47. TESSA
TESSA
I perched on the edge of the bed, hyperaware of his presence as he settled beside me, the mattress dipping under his weight. He reached for his stethoscope, the movement bringing a whisper of his body wash to me—clean and masculine, achingly familiar.
“I need to listen to your heart.” His eyes met mine, dark and intent. “Try to breathe normally.”
As if that were possible with you so close .
Blake pressed the stethoscope above my left breast, near one of the heart monitor nodes because, apparently, he needed to hear my heart with his own ears, too.
There was something so intimate about this moment, knowing he was listening to my heartbeats, wondering if he knew that each beat of my heart pulsed for him.
It hit me then, with devastating clarity, why his rejection had wounded me so deeply.
For one perfect moment on that terrace, all my dreams had aligned like stars.
My business was open, and despite its complications, I was building something real, something mine, brick by precious brick.
And there was Blake—the man who had haunted my teenage fantasies—finally touching me the way I’d always hoped. Like I was his everything.
For a handful of heartbeats, I’d held the world in my hands. Then it had all crumbled to dust.
“Good,” he murmured, his voice honeyed and low. “Now your lungs. Deep breath.”
I inhaled deeply, my chest rising and falling as he moved the stethoscope, first left, then right. His free hand rested lightly on my shoulder, steadying me. Or maybe himself.
“May I?” He fingered the hem of my shirt, eyes questioning.
I nodded, not trusting my voice, and the cool metal slid up my back beneath the fabric, followed by the ghost of his knuckles against my spine.
“Deep breath, Cupcake.”
Ugh, would my pet name rolling off his tongue always make my skin tingle like this?
“Again … once more.”
When he finally removed the stethoscope, draping it around his neck, his frown sent a different kind of shiver through me.
“Your lungs sound diminished.”
“What does that mean?”
“Lie back, please.”
I complied, trying not to think about how many times I’d imagined being in this bed under vastly different circumstances. Blake stood over me, his expression unreadable as his hands moved to my abdomen. When I flinched, his eyebrows drew together in concern.
“Does that hurt?”
“A little,” I admitted.
His lips pursed as he continued the examination, his touch still setting my nerve endings alight. Every point of contact felt like a reminder of what we were trying so hard to deny.
“Okay, you can sit up,” he directed, stepping back to create distance between us.
The loss of contact felt like a winter chill.
His gaze drifted to my packed suitcase by the door, and something flickered across his face. Regret, I think. He pulled a hand to the back of his neck for a few seconds.
“You should stay,” he said quietly. “At least until your breathing improves.”
I slid off the bed, squaring my shoulders. I refused to be that girl who fell apart just because the man she wanted didn’t want her back.
“I think we both know that’s not a good idea.”
The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything we weren’t saying, until he finally broke it.
“Listen, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Blake said, his voice rough with emotion, but then he just stopped. At a loss for words? Or presuming that was the only explanation he thought I deserved?
“One minute, you’re telling me you wanted to do more than just kiss me. Then you’re burying your face between my legs like you’ve imagined nothing else, but the very next minute, you push me away.”
“I made a mistake.” The muscles in his jaw clenched, his eyes fixed on some point over my shoulder.
“Which part? Going down on me? Or making me assume it meant more than just sex?” I hated how small I felt in this moment.
“It did mean more than just sex.” His eyes finally met mine, dark with pain. “That’s the problem.”
“He said, as if that sounds clear,” I muttered.
Blake dragged a hand through his hair. “Tess, even if I could get past my issues?—”
“Which I can only assume are some flavor of fear of losing me , but I wouldn’t know what those issues are. Being that you won’t open up to me.” A bitterness in my voice crept out.
“Even if I could get past my issues, Ryker is my best friend. I promised him.” His shoulders sagged, as if the weight of that promise physically pressed down on him.
“ That’s what this is about?” I balked, heat rising to my cheeks. How insulting. “We’re grown-ups, Blake. We’re not teenagers anymore.”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Try me.” I lifted my chin, challenging him.
His expression shifted, and for a moment, I saw the teenager I’d first fallen for years ago.
“Ryker saved me, Tess. When I was drowning, if I didn’t have his friendship, I wouldn’t have had your family.
Wouldn’t have met you.” He swallowed hard.
“The only thing he ever asked of me was to never date you. I don’t expect you to understand, but that matters to me.
I made a commitment to always have his back as he’s had mine. I can’t betray him like that, Tess.”
Something in his voice made me press harder. “That’s not the only thing this is about though, is it?”
He looked away. “I have issues letting myself … love.”
“Why?” The word came out barely above a whisper, hope blooming in my chest that, finally, he might tell me what this was really about.
Because, sure, the Ryker thing? I understood.
But rejecting a lifetime of happiness without even trying to reason with Ryker?
That wasn’t passing my test. Whatever this issue of loving was—that was the biggest issue of all.
The rest was just more justification to himself.
“But even if I didn’t have issues, I’m not the stand-up guy you think I am, Tess.”
“I know you have demons or whatever.” My hand twitched with the urge to touch him, to smooth away the crease between his brows. “But you literally save lives every day. How can you still see yourself as a bad guy?”
“I don’t. I accept who I am.” He scrubbed his jaw. “But even if I could get past my issues and even if I could break the only promise I’d ever made to Ryker, you deserve someone better, Tess.”
His words suspended between us, weighing down the air in my lungs, making it harder to breathe.
“You’re fighting this though,” I said, recognizing the torment in his eyes. “I can tell. You’re trying to convince me as much as you’re trying to convince yourself.”
The silence that followed was answer enough. His eyes flickered with concern as he studied my face, changing the subject.
“Walk me through your symptoms today.” His voice shifted to that professional tone, throwing up yet another wall between us.
“Blake.”
“Walk me through them.” His tone was clipped with the unspoken meaning behind them. The one that said I’m done talking about this.
Would I ever find out the other reasons he was fighting this hard to push me away? I needed to understand because this felt like … like watching everything I ever wanted burning down in front of me, without knowing what started the fire.
My eyes stung, but I bit back the tears. I’d wait until later, when I was back at my home, where I could fall apart in private, where he couldn’t see how thoroughly broken I felt.
“Nausea, stomachache, shallow breathing. I was particularly stressed today though.”
“From the wedding planning?” His voice carried an edge.
“That and … everything else.” I risked a glance up at him. “So, maybe this is just stress.”
Blake dragged a hand through his hair again, mussing it in a way that made him look less like the polished doctor and more like the man who’d devoured me on that terrace.
“Stress can wreak havoc on the human body,” he acknowledged. “But this isn’t stress, Tess. Something’s wrong, and I need you to tell me everything about your day. From the moment you woke up until now.”
“Why?”
“Please.” The word carried weight, heavy with something that made me look up sharply. “Indulge me.”
I studied him, noting the tension rolling across his shoulders, the way his muscles coiled like he was preparing for a fight.
“Well, I woke up, had breakfast?—”
“What did you eat?”
“Pancakes. Extra syrup.”
His eyes rolled skyward, and for a moment, a ghost of a smile played at his lips. “Of course you did.”
The familiar banter tried to make me smile, but my pain kept it at bay.
“Then I had my morning tea and those supplements you gave me while making calls from the office. The office you created for me,” I added.
“Did you touch anything new? Cologne? A cleaner? New body soap?”
“No.”
His mouth fixed into a line. “Keep going.”
“And then I left to run to a florist. That’s when I started feeling sick.”
His expression darkened. “Did you touch anything at the flower shop?”
I thought back. “No.”
“Did you make any stops before the florist?”
“I … yes. I stopped at my place for business cards. It was literally five seconds. If breathing in mold got you sick after five seconds, then sleeping there for the last year and a half would’ve killed me.”
“Did you see him?” Blake’s voice dropped dangerously low.
“Who?”
“Your creeper.”
“My neighbor,” I corrected, though something cold slithered down my spine at his choice of words.
“Was he waiting for you again?”
I swallowed hard. “He was on his porch.”
Something shifted in Blake’s expression. Something that made me glad I wasn’t the focus of that barely contained fury. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I was distracted, angry about the florist situation. I grabbed my cards, and when I was closing the door …” I faltered, remembering. “He came up behind me, put his hand on my shoulder.”
“He touched you.” The words came out like ice cracking.
“Asked how I was feeling.”
Blake’s hand clenched into a fist. “When did the symptoms start?”
My breath caught as realization began to dawn. “Maybe … fifteen minutes later.”
He moved closer until his face was inches from mine, eyes fierce with protective intensity.
“These symptoms aren’t random,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “After all our tests, I think someone’s hurting you deliberately.”
My heart stuttered. “Blake?—”
“And when I find them,” he continued, one hand coming up to cup my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone in a touch that was anything but clinical, “they’ll learn exactly how much damage a doctor can do.”
The promise in his voice sent ice water down my skin, but whether from fear of the threat or the way he was looking at me, I couldn’t tell. And as his words sank in, a more terrifying question surfaced.
What if Blake was right? What if this whole time, someone had been making me sick?
No. That was lunacy. People don’t get poisoned to death very often, and they certainly don’t get poisoned slowly for over a year.
What if my illness was making Blake come unhinged?
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
He left me here. Alone with my torturous thoughts, and just like last time, he didn’t even bother to explain why.
I stood up and exited the room, and as I stepped into the hallway, a sliver of light caught my eye. The mystery door stood ajar, golden light spilling onto the hardwood floor like an invitation.
Blake must have gone in there. Whatever was in that room had drawn him away from me. Urgently.
But what could it be? It was silly and irrational to wonder if the room held the answers to why he pushed me away, why he’d crushed any hope of us being together, why he’d chosen his promise to Ryker over me.
Chosen his unspoken demons over the possibility of love.
Those answers lay in his guarded heart, not some mystery room.
And yet my feet inched closer to it.
He was probably just looking up some latest test result. Nothing to do with our non-relationship situation.
God, I hadn’t realized how deep the roots of hope had grown until he’d ripped them out. All these years of maybes and what- ifs, of lingering touches and heated glances—gone. And all I had left was friend Blake. Medical Blake.
What if I wasn’t sick? Would he even be talking to me right now? What if I was mistaking some of his care as feelings when it was nothing more than doctor stuff?
My hand trembled as I pushed the door open.
And then I took a step back.
“Oh my God.”