Chapter 19
NINETEEN
FINN
The No Access sign glared like another rule I’d broken.
I pushed past the labeled door and kept going—up, and up.
Not as hard as I’d pushed during the blackout, when a cooler with two tiny blood bags had bumped my hip with each step, but my heart still beat out a fast, nervous rhythm behind my ribs.
Wind needled through the flimsy material of my scrubs when I emerged onto the rooftop. Even the T-shirt I wore underneath couldn’t protect me—Jesse’s, borrowed less than two hours ago that now felt like a lifetime.
“I saw you with Dr. Maddox last night. Please explain yourself.”
I shook off Novak’s voice and focused on Jesse. A few feet away, he stood with one hand on the railing, holding himself straight against the skyline. Face pale. Jaw tight, although his mouth tugged up at the sight of me, just a little. Somewhere below, a siren wound itself thin.
“Remember the first time we came up here?” he asked.
“Not exactly the kind of conversation you forget, yeah.” I stepped up next to him, elbows on cold metal. The city threw a gray shine at us, clouds snagging on skyscrapers. “First time I had to clarify that yes, I tend to people’s bodies. But not like that.”
He gave a half-laugh snatched up by the breeze. “I remember my top sticking to my back—hot sun and all. Now it’s almost winter.”
Almost time for attending applications to open.
I rolled my lower lip between my teeth and met his eyes—tired around the corners, but there was something bright underneath, alert. That first time, he’d been barely more than a stranger. This was… God, it couldn’t be more different.
“You okay?” I asked, close to a whisper.
He frowned as if the question hadn’t occurred to him. “Define okay.”
The cold climbed higher, sharp in the back of my throat. “You tried to take the fall for me.”
“So did you.” His tone was soft, calm, and Jesus, I wanted to reach for him—didn’t, though. Professionals. Even if it killed me.
“I have most of my residency left to recover from this.” From us. “Almost five years. You?” My voice came out thin. “For you, it’s now.”
A beat passed while he watched me, his face still in a way I couldn’t read. “She gave me a choice,” he said then. “Novak.”
I tasted bile. “A choice?”
“Devon or you.”
Right. Of course. I swallowed around shards of glass stuck in my throat. “Well, that’s simple. Devon’s your dream—you’re not throwing that away. Not for me.”
Something cracked in his face—a hairline fracture. “I chose you.”
My brain just… skipped. Like a flat stone on water, like the ones kids had thrown that day by the lake, laughing as they egged each other on. It took a moment for my voice to work. “You what?”
“I chose you,” he repeated, as if the words weighed nothing.
For a second, the whole city seemed to freeze—a seagull surfing on the wind, the red light on a far crane, traffic. Then I blinked and everything spun back into motion. “Jesse…”
“Look,” he cut in gently. “I know what you’re going to say. But listen—”
“You’ll resent me.” I shook my head, took half a step back. Distance. Easier to see clearly. “Maybe not now. But give it a year, and you’ll wake up thinking you could have had Devon. And instead, you’ve got…” I waved a hand at myself. “This.”
“First off, you’re not some defective display model.” One side of his mouth twitched up, eyes a clear green that made me think of forests and springtime. “Secondly, Ashwick Presbyterian is opening a pediatric surgery position. Novak offered to vouch for me.”
Everything went golden. Then turned to ashes. Because… “That’s not what you’ve always wanted.”
“No,” he said simply. “But maybe what I want has changed.”
“Because of me?”
“In part, yeah. You also made me think. Like… is New York really what I want? What price do I want to pay for my career? What price have I already paid? Ashwick’s smaller—faces you get to know, trees that don’t grow out of concrete. It might be better.” A small tilt of his mouth. “For me.”
He sounded philosophical, not like someone about to throw aside seven years of hard work.
I shut my eyes for a second, breathing in.
“And you just decided that in the last fifteen minutes?” I shook my head.
“Look, this is what happens, okay? People get really into me for a while. They fall for, like, the face and the highlight reel. But then they realize I can be a lot. Too serious, too hungry. Too… me.”
“People?” Jesse snorted, shifting slightly to face me fully. “Or your douchebag exes? The ones who liked the version of you that catered to their whims, then dumped you when you stopped? Or said you should marry your ambitions?”
“That was Travis,” I muttered. “The guy who dumped me just before—you know. Before we met.”
“Idiot.” Jesse’s lips turned up. “Personally, I like your ambition. It’s hot.”
That startled a small laugh out of me. Yeah, maybe Jesse got it, in a way none of the others had—he hadn’t risen to where he was by slacking off. Which was my point. Because, what, now he was suddenly okay with just… scaling his dreams down a notch? No big deal?
“That’s just it, though.” I shook my head.
“It’s so easy to feel like you’re in love at first, you know?
It always starts shiny. Hormones, everyone’s on their best behavior, wearing their best clothes.
Happy to feign interest while they rant about their favorite baseball team and you ramble about anatomy. It’s a performance, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Jesse said, dry as dust.
“Right. But then here’s the thing.” I cleared my throat, cheeks cold.
“It’s really just attraction dressed up as something bigger.
The shine fades once they… Once they meet the me who forgets to text back, who’d rather talk about sutures than superhero movies.
Turns out they only ever cared about hearing their own opinion echoed in a different voice, you know? ”
“Okay, my turn.” Jesse’s voice dropped to something slow and serious.
“I’ve known you for three months now, Finn.
I’ve seen you overtired and in scrubs.” He wiggled his fingers at me, a shadow of humor crossing his face.
“Not exactly flattering, even if blue is definitely your color.” He sobered, leaning in just enough to register.
“I’ve also seen you overwhelmed and embarrassed and so sick you could barely stay upright while trying to argue about how you should finish your shift.
I’ve seen you holding steady in a blackout.
I know you drink disgusting, reheated coffee rather than throw it out.
I know New York still feels too big. I know you try so hard to deserve this that you forget you’re allowed to be human. ”
“I…” It trailed off into nothing, words slipping through my grasp.
After a beat, Jesse continued, so quietly it was almost lost to the breeze. “I’m not saying there isn’t more I can learn—but I know you, Finn. And that’s why I want this. Want you.”
Everything in me went still like the air before thunder. Breath snagged on the way out, ribs tight, as if the words had crawled inside my chest and expanded until I was all out of space.
“Say something?” he prompted after a few seconds of silence, seeming abruptly uncertain.
“I, um.” It felt like I’d been stripped bare and raw. I dragged in some air. “But what if you regret it? Choosing me.”
“I won’t.” Now he sounded sure again—the same confidence he carried in the OR, each word deliberate, just like how he’d crossed the floor toward me that second time we’d crashed into each other, after the blackout.
“I’ve heard regret—end-of-life moments in ICUs and patient visits.
It never sounds like ‘I should have chased one more promotion.’ It sounds like ‘I should have been there, I should have chosen the people who mattered.’ I’m not making that mistake. ”
He just… He… God.
“I love you.” I hadn’t meant to blurt it out like this, but Jesus, yes, I wasn’t about to take it back. The city seemed a million miles away.
His smile was slow but inevitable like a sunrise, which, cheesy. He made me think in clichés, though, in colors and nature, in shades of green and the clear brightness of a summer morning even now, with late autumn cutting through my clothes. “Good,” he said, like that was an acceptable response.
My chest felt suddenly wider, lighter. “You’re not going to say it back?”
“Feels like I already did.” He leaned in, close enough to count the darker flecks in his eyes. “In about five different ways.”
I chose you. Maybe what I want has changed. I know you.
“Okay,” I said. The word caught on a chuckle. When I touched the side of his jaw, his pulse was beating hummingbird-fast, a counterpoint to the calm certainty of his tone.
“Still, though,” he said. “I love you.”
Oh.
I turned my head and brushed a kiss against the corner of his mouth before I pulled back—not far, just enough to meet his gaze.
A helicopter chopped the air somewhere above us, unimportant compared to the hint of his deodorant that I’d borrowed this morning, to the faint shadow of stubble under his chin.
“Good,” I echoed his earlier reaction.
His eyes creased with a grin. “Rude.”
“No—fair.” I grinned back, then let it fade into something softer. “I’m… Yeah. Thank you. For choosing… this.”
“Thank you for letting me.” He moved one hand to my hip, lightly steadying—me or himself, I wasn’t sure. “But we both heard Novak—we need to finish your rotation clean. No hallways, no elevators, no almosts. Even after, we’ll have to keep it quiet around here.”
I quirked a brow. “Boring.”
“I know.” Only his eyes were laughing. “But one of us has to keep a grip on the wheel. Never thought it’d be me, but here we are.”
“You’re hot when you’re in control.”
“Not helping.”
I spread my arms wide. “Sorry.”
“Once more, with feeling.”
“You met me in eyeliner and a silk shirt. You know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.” It hit me even as I said it—he did know. “Like… I kind of lied that first night, mostly because it seemed like a fun ride, and you still gave me another chance.”
That, and more. He knew how badly I wanted this career, how badly I needed to prove myself.
He’d seen me sick and sweating, and he’d dragged me home instead of leaving me to fake it.
Everyone else, I’d felt like I had to put on a show.
With him, I didn’t have to be smaller or shinier than I was because he got me.
No need to hold back because I knew he’d keep up.
And I knew him, too—his kindness and glimpses of mischief, how smart he was.
That he wasn’t half as confident as he pretended to be, that he moved like he was born to this city but hadn’t actually made a home of it.
The tiny streak of mischief he kept tucked away as if he’d convinced even himself that he’d outgrown it—but then he met me quip for quip, told me to keep the money as a relocation grant, crossed a room and some lines for me.
“Well, yeah,” he said, halfway to a crooked smile. “But I’m kind of gone for you. So.” And that—just.
“I love you,” I said. “I want this. Us.” And then, because I had to give him one more out, just this last one before I trusted him the way I hadn’t trusted any of the others, not really… “But if you wake up tomorrow and find that you’ve changed your mind—”
He didn’t let me finish. “Finn,” he said—just my name, but it carried weight.
“I’ve already done the math. In five years, it’s not my chance with Devon that I’d regret losing.
It’s you.” His fingers curled into the material of my scrub top, voice dipping low even as his lips curved up. “So I won’t.”
He said it like it was simple. Not easy, maybe—but simple. And I…
I believed him.