35
Lila
Mason Reid’s name lit up my phone in the middle of an afternoon supply review, and I knew before I opened the message exactly why he was texting.
Blue had reached out to him about one of the attending positions at the new ER.
Hearing from him should have felt like another item on a very long hiring list. Instead, seeing his name pulled my attention away from everything else on the table.
Mason: Blue said you’re part of the hiring mess now too. Thought maybe we should get coffee and make sure this won’t be weird.
I read it twice. Mason had always been good at making things sound reasonable enough that saying no felt heavier than saying yes.
That ease was part of why our arrangement had lasted as long as it had.
He had been funny, uncomplicated, and available during a period when uncomplicated was exactly what I wanted.
Life had apparently decided uncomplicated was temporary. I typed back.
Me: Sure, coffee sounds good.
His answer came almost immediately.
Mason: There’s a place near the site. Tomorrow after lunch?
Me: Okay.
That should have settled it. Instead, the meeting stayed in the back of my mind for the rest of the afternoon, irritating mostly because I could not find a good reason for it to matter this much.
The next day, I left the trailer office just before one with Blue asking if I wanted company and Evan apparently planning for combat by baked good. “I’m serious,” he said as I grabbed my bag. “A blueberry one to the temple would humble most men.”
“I’ll be fine, we just need to talk things out, I don’t need a body guard.” I slung the strap over my shoulder, already regretting telling either of them where I was going.
Evan looked deeply unconvinced. “That’s what a woman walking into danger always says.”
Blue glanced up from the paperwork spread in front of her, concern quieter than Evan’s theatrics. “If it gets weird, text us.”
I gave her a look. “It’s coffee with a man I used to casually sleep with, not a hostage exchange.”
Evan snorted. “You say that now.”
I rolled my eyes and left before he could inventory the trailer for throwable pastries.
The coffee shop sat close enough to the construction site to catch hospital staff and contractors, but far enough away that the noise faded behind the door.
Inside, the lunch rush had thinned to a steady stream of scrubs, work boots, laptop bags, and people trying to buy ten quiet minutes with caffeine.
Mason was already there, sitting near the front window in a button-down with the sleeves rolled, relaxed and polished in the way he always had been.
Clean-cut, all-American handsome, the sort of doctor families trusted before he said a word. His smile reached me first.
Then I noticed the drink waiting across from him, and I slowed. It was exactly what I used to order, specific enough that the fact he remembered caught me off guard more than it should have.
Mason stood when I reached the table. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I glanced at the cup before setting my bag beside the chair.
He followed my eyes. “I remembered right, didn’t I?”
I gave a small nod. “You did.”
“Good.” His smile warmed. “I was hoping that wouldn’t be the first thing I got wrong.”
A breath of laughter escaped me despite the awkwardness, and I sat. “So. Coffee diplomacy.”
Mason settled across from me. “Something like that.”
For the first minute, we both tried too hard to make it ordinary. There was no hostility between us, only the awareness of old intimacy sitting at a small table with nowhere else to go. Mason finally exhaled and gave me a crooked smile. “This is weird.”
I snorted into my cup. “A little.”
“Good,” he said, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “At least it’s not just me.”
That helped enough to get us past the worst of it.
We started with work because work came with rules.
The new ER. The construction. The absurdity of building a department from floor plans, supply lists, staffing projections, and administrative optimism.
Mason asked smart questions, and I answered them.
He listened the way he always had, attentive without crowding the conversation.
From there, Wicker Falls slipped in naturally.
We talked about people we had both worked with, including one surgeon who still seemed convinced every nurse in the building existed to keep him from having public tantrums and another who treated new nurses like his personal dating pool.
Mason reminded me of the resident he used to threaten with decaf whenever the man got too cocky, and I laughed harder than the memory deserved.
For a few minutes, it felt easy again. That was exactly why I kept part of myself braced.
Mason had never been unpleasant. The problem had been how easily pleasant turned into momentum, and how differently we had understood where that momentum was allowed to go.
Halfway through the drink he had remembered for me, the awkwardness faded enough that I finally stopped waiting for the conversation to tip.
“I’m glad we did this,” Mason said.
I looked at him over the rim of my cup. “Yeah?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t want there to be any weirdness hanging over things if I interview and end up here.”
“There doesn’t have to be.” I meant it. Whatever had happened between us did not need to follow either of us into the new ER.
His expression softened. “I’m glad you feel the same way.” He looked down at his hands for a second, then met my eyes again. “For what it’s worth, I really do respect your decision. I know I wanted more than you did. That part was mine, not yours.”
The admission landed more gently than I expected. “It wasn’t anything against you,” I said. I watched his face before adding, “You know that, right?”
“I know it now.” His answer carried no accusation, which somehow made the guilt prick harder.
“Mason.” I heard the apology trying to creep into my own voice and disliked it immediately.
He gave me a small, sad smile. “I said I know.”
There was no reason to leave anything blurred between us, so I gave him the truth I should have said more plainly then.
“I just wasn’t in a place to be in a relationship with someone new.
I thought we were both on the same page.
That it was just...” I searched for a graceful phrase and found none.
“A scratch-the-itch kind of thing, no strings attached..”
A real laugh broke out of him. “Very romantic,” he said, and some of my tension went with it.
“You know what I mean.” I wasn’t going to dress it up into something more sentimental than it had been.
“I do.” His amusement faded into something more reflective. “At first, I felt the same.”
I studied him. “At first?”
“At first.” His fingers tapped once against his cup. “Then I didn’t.”
There it was, said plainly enough that the imbalance between us felt less like old awkwardness and more like what it had actually been: two people whose expectations stopped matching.
Mason held my gaze. “I developed feelings. It happens.” He said it without drama, which somehow made the old imbalance between us feel more real.
“I’m sorry.” The words came automatically, guilt reaching for responsibility before I could stop it.
He shook his head, refusing to let me carry something he had already claimed as his. “Don’t do that.”
I frowned, even though some part of me already knew what he meant. “Do what?”
“Take responsibility for something just because you’re kind enough to feel bad about it.” His tone stayed easy, but there was nothing casual in the way he looked at me now. “You were honest with me. I just hoped honesty might change eventually.”
I looked down at my cup because that part I understood too well.
Mason leaned forward slightly, studying me in a way that made me suddenly wary of where his thoughts had gone. “Is there someone else?”
My head came up fast enough to give away more than I wanted. “What?”
His faint smile returned, not triumphant so much as knowing. “That’s not a no.”
For one stupid second, yes rose in me before I could argue with it. There was someone else. There had always been someone else. Apparently seventeen years and every reason in the world to know better had done nothing to convince my heart that Jackson Hayes no longer occupied the space.
Mason must have seen something cross my face because his expression sharpened with understanding.
I looked away. “There’s...” The truth caught for a second before I made myself finish it. “There’s someone from my past I’m not over.”
It was the cleanest version I could give him without opening a story that had nothing to do with this table.
I traced one finger along the design on my cup. “It wouldn’t be fair of me to get into anything with someone when my heart is still halfway somewhere else.”
Mason went quiet. When he finally nodded, the movement was slow and controlled. “Okay,” he said.
“I really did think we were on the same page.” I hated how much I needed him to understand that I had never meant to hurt him.
“We were,” he said. His mouth tightened briefly. “Until we weren’t.”
The answer hurt, though not because I wanted him back. I just hated realizing that something easy for me had cost him more.
Mason leaned back. “I mean what I said, Lila. I respect it. And I’m not going to make work weird if I end up here.”
“That matters.” Professionally, it mattered a lot.
“I know.” His expression eased before he added, quieter, “I’d still like to be friends.”
He reached across the table and covered my hand with his, his thumb brushing over mine. The touch should have been harmless. Instead, my body tightened before I had time to decide whether it should.
The conversation had just closed one door, and his hand felt too much like keeping it cracked. Maybe he felt me stiffen. Maybe he was already about to pull away.
A shadow crossed the table before I found out. I looked up and saw Jude standing beside us with a coffee in one hand and a smile already in place. My stomach went cold. His eyes moved from me to Mason, then down to our hands before returning to my face with too much interest to feel accidental.
“Well,” he said, as if finding me here amused him, “we just keep bumping into each other, don’t we?”
I slipped my hand out from under Mason’s and sat back. “Yeah,” I said, unable to keep the suspicion from flattening my voice. “That’s really odd, actually, since you live and work in Wicker Falls. This isn’t exactly a quick drive from there.”
Jude straightened slightly, smile intact. “I told you, my new girlfriend lives out this way.”
My eyes narrowed before I could stop them.
He lifted his coffee. “I’m just grabbing something before I go house hunting.”
That pulled me up short. “House hunting?”
“Yeah.” Jude took a drink as if there were nothing strange about the answer.
I stared at him, every recent coincidence lining itself up whether I wanted it to or not. “You work in Wicker Falls. Why would you go looking for a house here?”
Jude smiled, but whatever he meant as reassurance never reached me.
“I might transfer here,” he said. “All depends on what happens with my girl. Once I get things settled with her and our house, I’ll transfer, move here so I can take good care of her.
” His voice softened as he tipped his head.
“The way she deserves, the way she always deserved.”
The back of my neck prickled. Maybe it was the possessive certainty in our house. Maybe it was the way always deserved sounded less like something a man said about a new relationship and more like a grievance he had been carrying for years. Whatever it was, I wanted distance from him fast.
I looked at Mason and found him watching Jude now instead of me. Staying suddenly felt like the wrong choice.
I pushed my chair back and stood. “Well, thanks for the coffee and the chat, Dr. Reid. I think we cleared up everything.”
Mason stood too, his expression harder to read than it had been a moment ago.
“I’ve got to get back to work,” I said, already reaching for my bag. Then I looked at Jude. “Have a nice day.”
His smile stayed exactly where it was. “You too, Lila.”
I left before either man could keep me there.
Outside, the afternoon light felt too bright after the coffee shop.
I crossed toward the construction site with the uncomfortable awareness of open sidewalk at my back and resisted the urge to turn around and see whether anyone was watching me through the window.
Jude could have a girlfriend in Bay of Saints. He could be house hunting. He could even be considering a transfer. Any one of those things made sense by itself.
Together, they were beginning to feel like something else.