Page 56 of Broken Vows

This time, I’m aware.

And that awareness gives me something I haven’t felt in a long time.

Control.

25 Theo

A knock at my office door drags me away from the last of my clinic notes. “Come in,” I call out.

“Hey, you’re here late,” Erica says, stepping inside.

I glance at my watch. Christ, I can’t believe it’s after six already. The office closed over an hour ago. After volunteering to complete a fellow clinician’s scripts when they ducked out early for their kid’s choir concert, I still have at least another hour of paperwork. But I always save my heavy paperwork for Thursdays. That’s usually when Lexie has social plans or visits her mom. These days, I’m sick of staring at her covered window, of seeing nothing but her silhouette, of counting down the days until we next meet.

I’m heading into week three without seeing her. And I fucking miss her.

Not the kind of missing that comes from wanting revenge or out of anger because she’s pissed me off. Not because I need to feed some compulsion.

I miss her. The person. And it’s eating me alive.

“I could say the same thing to you,” I say to Erica. “What’s up?”

“I come bearing good news,” she says with way too wide a grin after a ten-hour shift, “on the condition that you tell everyone I’m your favorite nurse.”

“You strike a hard bargain,” I say with a chuckle. “You’re lucky I’m in the mood for some good news. Give it to me.”

Her smile drops. “Oh, no. Wedding planning getting to you, huh?”

“There’s a reason why people elope.” This is all I’ll say, even if Erica presses. But we won’t elope. The wedding plans are my only tether to Lexie, the only excuse I can use to be in her company, the only thing keeping me sane.

Sometimes, I wish Lexie weren’t so goddamn efficient and good at her job. Every time I push back, stalling for more time with her, pretending I care about the details when I don’t, she returns immediately with a solution before I can blink. I don’t like the caterer—she’s got four more lined up. The place settings don’t look right—she’s already switched to my second and third choice.

“So true.” Erica twists her mouth like she wants to say more but doesn’t. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you I secured an appointment for Mr. Lopez at St Augustine’s oncology department.”

“You did?” My mood immediately lifts, and the first genuine smile of the day reaches my mouth. I liked Mr. Lopez—a hard-working father of five—the moment I met him, and I’m grateful that Erica could wrangle an appointment with one of the top oncologists in the state.

“Sure did,” she says. “I had to use a little bit of Erica magic. A perfect combination of sweetness and threats.”

“Like a sugar-laced jalapeño.”

She tilts her head. “I like to think of it as a sugar-laced grenade. It just so happens I used to work with the scheduler there, and well, voilà.”

Incredible. I lean back on my chair and drum my fingers against the arm rest. “You still have my credit card, right? Will you send her something? A good bottle of wine, Scotch, whatever you think she’ll like. Get yourself something, too.”

She arches a brow, tugging on her dark ponytail. “You realize those are words men end up regretting, right? Especially when said to a woman with expensive taste.”

“I know,” I say, rolling my chair back to the desk. “But if you use the card for evil and not good, then I’d have to fire you, and depriving you of my daily presence feels unnecessarily cruel.” I wink at her as she rolls her eyes.

“That would be a tragedy.” She grins and closes the door behind her.

After I finish sending in scripts, reviewing a last-minute lab result, and entering in the final after-care summary, I can’t escape the growing restlessness in my body and I head to the gym. The good mood from Erica’s news is short-lived, and by the time I hop on the treadmill, I’m back to raging. Through lifting, running, and hitting the bag, I beg for my mind to clear. Three fucking weeks and I haven’t seen her. Not once. Like I mean nothing. I need the fantasy of me going further, harder, deeper, to leave my hungry mind. She was supposed to beg. Not me. And here I am, desperate for her scraps, even after she said she never wanted to see me again after she eventually closes my account.

After an hour, my agitation is still brewing. I shower, head back to the studio, slide open the curtains a few inches, and eat my dinner in my lap.

Jesus Christ this is pathetic. I’m seriously fucked up. For two hours, I’ve been sitting in the dark, staring at a wall because of her. This is the shit she makes me do. She drives me to the brink of insanity. Just as I stand to do something even more stupid like stream a mindless show, the lights flicker on in her apartment and my breath seizes. She’s home. I grab my camera and zoom in through the lens.

The shadow of her curves from behind the blinds releases the tension in my shoulders. She’s standing close to the window, and several moments pass when she snaps opens the blinds. I exhale. Finally.

What’s she doing? She’s glancing at the road, at the sky, and then… me? I look away from the lens. No… that can’t be. I peer again. See, she’s making me paranoid. She’s looking at the building, at the road, and even if she were looking at my window, she wouldn’t see me. If she had a camera and could zoom in, the only thing she’d see is a camera lens.