A solid seven or eight minutes passed without incident. We didn’t touch each other. I didn’t dump the contents of my pockets in her lap just to see if any of it impressed her as much as the pen. I didn’t beg her to tell me if it was plum or peach or some other thing I didn’t even know about.
She laughed under her breath a few times while O’Rourke fielded questions and roasted his colleagues in response. He was a low-affect, brick wall kind of guy. He glared down at the audience like we were wasting his damn time, asking, “Is that really what you want to askme, McCurty? Not your Intro to Gross Anatomy professor, somewhere around thirty years ago?”
Whit brought a hand to her mouth as a laugh shook her shoulders. Her elbow was on my arm again and I shifted toward her by millimeters. I wasn’t sure if I’d invented this in my head, but it seemed like she shifted toward me too.
“Is he always like this?” I asked.
“Mmm. Yeah.” She shrugged and there was not a single chance in hell that she wasn’t fully aware that we were pressed together from the armrest on up. “Not the most conventional style, I’ll admit.”
I went back to that last page, addingCoffee Exchangeandmuffins—hot?to my list.
The Q&A ended and the next presenter took the stage. This one was about recent outcomes of minimally invasive surgical interventions for adolescents with chronic heart failure, and Whit put her phone away. She’d probably come specifically for these cases.
One of the many things about Whitney that amused me to no end was how she telegraphed every thought and feeling—when her guard was down. The rest of the time, she was a wall of cool, unyielding granite, and that made these rare flashes of her personality even more amazing. Right now, her face was a kaleidoscope of reactions. Interest, doubt, disagreement, excitement—it was all there, shifting by the second while she jotted down notes.
I wanted to hear every thought crossing her mind.
While processing the completewhat the fuckof this situation over the past few days, I’d let myself wonder what would’ve happened if either of us had been upfront about our careers at the wedding. Would we have run through our histories, comparing notes on who we knew and where we’d been? Would we have fallen into bed the way we did? Would it have mattered after the hours we’d spent on the dance floor? I didn’t know, and chances were good I’d never know, but playingwhat ifwas simpler than trying to figure out how to playno one has to know.
Whit’s elbow jolted me again, though when I glanced over this time I found her dragging her palms up and down her arms. A small shiver sent her burrowing into herself, which had thecomplicated effect of drawing my attention to her lips and then her chest. Specifically, the nipples stabbing their way out of her blouse.
My god.
And fuck me, I remembered exactly how her breasts felt in my palms. The perfect handful. I swallowed hard and tucked my pen over my ear while I shrugged out of my fleece, careful not to wake the snoozer. “Here.” I motioned for her to lean forward so I could drape it over her shoulders. She didn’t move. “Have mine.”
She waved me off, saying, “No. Thank you, Dr. Hazlette, but no. I’m fine.”
I leaned in close so that only she could hear me. “If you don’t take this, Dr. Aldritch”—I drew a pointed glance down to her shirt—“I will put it on you myself.”
Her stare turned as hard as her nipples and there was a second where it seemed like she wanted to press her luck with that ultimatum. Which was fantastic because there was nothing better than getting a real reaction out of her. It was a big improvement over her walking away from me.
But another shiver moved through her and she snatched up the fleece, settling it over her lap like a blanket. She folded her arms beneath it, officially removing her elbow from my bicep.
“Thank you,” she said, though it sounded a lot likefuck you.
I arched a brow but didn’t say anything. We turned our attention back to the presentation, her nodding along and murmuring to herself as the fellow spoke and me scribbling down everything that seemed relevant—which was most of it. This was the sort of material I remembered Whit bringing up during rounds and I’d bet anything she’d reference these cases next week.
When the fellow started winding down the presentation, I felt Whit’s gaze on me. She tapped her pen to one of the notesI’d written. I glanced over. She nodded enthusiastically, saying, “That’s a smart point.”
“Thought you’d like that.”
She huffed out an impatient breath. “It’s not that Ilikeit, it’s that it’s a meaningful observation.”
“You’re welcome to cling to that difference as long as you can see it.”
Another huff. “I’m not clinging to anything.”
I held her gaze as I shifted my knee toward her again. I saw it the minute she felt me against her thigh and I saw the rapid-fire debate occurring behind her hazel eyes. For all that debate, she didn’t seem to come to any quick conclusions because we went right on staring at each other through the remainder of the Q&A portion. Somewhere in there, she’d edged her elbow out from under my jacket and returned it to my arm.
I couldn’t say with any accuracy what she was thinking. I didn’t know anything other than the fact we were pushing and pulling at each other. And yet it felt like we were saying something. Like we were swearing that we remembered that night,everythingabout that night, and we couldn’t stop thinking about it. That we’d tried and failed and we were here now, in this unbelievable situation where everything was difficult. That we missed each other.
Like I said, I didn’t know what was happening behind those eyes. But I felt something.
The guy beside me startled himself awake, springing out of his seat and shaking himself like a wet dog when the conference ended. “Good talk, good talk,” he muttered. He shoved his arms back through his sleeves and rubbed his eyes before jogging down the row.
I had to leave. My schedule had no breathing room and my cohort would be waiting for me. But I stayed, scribbling notes I didn’t need while the room cleared out.
Whit’s phone buzzed and she had to displace both her elbow and the jacket to fish it from her pocket. She glanced down at the screen, muttering, “Dammit.”
