Page 72 of Waiting for You

Her hands went still.

She turned around on the stool to face me. She didn't say a word. She set the serum bottle on the dresser and fixed me with a look, her dark brows level, her mouth pressed closed.

I walked over and sat on the edge of the king bed.

I'd been sitting with it in the dark corridor, and I was still sitting with it now. All these damn years. That was the loop I kept circling. All these years, and I'd put in the work to move on. I survived residency, ground through the years after, built the clinic empire, built a respectable life, and convinced myself moving on was a math problem of accumulation: enough time, enough distance, enough forward momentum. I believed that one random morning I'd look up and the ghost I'd been dragging around would be gone.

The ghost never left.

When I walked into Violet's rehearsal dinner and saw Sloane standing across the room, I'd realized within thirty seconds that all my accumulation hadn't done a single damn thing.

I'd told Sloane I felt trapped in a cage. It wasn't a cage made of corporate burnout or parental expectations. It was a cage built out of still being in love with her. I'd prepared myself to live the rest of my life trapped in it, to get comfortable pacing the same floorboards I'd described to her. But I couldn't do it. I'd lectured Andrew about how romantic love wasn't a force capable of altering the trajectory of a life.

It was.

Love could strip me down and make me face what I'd been hiding from. And my reflection had been screaming the same truth at me for eight years. I'd refused to look at it.

"I've been lying to myself," I said to the quiet room.

Eliza looked at me.

"Is this about being in love with her?"

"Yes," I breathed.

She let out a slow exhale and looked up at the ceiling for a long moment.

"I knew it the second I saw her again," I went on, my voice rough. "I knew it before this trip even started, if I'm being honest. I tried not to let her presence derail me. But every time I stood next to her, I could feel the gravity of it anyway." I dropped my gaze to my hands. "Loving that woman is as involuntary as breathing. Trying to stop is like trying to hold my own head underwater."

She stayed silent. Then the corner of her mouth pulled into a humorless smirk.

"So this is the end of us."

"Yes," I confirmed. "I'm sorry, Eliza. I shouldn't have kept stringing this along knowing I'm still carrying the ghost of my past. You deserved better than that."

She held my gaze steady.

"You don't have to worry about my heart," she said. "What we had didn't have real romantic feelings. I want you to know that. I see this for what it is: a failed partnership, a contract that didn't close, and nothing more." She let out a soft exhale, studying my face. "But honestly? I wish someone would love me with the same intensity you love that woman. It's clear to anyone paying attention. The two of you are cut from the same cloth."

I smiled. I couldn't help it.

"You planning to go back to her?" she asked, tilting her head.

"No."

She arched an eyebrow.

"I'm ending things with you because I refuse to keep lying to myself," I clarified. "That's the only reason. Not because I'm running back to Sloane." I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. "I don't even know if what she confessed tonight is true. And even if it is, I have no guarantee there wouldn't be another crisis where she'd throw me away again at the first sign of friction. I've been stranded at the bottom of her priority list before. I won't bet my life on that dynamic again."

Eliza stayed quiet a moment, working through it. Then she made a thoughtful sound low in her throat.

"Maybe what you see and what's really happening are two different things," she said. "To you, her actions look like she throws you away the second things get hard. But to her, it might be that she refuses to let you face the danger of her own trouble. She might be standing in front of you like a shield, not walking away from you."

"But what's the point of love," I countered, "if not bracing against the storm together? Holding hands and walking through the wreckage side by side."

"And what if her version of love," she pressed, "is standing in the path of the storm, taking the full hit, so you never have to meet it at all?"

She picked the serum bottle back up and turned to the mirror.