I never saw Mr. Thompson after that day. The only reminder of him was the faint mark on my arm where his fingers had clamped down, already fading to a ghost of a bruise.Men. Stupid, angry, toxic men who thought women owed them obedience and apology.Thiswas why I hated them.
Except foroneman. My husband.
The ripple of my ill-advised infatuation had grown into something wild and mutinous, expanding over late-night sleepovers where silly laughter hid between breaths and silk sheets, over calm evenings when I’d watch him lesson-plan with a concentration that made my chest burn, over the times I’d offerto listen to him practice his lecture for the next day just so his voice could sink into me, marinating around every inch of my being.
It wasn’t a crush anymore. It was something terrifying and unbearably warm, something that filled every empty place inside me until I could barely hold myself together. It was the kind of feeling that made me want to run and stay all at once. The kind that rewrote every rule I’d ever made about love, and men, and the things I told myself I didn’t need.
It was getting harder and harder to be around him without giving it away—my breath catching when he smiled, or how I caught myself looking for him in every beautiful moment.
He never spoke about his brother again. I hated that he chose that moment to finally,finallyopen up and tell me about his past when I wasn’t in any position to comfort him the way he always somehow knew how to comfort me. If I’d been more alert and less in my own “I just killed three people” spiral, I could’ve hugged him, run my fingers through that infuriatingly perfect hair I’d been dying to touch, maybe even coaxed a few tears out of him. I had the inkling suspicion he’d be such a pretty crier in a serene, yet devastatingly cinematic way.
But that was wishful thinking. Khalifa Nasser didn’t break down; he professionally contained. If restraint were an Olympic sport, he’d have a gold medal, a sponsorship deal, and a stoic smile for the cameras.
Still, somehow, I didn’t mind. Maybe he’d never learn to spill his emotions the way I did—loudly, dramatically, with a level of enthusiasm that could frighten small animals—but that was fine. Because that was him. And for reasons I was refusing to admit to myself, I was completely, helplessly okay with that.
I used to hate him. I used to tell myself that he was rude, and stubborn, and emotionally unavailable, and every cold thingabout him was personality, not a challenge I wanted to solve. But now...
God, I couldn’t even think it without feeling like the ground might crumble beneath me.
Because if I admitted it—if I let that four-letter word form fully in my mind—it would mean I’d crossed a line I could never uncross.
When Sarah walked into my office, I was lying flat on the floor, staring at the ceiling tiles like they might rearrange themselves into answers.
She froze in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out how to turn my humanity off,” I said, deadpan.
There was a beat of silence. Then, cautiously, “Like...what vampires do?”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
Sarah sighed, set her coffee down on my desk, and then—because she was Sarah—lay down beside me. “Don’t you need your humanity to be a doctor?”
I thought about that. “Yes,” I admitted. “Okay, maybe just half of it. I’ll keep the part that feels emotions toward babies, pregnant women, and you. But I’ll turn it off for everything and everyone else.”
“What about your husband?”
I stared up at the ceiling again. “Especiallyhim.”
“Right,” she said slowly, “because emotional repression always works out well for people.” I didn’t answer, so she added, “Look, I don’t know what’s got you in this funk—or what compelled you to lie down on a floor that literally touches the bottom of shoes every day—but can we move on to me for a second? I have news.”
That got my attention. I rolled onto my side, propping my head up with my hand. “What kind of news?”
“I went to dinner with your cute husband’s coworker.”
“What? You went on a date with Amir?”
She nodded. “And it went great.”
“Great? How great?”
“Supergreat. He was nice, and cute, and religious in a prays-five-times-a-day-but-isn’t-a-toxic-extremist way.”
I gasped, clutching her hand like she’d just told me she’d found the cure for heartbreak. “I’m so happy for you.”
She hummed, a soft, content sound that filled the silence. Then she turned her head toward me, expression gentler now. “What’s going on with you, Lilly? Really.”
I sighed, sitting upright. “It’s just like you said. Afunk. It’ll pass.”
