10. Ethan
ETHAN
W hen I finally get home that night, my mind is made up about not letting Ivy do this alone.
Unfortunately, when it comes to putting that intention to practice, I quickly find out that she is one stubborn woman.
The first time I call her, it rings four times before going to voicemail.
The second time, it doesn't even ring. Straight to silence, like her phone already knows what I’m going to say.
By the third attempt, I don’t bother leaving a message.
She’s shut me out before, but this feels different in its finality.
She’s building walls faster than I can scale them, and for the first time in years, I feel it acutely—that old, aching fury twisting in my gut, the kind that comes when something you want is slipping through your fingers and you can’t fucking stop it.
I toss the phone onto the nightstand and lie back, one arm stretched over my head, the other resting across my chest. The clock on the wall tells me I’ve got five minutes left to be selfish. Five minutes before I have to become the man the world expects. So I close my eyes and think of her.
She’s lying beside me.
Hair loose across the pillow, lips parted, bare skin lit only by the slow wash of early morning light slipping through the blinds.
Her thigh is hooked over mine. Warm. Supple.
My hand curls beneath it, possessive by instinct.
In this dream version of the world, she came home with me last night.
Slipped out of that clingy sweater in my hallway, let me kiss every inch of her like I’ve wanted to since the moment I saw her again.
I close my eyes and breathe her in, even if she’s only in my head. I can still taste her—sweet, addictive, the sound of her moan etched into my bloodstream.
“Touch me,” she whispers.
I turn to her in the dark, reach for her waist, and pull her beneath me.
Her legs open easily, as if she is openly greedy for more.
And in this version of reality, she isn’t afraid.
She isn’t hiding. She arches up with a gasp, that soft sound she makes when she wants more.
My hand traces the curve of her hip, over the faint swell of her stomach.
She kisses me like she’s starving. Tongue slick against mine, fingers tangled in my hair. Her hips roll up to meet me, begging without shame.
“Please, Ethan. I need you.”
I groan against her throat and trail kisses down her chest, my teeth grazing the side of her breast. She writhes beneath me, panting, her voice cracking when I suck her nipple into my mouth.
I feel her thighs tighten around me, desperate for friction.
I want to give it to her. Every inch. Every filthy promise I’ve kept locked behind clenched teeth since the day she asked me to leave.
She shivers when I slip down between her legs, pressing a kiss to the inside of her thigh before my tongue finds her. Ivy’s back arches hard, both hands fisting the sheets. She whimpers my name, one leg draped over my shoulder, the other shaking as I take my time.
"You taste so fucking good," I whisper into her. “I could live here.”
She’s soaked. And when she breaks apart against my mouth, crying out like she’s unraveling, I don’t stop. I need more. She grabs at my wrist, tugging me up, eyes glazed with lust.
“Your turn,” she says, voice thick, trembling. “Let me take care of you.”
And then she’s sliding down my body, her fingers curling around my cock like she already knows the rhythm I like.
Her mouth follows a second later—hot, wet, so fucking perfect.
I almost lose it when she moans around me.
I thread my fingers through her hair, watching as she takes more, licking me like I belong to her.
“Jesus, Ivy.”
She looks up through her lashes, lips wrapped tight around my cock, and I nearly lose control. It’s the look that breaks me. That mouth. That hunger. The way she owns me without even trying.
“Keep going, baby,” I grit out. “Just like that.”
She does. I come with her name on my tongue, one hand locked in her hair, hips jerking up into her mouth. She swallows every drop, wipes her lips with the back of her hand, and climbs up to straddle my hips. Her eyes shine, cheeks flushed, body soft and bare against mine.
I jolt awake with a strangled sound, sweat slick on my skin and my cock still hard. My hand is wrapped tightly around it, my release sticky across my stomach. I shut my eyes, breathing hard, chest rising and falling like I just ran ten miles.
But she’s not here. The bed is cold except for the space I warmed myself. My body aches with how badly I want her, how much I miss her. Every part of me is still wired from the dream, from the taste of her still lingering on my tongue and the sound of her voice begging for more.
That’s enough.
I peel myself out of bed and drag my palm over my face, trying to exorcise the memory of her mouth from my skin, her voice from my head.
The cold water of the shower does its job, shocking me back into my body, stripping away whatever fantasies I had let crawl under my skin overnight.
Ivy Dawson is not in my bed. She's not in my life. She doesn’t want me there.
That’s the fact I keep repeating as I towel off and head to the kitchen.
Breakfast is fuel today, nothing more. Toast, peanut butter, black coffee. I chew mechanically, barely tasting any of it, my thoughts already spiraling toward work, toward the safety of scalpels and sterile lights.
I leave the penthouse just after seven. The sky above St. Vincent’s is still bruised with early morning light, the kind that feels more ghost than sun. Traffic drones low as I pull into the underground parking, kill the engine, and head up through the staff entrance.
My badge clicks against the scanner, and I breathe out deeply as I enter. By the time I’m scrubbing in, the noise in my head is beginning to quiet. This is the rhythm I’ve relied on for years. This is where I forget everything else.
The first case arrives, and he’s already coding when they wheel him in—twenty-nine, motorcycle wreck, blood pressure tanking fast. I bark for a trauma tray before the gurney stops moving. Gloves on. Gown. Mask. I step to the table.
“Ruptured spleen,” one of the residents calls out. “BP’s eighty over fifty.”
“Let’s not let it drop again,” I say, already cutting. The incision is clean and quick, midline from sternum to navel. The moment we open him, the blood surges, and he's losing too much. The suction whines as I guide it in.
“Give me retraction. Get the lap pads in—now.”
Hands move around me. I don’t look up. I locate the source. Left upper quadrant, classic rupture, spleen’s blown open like fruit. My fingers work around the tissue. I clamp the hilum, fast but steady, to control the bleeding. Another suction. We’re stabilizing.
“Cross-clamp ready?”
“Ready.”
“On my count.” I guide the instruments in, pack around the field. The bleeding slows.
“Vitals holding,” the anesthesiologist mutters.
I keep going. This is routine, and while it's chaotic, there's a method to it. I’ve done it a hundred times, maybe more. Spleen’s a loss, but the rest of him is still salvageable. I start the removal, careful around the pancreas. No slips. No surprises.
“Looks like he’s got a shot,” someone says.
I don’t answer. I’m already two steps ahead, closing what I can, cleaning the field, checking for anything we missed. When it’s done, I strip my gloves, chest tight. The patient will live.
For ninety minutes, I’d remembered who I used to be before Ivy became the one thing I couldn't stop thinking about. But as I’m finishing up, the thought creeps in again. Her voice. That soft, exasperated lilt she used to use when she teased me, always one part amused, one part challenging.
"You need sleep. Or a hobby."
I don’t know why that memory surfaces now, years later, at the end of a surgery, but suddenly, I’m twenty-five again, scrubbing out of a double shift with a knot of exhaustion in my spine and the faint sound of Drew’s voice echoing down the corridor as he rounds the corner—with Ivy trailing behind him.
She was eighteen then, young, bright, and too damn fearless for her own good. She used to sneak into the hospital with Drew on his shadowing rotations, always carrying a drink for me because, as she claimed, I looked like a corpse who needed saving.
That day, she had stared up at me with that little grin and handed over a cup of whatever sickly sweet concoction she had mixed for me. I hadn’t even said thank you, just took it and downed it in one gulp. "Surgery is my hobby," I’d muttered, pulling on a lab coat.
She had laughed then. "That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard."
And it was. But it didn’t matter. Because for a man like me, purpose had always outweighed peace.
Still, she lingered. That was the thing about Ivy.
She never seemed in a hurry to leave. Even when she had somewhere to be, even when Drew would sigh and tell her to stop bothering me, she’d hang back.
Asking questions. Watching. Pressing me with that wild curiosity that made everyone else uncomfortable but never really bothered me.
I see her now the way I saw her then—back when I still thought she was just a kid with a smart mouth and too much charm for her own good.
Only now, the kid is gone. What’s left is the woman who keeps me up at night, the woman carrying a child and still refusing to let me in.
Scowling heavily, I leave the OR, toss my gloves into the bin, and scrub out hard enough to turn my knuckles raw.
The halls of St. Vincent’s blur around me.
White noise, a rush of movement and white light.
I push through it until I find myself in the physician’s lounge.
Coffee. I need coffee. The machine is spitting out something close to drinkable when another memory crashes into me. Ivy again. But not in the hospital.
It's summer, back at the lake house. There's a bonfire flickering across the lawn. Ivy in a sundress, tipsy from cheap vodka and dancing barefoot in the grass with someone I didn’t like. Some guy with a too-easy grin and hands that drifted a little too low when he thought no one was looking.
But I had been looking. And when Ivy had laughed too loud, leaning a little too close, I’d moved.
I remember dragging her away, down the dock and into the shadows, and the way she had blinked up at me, still smiling, still defiant.
"You jealous, Cross?" she had teased.
I hadn’t answered, just told her she could do better. That she should be smarter. I hadn’t even known what I meant then. Whether I was warning her about that guy or myself.
Now I know I was already in trouble. Even then.
I sink into the couch, coffee in hand, stuck on one thought and one thought only.
She’s always been under my skin. And all I can think of right now is what I can do to help her, to convince her that she doesn’t need to do this alone, even if she thinks she can.
A few sips in, an idea forms in my head.
Maybe I can’t make her want more from me.
Maybe I can’t fix whatever it is she’s so damn afraid of. But I can be there.