Chapter One
KAZEYUKI CHECKED TODAY'S calendar, printed out by his assistant and left centered on his desk with the edges aligned to the leather blotter because Emily was, if nothing else, aggressively precise about things that did not require precision.
He set the paper down. Picked up the pen he had been using to annotate a patient file. Put the pen down. Looked at the clock again.
This was unusual. Or worse, something had happened.
For the past two years, Katherine McKenna had never once been late. She had, in fact, never once been on time, because being on time would have required her to not arrive hours early, which she did, every single appointment, armed with an ever-rotating arsenal of excuses as to why.
She had a question about her medication.
She was in the neighborhood. She wanted to double-check whether her appointment was today or tomorrow (it was always today; she always knew this).
She needed to accompany him on his rounds because she had recently developed a heart condition that she was fairly certain required the attention of a neurosurgeon.
The heart condition had a peculiar tendency to flare up exclusively when another woman attempted to capture his attention in a way that Katherine deemed unprofessional, which, by Katherine's definition, included but was not limited to: speaking to him, looking at him, standing near him, and on one memorable occasion, handing him a pen.
Everyone knew what she was doing, of course.
But no one, least of all Kazeyuki, had ever called her out on it.
Katherine was the sort of person that the entire hospital had adopted like a communal pet.
She remembered every nurse's birthday. She brought homemade scones that were, if he was being honest, terrible, but which everyone ate with theatrical enthusiasm because the alternative was watching Katherine's face fall, and no one in this building had the constitution for that.
She once spent an entire afternoon helping an elderly patient in the waiting room complete a crossword puzzle, and by the time Kazeyuki came out for his next appointment, the old man was showing her pictures of his grandchildren and asking if she wanted to be adopted.
The only people who did not adore Katherine McKenna were the women she had been jealous of, and even they tended to come around eventually, because being disliked by Katherine was like being mauled by a kitten. You could not take it seriously, and you almost felt sorry for her for trying.
Everyone in the hospital knew Katherine had the biggest crush on him.
"Emily, can you come in for a moment?"
Just like everyone also knew he did not return the feelings.
His assistant appeared in the doorway. She was twenty-six, dark-haired, and in possession of the kind of face that broadcast every thought she had ever had or would ever have with the subtlety of a billboard.
"Yes, Doc?"
"Has Ms. McKenna called to cancel today's appointment?"
And yet.
The moment Kazeyuki saw his assistant's eyes start to twinkle, he knew right away he had made a mistake.
"It's only 3:06."
"You know she is never this late."
"Her appointment is at five."
"Exactly."
Emily tilted her head. Her ponytail swung with it, and her expression was rapidly becoming the kind of expression that he had learned, over two years of enduring it, preceded something he would regret allowing her to say.
"Are you worried about her?"
"So I will take that as a no, she did not call to cancel?"
"You are worried about her, aren't you?"
"That will be all, Emily."
"Maybe...you're not just worried. Maybe, you're in—"
He pointed to the door. "Go."
She went. But the grin she wore on her way out was the kind of grin that made Kazeyuki wish, not for the first time, that he had hired someone who understood what professional boundaries were. Or at the very least, someone who could identify one if it walked up and introduced itself.
But Emily had been here since the beginning.
Since the week Katherine's aneurysm had brought her into his ER, pale and seizing and forty minutes from death.
Emily had been the one to manage his schedule through the surgery and the recovery and the follow-ups, and she had watched, over two years, as a girl who could not even say "good" without turning it into "grwd" had quietly, stubbornly, ridiculously made herself a permanent fixture in the life of a man who did not allow permanent fixtures.
His assistant had seen all of it.
And unfortunately, she had opinions about all of it, too.
He could still hear Emily humming on the other side of his door. She only hummed when she was pleased with herself, and she was never pleased with herself about anything worth being pleased about.
Kazeyuki returned to his patient files. He reviewed the notes for his four o'clock.
He responded to two emails from the department head.
He signed off on a referral. He did these things the way he always did them: thoroughly, gently, and with the immaculate focus of a man who had built his entire life around the principle that kindness was not a feeling but a discipline.
But the clock was now reading 3:27, and Katherine McKenna was still not here.
His pen slowed against the page, and without warning, he found himself thinking about the phone call.
It had been a few weeks ago. He'd just come back from his rounds, and she hadn't known he was there yet.
She'd been standing at the far end of the hallway near the stairwell, her back to the corridor, phone pressed to her ear, and her voice had been low in a way that wasn't like her at all.
Katherine McKenna was not a quiet person.
She was the kind of person who said everything at full volume and then looked horrified when she realized what she'd said, which was most of the time.
But that day, she'd gone out of her way to make sure no one heard, tucking herself into the corner where the hallway met the fire exit, and he'd caught only fragments as he passed.
"That's really sweet of you, but..."
A pause.
"No, it's not that, it's just...."
He'd kept walking. It wasn't his business. But he'd noticed her feet. She'd been shifting her weight from one foot to the other, the way people did when they were uneasy. Or the way they did when they were interested but trying not to be.
At the time, he'd thought it was the former. Unease. A man she didn't want to hear from, calling at an inconvenient time.
But what if he'd misread it?
He was no behavioral expert. He cured brains, not hearts.
He could map the neural pathways that governed emotion but had never once claimed to understand the emotions themselves, and what if that shifting of her feet wasn't discomfort at all but the kind of restlessness that came from being flattered?
From being wanted? From a man who had probably asked her to dinner, and Katherine, who was kind to everyone, who couldn't even dislike the women she was jealous of, had turned him down kindly because she was Katherine and that was what Katherine did?
But what if he'd called again?
And what if this time, she'd said yes?
The thought left a bitter taste at the back of his throat. He set his pen down and reached for his coffee, but it had gone cold, and that only made it worse. He pushed the cup aside.
This was a medical concern. Nothing more.
Katherine McKenna was only two years out from a brain aneurysm.
She was a walking miracle, and the fact that she was still walking at all was because he had been in that ER at exactly the right moment with exactly the right training.
Any significant change in her routine could be a sign of elevated stress, disrupted sleep patterns, hormonal fluctuation.
A new relationship could affect all three.
It was simply his job to make sure she stayed the way she was.
Alive. And walking.
That was all this was.
The humming had stopped by the time the clock read 3:58, and that should have been his first warning. But Kazeyuki merely rose from his desk, fastened the middle button of his white coat, and stepped out of his office to begin his rounds.
And unfortunately, another thing that people in Emily's age range were not particularly skilled at?
Keeping their mouths shut.
Because by the time the elevator doors opened on the third floor, it was obvious.
The charge nurse at the station glanced up from her screen, caught his eye, and looked away too fast, pressing her lips together in a way that was not subtle.
Two residents passing in the corridor developed sudden, intense interest in a fire extinguisher.
A lab tech he had never spoken to in his life gave him a thumbs-up from behind a supply cart.
Emily had told everyone he had asked about Katherine.
And now they were all adding their own color to the whole thing, twisting it into something it was not.
Head Nurse Jada was waiting for him when he stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor.
She was a tall woman with short silver hair and thirty years of surgical nursing behind her, and in her hand was a plastic party trumpet, the kind sold in packs of twelve at dollar stores, and she blew it the moment he came into view.
"Congratulations, Doctor."
"There is nothing to congratulate me for."
He kept walking. Jada fell into step beside him, and the trumpet disappeared into the pocket of her scrubs with the ease of someone who had been planning this ambush since lunch.
"I need the labs for room 514."
"Already on your desk." She paused. "Along with the entire floor's best wishes."
He did not respond to that.
The janitor was next. The older man had been mopping the corridor outside the radiology wing, and he actually parked his cleaning cart to one side and leaned against it with the grin of a man who had been waiting all afternoon for this exact moment.
"I heard the good news."
"There is no good news."
"Whatever you say, Doc." The grin did not diminish by so much as a millimeter. "Whatever you say."
Kazeyuki made it through two patient consultations, one post-op check, and a brief conversation with a colleague about a complex spinal case.
Somewhere between the second consultation and the post-op, he passed the lobby co-working space on the ground floor, and his gaze went to the window-facing seat before he could stop it.
Her seat. The one she claimed every time, laptop open, client briefs spread across the small table, because it had a clear sightline to the entrance he used every morning, which meant she could see him arriving before he could see her pretending she was not watching for him.
The seat was empty.
He kept walking.
He was coming around the corner toward the vending machines on the fourth floor when Mrs. Clinton materialized.
His patient's mother's best friend, a woman who had appointed herself the unofficial social director of the entire hospital and who treated the lobby co-working space like her personal salon.
She was turning away from the vending machine with a cup of coffee in her hand when she spotted him, and the beam that broke across her face could have powered the building.
"I told you, didn't I?"
"Mrs. Clinton—"
"I knew from the moment I saw you two together." She was advancing now, coffee sloshing dangerously. "I told her so, too, but she didn't believe me. Well, now she'll know I was right all along. You've always been in love with Kitty—"
Crash.
Kazeyuki frowned. Had someone dropped something behind—
"D-Doctor Collington?"
Fuck.
"Is t-that true?"
He had been hoping he had just imagined hearing it, or that he was wrong, and the voice belonged to someone else.
"A-Are you in love with me?"
Kazeyuki slowly turned, and there she was.
She had just stepped out of the elevator, and the shattered pieces of what looked like a snow globe were scattered across the floor at her feet, the water still pooling, still spreading.
Her red hair was down, her green eyes were enormous, and she was looking at him the way she had looked at him two years ago in that hospital bed, when she had asked him if he was dating anyone and he had answered her, and he still did not know why he had answered her.
He knew he had to tell her the truth.
But when he finally heard himself speak—
"Yes."
He just fucking couldn't risk it.
"I am."
Because he would never survive if another girl died because of him.