After all the years and all the running and all the noble bullshit I had dressed up as distance, Destiny knew the shape of my pain.
“You remember that much about me?” I asked.
Her fingers stilled on the tablet.
For one second, the room changed.
No machines. No Georgia’s sweater. No IV. No bullet wound.
Just Destiny looking at me with all the things she refused to say sitting behind those dark eyes.
Then she blinked.
“I remember patients.”
Liar.
I almost said it.
Wanted to.
Wanted to push. Wanted to crack that professional mask and get to the woman underneath. The one who had whispered I loveyou when she thought I couldn’t hear. The one who had kissed my knuckles instead of my mouth because she was too decent to steal from Georgia even when her heart was breaking.
My heart kicked.
The monitor ratted me out.
Destiny pretended not to hear.
Professional.
Always professional.
She pulled on gloves.
That should not have been hot.
Nothing about latex gloves, hospital protocol, and a pain chart should have been hot.
But her hands had always been a problem.
Small, sure hands. Healer’s hands. Hands that could hold pressure on a wound, mix old herbal remedies, cup a mug of matcha, wash blood from someone’s skin, or slide into my hair and turn me into a man with no defenses left.
She checked the dressing near my side.
I held still.
Barely.
Her touch was clinical.
Careful.
Impersonal.
My body did not care.
Every brush of her gloved fingers against my skin burned. Not because she lingered. She didn’t. Destiny was too careful for that. Too good. Too afraid of becoming her mother’s worst story.
