Julian
APRIL, YEAR 2
Alesha takes an entire week to respond to me. She’d apparently been on a honeymoon in Cancún.
Lucky her.
The last weekend in April is the only one I don’t work this month, and Alesha begs to take me to brunch. Her explanation is expected but fails to relieve the gnawing anger low in my gut.
She messes with the crumbs on her plate, cutting them into smaller and smaller pieces with her butter knife. “If she’d ever told me how much it bugged her the way people talked…”
I scowl. “She internalizes everything. How have you not figured that out by now?”
She shrugs.
“Maybe you should have asked her. You should have used a little logic. No one likes to be gossiped about, and everyone will put a brave face forward to deal with it. Why would you think Grace is any different?”
“She said —”
I lift a hand to stop her. “No. Don’t lie to me. This is on you. You didn’t know because you didn’t want to know. Because it was easier for you that way.”
The server comes to clear our plates. When he leaves, Alesha takes a deep breath, eyes bright. “I’m having to face some difficult truths about myself lately.”
My hard stare is unwavering. “Please forgive me for the zero fucks I give.”
Her face scrunches and her voice breaks. “I hate that I hurt her.”
I finish the weird cucumber-lemonade cocktail the server recommended, unsure what to say. I hate that she did that too, but I’ve probably heaped it on enough.
By the end of the morning, I’ve all but forgiven her, even though I’ll never forget. I’m far too mushy and have no ability to hold grudges. Grace would call me a softie and smile.
God, I miss her. And that’s Alesha’s fault. Alesha and some mysterious villain from Grace’s past.
I should stay mad. I should be furious. I’m too numb to manage it.
Before we part ways in the parking lot, Alesha hugs me. “I’m going to talk to her today.”
“Good luck with that.”
A melancholy laugh answers me, and she reaches into her giant purse, jingling her keys.
I turn toward my truck but hesitate. “Hey, Alesha.”
Her eyes are still wet from tears.
“Apologies are well and good,” I say, “but we’re not really okay, you and me.”
Her eyebrows lift.
“I lost the girl I love because of you. This—this will take me a minute.”
Her full lips pinch and she gives a stiff nod. “I understand.”
I leave her in the parking lot and head home.
The BrOB-GYN hangout that night is a welcome distraction. Maxwell brings a ridiculously expensive bottle of Glenlivet that impresses even Dr. Levine. Most everyone is out on the deck smoking cigars, but I linger inside after refilling my glass. The empty cookie jar atop the fridge kindles a smile.
When Asher enters with three empty glasses, he pauses. “’Sup?”
“Nothing.” I point at the jar. “Just thinking about the condom prank.”
He chuckles. “His face was priceless.”
We exchange places so he can refill the glasses and I wander into the connected living room. While he works, I study the rainbow art above his sofa.
I’m not a gynecologist. I’m a vagician.
“Where’d you really get this, Asher?”
He glances at the poster, a subtle smirk lifting one edge of his mouth. Hands busy with the bottle, he tilts his head. “A patient gave it to me.”
I laugh. “What? Really?”
“Yeah.” He leans against the kitchen counter, gaze matching mine. “It’s kind of a weird story. At the end of first year, I had this patient who came to me with severe pain with sex.”
My eyebrows lift.
“She was in tears, man. Wanted so badly to have a baby, but her pain was… I couldn’t even touch her. I did so much research on it. We tried everything. Topical creams. Physical therapy. Vaginal Valium. She saw pain specialists and tried vaginal lasers. She even went as far as seeing a fertility specialist, thinking if she could just be inseminated, it would be easier.”
“Jesus.” I glance at the poster again.
“Yeah. Her husband was supportive, but it was all just so—sad.” He shakes his head. “So, we got a little unethical. She bought a bottle of Botox from some local medical spa and brought it to me. Begged me to try it.”
I laugh. “You did it?”
He nods. “I injected it every three months for almost a year. That shit works, man. When she got pregnant, she gave me that.” He nods at the poster. “She had her baby, and all the pain sort of resolved. I haven’t seen her for a while now.”
I stare at the poster again, my view of him entirely reshaped. That poster isn’t swagger. It’s pride. I’m not certain where the line between the two lies, but it’s distinct.
When I turn back to him, his scrutinizing gaze is fastened on me.
He crosses his arms. “What do you think about all this stuff with Alesha?”
A muscle in my jaw twitches. “Honestly? I think keeping it a secret and letting Grace drown under all those rumors was a really shitty thing for her to do.”
A humorless laugh bursts from Asher. “Yeah. Do you ever think about how terrible it must be to be a woman? Rumors like that never spread about men.”
Surprised, I step a little closer. “I’ve got four sisters. I think about it all the time. Did you know Alesha thinks now that she’s public with Langston, the rumors will just…go away?”
Asher’s skeptical face says everything. “I always kind of thought Grace wasn’t interested in dating because of those rumors.”
“She wasn’t,” I say.
His head tilts. “I kept trying anyway—until it became obvious it wasn’t that she didn’t want to date . She just didn’t want to date me .” He gives me a pointed stare. “But I guess I should be glad. Dating her looks like it hurts.”
I avert my gaze and take a sip of the smooth liquor. “How do you figure?”
Ice clinks against glass as he goes back to work. “Because you got hurt.”
My chuckle is bitter and tastes of fine whiskey. “I guess we weren’t as secretive as we thought, huh?”
“Nah, man. The second you guys stopped fighting in didactics, we all knew you’d fucked it out of your systems.”
“Well.” I swallow against a knot in my throat. “It wasn’t the dating that hurt. It’s the not dating that hurts.”
“What happened?” His voice has gone thready, like he doesn’t want to know, but can’t help himself.
I glance at him from the corner of my eye. “When an insecure woman decides she’s not good enough for you, there’s no convincing her otherwise. Can’t force her to be with me. What else could I do?”
He doesn’t look at me. His gaze is fixed to the glasses as he grins. “I guess you keep trying til you find the Botox.”
* * *
The next day, my drooping eyes win against a documentary on recalled medical devices. I’m not sure how long I’ve been asleep when a soft knock raps on my front door. I blink at the uterus on the ceiling, confused. The stranger raps again, a little louder.
I rub my eyes and take a sip of water. The documentary is going strong, so I snap the TV off before I head to the door. It swings open in silence, and my stomach drops.
Grace stands at the threshold, unsmiling. Her wavy hair hangs limp, T-shirt and leggings rumpled. Hazel eyes meet mine and blink once. “Can I talk to you?”
The mangled organ in my chest lurches out a single throbbing beat. “Why?”
She looks down and pulls her lip between her teeth. “Just—please?”
I stare at the top of her head, at the slump to her shoulders, and the hopeful, self-destructive part of my brain urges me to hear her out. My feet move away from the door, allowing her entry, and her presence invades my space once more. Her scent fans out and clings to all the places it had dissipated.
Ugh. I’ll have to extract her all over again.
The door clicks closed, and I lean against it while she perches on my coffee table.
Silence.
She says nothing. I hardly breathe. Looking at her hurts, so I stare at the door to my bedroom and wait.
I squeeze my eyes shut against her sniffle. Her tears are knives in my flesh. I want to comfort her, but I also want to scream. She did this to us.
“I want to tell you a story,” she whispers.
My gaze slices to her.
Two tears drip down her face and she wipes them away before meeting my eyes. “I—I’m not sure where to start.”
“The beginning is usually a good place.”
A harsh laugh falls from her mouth. “The beginning. All right. Let’s start at the beginning.” She reaches behind her to grab a tissue from its box. “It started in med school. I was all bright and shiny, ready to tackle my dreams.” Another watery laugh. “I met him on the first day.”
My fingers go numb. Him?
“Matt was…wonderful. So charming. Handsome. He had the best smile. It wasn’t a week into classes before he’d taken me out, and we were studying together, spending our time together. Falling in love.”
A muscle in my cheek won’t stop twitching. Why is she telling me this? Is she trying to tell me she’s still in love with him? I don’t want to hear this.
“It was blissful. My grades soared. I’d never been so happy.”
Stop torturing me. “Grace—”
“Just let me finish, . Please?”
My hands clench, but I nod and move to the sofa.
She turns to face me, her skin pale and waxen. “I took the physical part slow. I’ve always been a little…nervous about that stuff. In high school, people had certain misperceptions. Teenage boys are jackasses, and I have big lips and big boobs and my name is Sapphire Rose. You can imagine how it was. They thought I’d be easy. Wild. Down for a good time, you know? And I was expected to be experienced. To know what men like and want to give it to them. When I lost my virginity, it hurt a little bit, and he just laughed and told me to take it all and shut up. Like it was…porn, or something. Like I was a porn star.”
A knot twists hard in my stomach. No. That happened to her? I’m too frozen to reach out. Tension builds in my muscles—potential energy poised to spring.
She shakes her head and stares at her lap. “When I finally gave myself to Matt, it wasn’t very good. I was too on edge, so I couldn’t climax and he kind of took it as an insult.” She sighs. “Things got weird after that. He kept trying different things, but the more he tried, the more pressure I felt, and I just couldn’t—”
My throat tightens. I reach for her. She lets me take her hand, her small fingers curling around mine.
She swallows. “He—um—started wanting things I wasn’t comfortable with. Sexual things. And I—I was scared to lose him. I thought I loved him. There came this sense of threat, like if I didn’t do these things, he’d leave. Like… let me ram you in the back door, Sapphire, or I’ll walk or if I’m not so deep in your throat that you’re vomiting, then why are we even doing this? ”
I blink. What the actual fuck?
“So I did it all,” she says. “He didn’t ask. Consent was…questionable. But I was afraid if I told him I didn’t like the kink, that I didn’t want to be tied up and hit and left hurting, he’d take away all the happiness I thought we had.” Her breath hitches. “I was so stupid.”
A sick cold settles in my chest. “Are you—Grace, are you trying to say I hurt you like this?”
She raises her head, keen gaze meeting mine. “ No . No, . You are wonderful. You were always wonderful.”
The relief is palpable. “Grace—”
“Just let me finish.” Her fingers claw onto my hand. “It went on for months. I hated myself, but somehow, I still thought I loved him. I convinced myself I loved him. That I was doing it for love. We were already second-years by that time and the workload was lighter. He started wanting to hang with his friends a lot. He got distant. Then one day, we were in his apartment and had sex, and it was totally normal. I thought that maybe he’d decided to give up on all the weird stuff. I was so happy.” She looks away. “But then he said, I can’t do this anymore, Grace. It’s like fucking an ice queen .”
Cold.
This was the man who called her cold.
I’m immobilized and have no idea what to say. My heart turns electric, pumping more fury than blood through my body. It’s pain with a slow sharp edge. Hatred with a frigid, calculating vendetta.
I’d hurt him. If I could, I’d hurt him.
“He was still inside me when he said it,” she says. “He was inside me when he broke up with me.”
I pull on her hand.
She scoots closer to me but remains on the table. “It gets worse. I found out he’d actually been seeing other women for a while. He’d spent months sexually coercing me into…hateful things, calling me names, hurting me, and he’d been screwing other women on the side, like a total cliché.” She blows out a slow breath. “ But , I thought I loved this man, right? I wanted to keep him. He promised me forever. We’d looked at rings. I thought I wanted a lifetime with him. So I begged him to stay. I begged him, , and when he wouldn’t take me back, something broke in my mind.”
A cruel artist paints pictures of what she’s saying all over my mind and I can imagine exactly what happened to this sweet, delicate girl when some monster tormented her mind and body, then fucking blamed her for it.
Don’t ask, . You already know.
And yet—
“What do you mean?”
She sniffles and wipes her tears again. “All that abuse, all those things I’d done for him—things I look back on now and cringe for how it made me feel—I didn’t want them to be in vain. When he left, I broke down. I was still functioning, still going to class, but my mind wasn’t there. I was…empty.”
I want to do more than hurt him. I’ve never known wrath this cold. He tried to destroy her. My Grace.
But this isn’t about me, so I try to push that away. I lift her hand to cup it in both of mine, kissing her fingers. “It’s not your fault—”
“I did a lot of weird stuff in those months, alienated a lot of people. The few people who knew the truth judged me and not him. They told me I should drop out, that I should be embarrassed for not knowing better. It all destroyed me, and I lost my ability to trust. Not just men, but myself. I never wanted anyone to have that kind of power over me again. I never wanted that vulnerability. It was better to be alone than risk being treated that way ever again.”
Understanding dawns and everything clicks. “Gracey—”
“Then I got here and I thought I could start fresh. Put it all behind me, you know? But—”
“But the rumor.”
Fucking Alesha.
She sighs. “Yeah. It opened the door to all the speculation about me. People gave me weird looks, treated me differently. It brought it all back. Matt broke me to pieces, and I’m not sure I was even in love with him. It was nothing compared to how I feel about you, but I couldn’t let myself trust that I wouldn’t be completely wrong about someone again.”
I take her face in my hands. “I would never do that.”
Tear-filled hazel eyes sparkle as she studies my face. “The last man who promised me things left me even after I debased myself for him. I was so scared that you—” She shakes her head. “I should’ve trusted you. You—you were always there, from the very beginning. You ran into the street, handed me a cocktail napkin to dry my tears even though you didn’t know me. You took me at my word that it wasn’t true, then defended me, and remained loyal even when you didn’t like me. You took time to help me with surgery when my own attendings wouldn’t bother with me. You never pressured. Nothing was ever hard with you. It was easy, and I fell in love. God, I’ve been in love with you forever, . Way before you could have known it. Way before I knew it.”
I pull her into a hug.
She relaxes against me like she always has, her arms around my shoulders. “It scared me. I made so many mistakes with Matt, and I was scared I was making them again, that I’d wind up hurt again . I was a coward, and that wasn’t fair to you. Because you aren’t him. You’ll never be him. He was poison and you are paradise.”
A tingle wakes in the part of my chest I thought had died, but I still don’t know what to say. She isn’t telling me she wants me back. She’s explaining why she left.
She pulls away to grab another tissue. Liquid eyes lift toward mine. “A baby died the other day.”
My heart catches. “What?”
“Yeah. The mom was in a car wreck. She was bleeding. We did what we could, but the baby died.” Tears pour down her face and she squeezes her eyes shut. “The mom is in the ICU now, but I—it was so awful. I wanted—I missed you. I wanted to fall in your arms, and I couldn’t because I pushed you away. I hurt us both because I’m a fucking coward.”
I feign a gasp. “She said the f-word.”
Her teary laugh is a warm breeze across my skin.
I brush away another tear as it falls. “Grace, I’m so sorry about…all that. If I’d known—”
“You did everything right.” She grips my shoulders. “I’m the one who did it all wrong. I wanted you to know all of it. The full truth.”
A lump forms in my throat. “Yeah. Thanks—um—for trusting me with that. That can’t have been easy to relive.”
She smiles through her tears. “I love you.”
My head tilts. “I—”
She presses her finger to my mouth. “No, don’t say anything. I love you and I’m sorry I couldn’t trust you. I still have trust issues, . I still struggle with severe anxiety and I worry about what other people think about me. I’m so far from perfect, but I think—I think we belong together. I want you to think about it and after you’ve processed everything, if you think you might still want me, even though I am, like, seriously flawed, , I’d really like to make this work.”
My voice drops to a whisper. “Grace—”
“I can promise you forever.” She presses a kiss to my cheek. “Forever is what I want. If that’s what you want too, you know how to find me.”
Extracting her warmth from my grip, she stands. I say her name as she rushes to the door.
She glances back before the door shuts. “Just take some time to think about it.”
Five full seconds pass. Eight erratic heartbeats.
What the fuck is there to think about? The woman of my dreams just sat before me and promised me everything I’ve ever thought to want. Before Grace, I didn’t know what desire was—not only physical, but emotional, too. I thought I did, but I was just a child playing pretend, seeing a single star and thinking it was the galaxy.
Wanting her is part of every breath, buried deep in the most primitive areas of my brainstem, impossible to live without. Deprivation is lethal.
Seriously flawed? The only thing about her that’s seriously flawed is her belief she’s not good enough.
I stand and run to the door. She’s already halfway down the stairs when I nearly fall over the railing. “Grace!”
Sunlight strikes her long hair as she turns toward me at the landing. It flashes over the brown, highlighting her, a golden lodestone drawing me closer.
She frowns. “That’s not thinking about it.”
I make my way toward her. “I don’t need to think about it.”
“Yes, you do.”
At the top of the stairs, I pause. “Do you need me to pretend like there’s a choice?”
“—”
“There’s no choice here.” I descend the stairs slowly. “I could fake like I really need to think about this. I could make you plead for me to come back. But what’s the point? I’m all in. I’m so deep I can’t see you treading the surface. If you say you’re ready to dive under, then come get me. I’m swimming blind in the darkness. Come light the way.”
I reach the landing.
She stands with her arms crossed, bottom lip between her teeth. “You’re sure?”
I nearly laugh. “Are you sure?”
Her arms drop to her sides, and she nods.
Thank god.
Her body against mine is familiar, but it’s also like a fantasy come to life—something I thought I’d never have again. My fingers sink into her soft hair, and one arm wraps around her back, anchoring her to me.
The taste of her relieves a pressure I didn’t know had built inside me. The air around us crackles. Or maybe I’m delirious. The kiss is probably too hard, but I can’t ease up. Everywhere we touch sizzles and she matches each move I make, giving as good as she gets.
“God, I missed you,” she whispers when I give up on kissing and crush her in my arms.
If I had more shame, I’d try to quell my satisfied smile. As it is, I’m practically laughing.
No. I am laughing.
She turns her face toward me in the tiny amount of space I’ve allowed her. “Are you—, are you laughing?”
“I feel like I won the lottery.”
She giggles. “Aw, that’s sweet.”
“Mmm-hmm. And now I want you.” I pick her up and steer toward my apartment. “In bed. For a long time.”
She submits to my manhandling, glancing at my face. Hers goes bright red. “How long?”
“Forever.”
A wicked grin lights up her face.
Fuck, she’s hot.
Blood drains from important areas to shoot downward and I’m suddenly dizzy. “Yeah, you’re not leaving my bedroom today.”
“That’s fair.” She nips my jaw. “Let me show you how much I love you.”