Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
Nash
“Nash!” Justin Frank’s voice echoes down the hall just as I hit the exit.
I don’t stop right away. Just close my eyes and keep walking another two steps, like maybe if I ignore him, he’ll disappear.
No such luck.
I turn, shoulders heavy, throat dry. It’s been a long damn day.
Started at midnight when I woke up with Russ Calder’s voice in my head, and all the questions about what happens next.
I know she loves to dance, but she also craves security.
Heading back out west with no job, no apartment?
I can’t stomach the thought of the struggle waiting for her.
Needless to say, I didn’t sleep. Just rolled around in a haze of worry.
The hospital called at four to cover a gap on the schedule. I said yes before they finished asking.
Anything to outrun my thoughts.
Justin smiles like a man who’s never lost a night of sleep in his life. That alone makes me want to punch him. “I’m glad I caught you.”
“Can’t imagine I’m that hard to catch. I’ve been here since before sunrise.”
“We’ve been trying to reach you for a week or so,” he says, falling into step beside me, “but you’re not exactly the easiest guy to get ahold of.”
“Probably because I live here.”
“True.” He laughs, like we’re old friends. “Which is actually part of the reason we’ve been trying to talk to you.”
Justin steers me toward the nurses’ station like I don’t have somewhere better to be. My hand itches for the door. My keys. This better not be about flu shot compliance. Or a mandatory ‘wellness seminar.’ I swear if they try to sell me on yet another miracle drug again…
“As you know, Marilyn left us a few weeks ago for a job in Miami.”
“Did she?”
First I’ve heard of it. But I stopped keeping up with hospital gossip almost as soon as I started working here.
Justin produces a thick manila envelope from under his arm like a magician revealing a card I didn’t ask for.
“Her absence left a hole for us to fill,” he says, “and we’ve been thinking about who could step into that space with authority, leadership, and clinical expertise.
The more we thought, the more clear it became.
We’d like to offer you the position of Assistant Medical Director.
You’re basically holding this place together already. We just want to make it official.”
Justin places the envelope in my hand like it weighs nothing. It doesn’t. It weighs everything.
“Take all that talent and drive and help us fix what’s broken here—inside the system. Better pay. Better hours. Predictable shifts,” he adds, glancing at me like he’s doing me a favor.
Which makes me think the last six times they yanked my schedule around were less about “coverage” and more about conditioning.
“You’d have your life back,” he says, “and we’d still be better off because of you.” He taps the envelope. “It’s all in there.”
I stare at the thing, unsure what to say. No, that’s not true. I know exactly what to say, but I also know better than to say it.
Justin chuckles, claps my shoulder like my silence is awe and wonderment rather than disillusion. “Go home. Sleep on it. We can talk Monday.”
And just like that, he’s gone.
I make it halfway to my truck before I realize I’m still holding the envelope like it might explode.
I toss it onto the passenger seat and slam the door harder than I mean to.
The envelope slides off the seat and lands face-up on the floor.
All that promise. All that polish. And it makes my stomach twist. They want to take me off the floor and park me behind a desk to “fix the system” from the inside.
I’ve been trying to fix it from the inside for fifteen years.
All it’s ever done is bleed me dry.
They’re calling it a promotion. But it feels like a slow death. Like they’re opening the lid on my coffin and calling it a luxury resort.
I rest my forehead against the steering wheel, eyes closed, exhaling hard through pursed lips.
Fifteen years of chasing codes, stitching wounds, setting broken bones with one hand while holding back a flood of policy garbage with the other.
And now they want me to trade all of that for meetings. Budgets. Committee reports.
And a life outside the hospital I might actually get to live.
I look over at the envelope, glowing faintly under the dome light like it knows exactly what I’ve been thinking since he handed it to me.
Better pay. Better hours. Predictable shifts.
If I’d had those things earlier, I never would have lost Jadelyn. But if I hadn’t lost her, I wouldn’t have met Lucy. But here she is, messy and fierce, full of sharp edges and softer things she doesn’t even know she’s showing me. And now those things I swore I’d never want again… I do.
I want to come home and know she’ll be there.
I want mornings.
I want dinner that isn’t interrupted because the hospital needs me again.
I want to be the man Lucy can count on, not just the man who patched her up when she fell.
I bring the truck engine to life, and pull out of the parking lot, headlights slicing through the quiet dark. The town passes in familiar blurs—closed shops, blinking streetlamps, a stray cat darting across Main. And all the while, my brain builds it. The life. The pitch.
If I take this job, she doesn’t have to go back to Los Angeles.
Doesn’t have to worry about finding a new apartment or hustling for jobs that don’t respect her body or her heart.
It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t have a place to go back to in Los Angeles.
It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t have a job.
I can give her space to figure out what she really wants. Here. With me.
Maybe this is it.
Maybe this is how I get to keep her.
Maybe this is what good timing looks like.
By the time I pull into the driveway, resentment has transformed into hope. The porch light is on. So is the lamp in the front room.
Lucy’s awake.
I take a breath, grab my keys, and step inside.
The door clicks shut behind me. Lucy looks up from the couch, her legs tucked beneath her, one of my hoodies hanging loose on her frame. There’s an unread book open in her lap and a mug on the table beside her that smells like chamomile.
She doesn’t say anything at first. Just watches me. Like she’s been doing the same thing all night—thinking, spinning, pacing the walls of her mind and ending up right here, unsure how to start.
“Hey,” I say, voice rough, the look on her face eroding the hope I’d built on the drive home.
“Hey,” she says softly in return.
I nod and hang up my keys. “Sorry I was so late.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She sets the book aside. “I was… hoping we could talk.”
I step closer, trying not to read too much into the way her fingers twist together in her lap.
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
Lucy stands, slowly, favoring the injured side just slightly, and meets me halfway. “My agent called today.”
I nod, let her fill the space, even though I see where this is going to lead.
“A spot opened up on the Sandro René tour and they’re offering it to me. A second chance in an industry that doesn’t give them.”
And there it is. Maybe there is no such thing as good timing.
My heart stutters. I nod again, slower this time. “And…?”
“I don’t know.” Lucy exhales like the decision is a weight she doesn’t know how to carry. “I thought I’d feel excited. Relieved. I worked so hard to get that gig. And now that it’s back on the table…” Her eyes flick to mine. “It doesn’t feel like it used to.”
I swallow. Every instinct in me wants to say something—Stay.
We can make this work. You don’t have to leave.
But that voice sounds too close to the one that stood in the spare room with Jadelyn and promised we’d make it a nursery.
I knew then that we were done, but we hung on and she hurt me more than anyone else in my life.
I won’t let that voice speak for me again.
Instead, I ask, “What does it feel like?”
“Like a door I’m not sure I want to walk through.”
Silence stretches between us. Lucy doesn’t move, doesn’t back away.
I take a step closer, slow and measured, fighting the urge to reach for her. “Why?”
“You,” she whispers. “I don’t want to leave you.”
And I don’t want you to leave, I think, but instead say, “I don’t want to be the reason you didn’t take your dream job. All that resentment aimed my way?”
“I wouldn’t resent you.”
“Maybe not at first. But it’d happen. It’s only natural when we miss out on what we want because of someone else.” I think of Jadelyn slowly falling out of love with me because our life wasn’t as she imagined, of the last thing she said to me before she left:
If you hadn’t fought so hard to keep me, I would have left long ago, sparing both of us all this pain.
Lucy is silent, studying my face. “So you think I should accept the offer.”
“I do.”
“I’ll be gone for a year.”
A year of life without light again.
I reach for her and say the first non-guilt-laden thing that comes to mind. “Thank goodness for cell phones. It’s worked for Mom and family dinners.”
“Yeah.” Lucy exhales, some of the weight leaving her shoulders, and leans lightly against my chest. I wrap an arm around her, careful, steady.
We stand like that for a long time—no promises, no plans. Just breath and bone and something like hope between us.