And God, can he kiss. That’s what I can’t stop thinking about. I’ve kissed my share of guys. Some were fine, some forgettable, and some made me wonder if they’d ever actually kissed a woman before.
Zayden Bishop kissed like he was an expert on the subject. The way his mouth moved against mine showed he knew exactly what he was doing—confident, patient, completely in control ... until he wasn’t.
My phone sits on the nightstand, dark and silent. He hasn’t texted. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.
I’d consider calling Winnie—spilling everything, letting her talk me down, talk me up, or just talk until I’m too exhausted to feel anything. But I already know what she’d say.
I told you so.
She’d be right.
I press my palms against my eyes and try to think. I’m good at thinking, at making plans and protocols, at keeping my head when everything else is chaos. That’s who I am. That’s who I’ve always been.
So why did I let him kiss me?
Why did I kiss him back?
Why am I lying here at three in the morning, replaying the sound he made when I put my hands on his chest—that low groan that vibrated through my entire body—instead of figuring out how to fix this?
Because you wanted it, a voice whispers. You’ve wanted it for weeks.
I roll over again, burying my face in my pillow.
This is fine. I can fix this. One kiss doesn’t have to mean anything. People make mistakes all the time. They acknowledge them, move on, and pretend they never happened.
That’s what I’ll do—acknowledge it and move on.
Simple.
I don’t fall asleep until after four, and when I do, I dream about his hands.
• • •
I get to the facility an hour early.
Partly because I couldn’t stand lying in bed anymore, and partly because I needed time to prepare myself—to build the walls back up, brick by brick, before he walks through that door and I have to look him in the eye.
I set up the training room with mechanical precision. Resistance bands, ice packs. I arrange everything twice, then rearrange it again, because my hands need something to do that isn’t shaking.
7:52 AM. Eight minutes until his session.
I can do this. I’m a professional. I’ve handled difficult situations before. One ill-advised kiss with a patient doesn’t have to derail my entire career.
It was just a kiss.
A really, really good kiss.
No. Stop it. I’m reviewing his file on my tablet—staring at it without actually reading anything—when the door opens.
Zayden walks in, and the air immediately changes.
He looks like he didn’t sleep either. Dark shadows under his eyes, jaw tight, shoulders tense. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and gray joggers, his hair still damp from a shower, and I hate that I notice. I hate that I’m cataloging every detail like my brain is trying to memorize him.
Our eyes meet.
For a second, neither of us speaks. The silence is suffocating—thick with everything we’re not saying, everything that happened yesterday, everything that can never happen again.
“We should talk about last night,” he says.
