Chapter 12 #2
Bennett kept talking, oblivious or brave. “Vitals?”
Destiny gave them to him, smooth and professional. “Temperature normal. O2 stable. Pressure acceptable. Pain underreported.”
“Snitch,” I muttered.
Bennett laughed. “She’s tough on everybody, Degan. Don’t take it personally.”
I looked at Destiny.
She did not look at me.
“I don’t,” I said.
Liar.
Everything about her was personal.
The way she stood. The way she breathed.
The way the blue-black shine of her hair made my fingers curl in the sheets.
The way her mouth flattened when she was trying not to feel something.
The way the scent of her—clean soap, coffee, something faintly floral under hospital air—cut through antiseptic and drugs like memory with teeth.
Bennett smiled at her again.
My jaw locked.
“Rourke,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask if you’re off this weekend.”
The room went still.
My room.
My hospital bed.
My nurse.
Not mine.
The sheet bunched under my fist.
Pain sliced through my side, but I welcomed it because it gave me something legal to be angry about.
Destiny looked at him like she wanted the floor to open.
“Doctor.”
“There’s this new place near Old Town,” Bennett said. “Good mezcal, supposedly decent food. I thought maybe?—”
Was he serious?
Was the man asking her out in front of me?
In front of a patient?
In front of a man recovering from a gunshot wound who had no weapon, no boots, and no decent way to break his jaw?
My abdomen tightened.
Bad idea.
Pain flared white.
I gritted my teeth.
Destiny saw it instantly.
“Do not tense your abdomen,” she snapped.
I looked at her. “Then tell him to stop flirting.”
Silence.
Beautiful silence.
Bennett blinked.
Destiny stared at me.
I regretted nothing.
That was the problem.
I should have regretted it. I should have apologized. I should have remembered Georgia’s sweater on the chair and the ring on Georgia’s finger and the promise I had made when I looked at a good woman and tried to build a life out of everything Destiny wasn’t.
Instead, all I could think was no.
No to Bennett looking at her.
No to Old Town.
No to mezcal.
No to another man discovering how her laugh sounded when she forgot to guard it.
No to anyone touching that loose curl against her cheek.
No to all of it.
Destiny stepped closer, lowering her voice. “You don’t get to do that.”
That hit.
Because she was right.
Didn’t make the jealousy go away.
“What?” I asked, because apparently I was determined to bleed from more than one wound.
“Act like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like it matters who asks me to dinner.”
It did matter.
It mattered so much my whole body went hot with it.
It mattered enough that if I could stand, I might have forgotten every stitch holding me together and done something stupid.
It mattered enough that I wanted to tell Bennett to get out.
Tell him she was mine. Tell him she had been mine since firelight and grave dirt and a kiss that ruined me for every decent woman who came after.
But she wasn’t mine.
I had made sure of that.
I looked at her.
Really looked.
Saw the anger. The hurt. The way she wanted me to fight and hated me for wanting it. Saw Mandy’s fear in her too, the terror of wanting what belonged to another woman and becoming the villain in a story already bleeding from every side.
That sobered me.
A little.
“You’re right,” I said.
The words scraped out.
They tasted like surrender.
Destiny hated them.
I could tell.
That made two of us.
Bennett cleared his throat. “I’ll come back later.”
Coward.
No, not coward.
Smart man.
“Doctor,” Destiny said.
Bennett gave her a look that was suddenly less flirt and more understanding. Then he glanced at me.
I held his gaze.
He left.
The door closed.
Destiny did not move.
Neither did I.
The silence between us went thick and hot.
The monitor beeped faster than it should have.
Destiny noticed.
Of course she noticed.
“Your heart rate is elevated.”
“You think?”
Her mouth tightened.
I wanted to bite it.
I wanted to apologize.
I wanted to drag her onto the bed and keep her there until every noble lie in my life burned down around us.
Instead, I lay there with tubes in my arms and guilt in my chest, useless as hell.
“You going to go?” I asked.
“To Old Town?”
The answer mattered too much.
That was pathetic.
I was a grown man with a fiancée, a bullet wound, a business, a degree, and more scars than sense, waiting on whether a woman I had no right to claim would agree to mezcal with Dr. Pretty Boy.
“No,” she said. “I’m not going.”
Relief moved through me before I could hide it.
She saw that too.
“You look relieved.”
“I’m in pain.”
“Convenient.”
I closed my eyes for half a second.
When I opened them, she was still there.
Still beautiful.
Still furious.
Still not mine.
“I am relieved,” I said.
Her face changed.
There.
The truth.
Small, ugly, impossible.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
She knew me too well.
I let out a slow breath and felt pain tug at the stitches. “No.”
Destiny looked away first.
Victory had never felt worse.
“You’re engaged,” she said.
Georgia’s sweater sat on the chair.
Her coffee cup near the window.
Her ring somewhere out there on her hand while she bought breakfast or took a shower or tried to become human again after nearly losing me.
“I know.”
“You chose her.”
“I know.”
The second one hurt more.
Because I had.
Again.
Even after hearing Destiny’s confession. Even after waking up with her voice inside me. Even after my body proved in the most humiliating way possible that every coal I thought I had smothered was still burning.
I had chosen Georgia.
Out loud.
With intention.
Because guilt was a powerful architect, and I had been building cages out of it for years.
“Then don’t look at me like that,” Destiny said.
My voice dropped before I could stop it.
“How am I looking at you?”
She didn’t answer right away.
Her eyes came back to mine, and for a second, I could see every answer she refused to give me.
Like you want me.
Like you remember.
Like you’re angry another man saw me.
Like you forgot she exists.
Like you think I’m yours.
She reached for the tablet instead.
“Like you’re going to make both of us worse,” she said.
That one landed in the center of me.
Because yes.
That was exactly what I was doing.
Making Georgia worse.
Making Destiny worse.
Making myself worse.
All because I couldn’t be honest enough to choose cleanly or strong enough to stop wanting.
She finished the vitals and stepped back.
“I’ll let your nurse know your pain is increasing.”
“Destiny.”
Her name came out before I could stop it.
She froze.
Not all the way.
Just enough.
Her shoulders, her hand on the tablet, the line of her throat.
I wanted to ask her to stay.
I wanted to ask her to leave.
I wanted to ask her for a sponge bath just to see if her professional mask would crack.
To ask for a massage where my shoulders hurt and watch her eyes darken because we both knew I wasn’t talking about muscles.
I wanted to be wicked enough to make her blush and honorable enough to hate myself for it.
I wanted her hands on me.
Not medical.
Not gloved.
Hers.
The thought hit so hot and sudden that my fingers curled into the sheet again.
Next time, some ruined part of me thought.
Next time she comes in, ask.
Make her say no.
Make her say your name.
Make her feel it too.
Then shame slammed the door hard.
Georgia.
I closed my eyes.
Damn me.
“Dylan?” Destiny said.
I opened my eyes.
There was worry on her face now.
Because even angry, even hurt, even trying not to love me, she was still a nurse. Still a healer. Still too good for the mess I kept dragging into her life.
“I didn’t know you’d be assigned here,” I said.
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t have?—”
“What?” she asked softly. “Looked?”
My throat closed.
She gave me the smallest smile.
It wasn’t happy.
It cut.
“Because we both know that’s not true.”
She moved toward the door.
It opened before she reached it.
Georgia stood there with a coffee tray in one hand and a paper bag tucked against her hip.
She stopped.
Her eyes moved from Destiny to me.
Then back again.
The room went cold.
Georgia knew.
Not the details. Not the dirty thoughts still burning under my skin. Not the way I had imagined Destiny’s hair in my hands or her touch on my body while my fiancée was out buying coffee.
But she knew enough.
Women always did.
“I brought breakfast,” Georgia said.
Her voice was bright.
Too bright.
Destiny stepped aside immediately, professional mask back in place so fast it almost hurt to watch.
“His vitals are stable,” she said. “Pain is elevated. I’ll update the nurse.”
Georgia nodded.
“Thank you.”
Civil.
Awful.
Destiny looked at me one last time.
I tried not to look back like a starving man.
Failed.
Georgia saw.
Of course she saw.
Destiny walked out.
The door closed behind her.
And the air she left behind felt warmer than the coffee Georgia set on the table beside my bed.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Georgia arranged the breakfast bag. Took out napkins. Checked lids. Small movements. Careful movements. The kind people made when they were trying not to fall apart.
“You’re flushed,” she said.
I almost laughed.
Couldn’t.
Pain, desire, shame, and guilt had all decided to move into my body and fight for space.
“Pain,” I said.
“Is that all?”
There it was.
Soft.
Sharp.
I looked at her.
Georgia’s eyes were on the coffee cup, not me.
“No,” I said.
The truth slipped out before I could dress it up.
Her hand stilled.
I should have lied.
A better man might have.
Or maybe a worse one.
She nodded once, slowly.
Then she handed me the cup with the straw and helped me drink because I was too weak to sit up alone and too guilty to deserve her care.
The coffee was lukewarm.
Her hand was steady.
My body still remembered Destiny.