“Have a good night, guys,” he murmurs to the table. He doesn’t look back as he crosses the room and places himself between the men and the bartender without hesitation.
“Dude, aren’t you the guy she left at the altar?” the taller man says.
“Yeah, you’d think you want to see the bitch put in her place,” the other one adds.
“I think I’d rather see my fist meeting your cheek,” Zac says.
The men retreat, muttering, and the bartender exhales, so softly it almost disappears. Zac says something I can’t hear, and her shoulders lower a fraction.
He glances over his shoulder at me once, a quiet, thankful look, then I turn back toward the table.
Serena nudges my arm. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say.
And I mean it. He’s still needing to stand in front of someone else. And even if he wasn’t, Zac isn’t who I want beside me. He’s rooted to his past, and the realization settles in my chest, calm and certain: I’ve been living in mine too.
I pullinto the condo lot and cut the engine. For a moment, everything’s still and quiet. Then a burst of laughter cracks down the row of buildings. I slam the door of my car and look up, not to my building but tohis.He’s at his window, half lit by the amber glow of a lamp behind him, the rest of him swallowed by the dark. Just… there, waiting for a cue I won’t give.
The path lights flicker me forward, and as I walk between them, I run through my schedule for tomorrow. A patient I need to call. An email I should’ve answered. Anything but the fact that I can feel him watching me even when I don’t look.
It’s hard to admit it, but Nate’s eyes on me, tracking my movement from a distance, takes me back to a less complicated time between us. A time that’s filled with fondness for him and no trace of anger.
We were younger then—back when everything still feltlike it could fit if I just worked hard enough. I was in my third year of med school, running on caffeine and adrenaline and the kind of tunnel vision that didn’t leave room for anything else. Or at least, that’s what I told myself.
I had a plan. I always had a plan.
The first time I saw him, I’d just stepped out of the hospital, the automatic doors hissing shut behind me, the morning light too bright against too little sleep. My scrubs were wrinkled, my ponytail barely holding in the bun I’d twisted my hair into hours ago. The coffee in my hand was the only thing keeping me upright.
He was standing right in the middle of the ramp. Sketchbook in hand, camera slung at his side, like he had all the time in the world to just stand still andlook.
I should’ve walked past him, but I didn’t.
“You’re blocking the ramp,”I said, my voice rough with exhaustion but sharp, the way I’d learn to be.
He turned, quick, as if he’d been pulled out of something.“Sorry.”He stepped aside, lifting the sketchbook slightly.“Architect. Or trying to be. I’m here for inspiration.”
I remember rolling my eyes before I even looked at him properly. I did then, and I knew in my bones I’d made a mistake. He was a distraction I couldn’t afford.
There was something open about him. Not careless—focused, but in a way that felt expansive instead of narrow. It was like he wasn’t just seeing the building behind me, but everything around it, everything it could be. And when his amber-red eyes met mine, he didn’t just see me, he saw what I could be for him.
Everything I didn’t want to take time to notice.
“And—did you find it?”I asked, because it was easier to keep it light than to linger on the way his attention settled on me.
“I sure did,”he said, and then he winked.
I laughed.“That was corny.”I cocked my hip against the ramp’s edge.“Is that how they play it in your department?”
He didn’t flinch or step back; he leaned into it instead, like my sharpness was something to learn, not avoid.“Why don’t you go out with me and find out?”
I took a slow sip of my coffee, buying time I didn’t need. I already knew the answer.
No.I’d sworn off distractions and detours.“Oh, sweet thing,”I said, tilting my head, letting a small smile curl at the corner of my mouth,“you wouldn’t know what to do with a wild doctor like me.”
I expected that to be enough, but from the beginning, Nate always gave as good as he got.
“I’m a quick study,”he said, stepping closer, voice lower now because the tease was just for me.
