Chapter 11
ELEVEN
DEAN
This was fine. We were fine.
Yeah, so I’d worried a little when I woke up, still tangled in him—the naked press of our bodies and the pleasant looseness in my limbs, the memory of his mouth against my throat. Where do we go from here?
Turned out we just kept moving—as if, for all his second-guessing, Tay didn’t doubt this. Us. He made it easy, and I fell into his pull like gravity.
I took a slow, measured sip of coffee, far better than anything I’d get at home. Tay stole another piece of mango off my plate, then slumped deeper into his chair like he was exactly where he wanted to be in the world.
Same.
“Swim?” he asked. “And then a real breakfast. Earn it, you know?”
“Thought the ‘earned it’ bit was last night?”
He rewarded me with a lazy smile. “Well, I’m a firm believer in strenuous exercise.”
“Cute,” I said in a tone that conveyed the opposite, letting amusement touch my eyes to show I was teasing. “That’s like your appreciation for napping, right?”
“Rigorous napping,” he corrected.
“The kind that requires warm-up stretches?”
“So many warm-up stretches.” By the end of it, his voice had gone bright with underlying laughter, and my attention tripped over the faint mark just below the curve of his jaw, invisible if you didn’t know what to look for. I did—I’d put it there.
“A swim sounds good,” I said, perhaps a shade too quickly because he flashed me a look that weighed more than the whole lazy morning. It was gone within an instant, as if I’d imagined it.
“You up for a little friendly competition?” he asked.
I arched a brow. “Always. Or do you think they make you an attending for coasting through your shifts?”
“You are driven and competitive?” He widened his eyes, surprise layered comically thick. “I had no idea.”
“I hide it well.”
“You do.” He nodded very seriously. “Like a chameleon in stealth mode.”
We truly were fine. The thought settled some leftover hum in my bones, made me breathe easier than I had all morning. Even though I’d wanted him too much to be smart about this, even though I’d broken my own word… we were fine.
Since the sight of him stripping off his T-shirt made me feel a little light-headed, I looked away. “What’s the challenge, then?”
“Breath-holding contest,” he said.
I glanced back at him and waited.
“What?” he asked after a beat of me simply staring at him.
“Are you really passing up a quip about blowjobs and breath control?”
“Mind out of the gutter.” The words were stated with a prim air, at odds with the cheerful glint in his eyes. “This is a family show.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
He spread his arms wide. “New day, new me.”
I shook my head, smiling. “Might want to get in the water before your halo starts choking you.”
“Oh, this silly old thing?” He reached up as if to adjust the fit, much like he’d done with the flower crown last night.
Something in my chest gave a traitorous twist. I waved for him to lead the way down the stairs, peeling off my own shirt before I followed, trying to focus on the blinding sparkle of the ocean rather than the faint purpling bruises at his hips.
I’d never done that—wanted someone quite this much, enough to shrug off all consequences. It wasn’t safe.
But we’re fine. No harm done.
I dragged my attention up from the warm sweep of his back just as he tossed a wink over his shoulder, already halfway down the steps.
The water glittered clear enough to see the sandy bottom stretching out, and I thought of tossing a coin as if I were a tourist at the Trevi Fountain—make a wish to return someday, to a place that felt like magic, with Tay a lean figure against an endless canvas of turquoise.
He grinned and let himself fall, like gravity was his to command.
I lowered myself in after him, the water shockingly cool, sun prickling on my shoulders. He waited for me in the shallows, hair wet at the tips and sticking to his forehead, pulling me into whatever orbit he spun.
Friends. Just with a little extra. I could handle that.
“Ready?” he asked, only to continue with a sly look. “Should warn you, though: I was literally thrown into the sea as a toddler. Sink or swim. Turkish family tradition. Or”—his laugh was weightless, like air bubbling up in water—“maybe that’s just what my siblings told me.”
“Well.” I paused to slick back my hair. “I nearly made the national youth swim team.”
He tilted his head, rightfully skeptical. “Really?”
“What do you think?”
For a beat, he studied me as if weighing everything he knew. Then he smiled. “Nah. You’re ambitious, but a different kind of ambitious, and you’d have hated the schedule. I think you were more the type to swim out far enough to scare your mom just a little.”
I slanted him a look. “Did Charley tell you that?”
“No.” Something about his face changed, nothing I could quite define. His tone remained easy, though. “I just know you pretty well by now.”
Something snagged in my chest, stupid and sharp. I inhaled around it. “Congrats on that dubious honor.”
“It is,” he said simply before his smile quirked sideways. “All right, so. Whoever dives furthest wins. That way.”
I glanced at the wide-open lagoon, then back at him. “What’s the prize?”
One side of his mouth curled into something darker, more secretive. He gave my chest a slow once-over, the sort of lazy, deliberate scan that sent a shiver down my spine.
And then, suddenly, he grinned—all teeth and sunshine. “Bragging rights. Obviously.”
I huffed out a half laugh, not quite sure whether I was disappointed or relieved. No—relieved. Probably. I nodded.
He counted us down—three, two, one—and we both kicked off at the same moment, diving into the clear water like two halves of the same damn story.
“Why cardiothoracic surgery?”
Curiosity, light as a pebble skipping across water.
I finished chewing a piece of watermelon, the late morning stretching quietly around us—nothing but the constant pattern of the ocean and the soft flap of the breeze against the sun sail.
Half-wrapped in his towel, Tay was a beautiful sprawl of tanned limbs, hair still wet from our swim.
“Why I chose it?” I asked, buying another second to consider my answer. This was a big decision for him, and while I knew that nothing I could say would single-handedly swing it for him, I owed him… something. Honesty, perhaps. My best effort, anyway.
“Yeah.” He popped a grape into his mouth. “Was it the stethoscopes and ego contests?”
“I do love a good contest.” I caught his eye for a quick grin and let it fade. “No, it’s… I knew I wanted to go into surgery. Something practical. Something that mostly didn’t let me stew for too long.”
“Stew?”
“Other specialties…” I picked at a buttery pastry that had gone stale around the edges. “Things like psychiatry, it’s typically long treatment arches. Other fields… Like oncology, there are things you just can’t fix.”
“Yeah.” Tay nodded, eyes thoughtful. “I’m not sure I thought it through quite like that—just seemed like I wasn’t half bad with my hands, and I liked the challenge. The idea of fixing something tangible.”
“Exactly. I mean, it’s rough sometimes, too.” I let my gaze skim across the radiant blue of the ocean, slightly too aware of his attention on me. “We’ve got this patient right now, just eighteen, and she’s desperately waiting for a donor heart.”
“Shit, that’s awful.” Tay’s voice dipped low. “It must be so tough for her. I mean, I’m sure it always is—waiting, not knowing. But eighteen? I can’t even imagine what that’s like.”
Briefly, I sat with the ghost of Brooke’s question.
“Someone has to die for me to live, right?” Then I cleared my throat.
“Yeah—I can’t either, really. So, yes. Sometimes you have a case like that and it’s just…
It’s fucking brutal. But a lot of times, you act.
You fix things. There’s structure, logic. Precision.”
“I can see how that would appeal to you,” he said, more warm than teasing. It made me shift in my chair, adjust the towel I’d slung around my waist.
“You made up your mind yet?” I asked. “Or still thinking?”
“Still a bit on the fence.” He picked up his cup, the coffee gone lukewarm by now but neither of us had felt like calling for a fresh one. “It’s that or pediatric surgery. So, like, hearts or tiny humans. Serious doctor vibes or snot and stickers.”
I could see it—how he’d devote his full attention to some five-year-old rambling about dinosaurs or ducks or paper planes, and the calm warmth he’d show the parents.
And I could see him just as clearly standing in the heart lab, gloved hands steady, talking some fifty-year-old carpenter through what came next—no condescension, no false promises, the kind of doctor people trusted blindly.
Which might have him end up back with me—professionally. In the same OR. Under actual scrutiny. Mentored. Evaluated. And if anyone found out what we were doing here…
I pointedly didn’t think about what that would mean for me, us—this was about Tay’s future.
“You’d be good at both,” I told him with a small but true smile. A bead of sweat glistened on his collarbone, briefly trapping my gaze before I refocused. “You’re sharp, and you’ve got heart.”
“Thank you.” He tapped the side of his cup, eyes thoughtful. “I guess CT, you know… It’s more impressive because people get it. Think my mom would faint from sheer pride—I’d have to cardiovert her myself.”
“Yeah, babe, talk nerdy to me.” I winked at him. “No, but listen. I’m not saying that’s irrelevant, okay? But it’ll be your day-to-day. You need to pick what’s going to make you happy, not your family. Or, you know, what will at least get you out of bed even when you’re exhausted and hating life.”
He snorted. “Is that what they put in the career guide brochures?”
“Nah. This is the unfiltered edition.”
“Thanks for that.”