Despite the whole cafeteria watching, I kissed his shoulder before pulling his sleeve back up. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, low enough for only him to hear.
He exhaled through his nose, a long, controlled breath, and his fisted hands slowly opened.
“You know,” Reed said, rolling his shoulder experimentally, “that was surprisingly not terrible.” He looked at me sideways. “Maybe if you helped me, I could actually get over this.”
“Of course.” I straightened his collar with two fingers and stepped back. “We would need to start a formal desensitization protocol—graduated exposure, incremental tolerance building.”
Reed stared at me for a moment. “You are so sexy when you talk like that.” He turned toward the serving counter. “Come on. Lunch.”
“You get started,” I said. “I need a word with Garrett first.”
He gave me a look but moved off toward the food. I waited until his back was turned, then crossed the cafeteria to where Garrett sat at the far table, his tray pushed to one side. I leaned down, and we had a brief exchange. Nobody at the surrounding tables looked up.
Next, I ducked behind the serving area. Theo appeared from around the corner, looked at me once, and jerked his head toward the back. We walked into the deeper parts of the galley, out of sight of the rest of the cafeteria.
A commercial refrigerator stood against the far wall, wide enough to walk into. Theo gripped it and pulled. Cold air rolled out across the floor in white plumes as he reached inside and carefully lifted out the cake.
The cake was enormous. It had to be to feed the entire station. Theo transferred it carefully on to the rolling cart. The cake occupied a full sheet pan with three tiers, frosted white with a border piped in dark chocolate, a small plane perched on top.
Theo had done something clever with the limited pantry—crushed cookie crumbles pressed into the sides, a drizzle of something dark across the top, and in the center, in clean block letters done with a steady hand and a piping bag, was the inscription. I stared at it. My heart was going at a rate I would have flagged as clinically significant in any patient. I pressed my palms against the front of my white coat and then did it again when they were damp a second later.
“How does it look?” Theo asked quietly.
“Good,” I said.
We stood behind the commercial refrigerator, backs against the cold metal, listening to the cafeteria on the other side. The scrape of forks. The low overlap of conversations. Someone laughing at the far end near the windows. The lunch hour was at full pitch, every table occupied, trays covering every surface, the smell of soup and warm bread thick in the air.
Theo peered around the edge of the refrigerator and pulled back. “I think everyone’s sat down.”
I checked. He was right. The serving line had emptied. Every person in the station was seated, eating, talking, facing away from us.
“Okay,” I said.
I did not move.
Theo looked at me. A slow smile crossed his face. “Doctor Park.”
“I know.”
“In all the time I have known you, I have never seen you nervous.”
“I am not nervous.”
He laughed, low and quiet. “How about I walk out first? You follow me.”
“Yes. Good. That is a good plan.”
Theo walked out first, pushing the cart ahead of him, and I followed two steps behind. The wheels on the cart had a slight squeak. In the full noise of the lunch hour, it was nothing, but I heard it with extraordinary clarity as we came around the serving counter and turned down the center aisle between the long tables.
The first person to notice was Grant, who looked up mid-sentence and stopped talking. The person next to him, his boyfriend Adrien, followed his gaze. Then the next table turned. A low murmur started moving through the room ahead of the cart, heads turning in a wave, and someone at the far end said something that made three people spin in their seats.
Theo kept walking, steady, the cart rolling forward. Finally, someone tapped on Reed’s shoulder, and he turned. His eyes went to the cake first. Then they came to me. His face broke into a huge grin. This was why I was making myself go through this torture. For that smile. On that man.
He pointed at the cake. Then at himself. “Is that for me?”
I nodded.
The cafeteria broke into claps and hoots. Reed stood up from the bench and practically skipped over to us.
