13. TESSA
TESSA
Heat crept up my neck as Blake stood there, looking at me with those damn eyes like he had the right to know all my darkest secrets.
“You don’t get to do this,” I said, my voice quieter than the storm building inside me.
Two years of swallowed words rose up like bile in my throat. The gentleness in his touch, the way his fingers had traced my scar, the way he made me feel like that scar was all that mattered to him. It was everything I’d once craved, everything I’d forced myself to forget.
And now, it was all rushing back.
God, I was an idiot. One knock to the head, and I’d let myself forget how this story ended. How many nights had I stared at my phone, watching those three dots appear and disappear as he typed and deleted, typed and deleted, until finally … nothing.
“Do what?”
“Act like my protector, like you care.”
His brows furrowed in unjustified confusion. “I do care.”
Yeah, that’s what I thought once upon a time too.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I swallowed down a fresh lump in my throat.
I felt like a terrible person. Blake just saved my life.
The right emotions were to be nothing but grateful and kind to him, but my heart disagreed.
It kept a record of every slight, every silence, every moment I’d waited for him to remember I existed.
“I thought so too,” I said. “But turns out, I was someone you could just discard.”
He recoiled as if I’d slapped him, hands clenching at his sides. His eyes searched mine, confusion and something deeper darkening his features.
“Tessa, I never discarded you.” Something rippled across his face. Pain? Regret? But it disappeared too quickly to read.
“Bull,” I said. “And the least you can do is tell me why.”
Blake’s hand found the back of his neck—his tell for emotional distress. If he thought I was going to break the long, long silence that elapsed? He was wrong.
“Can’t we leave the past where it belongs?” he questioned.
Belongs? How insulting.
“No.” The word shot out like a bullet. “You don’t get to push me away and pretend I never existed without explaining why.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and it took him for-freaking-ever to finally speak.
“Everything I did was to protect you.”
A harsh laugh escaped me, echoing off the sterile hospital walls. “Protect me? By blowing me off?”
Something shifted in his expression—just for a heartbeat—but it was enough to make me wonder if there was more to his abandonment than simple rejection. A reason he wasn’t sharing.
But if we had any hope of moving forward—and I had no idea if I wanted to move forward, by the way, let alone if he did either—we had to talk about this.
His career, however, disagreed.
His pager buzzed, and the way his shoulders tensed told me he couldn’t ignore it. Part of me wanted to grab his arm, make him stay and explain himself. But he was a doctor. Saving lives would always trump my wounded heart.
And the way he kept inching toward the door, like a trapped animal seeking escape, only twisted the knife deeper.
“Just leave,” I said.
Blake’s chest rose and fell as he appeared to hunt for the right words.
Did he look pained, hurt even? Yeah.
But welcome to the party, Blake.
Then, just like he did two years ago, he did what he did best. He left.