Ourwedding.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CALLA
FIVE YEARS AGO
I was sittingin the locker room, still in my scrubs, scrolling through messages on my phone while I waited for the OR to be prepped for my next case. Most of it was the usual noise. Department memos. Scheduling updates. A reminder about the mandatory compliance training I'd been ignoring for two weeks.
Then I saw the subject line.
Fellowship Opportunity - International Trauma Consortium.
I opened it without thinking, expecting another mass email or another generic recruitment pitch that would end up in my trash folder within seconds.
I read it once. Then again, slower this time to be certain I'd misunderstood something.
I hadn't.
They were offering me a position. Not an invitation to apply. But an actual position, extended directly to me based on my research and surgical outcomes over the past three years.Two years at one of the most prestigious trauma programs in Europe, fully funded, while working with surgeons whose papers I'd been citing since medical school.
It was the opportunity people spent their entire careers hoping for.
And eight thousand miles away from Cassian…
I closed my laptop and pressed my palms flat against my thighs, forcing myself to breathe.
I should tell him. That was the obvious answer—the right answer.
We’ve always been honest with each other about career opportunities and made decisions together. That was the agreement we made when we got married. Partnership. No one's career mattered more than the other's. We would figure things out together, compromise when necessary, and support each other's ambitions even when it was hard.
But this felt different.
This felt like a choice that couldn't end well no matter what I decided.
If I told Cassian about the fellowship and turned it down, I would resent him eventually. Maybe not immediately, maybe not obviously, but the bitterness would grow. Every time I hit a ceiling in my career, while I watched colleagues surpass me because they'd taken risks I hadn't, I would think about this moment. I would think about what I gave up, and I would blame him for it—even though the choice would have been mine.
If I told him and he encouraged me to go, I would leave anyway. We would be apart for two years, squeezing in video calls at odd hours and visits that would never be frequent enough. Our marriage would crumble under the weight of it. I had seen it happen to other couples, their relationships dissolveacross time zones until there was nothing left but polite emails and divorce papers.
But I could say no. I could decline the fellowship, delete the email, and pretend it never existed. Cassian would never have to know.
Except I wasn't sure I was capable of burying something this significant without it poisoning everything around it.
I pulled out my phone and stared at Cassian's contact. His face smiled up at me from the screen, a photo I'd taken on our last vacation, his hair windswept and his eyes bright with laughter. He looked happy in that picture.
We'd been happy.
My thumb hovered over the call button.
One tap. That's all it would take. I could tell him right now, hear his voice, and let him help me figure out what to do.
But my thumb wouldn't move.
Because I already knew what I wanted. I knew from the moment I read the email and felt the surge of excitement that I couldn't quite suppress no matter how hard I tried. I wanted this fellowship. I wanted it more than I'd wanted anything in years—maybe more than I'd ever wanted anything in my professional life.
And I was terrified of what that said about me.
I put my phone away and went back to work.
