Chapter Two
I THINK HE WAS PRESSURED.
Dr. Collington softly told me to wait for him in his consultation room, and at that time, I was in a complete daze.
I simply obeyed him without question, floating down the hallway while everyone cheerfully congratulated me, and I remember saying thank you again and again and again, smiling so hard my cheeks ached, and the whole time my mind just.. .
It refuses to believe what's happening.
I think he was pressured.
The thought circles back as I pass the vending machines on the second floor, and that's when I see it.
Third row, far right. The granola bars. The ones with the dark chocolate and sea salt, and just seeing them makes my chest do this awful squeezing thing because I remember the first time I noticed.
It was about six months into my follow-ups.
I'd been sitting in my usual window seat in the lobby co-working space, starving because I'd skipped lunch to get here early (four hours early, but who was counting), and when I'd finally been called in for my appointment, there'd been a granola bar on the small table beside the examination chair.
The dark chocolate and sea salt kind. My favorite.
I'd assumed a previous patient had left it behind.
But it was there at the next appointment, too. And the one after that. Always the same kind. Always sitting there like it had been waiting for me, and I finally asked one of the nurses about it, and she'd just smiled and said, "Dr. Collington leaves those for you."
He knew what kind I liked.
I'd never told him. I'd never mentioned it, not once, and I'd gone over every conversation we'd ever had in my head (yes, I keep a mental log, don't judge me), and there was no possible moment where I could have let it slip.
Which meant he'd noticed on his own. Which meant he'd been paying attention.
Which meant he probably knew all of my favorites, not just the granola bar but my favorite color (green, obviously, because of his scrubs) and my favorite movie (The Notebook, equally obviously) and my favorite book and my favorite season and probably even the exact shampoo I use, because that's the kind of man Dr. Collington is, the kind who quietly memorizes everything about a person while pretending he hasn't noticed a thing, and if that isn't proof that he's secretly obsessed with me then I don't know what is—
I think he was pressured.
I walk past the vending machines and keep going. My legs know the way to his clinic even if my brain is currently on fire.
The thought won't leave me alone.
I'm turning the corner toward the east wing when Emily intercepts me. She comes out of nowhere, practically sprinting, and throws her arms around me so hard that I stumble backward into the wall.
"I knew it! I KNEW IT, I knew it, I told you, didn't I? Didn't I tell you?"
"Emily—"
"I'm so happy I could scream!"
She's squeezing me so tight I can't breathe, and she's bouncing on her feet, and I should be telling her that it's not what she thinks, that he was pressured, that none of this is real, but instead all I can think about is the list.
It was a few months ago. I'd gone to Emily's desk to drop off some paperwork, and Emily had stepped away for a moment, and I hadn't meant to look.
I really hadn't. But her desk was right there, and her notebook was open, and at the top of the page, in Emily's aggressive capital letters, was a header that read: ALWAYS TAKE CALLS.
And under it, a numbered list.
1. Kitty McKenna.
Above the department head. Above Konstantin. Above everyone.
And I'd known right then and there what that meant.
Emily wouldn't put me at the top of that list on her own.
That was an instruction that came from Dr. Collington himself, which meant that when I called, he needed to hear my voice.
Needed it the way other people needed air or water or caffeine.
It was a biological necessity for him, hearing me say "Hi, Dr. Collington, it's Kitty!
" and I bet his whole day was ruined if I didn't call, and I bet he sat at his desk waiting for the phone to ring, and I bet Emily knew this, which was exactly why she had my name at the top, because she was basically the gatekeeper of his happiness and my voice was the key—
I think he was pressured.
"Kitty? Hello? Are you okay?"
Emily is pulling back to look at me, her hands on my shoulders, and her face is so bright and so happy and so sure, and I want to believe her. I want to believe what she believes. But I can't, because—
I think he was pressured.
"I'm fine," I tell her. "I just need to...he told me to wait in his clinic."
"Of course he did," Emily says, and the way she says it, with such total confidence, like this was always going to happen, like it was inevitable, makes me want to cry. "Go, go, go! And Kitty?"
"Yes?"
"I'm so happy for you."
I smile at her because I don't know what else to do, and then I turn and walk the rest of the way alone.
His consultation room looks exactly the way you'd expect Dr. Collington's consultation room to look if Dr. Collington were the kind of man who made even breathing look elegant. Which he is. So.
The desk is pale wood, almost white, with nothing on it except a single pen and a closed laptop placed at a precise angle.
The chair behind it is low-backed, simple, the kind of chair that would look boring in anyone else's office but here looks like a throne that's choosing to be modest. There's a low shelf along the wall with a handful of books between wooden bookends, and I can't read the spines from here but I already know they're arranged in some kind of perfect order because the man who sits in this room irons his lab coat.
The walls are bare except for one thing.
A single scroll of calligraphy in a dark wood frame, brushstrokes so spare and clean they look like a breath held on paper.
I don't know what it says. I don't read Japanese.
But something about it feels private in a way that makes me look away, like I've accidentally seen something I wasn't supposed to.
There's a small stone basin on the shelf near the window.
No water in it. Just the basin, smooth and grey, sitting there like it's been sitting there for a hundred years and plans to sit there for a hundred more.
The whole room smells like him, I think, even though I don't know what that means exactly.
Not cologne. Not antiseptic. Woodsy, maybe.
Like paper and cedar and very clean air.
Everything in this room is calm.
And I’m the opposite...because I still think...
I think he was pressured.
This isn't a prank. I know that much. Dr. Collington isn't the type to participate in such things.
He's too busy and too dignified, too much of a super hot superhero whose cape of choice is a lab coat with his initials monogrammed on his breast pocket, and he once apologized to a door for opening it too fast. That man does not do pranks.
But that's exactly why none of this makes sense.
I don't know how he ended up being forced to lie and pretend about having feelings for me, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I'm right.
Maybe someone's blackmailing him?
I'm not sure why falling in love with me would be the punishment, and I'll be the first to admit I'm not good at the technical stuff, but it could be true, right?
Maybe someone's got something on him, and the price of their silence is him pretending to be in love with the girl who once asked him to check her heart rate because a woman in Radiology smiled at him, and he actually did it, and my heart rate was in fact elevated, and he recommended she reduce her caffeine intake, and I said I would even though I would literally rather die, and oh God, I'm spiraling.
Or what if he's suffered an accident and no one told me about it, and the side effect is temporary insanity manifested by his sudden declaration of love for me?
So many possibilities crowd my mind that I find myself jumping to my feet, and I’m thinking, thinking, oh why bother?
I think I’m just going to distract myself with the coffee station in the corner of his consultation room.
I still remember the day he taught me how to use it and how to make latte art.
That’s actually another reason why I’ve always believed Dr. Collington is secretly into me, but. ..what if I also got that wrong?
What if I’ve gotten everything wrong?
I mean...he was so, so patient while teaching me, and at that time, I was thinking, it’s a sign, it’s another sign I’m special to him.
But what if he’s just, you know...patient?
And then there’s how super, super careful he was when teaching me. Meticulously making sure that we don’t come into contact at all. At that time, I also saw it as his way of making me feel—yes, it’s that, too—I believed it was his way of making me feel special.
But what if he’s just, well...careful, and oh my gosh, I feel like I’m overthinking myself to death here.
This coffee station with all the fancy things it can do is supposed to distract me, but it’s not working at all. All I can think of is how the past two years have been, and how none of it might have meant what I thought it meant because...
I think he was pressured.
I give up on the coffee station and start pacing the length of his consultation room. Could that be true? Have I just been jumping from one crazy conclusion to another this whole time? When I asked him earlier if he was in love with me, and he said yes—
Was that really true? Or was he lying because...I pressured him to say so?
Just the thought of it makes my heart feels like it’s about to implode, and I’m starting to find it so, so difficult to breathe. It’s like someone telling me I’ve won a million dollars...only to have that same person say they’ve made a mistake, it’s actually someone else—
Oh!
The door suddenly opens, and I’m completely caught off guard at the sight of Dr. Collington walking in like an angel made human.
Everything he does is just so effortlessly graceful and so perfectly.
..hot. I honestly don’t know how he does it.
White coats aren’t exactly the sexiest thing on earth, but he just makes it work, with his sleeves rolled to his forearms, and oh, just looking at him now—
A part of me wants to cry. Another part of me wants to run away.
But in the end, the part of me that wins is the part that believes in doing the right thing, and so—
“It’s okay,” I hear myself blurt out. “You don’t have to explain anything.”
“Explain what?”
Dark eyes settle on me, and they’re just so beautiful and kind and gentle that it leaves me no choice but to force myself to go on.
“I’m saying you don’t have to go through with it.”
He takes a step toward me, and I have to fight against the urge to take a step back.
“Because I get it, I really do—”
“You’ll have to be more speci—”
“I know you’re not in love with me!”