Chapter 8 Carter
Carter
The sliding doors hissed shut behind me, and I let the night air wash over me—cooler than I expected for Southern California, tinged with salt and exhaust from the freeway.
I hadn’t meant to stay that long. Hell, I hadn’t even meant to go in. I could’ve dropped the food off at the front desk and left. But the second I saw her name on the whiteboard outside the trauma wing, my feet didn’t listen to reason.
Harper Vale.
She looked tired, yeah. Bone-deep, twelve-hour-shift tired.
But she carried it with a kind of grit that made most people fold.
I’d seen it before in soldiers on their fourth tour, in teammates dragging themselves through fire because quitting wasn’t an option.
Only with Harper, it wasn’t duty. It was a choice.
She chose to stay in the trenches. She chose to carry the weight.
And damn if it didn’t pull me like gravity.
I leaned against my truck, watching the glow from the ER bay cast long shadows across the asphalt. I should’ve just gone home. I should’ve told myself she was a nurse I happened to meet on a mission, nothing more. But the truth was that I was already tangled too deep.
She remembered me. The way her eyes caught mine, sharp and cautious, then softened when she realized I wasn’t going anywhere. That look had hooked me in the ER, and tonight it yanked the line tighter.
“You ever put any of it down?” I’d asked her.
The way her voice had dropped on no… it was too honest to forget.
I ran a hand over my jaw, cursing under my breath. This wasn’t the plan. I’d come to Carlsbad to work, to keep my head down, to bleed out the ghosts from Idaho. I hadn’t come here to notice the way a woman’s braid slid over her shoulder or how she steadied the world for everyone but herself.
But I noticed. Every damn detail.
A group of interns cut across the lot, laughing too loud, breaking the spell. I climbed into my truck and sat there a minute, hands on the wheel, eyes on the hospital doors.
Part of me wanted to march back in and tell her straight—I see you. You don’t have to carry this alone. But she didn’t need a rescue. She’d made that clear in the ER, and again tonight.
Still, the thought wouldn’t leave me: maybe she didn’t need saving. Maybe she needed someone stubborn enough to stand beside her.
I put the truck in gear, the decision already made somewhere in the marrow. Harper Vale wasn’t going to be easy, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t shake her.
Because for the first time in a long time, hard didn’t scare me.