My hands still for just a moment before I resume examining the grumpy tabby. “Let’s focus on your cat, Quinn.”
“Oh, come on, Violet. We’re not kids anymore.” Her voice has that practiced casualness that never quite masks the curiosity underneath.
“I think it’s cute,” she goes on, flipping her hair over one shoulder, her bracelets jingling. “High school sweethearts finding their way back to each other.”
“We weren’t sweethearts,” I say a little too quickly. Mr. Biscuit gives me a judgmental look.
Quinn laughs, the sound like wind chimes but somehow shriller. “Right. Just two people who stared at each other for four years and never did anything about it.” She leans in, lowering her voice. “Iknowyou always had a thing for him.”
My cheeks flush, and I hate myself for it.Professional. I need to be professional.
“Mr. Biscuit probably has a hairball issue. We can prescribe a paste that should help.”
Quinn hums, clearly amused by my attempt to steer the conversation back to the cat. “Relax,” she says, waving a perfectly manicured hand. “You don’t have a thing to worry about. I’m a married woman now.”
My eyes flick up in spite of myself.
She smirks. “Owen’s in finance. Hedge funds or something equally soul crushing. My dad set us up—said it was time I started choosing stability over thrill.” She laughs again, too loud for the quiet exam room. “Had to leave the bad boys behind.”
She says it like it’s a joke, but my insides are currently staging a full-blown riot.
I wonder how many other women have thought the same thing about Rowan, and I hate it because he’snotthat.
They saw the scuffed shoes, the quiet moods he never explained, and they wrote him off as some brooding cliché. A thrill to chase, a mistake to outgrow. They didn’t see him drop off groceries for the neighbor he swore he didn’t like. They didn’t catch the way he flinched when his dad’s truck pulled up too fast in the driveway.
Rowan was never just a “bad boy.” That label never fit right, but he wore it anyway because it was easier than proving them all wrong. He was always more.
It guts me that I’m the only one who ever saw it. That maybe he stopped believing he could be anything else.
“Right,” I say, tone clipped as I scribble words onto Mr. Biscuit’s chart. “We’ll get him started on the paste and keep an eye on things from there.”
Quinn doesn’t notice the shift. She’s too busy looking at her reflection in the steel exam table, checking her lipstick.
That still doesn’t squash the familiar trace of protectiveness that rises in me. Whatever this is, it’s deeper than old crushes and unrequited teenage pining.
After Quinn breezes out, floral perfume trailing behind her, I rest my palms on the counter and exhale through my nose.
Professional. I’m professional.
Mr. Biscuit’s chart stares up at me likesure you are, and I flip it shut with a little more force than necessary.
I grab the file for the next appointment and head toward exam room two, trying not to think about the fact that Rowan is apparently a highlight reel in Quinn’s memory.
The next patient is a golden retriever with a limp. His owner’s an older man who smells like pipe smoke and tells me all about his granddaughter’s rodeo ribbons while I check the dog’s paw.
It’s a welcome distraction, until I look down at Moose’s hopeful face and imagine Rowan at sixteen, sprawled out on my parents’ lawn when they weren’t home with our dog’s head in his lap, sun turning his skin gold.
I blink, shake it off, and focus on the job in front of me.
If I let myself go there…I’m not sure I’ll be able to climb back out.
My limbs arelike overcooked noodles, and my brain’s still chasing Quinn’s words in an endless loop. I toe off my shoes in the entryway of my condo and toss my keys into the ceramic bowl. It clinks too loudly. I wince.
The kitchen stares at me like it’s expecting effort. I stare back likeabsolutely not.
I order Chinese from the place that always forgets the sauce, shrug into one of my oldest hoodies, the cuffs loose and frayed from where I used to tug on them, and sink onto the couch with a sigh.
I’m halfway through convincing myself that lo mein counts as self-care when my phone buzzes against the arm of the couch.
