Yours to Lose (The Boston Hearts #1)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

JORDAN

Two Years Ago

“Your ass looks spectacular in those scrubs,” I whisper in my fiancée Allie’s ear as I wrap my arms around her waist from behind in the empty doctors’ lounge. Allie sucks in a breath as she spins around to face me.

“Jesus Christ, Jordan. You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry, baby girl, but you know how I get when I see you in scrubs.”

Allie smiles, wrapping her arms around my neck. “I’m a surgeon. I wear scrubs every day. I would have thought you would be used to them by now.”

I lean in and press a kiss to her forehead. “The day I don’t love the way your gorgeous ass looks in scrubs will be a sad, sad day.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Just in scrubs?”

I scoff. “Fuck no. It looks incredible in everything. I dream about your sweet, perfect ass. Touching it.” I slide a hand down over one round cheek.

“Biting it.” I pinch the other cheek and relish in the shiver that works its way through her.

“Fucking it.” I glide a finger down the crease of her ass over her scrubs and Allie’s eyes heat, even as she gives me a wicked grin.

“Let’s put that on the menu for later.”

I drop my head back and groan up at the ceiling. “Shit, baby girl. I’m an hour away from starting a twenty-four hour shift where my first surgery is an eight-week-old with pyloric stenosis. I need to focus on a very, very tiny stomach and small intestine, except now all I’ll be able to think about is your tight ass squeezing my cock.”

Allie pats my cheek. “Be a good boy and fix the baby. In three days when we’re finally done working opposite shifts and get to be home at the same time, I’ll let you do anything you want to me.”

Fuck, I love her so damn much my heart practically explodes with it even as my cock twitches in my own scrub pants. “Anything?”

“Literally anything.”

“You’re on. Buckle up baby girl, because shit’s going to get wild.”

Allie presses closer to me and leans up to kiss my jaw. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”

Grinning, I bend to kiss her. I mean for the kiss to be short and sweet; I swear I do. But when I feel Allie’s full, soft lips against mine, I can’t help but cup her cheek and tilt her face up to take the kiss deeper. She opens for me the second I glide my tongue along her lips, and I groan into her mouth. She tastes like coffee and the cinnamon gum she always chews after a surgery and mine .

Need swamps me.

It doesn’t matter that we’re in the doctors’ lounge on the surgical floor of the hospital where we both work, or that literally any of our colleagues could walk in at any minute, or that in an hour I have to operate on a tiny baby. Every time my lips are on Allie’s, we are the only people in the world. It’s just us—my hand on her face and my arm wrapped around her waist to pull her close and her arms around my neck, playing with my hair the way I love.

When we finally break apart, I push a piece of blonde hair behind her ear and glide my fingers over her jaw, keeping my gaze on hers. Her ocean blue eyes are hazy from the kiss and a little red-rimmed from her long shift. Cupping her cheeks with both my hands, I glide my thumbs over the dark smudges under her eyes.

“Tired, baby girl?” I murmur. As chief of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery, not only does she operate, but she manages an entire team of surgeons who perform some of the most complex, intricate surgeries in the world on the tiniest hearts and lungs. She’s such a badass, and I’m never not in awe of her.

She blows out a breath and closes her eyes for a second, leaning into my touch. “Exhausted. It was a rough one.”

“Come sit.” I lead her to the couch in the center of the lounge. I wish I could carry her to our bed and hold her while she sleeps for twelve hours straight, but since that’s not in the cards right now, this very uncomfortable couch will have to do.

Pulling her down to sit, I wrap an arm around her and guide her head onto my shoulder. She curls up next to me and lets out a soft sigh, her body melting into me.

“What are you even doing here?” she asks, her voice muffled by my scrub top. “You’re not on for an hour.”

I lean down and press a kiss to the top of her head, taking the hand she has resting on my chest and running a knuckle over the diamond on her ring finger. We’ve been engaged for a while, but seeing it there still gives me a little thrill. “Missed you. Working opposite shifts blows. I wanted to see your face.”

I can feel her smile into my shoulder. “I’m glad you caught me then. I have dinner with Molly tonight. She’s picking me up here in like forty-five minutes.”

“Oh, I forgot about that. You sure you’re okay to do it without me?” Molly Jenkins is one of our best friends and also the lawyer helping us out with some estate planning.

“Totally.” Allie yawns and curls closer to me. “We’ll talk about the trusts, but really, I haven’t seen her in a while, and we need a serious catch-up session over many margaritas.”

“Sounds great. Give her a hug for me. I feel like I haven’t seen anyone in forever. When our schedule is less manic in a couple of weeks, let’s have everyone over. We need a big, loud family dinner.” Allie and I are part of a very tight group of friends that includes Molly, my two best friends from college, their girls, and a few others. They are the best people in the world, and Allie and I don’t get to see them nearly often enough because of our insane schedules.

“That sounds perfect. I’ll mention it to Molly. She can get everyone else on board.”

I open my mouth to say something but before I can, Allie’s phone beeps. She lifts a hip to dig it out of her pocket and when she glances at it, she groans. “They need me for a consult in the ER.” She sits up and scrubs a hand over her face.

I run a hand up her back. “Your shift was over ten minutes ago.”

“Ugh, I know, but it’s one of my regular patients. It should only take a few minutes, and I have to meet Molly outside anyway. I’ll just text her to pick me up outside the ER instead of at the front.”

She leans over and kisses me. “I’m glad I got to see you,” she says against my lips. “This opposite shift thing really fucking sucks.”

I wrap my hand around the back of her neck and bring her in for a longer, deeper kiss. “Three days, baby girl, then we’ve got a date in our bed.”

“God, I really can’t wait. Love you,” she murmurs, kissing my cheek and pushing to stand.

“Love you back, baby girl. Drink all the margaritas; you deserve it. Text me when you get home later?”

“Always.” She heads for the door, tossing a grin and a wave over her shoulder. I keep my eyes on her, watching her walk away until she’s out of sight.

* * *

“Do you know what’s going on in the ER?” I ask my friend and fellow surgeon, Owen. “A nurse just mentioned something weird was going on down there, but she didn’t know what.”

He shrugs and turns to the coffee maker. “Don’t know. Can’t be that big of a deal since they didn’t lock anything down. Weird shit goes on in the ER all the time. Anyway, I was a little more focused on what was going on up here.”

He gives me a sly smile, and my gossip radar immediately lights up. I fucking love gossip. So does Allie. It’s, like, a core tenant of our relationship. Talk about all the people. Know all the things. I lean back on the couch where I’m still sitting and toss an arm over the back, getting ready for story time.

“What was going on up here?”

Owen hands me a cup of coffee and I take it gratefully. Working nights fucking sucks. I’m already tired and I haven’t even started yet.

“Marci may or may not have come by, and I may or may not have been in an on-call room with her.”

I read between the lines of that very undetailed sentence. “You snuck your girlfriend onto the surgical floor and fucked her in an on-call room?”

“Sure did. Listen, I’ve been on nights for two weeks and Marci’s a lawyer who works bananas hours. I hadn’t seen her face in four days, which is four days too many. I regret nothing.”

I stretch my legs out in front of me, crossing them, as I laugh at the smug, satisfied look on Owen’s face and get a flash of all the times Allie and I have defiled on-call rooms over our years at the hospital. I also regret nothing.

A noise in the doorway has me turning, surprised to see my friend Molly standing there, since she’s supposed to be at dinner with Allie. I grin at her. “Hey, Mol, what are you doing here? I thought you and Allie were having dinner. Did she let you know about that ER consult? She said it wouldn’t take long though. Word is something weird happened down there a little while ago, but I figured you guys would be at least one marg in already.”

She says nothing, just glances around, her gaze landing on Owen. “I’m a friend of Jordan’s,” she says to him. “Would you mind if I talked to him in private?”

It’s a weird request, one I can’t figure out why she would make, but Owen just looks at her for a second and nods. “Sure, no problem.”

Owen starts for the door, squeezing my shoulder as he passes. “I’ll be in the office catching up on charts if you need me when you’re done.”

His uncharacteristic gesture and the blank expression on Molly’s face have a tiny frisson of dread curling in my stomach. When he leaves, Molly steps fully into the room. My eyes follow her hand as she flips the lock on the door to the lounge, and when my gaze meets hers, the dread deepens to fear as my heart starts to gallop in my chest.

I don’t understand what Molly is doing here when she’s supposed to be sitting with Allie in their favorite Mexican restaurant or why my always light-hearted and bubbly friend is silent, a blank expression on her face as she sits on the couch and turns to face me. Molly grips her hands together in front of her, like she’s trying to keep them from shaking, and I feel like I might lose my shit if she doesn’t tell me what’s going on in the next thirty seconds.

“Mol, not that I’m not glad to see you, but what the fuck is going on? Where’s Allie?”

Molly takes my hand in one of hers and holds my gaze for a beat. I live a thousand lifetimes in that beat, knowing that I’m standing on the edge of something but not sure exactly what.

The dread turns to fear.

Then Molly speaks for the first time since she sat.

“Jordan, Allie was shot about twenty minutes ago outside of the ER while she was waiting for me to pick her up.”

I blink at her, my breath hitching as I try and make sense of the words she said.

Allie. Shot. Outside. ER.

I understand each of those words by themselves, but together they don’t compute. My brain works rapidly, trying to make them fit, but I can’t. They don’t.

When I say nothing, Molly keeps talking.

“The person who shot her was the father of a patient she lost last week. The bullet hit her in the chest, and she lost a lot of blood. They couldn’t save her. She died, Jordan. Allie is gone.”

I clench my jaw so hard I wonder if my molars are cracking, my body seeming to understand something my brain can’t quite comprehend. I open my mouth but close it when I can’t form words. Then I do it again. I shake my head vigorously, not sure if I’m trying to dislodge Molly’s words that are pinging around my brain looking for a place to dig in or disagree with them entirely.

“She’s not. She can’t be. I just saw her. I came in early so I could see her before she had dinner with you since we’re working opposite shifts this week. She was just sitting right where you are, and then she got called to the ER for that consult. You guys are having dinner. She said she told you to pick her up outside the ER instead of at the front. That she was going to wait for?—”

I break off, as the truth of it slams into me like a fist. Allie told me she was going to wait for Molly outside the ER after her consult. Molly was picking her up there.

Allie. Shot. Outside. ER .

A cold sweat drips down the back of my neck, and my heart thunders. My hand tightens around Molly’s. My head spins and my breaths come in fast pants as the room around me blurs. I can’t see anything except for Molly sitting in front of me, and then I can’t see anything at all because tears are flooding my eyes and spilling over as I try and comprehend the incomprehensible.

Allie. Shot. Outside. ER .

“She died?” My voice is a raspy whisper. Died . The word sounds wrong in my mouth. Foreign. And for a second, I feel a surge of hope because any word that feels this wrong can’t possibly be true. Allie is perfection and brilliance and joy and life . It’s impossible that all of those things exist in the same world as died . Died is impossible. Impossible things can’t be true things.

“She died, Jordan. I am so, so sorry.”

Molly’s voice is both stoic and full of pain, and it’s that combination that shoves reality at me like a high-speed train. And suddenly I know what she’s telling me is true, because I can feel it. The severing of a tie. An absence that lives and breathes.

A love so enormous that suddenly has nowhere to land.

The shattering of my heart, like it knows its other half is missing.

A grief too deep for tears.

“Allie.” It’s all I can manage, the word a whisper made up of the jagged pieces of a broken heart that will never be whole again.