I sat behind the desk as Korbin and his friend came in. Korbin hobbled to one of the waiting room chairs and sat down, the strain on his face evident as he shifted to the side for comfort. The second guy walked up to the desk to check in, smiling kindly at me.
“Tate Hansen here for Korbin Butler,” he said. “He has to start PT today.”
“Yeah, we have him down,” I muttered as Tate signed them in. “We should be ready in just a few minutes.”
“Great, thanks.” Tate turned around, and that’s when I noticed the emblem on the back of his jacket. Eagle River Fire & EMS. A firefighter.
A firefighter. Did that mean that…?
I shook my head, forcing the thought from my mind. Korbin’s dream had always been to become a firefighter, even when we were two kids in college. However, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be happy for him or bitter about all of it. I was happy too, but it was certainly no thanks to him.
Next to my hand, my phone buzzed. A message from Rem.
Are you killing it at the new job?
Forcing myself not to look at Korbin, I typed back a quick reply.
Just got my new patient today. It’s WOLF.
There was a beat of silence, and then,you mean the first man you ever loved who broke your heart and stepped on it?
Yep, that one.
With a sigh, I pocketed my cell phone again, picked up Korbin’s chart, and came around from the front desk. I stopped in front of the waiting room chairs and took a deep breath, wondering if I was making a colossal mistake by staying here.
“Korbin,” I said to the room, intentionally avoiding looking in his direction. “Korbin Butler?”
Chapter9
Korbin
“Korbin Butler?”
The voice was so familiar, and it wasn’t until right then that I spotted the Peyton Blake lookalike, standing in the middle of the floor, saying my name. But she wasn’t a lookalike, no. It was her. It was her familiar smile. It was her auburn hair. It washer.
“Here,” I said, my voice catching in my throat. Peyton didn’t look at me, but I knew she heard me. If I had thought that yesterday’s surprise appointment couldn’t get any worse, it did. And here I was, again, about to face the one person on the face of this earth who probably would have liked to hit me with her car.
“Come on back,” she said cheerily, but I sensed something more sinister under that cheerful tone. She was angry at me. She always would be. This wasn’t a reunion that was bound to go well.
But God, did she look fucking stunning. Still. Even after five years, she was just as beautiful as ever. More so, even. No thanks to me.
For a moment that seemed to go on forever, all I could do was sit there and stare at her, take her all in. Part of me wanted to get up and leave to avoid the awkwardness between us that had never truly been sorted, but the other part of me craved to see her. To speak to her. To pick up where we left off all those years ago.
“Do you need help?” Hansen asked, getting to his feet to grab my crutches for me. He helped me up, and I took them, feeling Peyton’s gaze on my back as I did so. I almost couldn’t look at her for too long, couldn’t face the trauma that I had inflicted on not only her but so many others as well the day I’d walked out.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, hobbling past him to follow Peyton to one of the PT rooms in the back. I swallowed the pain in my chest and continued forward as the screaming pain in my knee consumed me, a suffocating, raw pain that now clung to my emotions and made the whole thing that much worse.
Peyton said nothing to me as I followed her to a patient room and stepped inside. She closed the door behind us, pointing at the PT bed for me before going straight to the computer to sign into her employee account. Not only was she not talking to me, but she wouldn’t look at me, either. Unsure of what else to do, I sat on the edge of the exam bed and watched her type something into the computer. I was taken, as always, with the way her brow furrowed when she concentrated, the way she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth to nibble on it anxiously. The soft curve of her neck stood out with such utter perfection that I longed to reach out and run my fingers over her skin until she shivered with pleasure, just like we used to.
But this wasn’t then. This was now.
“So,” I said, but Peyton didn’t respond. She acted as if she hadn’t heard me, so I shut my mouth again and let her work. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she turned in the office chair to look at me. I couldn’t read her expression when she did this, and I wasn’t sure she wanted me to. I didn’t know what to say or do to make this better for either of us.
“The notes I have say it’s a patella fracture,” she said, lowering her gaze until she looked at my bum knee. “What happened?”
“I fell,” I said, trying to catch Peyton’s gaze, but she was making it a point not to look at me directly.
“You fell,” she repeated. “From a five-story building?”
