None of them showed up at my door at night looking at me like they were drowning and I was air.
I stay under the spray until the water begins to cool, my fingers pruned and my skin flushed pink. After drying off, I pull on my softest pajama shorts and an oversized t-shirt and head out.
My kitchen offers little in the way of comfort food—I really need to go grocery shopping—but the freezer yields the last of my emergency. I grab a spoon and head for the couch, collapsing onto it with my legs tucked under me.
"Okay, plant friends," I announce to the green audience scattered around my living room. "Time for tonight's episode of 'Why Sebastian Walker Is The Actual Worst.'"
Fitzwilliam the fern, as usual, says nothing. But his fronds seem to lean in slightly, as if interested in the gossip. Or maybe that's just because I need to water him.
"I hate him," I continue, jabbing my spoon into the ice cream for emphasis. "I absolutely, one hundred percent hate Sebastian Walker."
The jade plant on the coffee table absorbs this declaration with stoic silence.
"He's arrogant." Scoop. "Cold." Bite. "Inconsistent." Another bite. "And completely fucking impossible."
The plants listen with the patience of good therapists as I outline every moment of today's humiliation in excruciating detail.
"And the way he just dismisses my ideas without even considering them?" I wave my spoon in the air, narrowly missing the hanging pothos. "Like I'm some first-year med student instead of a doctor who graduated top of her class. Who does he think he is?"
A drop of melted ice cream lands on my shirt, and I absently wipe it away. "My body absolutely one hundred percent does not hate him at all."
And there it is.
"This is ridiculous," I mutter, setting the now-empty ice cream container on the coffee table. "He's my boss. My incredibly annoying, impossibly hot boss who probably gets off on making me look stupid."
The unbidden image of exactly what Sebastian might look like getting off flashes through my mind, and I groan in frustration, grabbing a throw pillow and burying my face in it.
"Stupid, stupid body," I mumble into the fabric. I squeeze my eyes shut, but that only makes it worse. The darkness behind my eyelids immediately fills with Sebastian. The way he looked at my door, tension radiating from every inch of his tall frame. Sebastian in my imagination, pressing me against a wall, those large hands finally, finally touching me the way I've secretly wanted since the moment I first saw him.
I toss the pillow aside and stand up abruptly, needing movement, needing distraction, needing anything but this torturous awareness of my own contradictory desires. I'm angry at Sebastian—furious, even—but my traitorous body doesn't seem to care. It wants him anyway, with an intensity that's both embarrassing and impossible to ignore.
"This is just… what? Sexual frustration? Proximity attraction?" I ask the rubber plant by the window, as if it might offer some botanical wisdom. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just biology. Chemicals. Hormones."
The plant, unsurprisingly, offers no insights.
I gather the empty ice cream container and spoon, carrying them to the kitchen where I rinse both and place them in their proper spots.
Tomorrow will be better. It has to be. I'll be more prepared, more professional. I won't let Sebastian's coldness throw me off-balance again. I'll focus on the medicine, on the patients, on proving myself through my work rather than wasting energy trying to decode Sebastian Walker's emotional state.
And if my body continues to want things my mind knows are impossible? Well, that's what cold showers and batteries are for.
But as I head toward my bedroom, I can't help wondering which version of Sebastian I'll encounter tomorrow—the cold, dismissive Dr. Walker, or the man who stood in my doorway looking like he was fighting a battle with himself. And which version I truly want to see.
Chapter 11
Mia
Monday morning arrives with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to my optimism. I stride into Sierra Mercy with my game face on. Last night's resolve feels like armor as I hit the elevator button, mentally rehearsing casual greetings that don't sound desperate for his approval. I've got this. I can be Dr. Phillips, badass professional who definitely doesn't think about her boss in the shower.
That armor cracks the moment I step into the conference room. Sebastian is already there, discussing something with Harper in low tones. When I enter, he doesn't even glance up. Not a flicker of recognition, not a pause in his sentence, nothing. It's as if I've suddenly developed the superpower of invisibility, but only to the one person I can't stop noticing.
"Good morning, Dr. Walker," I say, my voice steady despite the stupid flutter in my chest. “Dr. Langston.”
Sebastian finishes his sentence to Harper before looking in my general direction. Not at me, but through me, like I'm made of glass. "Dr. Phillips." Then he's back to Harper, dismissal complete.
I take my seat, smiling at Jonah who offers a sympathetic grimace in return. The meeting proceeds with Sebastian addressing every fellow except me. When it's time to assign cases, I'm handed a stack of charts for follow-up paperwork while the others get actual patients.
"Questions?" Sebastian asks the room at large, his gaze sweeping past me like I'm part of the furniture.
