Chapter 22
Twenty-two
Liz
We’ve been back over a week, and I’ve avoided Alaric nearly completely.
He’s texted and called, but Jeannine didn’t waste a moment, and the gossip around the hospital has been at full throttle.
No way am I contributing to that. I feel a bit of panic now when I think about Hawaii.
I can’t believe I got caught up in things like that.
All it takes is a little proximity for me to completely lose my head?
Nothing about my reality with Alaric has changed, and now, I just hope a few days of walking down memory lane haven’t derailed my career and wrecked my heart.
The bell over the door jingles as I walk into Steaming Mugs, and I spot my older brother Mark already at a booth by the window. He waves me over with a grin.
“Look at you,” he says as I slide into the seat across from him. “You’re tanned. Like, actually tanned.”
I snort and peel off my jacket. “The sun in Hawaii kind of forces itself on you. It’s only a week since I got back, and it’s already starting to fade.”
“Still, you look good.” He lifts his mug. “Refreshed.”
“I don’t feel refreshed,” I say, picking up my own mug. The steam curls against my face. “I feel jet-lagged and stressed and like my pores are still sweating sunscreen.”
He laughs. “That tracks.”
I take a sip of coffee. “But it was beautiful. Warm. Everything smelled like flowers and salt and sunscreen. And the conference actually had good food, which shocked me.”
“So worth the trip?”
I hesitate, my thumb running along the rim of my mug. “Parts of it.” I’d like to stop there, pretend everything is fine, hold on to my dignity before the rest of it crashes in.
Mark gives me a knowing look but doesn’t press. Instead, he says, “Speaking of trips, Sam took Nicky for his checkup yesterday.”
That pulls me out of my head. “How’s my favorite nephew?”
“Giant,” Mark says with a proud smile. “Nine months old and already convinced he’s ready to walk. He spent the entire appointment trying to climb the exam table.”
I laugh, picturing Nicky’s chubby hands grabbing everything in sight. “That sounds about right.”
“He weighs twenty-four pounds now,” he adds. “The pediatrician said he’s thriving. Sam cried.”
“Aww…” My heart squeezes. “I miss him. I feel like he does something new every week.”
“He does.” Mark rubs the back of his neck. “And Sam is starting to get nervous.”
I tilt my head. “About what?”
“Going back to work,” he says. “She’s got three months left on maternity leave, and she’s already stressing.”
I frown. “About childcare?”
“Yeah.” He exhales slowly. “She’s called daycares, looked at home options, interviewed two people… She hates all of it. She doesn’t want to leave him with anyone. But at the same time, she’s going crazy without adult conversations about something other than the color of poop in the diaper.”
“That’s a hard one,” I say, swirling the coffee in my mug. “Leaving your child with a stranger is terrifying, but I think I’d be a better mother if I worked.”
“She keeps saying she’ll never be able to walk out the door on her first day.” He gives me a tired smile. “And honestly, I don’t know how we’re going to make it work if we don’t find someone soon.”
“Do you need help?” I ask quietly.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. We just need someone good. Someone who won’t freak Sam out. Someone who can handle Nicky without panicking if he shoves a Lego up his nose.”
I laugh under my breath. “Sounds like a unicorn nanny.”
“Exactly.”
I reach across the table. “You’ll find someone. Sam isn’t unreasonable. She’s just a mom. She’ll know the right person when she sees them.”
He nods, but worry still shadows his eyes. “I hope so.”
I take another sip and try to give him a reassuring smile. “You will. We’ll figure it out.”
He nods, and for a moment, the weight on his shoulders seems to ease. Then he studies me again. “You look wiped.”
“I am.” I try for a joke, but my voice comes out thin. “This week has been hell.”
He waits. And here we are again.
My brother has always been like this, giving me space to circle around the hard stuff. I take a big drink of coffee, because even though it’s scalding, it gives me something to do with my hands.
Finally, because I see no way out of this and because deep down I want to, I tell him about the debacle with my hotel room and hooking up with Alaric, which was confusing on its own, and then running into Jeannine at the airport, the moment that sparked the worst re-entry to real life possible.
“The gossip has gotten out of control.” My throat tightens.
“What started as a few whispers has turned into this whole story about me spending a lusty week in Hawaii with the hospital footing the bill. People actually said those words. Lusty week. And every time I walk out of my office, they go silent. I know they’re talking about me. I can feel it.”
Mark’s jaw ticks. “People who have nothing going on like to pick someone to talk about. This is about them, not you.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.” I rub my forehead. “Every step I take feels like someone is waiting for me to mess up. I let my guard down. I knew better. I never should have…” My mouth closes on the rest.
He raises his brow. “I always thought Alaric was different from the others you dated. He treated you well.”
Something stabs hot under my ribs. “He left me. That’s the part everyone forgets. He left.”
Mark reaches across the table and taps the back of my hand with his fingertips. “Have you talked to him? Since you got back?”
“I was going to. He’s texted.” I look into the swirl of my coffee. “But now? I swear people are actually watching us. Like they’re waiting to catch us together. I think they’re staking out our houses.”
Mark laughs, a startled burst. “Liz, it’s not that bad.”
I meet his eyes. “It feels exactly that bad. I’m worried I’m going to be in trouble for this. We worked at that conference. It wasn’t a lust-filled week.”
“Then you don’t have anything to worry about, do you?
” After a moment, he softens. “All right. Let’s say, worst-case scenario, you can always go back to Vancouver.
Or try Calgary. Or Toronto. Or if you need somewhere immediate, you can move into our spare bedroom.
Sam would love it if you wanted to take some time off and watch Nicky when she went back to work.
You don’t even have to warn us. Just show up with a bag. ”
The idea of leaving Paradise squeezes something inside me, like someone pressing a fist against my sternum. “I don’t want to go anywhere. But if my boss hears the wrong thing or believes this rumor, what am I supposed to do? How do I fix that?”
“You’ll figure it out,” he says. “You always do.”
I wish I believed him.
I finish my coffee quickly because the warmth is the only thing keeping me from shaking. Then we stand, and Mark pulls me into a hug. For a second, my cheek presses against his shoulder, and I feel like I might break open if I let myself stay there too long.
We say goodbye, and I head back to work on autopilot. But I feel better after talking to Mark. This is why I moved here. I have support.
When I step into my office, I place my bag on the floor, sit down, and pull Hudson’s project toward me. Numbers, charts, projections, budgets. Things that usually calm me.
I open the spreadsheet I asked Misty to send over yesterday. The columns fill the screen, rows of numbers lining up like soldiers. At first, everything looks normal.
Then my eyes catch the occupancy totals, and a jolt of confusion runs through me.
These numbers show the hospital at capacity every single night.
Not just full, overfull. These numbers would have people in hallways.
Overflow patients. Crowding so severe we should be in incident-command mode.
The press would be all over us. We should be holding emergency meetings.
Staff should be complaining. There should be chaos.
But I’ve seen none of that.
I frown, scroll up, scroll down. The numbers stay wrong.
This cannot be real.
I lean back in my chair. My heart thuds. Something is wrong.
The file includes no notes from Misty, no warnings that the data source changed. Nothing to suggest these numbers are preliminary.
Just this file. This file that could destroy me if I sent it on.
My fingers tighten around my pencil, and it snaps in my hand.
I push back my chair and stand.
On my way out, one more detail slams into me. This isn’t the first time. The slides Hudson needed from me for a leadership meeting—they were full of errors, something I brushed off as a mistake because I didn’t want to believe anything worse. But now, it’s happening again.
I clutch the pages and head down the stairs to Emergency, needing someone who can tell me I am imagining things, that I’m tired, that the numbers got mixed up.
As I enter, nurses call out, a stretcher rolls past, a baby cries. And standing at the center of it, typing on a computer at the nurse’s station is Greyson Paradise.
He looks up when I approach.
“Hey,” he says, eyebrows rising slightly. “Everything all right?”
“Not really.” My voice shakes. I slide the papers toward him. “I need you to look at something.”
He scans the first few lines, his brows slamming down almost instantly. “No. These aren’t even close. Not even in the same ballpark.”
My stomach drops.
He turns back to the monitor, fingers flying over the keys. “Let me pull the actuals.” He clicks a few times, then pivots the screen toward me. “This is what we’ve been running.”
I lean closer.
His numbers are calm. Reasonable. Normal.
Nothing like mine.
“What the hell?” I whisper.
Greyson looks at me again, eyes narrowing. “Where did you get these?”
“Misty pulled them. I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now.” I press a hand to my forehead. “If I had handed this to Hudson, I’d be done. Completely done.”
Greyson’s voice softens. “Here, let’s get you the right numbers.”