Then Tessa opens her fucking mouth. “Wow,” she says. “Just so you remember, that’s the girl you’re pining about. A sl?—”
I slam my hand on a table, and her mouth hangs open.Good.
“Don’t you dare say one more fucking thing about Robyn,” I hiss, my voice low and dangerous. “She had every right to do what she did. No matter how sick it makes me.”
Tessa doesn’t need to understand that this is on me, but it is, with a certainty that tightens every nerve in me.
CHAPTER 19
The Finality
Robyn
“The fucker said what?”Julian’s eyes go wide, and his knuckles whiten around the water cup he’s holding.
We’re squeezed into a corner table at Momo District, a cramped grab-and-go spot a block from the hospital. Ginger and cardamom hang in the air, but they’re drowned out by the sharp, burned soy-and-cumin drifting from the kitchen. Someone definitely scorched a pan and skipped the scrubbing. Trays and metal silverware clatter nonstop, loud enough that Julian and I don’t bother lowering our voices, even with a cluster of people in scrubs eating by the door.
“That it was classy for me to have sex in a bathroom and that it was his cue to move on.” I cut my last dumpling in half with my fork, but I’m not hungry anymore.
Julian drags a torn piece of naan through the last streaks of sauce, methodically cleaning the beige plate.
“Then he wrapped his arm around Tessa.”
He stops mid-motion. “Tessa?”
I shrug, blowing a loose piece of hair away from my lip. “They’re probably together now.”
Julian’s jaw juts out. “Please just let me punch him.”
He’s joking, of course, but if I were still struggling to breathe the way I did when that video popped up on his phone, or if I were still freezing in front of the whole team during rounds… Julian would punch him. Warmth floods my chest, knowing he would, but it warms even more because it’s understood he doesn’t need to.
“No punching for the neurosurgeon.”
“Not even if I wore a glove?”
“No, Kells, it isn’t worth it.” This is where the joke ends. When I can’t keep my lower lip from trembling for a millisecond. “I essentially pushed him into her arms.”
His eyes widen a touch before his eyebrows relax. “A man worth keeping doesn’t get distracted by someone he doesn’t want.”
I nod, pressing my lips into a smile, but it wobbles a little. This one stings. “Exactly.”
He sets down his cup and reaches across the table and holds my fingers in a quiet, grounding squeeze. He gets it, it’s written in his pale-blue eyes and in the curve of his mouth that’s not quite a smile, just agreement. It’s the truth of it that makes this painful.
As he lets go of my hand, he clears his throat. There’s nothing to do about what Nate did or felt.
“How was Daniel?” Julian wiggles his eyebrows.
“Not mind-blowing, but he isn’t small, and he isn’t clueless.” I break a tiny bit off the napkin and throw it at Julian when he starts chuckling. “It also… wasn’t about him.”
“It was about the job.” Julian sips from his cup and starts cleaning up after himself.
It wasn’t really about the job either, it was mostly about having to think of only myself when deciding what comesnext. And a breather from the constant pounding in my chest I’d come to experience every time I thought about how easily everything you believe to be true and safe can hurt you anyway.
“It was about possibilities.”
He tilts his head. “Because you’re moving.” He’s hiding his eyes from mine by looking down and piling everything up on his plate.
“I still don’t have the job, but… yeah.”
