“That was too close,” she whispered.
“Way too fucking close,” Maggie agreed, her heart still hammering. “We can’t—this can’t happen again.”
“I know.” Evie finally looked at her, and the longing in her eyes made Maggie’s chest ache. “But Maggie, I don’t know how to do this for four more months. I don’t know how to stand this close to you and not?—”
She cut herself off, jaw clenching.
“I know. Believe me, I know,” Maggie said.
They stood there for another moment, the weight of impossible pressing down on both of them.
Then Evie turned and walked away without another word, disappearing around the same corner Morrison had taken.
Maggie stayed in the hallway for a full minute after she left, staring at nothing, feeling the careful control she’d maintained for weeks starting to crack.
That evening, when Evie came home, she was quiet.
Not angry. Not distant.
Just... defeated.
Maggie had dinner ready—nothing fancy, just pasta and salad—but Evie barely touched it. She pushed food around her plate, responding to Maggie’s attempts at conversation with one-word answers, her mind clearly elsewhere.
After twenty minutes of strained silence, Maggie set down her fork.
“Talk to me,” she said.
Evie looked up, something breaking in her expression. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Maggie’s stomach dropped. “Can’t do what?”
“This.” Evie gestured between them. “The hiding. The professional distance. Seeing you at the hospital and having to pretend you’re just another attending. Walking past you in hallways and not being able to touch you. This morning—” Hervoice cracked. “This morning I wanted to kiss you so badly I thought I might die from it. And then Morrison showed up and I had to stand there and act like you’re nothing to me.”
“Evie—”
“Four more months, Maggie. One hundred and twenty days of this. And I don’t—” She pressed her palms against her eyes. “I don’t know if I can survive it.”
Maggie moved around the table, kneeling beside Evie’s chair, taking her hands. “What are you saying?”
Evie looked at her, and Maggie saw tears streaming down her face. “I don’t know. Maybe one of us should transfer. Maybe we should just... end the waiting. Take control of this instead of letting the committee control us.”
“You want to leave Oakridge?” Maggie asked carefully.
“I don’t want anything except to be with you,” Evie said. “Actually with you. Not this half-hidden thing we’re doing where we pretend to be strangers forty hours a week and then come home and pretend everything’s fine.”
“Everything isn’t fine,” Maggie said.
“No,” Evie agreed. “It’s not. I want the real you. I get glimpses of it, but this pressure, it’s pushing you down and shutting you down.”
They looked at each other, the truth hanging heavy between them.
“So what do we do?” Evie asked.
Maggie’s mind raced through options, through contingencies, through every possible outcome. Her old patterns screaming at her to fix this, to manage it, to find the perfect solution that protected them both.
But there was no perfect solution.
There was just choosing.
