4. TESSA
TESSA
Kill me now.
I mean, my God. It was cosmically unfair how Blake Morrison kept aging like a fine wine while the rest of us mere mortals just …
aged. Those faint lines around his eyes had deepened since I’d last seen him, but in that infuriating way that made him look distinguished rather than older.
Like time itself had decided to be his wingman, chiseling his features into something even more breathtaking than before.
And his body. Good Lord. Those dark blue scrubs were fighting a losing battle with muscles that made his teenage self look scrawny in comparison.
Which was saying something, considering teenage Blake’s body had been the star of approximately ninety-eight percent of my high school daydreams. Okay, fine.
A hundred percent. Apparently, Dr. Morrison had found time between saving lives to become camera-ready for a Calvin Klein underwear commercial.
Which was just rude. What …did he do push-ups between patients?
Curl medical textbooks in his spare time?
Also, why did he have to succeed at EVERYTHING?
Successful doctor wasn’t enough. He had to go all ER trauma savior in a sexy white coat too.
His stethoscope was probably made from the tears of every woman who’d fallen in love with him.
And who could blame them? Blake had that whole brilliant-doctor-who-looks-like-he-walked-off-a-medical-drama thing going for him.
Not that he noticed. In true Blake fashion, he remained either completely oblivious to his effect on the female population or just supremely uninterested.
This was the same guy who’d once asked me, with genuine confusion, why women kept finding reasons to bring him coffee in the hospital cafeteria.
As if his face alone wasn’t a walking invitation for cardiac episodes.
At least the universe had thrown me one bone today—exactly one—and had waited to stage its hostile takeover of my consciousness until after I’d showered and made myself presentable.
If I’d landed in Blake Morrison’s ER sweaty from my morning workout and looking and smelling like an armpit, I might have asked them to pull the plug right then and there.
Blake’s stormy eyes remained locked on mine, and time ceased to exist. Every stolen glance from our teenage years rushed back—him watching me across my parents’ dinner table, that scorching hot August afternoon by the community pool when he’d taught me to dive, his hands gentle on my waist, my skin buzzing beneath his touch.
Or that one night by the bonfire, when orange embers danced into the ebony night, and he’d touched my hand, his lips parting like there was something he was working up to saying.
Only for the moment to slip through my grasp the second he let go of mine.
Even now, all these years later, he looked at me with that same unreadable intensity. The one I’d spent my teenage years desperately decoding, wishing my brother’s best friend saw me the way I saw him.
Back then, I’d told myself him going away to college would cure me of Blake Morrison, that four years of distance would finally shake him from my system.
Wrong. Instead, his absence carved deeper hollows.
I caught myself searching for him in every corner of my childhood home: the empty chair at Sunday dinners that had been unofficially his, the garage where he and Ryker had spent countless hours tinkering with that old motorcycle they never got running, even the porch swing where he’d sat with me the night before he left, promising to look after my brother at school.
When Ryker’s calls home were peppered with stories of Blake’s latest adventures—the fraternity they’d both gotten into, the parties he’d attended—each word felt like swallowing shards of glass.
Which was stupid. What did I want? For Blake to be miserable because he was too busy pining after me to have any fun?
Answer. Yep. Evidently, that selfish desire was exactly what my heart wanted.
Which was when I knew the truth. You don’t spend years trying to forget someone who was just a crush. You don’t feel physical pain at the mention of their name. Unless they’ve become part of your DNA, coded into every cell like a genetic memory you can’t erase.
Honestly. If humans could choose who to have feelings for, it would make life so much easier. Maybe one day, big pharma could come up with a pill for that.
For people like me, who had feelings for someone who had never returned my interest. Blake had never been interested in anyone that I knew of, though, so I guess that was something.
Rejection of all humans, not just me. The guy was massively guarded, to say the least, damaged by a traumatic childhood that he never wanted to talk about with me.
Well, except that one time I walked in and saw something I wasn’t supposed to, but I digress.
“ You’re the patient that fainted?” Blake took a step closer, eyeing my monitor with worry.
“Not fully.” Man, look at me go. Faking a smile, putting on my camouflage that had taken years to perfect. The one that said, No feelings here.
As Blake stepped to the edge of my bed though, it was hard not to notice the small silver scar cutting through his eyebrow.
When I was a teen, I would have known the story behind it.
He would have crashed on our family couch, feet propped on the coffee table, telling us how he got it while Mom fussed over him with an ice pack.
Now that scar was just another reminder of how much of his life had become a mystery to me.
Another chapter in a book I wasn’t allowed to read anymore.
“Does Ryker know you’re here?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m a thirty-three-year-old woman, Blake. My big brother isn’t my keeper.”
“Dr. Morrison.”
“What?”
“I go by Dr. Morrison.”
I smirked. “That’s such a flex.”
And then … oh God … there it was. That rare Blake Morrison smile, the one that made time stop. It was infectious, melting away some of the tension, making me remember the boy who used to sneak candy bars into my hospital room when I had my tonsils out.
“You did it,” I said softly, a surge of pride warming my chest. “You’re a doctor.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you after medical school.”
Classic Blake, dodging praise like it was a physical attack. He’d always been allergic to compliments, as if accepting them might jinx everything he’d worked for.
“But this is the first time I’ve seen you in your natural habitat.” My eyes wandered around the space, taking in the scene and the way he seemed to belong here. “It looks good on you.”
Wonderful. My cheeks just incinerated, and his gaze was—yep—glued to them. Maybe he’d write a paper titled “The Curious Case of the Perpetually Blushing Patient.”
“Tessa, we can catch up later.” His tone shifted into that no-nonsense doctor voice that probably made interns quake in their shoes. “Right now, I need you to tell me about your head injury. When did it happen? How? Where?”
I fought an eye roll. The resident had clearly told him my skull wasn’t split open, or I’d already be trapped in some machine with Blake hovering over the controls like an overprotective helicopter pilot.
But before I could answer, another nurse appeared, and I watched in fascination as Blake Morrison gave a practiced flick of his wrist, causing the nurse to retreat like she’d been caught stealing cookies from the break room.
The moment the door shut, he leaned against the wall, crossing those arms that strained against his white lab coat in a pose of pure authority. This wasn’t my brother’s best friend anymore; this was Dr. Morrison, the man who commanded one of the most prestigious ERs in the country.
“Tell me what happened,” he pressed, his voice softer now, but no less commanding.
Okay, I could do this. One final interrogation, and I’d be free. The fainting was nothing. Just a classic case of me versus gravity, a battle I’d been losing my entire life whenever I stood up too fast. Nothing to do with my medical mystery at all.
But if Blake caught even a whiff of something wrong?
God help me. He’d turn into a medical bloodhound, complete with the stubborn determination and inability to let things go.
He’d want to start from scratch, consulting every specialist with a pulse, ordering tests I probably couldn’t even pronounce.
Yeah, no. Not happening.
I’d already sacrificed a year of my life to this mystery.
Watched my bank account hemorrhage even more money into medical bills while my client list shrank faster than a wool sweater in hot water.
Hell, the stress of it all had even cost me my relationship.
Though, honestly, good riddance to Eli and his WebMD obsession.
If something was seriously wrong with me, surely, one of the seventeen doctors I’d seen would have caught it. Instead of, you know, patting me on the head and telling me all my tests were fine while practically shoving me out the door.
I’d finally made peace with having a slightly defective body. Like a car with a weird rattle that mechanics can’t find. Annoying, but not deadly. And I refused to let go of the control I’d fought so hard to reclaim over my life.
One teensy problem with my brilliant plan: stress had a way of making my symptoms throw a party. A very unwelcome, very noticeable party.
Like the wave of nausea currently throwing a rager in my stomach.
“So, you fainted.” Blake’s voice carried that same authoritative edge he’d used on the nurse, only now it was laced with something else. Concern? Irritation?
I swallowed hard against the rising nausea, plastering on my best this-is-totally-normal smile.
“I skipped breakfast and, well …” I shrugged like I was discussing the weather. “People faint all the time.”
“Not you.” The words shot out like bullets. “Ryker’s told me about every scraped knee and broken bone since you were ten. Never once mentioned fainting.”