She yanked free that time.
I let her go.
The loss of her skin under my fingers felt worse than it should have.
She stepped back from the bed, shoulders squared, cheeks flushed. “I am not your plaything, Dylan.”
The words hit hard enough to knock whatever heat had been building straight into shame.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You didn’t have to.” Her voice trembled, but not with weakness. “I am trying to be a professional nurse in an impossible situation, and every time your fiancée leaves the room, you start looking at me like?—”
She stopped.
“Like what?”
“Like you forgot she exists.”
Silence.
The machines kept talking because neither of us could.
I looked toward Georgia’s chair.
Empty.
Her sweater gone.
Her coffee cup gone.
But the ring remained in my mind, bright and damning.
Destiny stepped closer again, not soft now. No, this was sharper. This was the girl who had survived fire. The woman who had chosen not to become someone else’s tragedy and hated me for making that harder.
“Frankly,” she said, “I thought you were a better man than that.”
That one hurt.
Good.
It should.
“The man I…” Her voice snapped off.
The room froze.
I looked at her.
Her eyes closed briefly, like she could pull the words back if she refused to look at me.
Too late.
“Say it,” I whispered.
“No.”
“I heard you say it the other night.”
