Chapter 22 #2
He stretches his arm toward the other side of the parking lot and falls into step with me.
Once we reach his car, he opens the passenger door of his truck and offers his hand.
He jogs around to the driver’s side, slides in, and we just look at each other.
His pupils are huge, swallowing almost the entirety of his dark-brown irises, when he leans over and presses a quick kiss to my lips.
We’ve never kissed in public before. We’ve been friends for several months and spent a good amount of time in each other’s company, but we’ve agreed to keep it loose, more friendly than romantic.
In fact, we’ve crossed the line less than a handful of times—and it’s for the best since we’re both recovering from past hurts.
“I’ve got goodies,” he says, chin tilting to the center console.
There’s a Loom the scent hits—warm, hazelnut, comforting.
One sip is enough to tell that he made sure it had oat milk.
It’s perfect, and yet, low in my belly, something shifts—an old ache, faint but sharp-edged.
Zac’s eyes aren’t the right shade of brown. I shove that thought down, hard.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I brought you a sandwich too.” He leans over the console, handing me the bag.
“Hmmm. I can’t wait to stuff my mouth.”
He grins. “BLT. Your favorite.” He gestures toward the bag.
There’s a glitch inside me I can’t quite name, if anything, it’s absence. I used to have someone who’d volley back, tease without even thinking. That flicker’s got to go too.
I eat while he talks about redesigning the layout of his gear shop for the upcoming hiking season. He moves his hands as if he’s rearranging shelves in the air.
When we head back toward the hospital entrance, he reaches out for my hand and tugs me closer. He doesn’t pull me against his chest or wrap his arm around my waist, and I lift my gaze to his.
“I know we’ve been casual. I enjoy this friends-with-occasional-benefits arrangement …” He slides his free hand behind his neck and his cheeks pinken, but maybe that’s just the cold. “But now that your contract’s been extended … maybe there could be something else too?”
He isn’t pressing. He’s … offering. Tilting his head, he smiles, and it makes something thump low in my stomach.
“I don’t know, Zac. You know I …” I shift my coffee in my free hand, my thumb worrying the rim.
“I was in a relationship right before moving. What you don’t know is I thought he was the one, you know?
” My throat tightens at the thought of it.
“And then his best girl friend decided to move back to town, and within a month, he was making out with her as a ‘joke’ and pretending it wasn’t a problem.
Hiding lunches, breakfasts.” Telling me my career choices pushed him to do it.
It’s so much worse recounting it even months later.
I was so sure back in Chicago that if I just focused on work, a new place would take care of all the heartache for me …
and yet rather than resetting my feelings, it sent me off the deep end even more than when everything happened.
I want to add: And now solid isn’t enough anymore.
I don’t know how to trust that I’m safe and things won’t collapse overnight.
But when I open my mouth, he shakes his head.
“Just think about it, we’re both figuring things out. You know I have my own disaster I’m dealing with. If it feels right, bring it up Thursday. If not … no harm, no foul.”
He adjusts the cuff of his jacket, then gives me a slow reassuring wink.
The thump in my stomach turns into a rattling, coiling sensation, but I smack it down before it grows legs, and walk back into the hospital.
Smiling and nodding is easier than telling him I don’t think I have enough trust in me for whatever he’s asking we try.
While signing charts and reviewing labs, I am thinking about what I’ll tell Zac. It’s what I’m thinking about when Dr. Raymond finds me.
“I was looking at your outcomes from last month,” he says, standing next to me and adjusting his metal frame glasses. “Your observation notes are exemplary. I want you to consider putting in more lab hours.”
I blink. He knows my contract extension didn’t change my allocations—I’m still seventy–thirty, clinic first, research second.
My instinct kicks in, the old Chicago reflex: straighten spine, neutral face because compliments back there came with strings attached that demolished my self-esteem, first the praise, then the fallout.
“Dr. Raymond—”
“Your clinic hours are extremely flattering too,” he continues, reviewing his red clipboard and dragging his hand through his gray hair. “You’re showing flexibility of thinking and adaptability to excel in both settings. Our fellows are usually suited for one and abysmal in the other.”
Something soft loosens in my chest—pride, uncomplicated and warm, mixed with relief that the work I love is actually showing.
“Thanks,” I say, though it comes out quiet. My hands are shoved in my coat pockets, fingers curled against the fabric like I’m bracing for a blow that doesn’t come.
“I’d like you to consider putting in a request for forty–sixty or sixty–forty, if you’re amenable to that. As you know, we don’t do fifty–fifty.”
We turn the corner toward the nurses’ station, our footsteps echoing off the linoleum. A few months ago, I would’ve leaped at the chance to prove I could stretch myself thinner, but the thought of rearranging the fragile balance I’ve built … I need to save my energy to keep playing Whac-A-Mole.
“Dr. Raymond,” I say, steady but careful. “I’m excited to hear you think I’m fulfilling my responsibilities adequately.” I swallow. “Truly.”
“You’re doing more than that. You’re thriving.”
The words are small feathers instead of anvils.
Back in Chicago, when everything went down, I threw myself into work so I wouldn’t have to register everything I’d lost. I was terrified that if I slowed down long enough to feel anything, I’d lose my career too.
Out here, there’s been enough space for grief to catch up to me—to finally look at the relationship I’d pronounced dead.
So his acknowledgment lands deeper than professional praise. It feels like a reminder that I’m allowed to have a pulse. That maybe soon I’ll figure out how to knock out all these emotions I’ve been whacking down. The old instinct is tempting—do more, feel less—but that’s not the plan.
“However,” I add, “I’m still figuring out the balance, and I’d like to avoid changes for now.”
At the nurse’s desk, Raymond’s expression softens. “Consider this, Dr. Hollis—patients can’t receive the best care if someone doesn’t stay behind the lab to understand what that care should be.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Let that simmer.”
Then he’s gone, rounding the corner with the same efficient stride he arrived with.
Ellie appears behind the desk like she’s been waiting for her cue. Her eyebrows shoot up. “Look at you,” she says, bumping my hip with hers. “Teacher’s pet.”
“Shut up,” I mutter—but my cheeks warm, and she absolutely notices.
The rest of the afternoon slips into its familiar cadence: assessments, consults, follow-ups. Laughter with patients. Quick jokes with nurses. My name is being called because someone trusts I’ll have an answer. Being useful. Being competent. Being wanted.
Maybe Nate never stopped wanting me—I know I didn’t stop wanting him. In the thick of it though, we lost sight of wanting together. And for a while, I lost sight of myself.
After loading my arms with grocery bags, handles digging into my fingers, I walk toward my building from the back parking lot.
It isn’t late, but Bend gets dark early this time of the year.
The only light comes from the low floor lamps lining the paths, casting soft halos over the patches of grass and garden beds that frame each building.
Except now everything’s buried under frost and thin crusts of snow, so the glow is muted.
My apartment complex shines against the dark. I love the two-story buildings wrapped in natural wood, narrow stairwells tucked between them. Communal mailboxes wrap around the front of each building, and they always let out a metallic groan when you open them.
I shift my bags higher. I’m already thinking about kicking off my boots, putting the kettle on—and then I see it. A moving truck backed up to the curb, hazard lights blinking, a couple of boxes stacked beside the tailgate, and a man standing with his back to me.
My brain recognizes the shape before my eyes do. My breath hitches.
Broad shoulders. A bit broader than when I last saw him.
His jacket, a green puffer coat, pulls differently across his frame.
There’s a width to him that makes him seem more solid, sturdier than he was months ago.
The strands of his hair are a little longer now, brushing the middle of his ears, just enough wave to catch the light.
Not long enough to tie back—so I guess he still hasn’t grown that man bun he used to joke about—but long enough that it helps my stupid brain remember how it felt against my fingers.
And then the color hits me—that brown with a reddish undertone, the one that always looked like it was a breath away from catching fire in the sun.
He turns, and his cognac eyes land on me with unsettling precision, like he sensed me before he saw me, as if some part of him never stopped tracking where I was.
Same eyes. Same mouth. Different posture. His jaw is wider, or maybe just tighter, framed by a darker, heavier shadow than the scruff he used to let in on weekends. He looks older. Weathered. But still looks like Nate. He’s just not my Nate. Not anymore.
My breath misfires in my throat, cutting sharp behind my ribs. Everything I’ve spent months tightening—my routines, my calm, my distance—starts trembling loose. The walls I’ve tried so hard to keep in place, crack, all the preventative care I’ve done is failing.
He’s here.
“Nate …” His name leaves my mouth without permission, soft, stunned, scraped raw from somewhere I didn’t mean to revisit.
He blinks once, slowly. “Robyn.”
The groceries feel too heavy, my palms slick against the paper handles. I clutch them tighter anyway, as if they’re the only thing keeping me upright.
“What are you doing here?” My voice isn’t cold, but it isn’t welcoming either. It’s caught in the uneasy middle—shocked, defensive. It’s clearly filled with mistrust, and he hears it, even though he really tries for his eyes not to narrow at the corners.
He steps down from the truck, boots crunching over the frost of the evening, and his gaze never leaves mine. “You know what I’m doing here.”
The words do it. My feelings flow through the cracks in the walls I’ve built, and I can’t whack them all back in.