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There was no medical chart telling me how long I was supposed to ache, no treatment plan for waking up every morning wondering where the man I loved was, and no medication that could stop my mind from replaying the last time he held me.

So after I moved, I threw every ounce of my energy into being a mother and a nurse. My son needed me, so I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart anymore. So I pulled myself together, took my boy, and figured out how to survive.

A light knock sounded against the open bedroom door.

I looked up from the suitcase.

My boyfriend, Yonas, stood in the frame, leaning his shoulder against the wood with his hands shoved casually into the pockets of his heather-gray sweatpants. He had on a fitted black T-shirt, a razor-sharp fade, and that heavy gold watch that caught the afternoon light whenever he moved his wrist. He was handsome enough to get on my nerves on a normal day.

Today, though, the usual light in his eyes was muted… he just looked sad.

His eyes flicked down to the framed photograph lying facedown on the comforter beside me, then shifted to the open suitcase packed with my clothes and nursing scrubs.

“You almost done?” he asked, his voice low and quiet.

“Almost.”

“You said ‘almost’ an hour ago.”

“I had more stuff than I thought I did.”

“Lakelyn, you got more stuff than a small department store,” he countered, the corner of his mouth twitching with the ghost of his usual smirk.

A faint smile touched my lips, though my chest felt tight. “Story of my life.”

Yonas pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the room.

He stopped at the foot of the bed, studying me with an expression that made my stomach drop into my shoes.

“You know I can come with you,” he said.

There it was again… the offer hung in the space between us, warm and sincere, and the weight of knowing I had to put an end to it pulled me straight back to the day I met him.

A colleague at the hospital had passed my name along when his mother needed short-term private-duty nursing after major abdominal surgery. By then, I had been an RN long enough that I took private cases on my days off when the rates were good and the hours worked neatly around Kaidence’s preschool. Yonas was the one managing every single detail of her care.

Our initial meeting was supposed to be a standard thirty-minute home consultation to review her recovery plan. I had rearranged my afternoon, paid a babysitter extra to keep Kaidence, and showed up ten minutes early because punctuality was non-negotiable for me.

Yonas strolled through the front door forty minutes late.

He was wearing gray sweats, holding a steaming cup of coffee, and carrying an expression so unbothered it was obvious this man spent his life surrounded by people who waited on him without a word of complaint.

I was not one of those people.

“You’re forty minutes late,” I told him before he could even take off his sunglasses.

He paused in the foyer, the coffee cup halfway to his mouth, taking me in with dark, curious eyes. “Good afternoon to you too.”

“It was a good afternoon forty minutes ago when our appointment was scheduled.”

From the living room sofa, his mom let out a loud, cackling laugh.

Yonas’s mouth curved into a slow, charming grin.

I kept my face carved out of stone.

He offered a smooth apology, blamed an investment meeting that had run over, and tried to glide right past it.

I let him finish talking. Then I clicked my pen, looked him dead in the eye, and informed him that if he was ever late to another scheduled consultation, I would bill him for my time whether he was present or not.