Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Quinton
Okay. Deep breaths. It’s just a conversation with your best friend—for whom you may have just permanently detonated the trust bridge. No big deal, right?
Honestly, Quinton, this is fine. Just the potential end of a decade-long friendship. Oh, and possibly your career if Julien decides to go all scorched earth on your reputation at work. Fantastic.
I could do this. I was a grown-ass man. A doctor who stitched up half the ER with hands steadier than a metronome—until now.
I’d known Gabriel since med school orientation, and Fitz since he tried to prank my anatomy lab and nearly got both our eyebrows singed off.
These two had seen me at my best and worst, and apparently, at my current twitchy-eyed meltdown.
Julien was more than a friend—he was practically family.
And his sister, Vivian? She wasn’t just a reckless mistake.
She was brave, sharp, the kind of woman who made you want to be better.
And now I was about to devastate her brother—or, best case, just get throttled and exiled forever.
“You’re spiraling,” Gabriel said, with the patience of a saint who’d seen this circus before.
“I’m not spiraling,” I lied, dignity already halfway out the window.
“You’re absolutely spiraling,” Fitz said, grinning like a feral cat. “Your left eye’s twitching. Again.”
I poked my eyelid—yep, full-on Morse code panic blinking.
“Just tell him the truth,” Gabriel said gently. “Julien is reasonable. Occasionally. Like, once a year.”
I inhaled, exhaled, and immediately calculated if I could fit through the conference window without breaking anything important. “Right,” I said, shoulders squared, voice mostly steady. “I’m going out there. To my doom.”
“Good luck, mate.” Fitz patted my back with all the sympathy of a Viking sending me into battle. “We’ll plan a lovely funeral. Open bar?”
“Not helping,” I muttered, but my lips twitched in spite of myself.
“I’ll wear black. Very somber. Maybe a veil.” Fitz winked. I snorted. Gallows humor was the best kind, apparently.
“FITZ,” I hissed, but honestly, the guy was a walking distraction from my impending social demise.
I stared at the door handle. Just open it, Quinton.
Rip off the Band-Aid—except this Band-Aid might bleed.
Breathe. Remember, you’re doing this because you care about Vivian.
Because you respect Julien. Because you don’t want to look like a coward in front of Gabriel and Fitz. Because you’re not a coward. Probably.
You can do this. Be honest. Tell him you care about her. Tell him it meant something. Tell him— The door swung open. Julien was there, phone to his ear, every muscle in his face wound tight.
Here it was. Friendship, future, and possibly my life were all about to go up in smoke. I opened my mouth—“Quinton!” Julien barked, lowering his phone. “Grab your bag. Now.”
I blinked. “What?”
“ER. Major emergency. Nathan needs help. Move.”
My brain short-circuited, relief and dread fighting it out in my chest.
That was... not how I’d pictured my dramatic confession going. But maybe, just maybe, the universe was giving me a stay of execution.
“I—what kind of emergency?”
“The kind where people are dying and you’re standing here asking stupid questions,” Julien snapped. “MOVE.”
I moved. My legs carried me toward my office on autopilot while my brain tried to catch up. Emergency. ER. Nathan needed help. Okay. I could do this. This was my job. This was—Wait!
I stopped halfway down the hall. This was a reprieve. A temporary, beautiful, possibly divine reprieve from the conversation I absolutely was not ready to have. Thank you, medical emergency. Thank you, universe. Thank you, whatever cosmic force just saved my ass.
“VIVIAN!” Julien’s voice echoed through the clinic. “I need you too! Grab your kit!”
My stomach dropped.
Oh no.
Oh no.
I turned slowly to see Vivian emerge from the supply closet, her face pale, her eyes carefully avoiding mine. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Major accident on I-95,” Julien said, already moving toward the exit. “New Haven Hospital is calling in everyone. All hands on deck. Let’s go.”
Vivian’s eyes finally met mine. For exactly half a second. Then she looked away, grabbed her bag, and headed for the door.
“Quinton!” Julien barked. “Why are you still standing there?”
Because I was having a minor existential crisis about the fact that I was about to spend the next several hours working alongside the woman I had mind-blowing sex with last night while her overprotective brother—who didn’t know about said mind-blowing sex—supervised.
“Coming,” I said as I grabbed my emergency kit from my office and jogged to catch up with them in the parking lot.
Julien was already in his car, engine running.
Vivian was climbing into the passenger seat.
Which left me in the back.
Like a child. A child who’d defiled the driver’s sister.
This is fine. Everything is fine. Just act normal.
I slid into the backseat and immediately regretted every life choice that had led me to this moment as Julien peeled out of the parking lot, his jaw tight, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“What do we know?” I asked, forcing my voice into professional mode.
“Multi-car pileup. At least fifteen vehicles. They’re triaging on scene, but the ER is already overwhelmed.” Julien’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “Nathan’s there now. Gabriel’s meeting us. They need all the help they can get.”
I nodded, trying to focus on the medical emergency and not on the fact that Vivian was sitting two feet in front of me, her shoulders tense, her hands gripping her bag like a lifeline.
She hadn’t looked at me once. Not once. Which was fine.
Totally fine. We were professionals. We could absolutely work together despite the fact that twelve hours ago I had her pressed against my hallway wall while she—FOCUS, WESLEY!
“ETA five minutes,” Julien said.
Five minutes. Five minutes until I had to walk into an ER and save lives while pretending I hadn’t completely destroyed my friendship with my best friend by sleeping with his sister.
Five minutes until I had to work alongside Vivian while she actively avoided eye contact.
Five minutes until I had to be a doctor instead of a disaster.
I could do this. Probably.
“Quinton.”
I looked up. Julien was watching me in the rearview mirror, his expression unreadable.
“Yeah?”
“Are you good?”
No, I’m spiraling. I’m in love with your sister. I’m terrified you’re going to murder me. I’m—“I’m good,” I said.
Julien nodded and turned his attention back to the road as Vivian shifted in her seat, her hair falling forward to hide her face.
And I sat there in the back of Julien’s car, hurtling toward a medical emergency, knowing that the real crisis was still waiting for me on the other side.
Because eventually this emergency would end.
Eventually, we would save who we could save.
Eventually, Julien would find out the truth.
And when he did? I was absolutely, completely, irreversibly fucked.
The car screeched into the hospital parking lot, and Julien was out before the engine had even stopped. “Let’s go!” he barked.
Vivian and I scrambled out, grabbing our kits, and followed him toward the ER entrance.
She still hadn’t looked at me.
And I still had no idea what the hell I was going to do about it.
But first?
First, I had to save some lives.
Then I could deal with the fact that mine was completely falling apart.
The ER doors burst open and chaos erupted.
Ambulances screamed into the bay one after another.
Paramedics shouted vitals. Nurses ran in every direction.
The waiting room was already overflowing with the walking wounded—people with lacerations, possible fractures, and shock-glazed eyes.
The smell of blood and antiseptic hit me like a physical force.
I dropped my bag at the nurses’ station without breaking stride.
Martha, the head triage nurse and a woman who’d been doing this job longer than I’d been alive, thrust the phone at me before I could even ask what was happening.
“Your lead,” she said simply. “Organize it.”
Right.
Lead doctor of Emergency Triage.
That was me.
I took a breath—just one, because that was all I could afford—and my brain shifted. The personal catastrophe, the dread about Julien, the awkwardness with Vivian—all of it got shoved into a locked box in the back of my mind. There was no room for it here. There was only the work.
“Martha, I need you coordinating triage,” I barked into the phone, already moving toward the ER floor. “Get me a count on incoming. Nathan, internal medicine. I want you in bay three. Gabriel, pediatrics in bay five. Hayden, cover minor cuts and breaks, bay two. Fitz, you’re with me in bay one.”
“Quinton, I’m OBGYN,” Fitz protested, appearing at my elbow like a bad penny.
“Not today, you’re not. Move.”
He moved.
Vivian was already in motion, her nurse’s instincts kicking in as she started assessing patients, her hands steady, her voice calm as she directed people to different bays. I caught her eye for half a second, just long enough to see her nod, and then she was gone, all business.
The next two hours were a blur of controlled chaos.
I fell into the rhythm of it: assess, triage, direct.
A woman with a compound fracture went to Nathan.
A kid with a possible head injury went to Gabriel.
An elderly man with chest pain went to Hayden.
Each decision made in seconds, each one potentially life-or-death, each one requiring absolute certainty I didn’t actually feel but had learned to fake years ago.
The ER transformed under pressure. What had been pandemonium became precision. Doctors and nurses moved like they’d choreographed it, responding to my orders without question. IV lines went in. Monitors beeped. Surgeons were called. The machine hummed.
And I was the one keeping it all running.
It was the only thing I was good at, really. The only place where my brain didn’t betray me with feelings and complications and the terrifying reality that I had completely destroyed my best friendship by sleeping with his sister.
Here, I was just a doctor.
Here, I could save lives.
Here, nothing else mattered.
The last ambulance arrived around 7 PM. A teenager with a laceration to the leg, stable vitals, nothing we hadn’t already handled a dozen times. I directed him to bay four and actually sighed in relief.
The worst was over. We had made it through. Everyone was accounted for, everyone was being treated, and the ER was no longer drowning in incoming patients. I could feel the tension in my shoulders ease for the first time in hours.
That was my mistake, because in the next moment, Nathan grabbed my arm. “Come with me,” he hissed, yanking me toward the supply closet before I could protest.
“Nathan, what the—” I barely got out as he shoved me inside and slammed the door.
“You fucked Vivian!” he shouted.
I stared at him, and then I hung my head and groaned.
Of course Nathan knew. How did Nathan know? How did everyone know that I slept with her last night? Last night. And somehow, in the span of approximately twenty-four hours, the information had spread through the clinic like a particularly virulent STD.
“How?” I asked, not bothering to deny it.
“Fitz told me,” Nathan said, looking absolutely delighted. “Said you were spiraling about Julien finding out. Said you were going to confess this morning, but then the emergency happened. Said—”
“Fitz is a dead man.”
“—that you’re completely in love with her and—”
“Nathan.”
“—and that Julien is going to remove your organs with a scalpel when he finds out.”
I pressed my forehead against the supply closet shelving and seriously contemplated the logistics of murder. How hard would it be to make Fitz’s death look like an accident? Could I blame it on his own stupidity? Surely the man had enough of a track record that no one would question it.
“This is amazing,” Nathan continued, apparently oblivious to my murderous spiral. “This is the best thing that’s happened all week. You, Quinton Wesley, Mr. ‘I’m Swearing Off Dating Forever,’ are completely whipped for Vivian Darcy. And Julien doesn’t even know yet. Oh man, when he finds out—”
“He’s going to kill me.”
“Absolutely,” Nathan agreed cheerfully. “But it’ll be worth it to see his face.”
I lifted my head and stared at him.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
“We’re in the middle of a medical emergency.”
“Which you’ve handled brilliantly, by the way. Very impressive. Very authoritative. Very, ‘I’m a competent doctor who definitely didn’t just defile his best friend’s sister.’”
“Nathan.”
“I’m going to tell everyone,” he said, grinning like a maniac. “I’m going to walk out of this closet and announce it to the entire ER. Vivian’s going to hear it. Julien’s going to hear it, and Gabriel’s going to—”
“You do that and I will personally ensure that Ester eats your car.”
“Ester’s an iguana.”
“Exactly.”
Nathan laughed. Actually laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re screwed, mate. Completely and utterly screwed. But hey, at least you’ve got good taste. Vivian’s great.”
“Get out,” I said flatly.
“Fine, fine. But this conversation isn’t over. We’re talking about this. In detail. With diagrams, if necessary.”
“Get. Out.”
He left, still grinning, and I stood alone in the supply closet surrounded by boxes of gauze and the crushing realization that my secret had a shelf life of approximately zero minutes.
Fitz was dead.
I was going to kill him, and I was going to get away with it, and it was going to be glorious.