Instead, I close the door to my office. Slowly. Quietly. Then lock it.
The scarf stays in my hand longer than it should. My thumb traces a fraying seam. My stomach knots in a way I haven’t felt in years.
Not since Marissa.
She’d once told me I didn’t know how to want things, that I was a great doctor but a terrible mate, that I could diagnose everyone else’s feelings but not recognize my own.
She left me with silence and an empty bed and the clinical irony that her words were the most accurate diagnosis I’d ever received.
But this.
Wren.
She presses against every fault line I’ve ever buried.
I unscrew the peppermint oil again, press it under my nose, breathe in like it’s medicine. It clears the space around me, but not the space inside me.
That still smells like her.
And I have no idea what the hell to do about it.
By the time I get home, the sky’s already gone dark.
I step into the stillness of my loft and let the door click shut behind me. My bag drops onto the bench with the precision of muscle memory.
The scent of metal and clean wood greets me—cold, orderly—a reflection of everything I’ve built to keep chaos out.
The space is vast and masculine, all polished concrete and matte black steel. Exposed ductwork veins the ceiling.
My kitchen gleams like a surgical suite—stainless steel counters, deep sink, pot rack suspended like a shrine above the island. Every appliance is high-end, seamless, and silent.
Not a single photo. No softness. No story.
It’s sterile—just the way I made it.
And yet tonight, it feels suffocating. Too quiet. Like it’s waiting for something.
I toe off my boots and move to the fridge. I haven’t eaten all day, and my stomach clenches in protest. I pull a ribeye from the fridge and slap it into the hot cast-iron pan.
Butter, garlic, thyme. The usual ritual. My hands go through the steps automatically, but my mind’s not here. Not really.
Because from where I stand, I can see the scarf.
It’s draped over the edge of the charcoal sofa. Careless. Mocking. Right where I set it earlier when I emptied my pockets.
Meant to toss it in the clinic’s lost and found. Meant to forget it.
But it’s there.
And it reeks of her.
I press down on the steak with a spatula, the hiss of sear and sizzling butter flooding the air—but even through all of it, her scent lingers. Amber. Clove. A smoky sweetness that curls under my ribs and won’t let go.
It’s useless to pretend I can focus now.
I kill the burner.
Peel off my scrub top, dragging the fabric over my head in one rough motion. Antiseptic soap and peppermint oil cling to my skin, but they’re fading and being replaced.
