3. BLAKE
BLAKE
Tessa Kincaid. My own personal torment since I was a teen, wrapped up in a five-foot-three package of sunshine and sass that had no business making my heart rate accelerate every time she walked into a room.
When I was younger, I told myself I noticed everything about her because that’s what outcasts do: we watch from the shadows, cataloging details about the normal people.
And in the Kincaid household, no one was more luminously, impossibly normal than Tessa.
The way she’d dance through their kitchen, making pancakes at midnight, how her green eyes lit up like she’d mainlined caffeine whenever she talked about her latest passion project.
How her small frame moved with a grace that made my hormone-addled teenage brain short-circuit, especially when she’d reach past me for the syrup.
At night, when insomnia kept me company like an unwanted best friend, I’d lie awake, analyzing every interaction.
The way my stomach would drop when she’d brush against me …
completely accidentally, because why would Ryker’s little sister touch the brooding mess who haunted their couch?
The urge to check her room when I heard her come in late, just to make sure she was safe.
The way I’d count the minutes until she came home from dates, pretending I wasn’t listening for her car.
It was all just … brotherly concern. After all, the Kincaids had taken in this stray when my own home became a war zone. It was natural to feel protective. Natural to want to murder any guy who made her cry.
So what if I’d memorized her laugh like a favorite song, or noticed how her hair caught the sunlight just so, or the precise shade of pink her cheeks turned when she was embarrassed?
The dreams I sometimes had about her were clearly just my subconscious taking the whole guardian role too seriously.
And that white-hot rage when guys tried their luck with her?
Pure big-brother instinct. Had nothing to do with wanting to shatter jaws when they made her smile in ways I couldn’t.
And if I happened to accidentally break the nose of the quarterback who tried to pressure her at homecoming?
Well, he shouldn’t have been standing where my fist was going.
Tessa was family, nothing more.
Even if, sometimes, late at night, in those moments between sleeping and wake, my mind wandered to dangerous territory, Ryker was my best friend, and I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that.
Plus, Tessa deserved far better than me. She deserved someone who didn’t have more issues than a medical journal, someone who’d kept my darkest skeletons hidden from her.
When I found myself having to remind myself of that, after I’d almost crossed a line, I decided to put some space between us. Two years of silence hurt like hell, but it made it easier to sell myself the brother-sister story.
But now, here she was in my ER, somehow more beautiful than my memories had preserved, making me realize that two years of distance hadn’t done a damn thing to stop these unwanted thoughts of her.
I had less than thirty seconds to figure out how to be her doctor without my unprofessional behavior destroying my career, my friendship with her brother, and any chance of Tessa ever talking to me again.