Apollo sticks his head in. “There you are. Ken is looking for you. He wants to go over next week's schedule.”
I swallow hard, trying to catch my breath. “Tell him I'll be there in ten minutes.”
Apollo nods and disappears.
I wait until his footsteps fade, then let out a long breath.
Natalie emerges from behind the lockers. Her cheeks are flushed, and her ponytail is half undone. She picks up her towel from the floor and wraps it around herself, refusing to look at me. “I’m sorry. That…that shouldn’t have happened.”
I want to contradict her, but she’s right. It shouldn’t have. “No. I’m the one who should be apologizing.” Her eyes meet mine. “You were just trying to help, and I”—I shook my head—“I took advantage. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
A flicker of disappointment crosses her face, but she nods, then heads for the door without another word.
6
Natalie
“Olivia sends her apologies,” Harper says as I slide into the booth beside Avery. “The baby was fussy, and Theo's at some charity event. She didn't want to leave Maya with the sitter.”
“Totally understandable,” I say. “Babies come first.”
The bar is upscale but cozy, all dim lighting and leather seats and the kind of jazz music that plays low enough for conversation.
“So.” Avery pours me a generous glass. “How's it going with Ethan?”
My stomach clenches.
How is it going? Let's see. A few hours ago, I was straddling my patient in the men's changing room while he sucked on my nipples. His hands were on my ass, and my hips were grinding against his cock, and I was seconds away from letting him fuck me on a bench.
That's how it's going.
I take a gulp of my wine.
“That bad, huh?” Avery says in a sympathetic tone.
I've replayed it a hundred times since I left that changing room, trying to understand what happened. The best I've come up with is that I felt sorry for him.
He looked so broken sitting on that bench. His shoulders hunched, his hands shaking, and his face a mask of barely contained anguish. He looked like a man about to shatter into a thousand pieces.
Every protective instinct in me surged to the surface. I forgot he was my patient. I forgot the boundaries I've spent years building. I just saw a person in pain, and I wanted to make it stop.
But that's not the whole truth.
I've been in similar situations before. Two years ago, a patient named Mark developed feelings for me during his recovery from a torn rotator cuff. He was going through a divorce, and he was lonely, and he mistook my professional kindness for something more.
One day, during a session, he tried to kiss me.
Keeping my voice calm and compassionate, I told him that I understood he was going through a difficult time, but I was his physical therapist, and it would be inappropriate for our relationship to be anything other than professional.
I recommended a good therapist for him to talk to and documented the incident. I handled it exactly the way I was trained to handle it.
So why didn't I do the same with Ethan?
Because when Mark tried to kiss me, I felt nothing but pity and mild discomfort.
When Ethan pulled me onto his lap, I felt like I was on fire.
I'm attracted to him. Desperately, stupidly, recklessly attracted to him. And that attraction made me forget everything I know about professionalism and appropriate boundaries.
