Randi nodded, but her gaze stayed on Brew.
He stepped back because he had to.
Because anything else would have said too much.
“Don’t miss therapy,” he said, his voice calm again, almost steady enough to pass for ordinary.
A faint, unsteady smile touched her mouth.
“That’s your farewell?”
“It’s the most important instruction.”
She held his gaze.
“I’ll be there.”
He inclined his head once.
The nurse began to turn the wheelchair toward the door.
Randi looked back one last time.
He was still standing where she’d left him, hands at his sides, expression composed, every inch the surgeon who had done his job and seen his patient through.
But she knew better now.
And something in his eyes told her he knew she did.
Then the chair rolled forward, and the doorway took her from him.
Brew remained where he was long after the room had emptied.
The silence she left behind settled hard and deep, causing a restriction in his throat.
He looked at the space where she had been, at the bed now stripped and ready for someone else, at the room already erasing every trace of her except the one thing it could not remove.
Him.
For the first time in years, Brewer Clay stood in the middle of a hospital room with nothing left to do.
No procedure to perform. No decision to make. No skill to rely on.
Only absence.
Only the sharp, unwelcome realization that somewhere between the operating room and this goodbye, Randi Caleb had become far more than a patient.
And now she was gone.
CHAPTER 9
TWO WEEKS LATER
The silence in her apartment was louder than anything she had faced in the hospital.
Randi stood in the middle of her kitchen, staring at the mug in her hand as if it had personally betrayed her.
It slipped.
