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“Don’t worry,” I tease, mostly to ease the tension between us. But my words carry an edge to them regardless of my attempt to remain nonchalant. “I won’t cramp your style now that I’m in town. By the way … how’s Jessica?”
He scoffs out a mirthless laugh. “I guess I deserve that.” He waits for a beat before angling toward me. His arm is resting along the back of our seat. “I don’t know how Jessica is. I haven’t talked to her. Look … I was an asshole that night. I was just using her to punish you.”
“I know,” I practically whisper. “But that wasn’t very cool of you to do. To her or to me. Why did you do it?”
“Because I’d heard you were having an affair with your boss.”
I sigh, slowly nodding my head. “Where exactly did you hear that?”
“From my mom and one of her friends.”
I laugh, but it sounds tired. “Wow, good news travels fast.” That’s not the first impression I hoped to make on his family.
“The world is a small place,” he murmurs.
Sullivan’s Way isn’tthatfar from the city. And a lot of people vacation here. But I still naively thought the gossip wouldn’t touch me while I was in town. I guess I was wrong.
The wind picks up again, and I snuggle into my coat. I stiffen when I feel Zane winding a strand of my hair around his finger the way he used to. But it isn’t because I don’t like it. It’s because I do.
The tip of my nose becomes colder as the wind keeps blowing.
I take a deep breath and make a sudden decision to tell my story. My voice is low and steady when I start speaking. “My first job as a PA, I was thrown into the deep end without a life jacket. I was fresh out of school, still learning, and I was seeing a clinic full of patients within my first few weeks on the job. I was evaluating them alone. People come to the orthopedists to get an expert opinion. And here I was, completely new and inexperienced, expected to diagnose and treat conditions I was still learning about. It was overwhelming and ridiculously hard. The stress was unbelievable. And the pay was horrible.”
My eyes are stuck on the golden aspen leaves across the way as I remember my first job out of school. They are sprinkled among the green pines ascending the side of the mountain. Very soon, the leaves will be gone.
“I left my first job to work for Dr. Cooper—Ron.Hewas a dream boss when I first started working for him. I felt lucky to have the position. He’s an amazing surgeon. Gifted. I workedwithhim, not just for him. He was always there if I needed guidance. He didn’t throw me to the wolves, like my first job had. I felt like a valued member of the team. He taught me a lot about medicine. And he paid me well.”
Zane sits quietly beside me, listening. His finger is still twirling my hair.
“But things started happening. Things that struck me as weird from the very beginning.”
“What kind of things?” he asks, his voice a deep baritone. I love the way it echoes off the lake. “Like when he grabbed your ass in the middle of work?”
“That didn’t happen right away. It’d started out with seemingly small things, nothing that blatant. When I first joined hispractice, he started calling me late at night. I’d always answer, thinking it was work-related somehow. But it rarely was. He was just calling me to … talk.” I pause. “It’s funny. I still remember feeling so uncomfortable the first time my phone rang and it was him. But after a while, it became … normal somehow.”
I drop my eyes to my lap for a moment, and Zane’s hand slips beneath my hair. He starts massaging my neck, and my eyes roll back into my head at the feel of his fingers. I tilt my head to the side.
“That feels good,” I murmur.
His pupils are dilated when I look over at him. My eyes drift across the features of his face. His chiseled jaw and five-o’clock shadow. Those lips that I’ve tasted more than once. The way his callous hand feels on my skin. And I wish we could go back to the beginning, when things were simpler between us.
“You said that he wanted to have an affair, but you didn’t …” Zane asks after a few minutes.
I know I don’t owe Zane an explanation. But I want to give him one. I don’t care what most people think of me, but he’s not most people. And I care about his opinion more than I’m willing to admit, even to myself. And even after everything that has happened. It feels good to be honest about the situation and finally air my dirty laundry. It’s cleansing somehow. And after living in secret for so long, it feels right to come clean. It’s like the weight is being lifted from my shoulders, one pound at a time with each confession that rolls off my tongue.
“One night, we left the clinic and stopped at a restaurant to have a couple of drinks and some food. We started doing that more often the last two years. It was like Ron never wanted to go home. And I worked so much that I didn’t have much of a life outside of the job. After we left the restaurant, Ron called mewhile I was driving home. I’ll spare you the details, but he let it be known that he was thinking about me in the biblical sense. I was taken off guard yet not completely surprised, if that makes any sense. Things had been building between us for a long time. But I guess I never thought he would go that far.”
I take a breath before continuing. I meet Zane’s midnight eyes. His hand is still tangled in the hair at the back of my neck.
“I guess the underlying flirtation between us felt innocent as long as the physical line wasn’t crossed. It seemed safe somehow. I thought about his proposition. I did. I thought about little else for a long time. I considered crossing that line for weeks … months after that phone call. But something always held me back. Even so, it was like this temptation was lingering in front of my face.”
“Why would you even consider it when he was married? And he was your boss …”
“If you had asked me that question before I was in the middle of this situation, I would’ve had a completely different answer. I’d never thought I’d be in a position like that, let alone consider acting on it. I was never the type of girl to cheat. But the one thing that had been lacking in my life for a long time … was love. I’d worked the past six years away. It didn’t leave much time for a social life. So, he became my social life in a weird, dysfunctional way. He gave me something I hadn’t realized I was missing.”
Zane grimaces and finally pulls his hand away. My skin feels colder suddenly. The first snowflake falls.
“I’m not blameless here,” I insist. “My hands aren’t completely clean. I liked the attention. After a while, I craved it. And for that, I was wrong. But one thing I never did was cross the line with him. I never touched him or kissed him. We never hada physical affair. But I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have an emotional one. Because we did.”
