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When he walked into the pharmaceutical room, which was located behind secure glass doors, she took advantage of the fact they were alone.
“You win, Drake. You’ve taken over my ER. Everyone thinks you’re this golden stud who walks on water. But dating another resident in the same ER is a recipe for drama and against the hospital rules.”
He slowly turned in mock surprise with a wicked smile that brightened his tired midnight-black eyes.
“You know, Dr. Monroe, you sound jealous, but that couldn’t be since you were the one uninterested in continuing our relationship. Or was it the buttercream-stuffed cake donut holes that won you over again? You always were a sucker for cake.”
His deep voice echoed in the confined space, and her body went hot.
She huffed. He was infuriating, but at the same time, she had an overwhelming urge to kiss that smug look off his face. His audacity to move across the country without even trying to come up with a plan and then claim she broke up with him was insane.
“Is this some kind of game for you? Torture me and taunt me until what, I quit? What is your endgame?”
“Why would I want you to quit? And whose rule is it that a resident can’t date another resident? I didn’t see it in the handbook.” Closing the distance between them, he pinned her with his broadening scowl but was careful not to touch her. He was close enough for her to smell his spicy soap scent and feel the warmth coming off him. “Which makes me think it’s your rule for me, but why?”
She opened her mouth to refute him, but the words stuck. Either she had to admit she didn’t want to see him with anyone else, or worse, that she still wanted him, like all his other fans. Or she lied and said she just hated him. But before she could say anything, his hand lifted to caress her face. Pushing a loose strand of her hair off her cheek, his thumb ran along the line of her jaw before falling away.
“Or maybe it’s like a childish game. You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone else to have me?” he said.
His words snapped her out of her trance.
“So you admit you’re dating the staff here? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel for you? Too easy to resist?” She took a step back from him.
“You should talk. You’re dating another attending, right?”
She stomped her foot. “You saunter back into town, stir up my ER, but we both know you’ll be gone again soon. Are you trying to punish me for not being able to follow you to LA? Because I’m not the one that ended things, so don’t try to rewrite our history now.”
His smile faded, and his gorgeous mouth fell open.
“Me? You think I ended things between us? You changed your mind about UCLA and me two days before our move. You told me you didn’t think long distance could work. You broke up with me, you changed your mind about us.”
“Nope, that is not what happened.”
Her heart pounded like drums in her ears.
He ran his hands through his hair, further disheveling it and causing the waves to fluff. Oddly, it only made him look more attractive.
“I didn’t come back after med school because there was nothing to come back to. You made it clear you didn’t want me and chose to stay. Then after med school, I heard you were spending time with my brother. Friends saw you together multiple times. It sounded like you had moved on.”
She thought back to the last time she saw Drake’s younger brother, Ian. They’d actually gotten along pretty well the entire time she dated Drake, even though as brothers they seemed more like enemies. Ian had been the devil to Drake’s role as angel, but it was clear it was all a façade. Some need to piss his father off and annoy Drake drove Ian to seek out bad behaviors. One of which got him into trouble as an adult and landed him in Margo’s ER one night during her first year. She’d been horrified to find him wasted and bleeding. She’d lectured him about squandering his privileged life all for some childish vendetta, and she’d made him promise to stop drinking. He’d always been one to party too hard in college. He swore he would get his act together if she didn’t tell Drake, and then, a few weeks later, he asked for her help.
“Well, it wasn’t what you think. And if you were really so worried, why didn’t you ask one of us about it at the time? If you had expressed any regret for how things ended or come back, maybe we could have…” She trailed off because she didn’t know what they could have done. She felt like they were going around in circles, and it was starting to drive her crazy. “But you stayed gone.”
He looked up at the ceiling and put his hands on his hips. “I thought everything fell apart because you stopped loving me. And I didn’t come back because I thought you didn’t want me to.”
She gasped at his words.
“I never wanted you to leave, not without me. I didn’t choose to not go to UCLA. I couldn’t afford it, not even with the scholarships. I didn’t qualify for enough loans.”
Drake’s eyes narrowed. “You never told me it was about the money.”
“I said we should apply to backup schools in case we didn’t both get in, or I didn’t get the funding. Then I said I couldn’t go, and you said you had to go. It was an impossible situation. If I asked you to stay, you would have been at least a semester behind, and if I’d gone, it would have taken me years to save up enough money to afford UCLA, and they weren’t going to hold my slot.”
Before he could respond, a nurse walked into the cool room to retrieve medicine for a patient. Her head bounced back and forth between them. But Margo did an about-face and reached for the door to exit. Her stomach ached with the thought that Drake actually thought she’d stopped caring about him when they broke up? Yes, she’d been forced to change her plans for medical school when the amount she could borrow and scholarships fell short, but she hadn’t expected Drake to want to go without her.
All their plans changed the moment she couldn’t go to an expensive school. He’d given up on her and gone away without her.
Drake’s family had been wealthy enough for him to never have to worry about how to pay for school, and Margo had always noticed the difference in their financial status. Was it possible he didn’t realize how much tougher it had been for her? The student loan department didn’t care that she’d been forced to give him and their dreams up, or that she’d never stopped caring about him.
