PROLOGUE
MAYA
The music pounds through my apartment, the bass so heavy I feel it in my chest. Someone cranked the volume to a level that'll definitely get me a noise complaint, but I'm three drinks past giving a shit. Maybe four. I stopped counting after Tyler showed up with that bottle of tequila.
Twenty-five. I'm officially twenty-five,and what do I have to show for it?A nursing degree that cost me four years and more student debt than I want to think about. A patient I couldn't save, no matter how hard I tried. And feelings for a man who sees me as nothing more than his little sister's best friend.
Emma's here, though, and that's something. She's tucked into Chase's side on my worn couch, the one I got off some old guy when I moved into this place. She's laughing at something he whispered in her ear, her whole face lighting up the way it does when she's with him.
She's been my best friend since we were kids, back when we'd spend every afternoon after school at each other's houses, trading secrets and dreams. Then my mother had a massive heart attack at thirty-nine, just collapsed in our apartment oneafternoon while I was at school. Gone before the ambulance even arrived.And my dad?Never knew him. He left before I was born, just a name on a birth certificate my mom refused to talk about.
Mrs. Anderson opened their home to me without hesitation. A grieving sixteen-year-old with nowhere else to go, and she took me in like I was her own. When I turned eighteen, I tried reaching out to my dad. Found him on social media, sent a message saying I just wanted to meet him once. He responded three days later, saying he'd moved on with his life, had a new family, and it was better for everyone if we kept things the way they were. No explanation. No apology. Just a polite dismissal like I was asking him to donate to some charity he didn't care about.
Mrs. Anderson saved me then. Emma's been saving me ever since, even when she doesn't realize she's doing it.
"You need another shot." Tyler appears beside me, waving that damn tequila bottle like it's a trophy. He's got that troublemaker spark in his eyes that I recognize from too many nights out. "Come on, birthday girl. Don't make me drink alone."
"God, yes." I hold out my glass, and he fills it to the brim. "You're a terrible influence."
"That's what you love about me."
I throw back the shot, and the burn slides down my throat, settling warm in my stomach. It feels good. Feels like forgetting, which is exactly what I need tonight.
My apartment isn't big, but I've managed to pack it with nurses from the hospital, some friends from college I don't see often enough, and a handful of Emma's people. Someone killed the overhead lights earlier, leaving us with the glow from the string lights I hung last month and the rotating colors from someone's Bluetooth speaker. In the corner by my bedroom door, Melissa from the pediatric unit is trying to convinceeveryone to play truth or dare like we're eighteen again, and this is a dorm party.
I move through the crowd, accepting birthday hugs and dodging the inevitable questions about my love life. My scrubs are folded in the laundry basket by the bathroom, waiting for tomorrow's shift. Twelve hours in pediatrics starting at 7 a.m., which means I'll be dragging myself out of bed with a hangover and pretending I'm functional.But tonight?Tonight I get to pretend I'm not terrified every single time I walk onto that floor.
Six months.It's been six months since Lily died, and I still think about her every day. Six months of second-guessing every call I make, every medication dose, every vital sign I record. She was six years old, this tiny kid with blonde pigtails and a gap-toothed smile. Pneumonia that turned into sepsis before anyone caught it. I was there when her heart stopped. I was there when they called it.
I shake my head hard, trying to dislodge the memory.Not tonight.I'm allowed one night where I'm not the nurse who lost a patient. One night where I'm just Maya, turning twenty-five at a party that's too loud and too hot and exactly what I need.
Emma catches my eye from across the room. She mouths something that looks like "You okay?" and I give her a thumbs up, plastering on a smile that probably doesn't reach my eyes. She knows me well enough to see through it, but she also knows me well enough to let it go. That's the thing about your best friend. She knows when to push and when to give you space.
The front door opens, and cold air rushes in, cutting through the heat of too many bodies in too small a space.
I turn to see who's braving the cold this late.
Jackson Anderson fills the doorway.
My heart stops. Actually stops, like someone reached into my chest and pressed pause on my entire cardiovascular system.I'm a nurse, so I know that's not medically possible, but I swear it happens anyway.
He's in dark jeans that fit him in a way that should be illegal, and a Henley that stretches across shoulders built from years of hockey. His blond hair is styled in that messy way that makes you want to run your fingers through it, and when his green eyes scan the room, I forget how to breathe. He's looking for Emma, I know he is, but for just a second, his gaze sweeps past me, and something in my chest cracks wide open.
I've been in love with Jackson Anderson since I was eighteen years old. Seven years of watching him from the sidelines, of pretending I only see him as Emma's older brother, of dying a little inside every time he dates someone new. Seven years of wanting someone I can't have.
"Jackson!" Emma launches herself off the couch and practically tackles him in a hug. "You said you couldn't make it! What are you doing here?"
"Finished early." His voice carries over the music, deep and steady and exactly the kind of voice that makes you believe everything's going to work out fine. "Wasn't going to miss your girl's birthday."
He's the captain of the Hartford Wolves, and from what I hear, he's damn good at it. Hartford's only two hours from Pinewood, but ever since Emma married Chase and they moved to be closer to his job, I don't see Jackson much anymore. Maybe once every few months. I tell myself it's better that way. Out of sight, out of mind, all those clichés that are supposed to help you get over someone.
Except I think about him constantly. I think about him when I'm trying to fall asleep. I think about him when I'm at work. I think about him when I'm on dates with guys who are perfectly nice and perfectly wrong because they're not him.
Emma drags him into the apartment, introducing him topeople he doesn't know. Tyler claps him on the shoulder, and Chase hands him a beer from the cooler by the window.
I should move. Should walk over and say hi like a normal person instead of standing here by the kitchen counter like I've forgotten how my legs work. But I'm frozen, watching him the way I used to watch him when I was sixteen and showed up at the Anderson house with nothing but a duffel bag and a dead mother.
Back then, he looked at me like someone he needed to protect, this sad, broken kid his mom brought to live with them. But somewhere along the way, as I got older, something shifted in the way he watched me. I've spent years trying to figure out what that shift meant, chasing those moments when his eyes linger a beat too long.
