyes land on your heated cheeks, on your slightly tussled hair, on how you're gripping your comforter to save your life.

He shoots you a calming smile, boyish and embarrassed, as he steps into your room and closes the door behind him. Locking it.

He hears you gulp loudly as you notice his final movement.

"How was your day?" you barely manage to ask, your throat hoarse, your breathing broken.

He settles down on the bed by your feet, close enough to make your heart beat out of your throat, far away enough that he won't overwhelm you entirely.

"Good, good," he sighs, one hand tentatively inching closer and closer to you. "Lot of injuries today."

"I bet."

He smirks, a huff of a laugh cutting through the tension in the room.

"Listen—" he starts, looking up at you before continuing. You choke on your own breath, body becoming a statue with shame. "I'm sorry, I should've realized you were in the shower. It was very inappropriate of me and it will not happen again."

You let out a shaky breath, settling into the false sense of security, choosing to believe that he definitely did not hear you...yeah.

Brendon has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop from grinning like an idiot. God, you're just so adorable.

You nod, shifting forward, closer to him. "It's okay, I know you didn't do it on purpose. It was just...weird I guess."

You laugh, awkwardly, because what a silly predicament the two of you have found yourselves in, clearly.

Brendon doesn't follow your lead, not at all. He just keeps watching you, eyes darkening as he leans into you as well, his hand finally coming up to grab ahold of your foot over the comforter.

He squeezes enough to punctuate the moment, the tension, the heat. Your gaze snaps towards his hand, towards him, towards—

Your eyes widen without your consent as they land on his crotch, on the straining in his scrubs, on his still practically throbbing erection.

"Brendon," you exhale, confusion and desire blending together excruciatingly.

He shivers over you, his grip tightening on you.

"Don't," he warns. "Don't start something you won't finish, sweetheart."

Your gaze meets his then. He looks like a caged animal, practically vibrating as he holds himself back.

Emboldened by your lust, by the pent up frustration left coiling in your lower stomach, you get up on your knees, letting the comforter fall around your waist, the slightest sliver of skin peeking through.

"Oh I intend to finish it," you whisper.

"Unlike your vibrator?"

That breaks the spell quickly, heat rushing up to your face, neck, back instantly.

"Oh my god, Brendon!" you smack his arm, falling back down on your heels.

He smiles dopily, his hand sliding up your thigh as your brain processes all this new information. Distracted, you don't even notice when he slides beneath the fabric. It's only when the backs of his fingers graze your dripping folds that your breathing hitches.

"Fuck, sweetheart," he groans. "You're so wet."

You whimper at the feather light contact, hips bucking towards his touch.

"Please," you're no longer thinking, finally. "I need...make me cum, Bren."

The smirk that adorns his face then, all self-righteous and proud, only gets you wetter.

"Is this what you need, baby?" he leans in, breath hot against your ear as he presses a kiss just below it. "Needed my fingers to get yourself to cum?"

You moan, hands coming up to grab a hold of him, nails digging into the toughness of his arms.

In response, Brendon presses his thumb over your clit, slowly moving the pad in torturous circles. You pull him closer, opening your legs so that he has better access.

"Tell me what you need," he commands. "Tell daddy how to make you feel good."

Oh your head is spinning. A tear falls down your cheek, frustration rocking you out of control.

"Need your fingers," you pant.

He grins against your skin. "You already have 'em."

You whine, patience wearing thin. Who would've ever thought, his good girl, so demanding.

"In me, please," you choke, swallowing the drool that has gathered in your mouth before continuing. "Please daddy."

It breaks him, his ring and middle finger thrusting into you in one swift movement as his thumb picks up the pace.

You instantly hide your face agains the crook of his neck, your breathy moan muffled against him as he hooks his fingers into you, curling them over and over again against you until your legs are shaking beneath him.

"That's it, baby, such a good girl for me."

You shiver against him, melting against his warmth.

"Help daddy out, baby, wanna—" he groans. "Wanna cum with you."

He slows down his movements, keeping you right on the edge between putty and alert.

You nod against him, timid hands grazing down his torso towards his pants. The second your hand slides under his waistband, a hiss escapes him, causing a shiver of praise to boost your ego.

You manage to pull him out, long and thick and hot and heavy against your palm, you can't help but salivate at the sight. You let your drool drip down on him, his hips jerking as the wetness lands over his sensitive tip.

You giggle, overly amused by his reactions, emboldened by how easy it is to tame the Shark with just a simple swipe of your hand over his leaking head.

"Fucking hell, baby," he groans, picking up his own pace in retaliation.

You pull back to look at him then, gazes locking in silent competition.

He looks completely disheveled, broken and almost...reverent. Gratification blooms in your stomach, your hand pumping his length in tandem with his own fingers inside of you, the pace causing the two of you to slowly start to unravel together.

Your mouth hangs open in a silent moan as your body clenches around him, so close to the edge, so, so, so perfect—

"Daddy," you warn. "I'm gonna—"

He grunts, grabbing your hand and pulling it back up to his tip, urging you to focus your efforts there.

It takes him no time to catch up to you, his own body tensing in anticipation.

"C'mon baby," he implores. "Let go for me, cum with me."

A choked moan ripples through you as the coil snaps. Your legs quake, your vision blurs from pleasure, your hand stills over him as you feel his own release take over.

It's overwhelming to say the least, his hot moans heavy in your ear, his spend spurting onto your hand, painting his scrubs and your delicate skin, his warmth...oh my god he's so everywhere.

You can't think straight. Can't breathe right. Can't—

You groan as he removes his hand from inside of you, wetness running down your inner thighs as he does. Pleasure clouds your brain as you watch him bring his hand up to his mouth, his tongue lapping up your release, humming contently at the sweet taste.

Hunger flares in your belly as you do the same, lifting your hand up towards your mouth and sucking down on the spot covered by his cum.

You can feel the moan that ripples through him, his body tensing up with lust once more as he watches you.

"Fuck sweetheart, who would've thought..." he smirks, leaning down to smash his lips with your own, mouth desperately seeking to combine your tastes into one sloppy, searing kiss.

You oblige instantly, opening up for him to take whatever he pleases.

He pushes you down onto the mattress, his imposing body slotting itself perfectly in between your open thighs.

He's about to join you on the bed when you break the kiss.

"Outside clothes," you grumble, sleepy and spent.

It tugs at his heartstrings, his mouth curling into a loving smile as he strips down to his boxers before slipping back into bed with you, pulling your body to nestle snugly against his.

"I'm sorry, baby," he kisses your temple, watching you settle into sleep beside him, completely oblivious to how he licks and cleans your skin before finally allowing himself to succumb to the darkness.

You're woken up by laughter.

Soft and airy, like a gust of wind rustling outside your window.

Your curtains are still drawn, only slivers of light peeking through into your room, the warmth from outside starting to become overwhelming as you toss the comforter aside.

You sit up with a start, memories from the night before crashing through you like a downpour.

You almost, almost could've pretended it had all been a dream. Almost, if not for the stickiness lingering between your thighs, for the Brendon sized dip in your mattress that he left behind.

It's impossible not to feel his lingering presence in your bed, the way the sheets molded to accommodate him, the way his woodsy scent mixed with hospital antiseptic lingers on the cotton.

Fuck!

You're so close to spiraling, to having your chest cave in from the pressure of guilt, but then you hear it again.

That laugh, like a tug, a spark, a lifeline.

School, you're supposed to up to help with drop-off today.

You're quick to dress, pulling on your sleep shorts, hastily forgoing underwear because you simply aren't thinking straight.

It's late, too late to be thinking instead of moving.

You burst into the kitchen, ready to hastily put together breakfast and Brendon's lunch when—

"Noooooo!" the toddler screams at you from her high chair. "Go back!”

You frown at her, moving slowly around the kitchen island to catch her dad, sweatpants low on his hips, topless for added effect, just finishing up at the stove.

Behind him, a plate with a mountain of pancakes, and beside it, a tray, decked out with cut fruit, a cup of coffee, scrambled eggs, bacon, even a cup with a little flower from the backyard.

He must see the flurry of emotions taking a hold of you, so he softens instantly.

"Morning," he steps forward slightly. "We were just coming to surprise you."

Your gaze snaps up to his, searching, panicked, overwhelmed and then...grateful.

Your cheeks heat up softly, not instantly, not rushed, just comfortable, safe, loved.

"I'm sorry bug," you lean over and plant a kiss on her head, unruly curls frizzy from sleep. "But now we can have breakfast together, yeah?"

She sighs, dramatically, before she turns to you, arms high up so that you'll pick her up.

You roll your eyes, obviously doing exactly what the princess wants.

You're about to walk out into the living room when you turn back to Brendon, the expression you manage to catch across his features just barely shy of adoration.

You've done this plenty of times before but it's never felt this...domestic. And you can't help how your stomach twists, how your heart blooms—you like this.

Breakfast continues on in that same way. Stolen glances, confusing feelings and an overly energetic toddler that get maple syrup over everything, especially her hair.

One rushed bath time later, you're putting her hair up into ponytail braids, her request, when his imposing frame slides up to lean against his daughter's open door, purple scrubs hugging his body deliciously.

"Ready to go, guppy?"