“Have you ever thought about a different path in medicine?” she asks.
“Sometimes.” I drag a hand through my hair. “I’ve imagined a private practice. More time with my patients. Actually building relationships. I wouldn’t be there for their worst days… but I’d still matter. I’d still help. I’m not sure that’s right for me, though.”
“What about administration at the hospital? Changing things from the inside?”
I huff out something between a laugh and a groan. “That would be a slow death for me. Too much sitting. Too much paperwork. Too much focus on metrics and not enough on what actually matters.”
It’s the clearest I’ve ever said it.
The rawest truth I’ve ever admitted.
“I get that,” Lucy murmurs. “I just hate seeing you unhappy.”
Her words settle deep.
Because she’s the first person I’ve ever really admitted it to.
And the first person who looks like she wants to shoulder the truth with me.
I twist, shift onto my knees between hers, and look into her eyes.
“I don’t want to talk about work anymore,” I tell her.
“What do you want to talk about?” Lucy’s breath hitches. Her lips part. Her eyes meet mine like the answer to questions I didn’t know I was asking.
“I don’t think I want to talk at all,” I respond, then cup her cheeks in my hands and kiss her.
Not a polite, careful kiss. Not a testing one. But deep. Devouring. Like I’ve been holding my breath for weeks and she’s the first lungful of air I trust not to hurt me.
She pulls me close, our bodies pressed together, and her fingers tangle in my hair. I cradle her face, run my thumbs along her cheekbones. We kiss again, slower this time, and I swear the ground tilts beneath us.
I lift her, carry her down the hall. Into my room.
Into our room, maybe. Man, I want it to be.
Moonlight through the blinds paints silver stripes across her skin as we shed our clothes—not hurried, but hungry. Each brush of skin is a promise I didn’t know I was allowed to make. She looks at me like I’m not a collection of sharp edges and long hours, but something worth unwrapping slowly.
When we come together, it’s like coming home to a place I didn’t know I’d been searching for.
It’s trust.
It’s letting her see every frayed edge I usually keep tucked away.
She meets me with quiet wonder, hands mapping the tension in my back, her breath warm against my throat. Her touch is healing in a way that has nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with being known.
And when I finally come apart, it’s not from release alone. It’s from the knowing… that she’s here. That she sees the man beneath the mask and chooses him anyway.
That maybe, for the first time in years, I don’t have to carry everything alone.
Afterward, she traces lazy patterns on my chest, and I realize something has shifted permanently. Not just between us, but in me. The careful distance I’ve maintained, the walls I’ve built, they’re not gone, but they have doors now.
And Lucy has the key.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Lucy
I grip the barre and stand on my right leg, left foot lifted just off the floor, toes pointed, breath held. Single-legged calf raises. On my injured ankle. And it feels…
