Chapter 2
Stuart
The pale light filtering through the hotel curtains tells me the sun has just barely risen.
I've been awake for the last twenty minutes, watching Claire sleep beside me, trying to reconcile the controlled surgeon I've been for the past fifteen years with the man who just spent the night thoroughly destroying his own rules.
She's curled on her side, one hand tucked under the pillow, dark hair spread across the Egyptian cotton like spilled ink.
There's a small bruise on her shoulder where I bit her during our third round—or was it the fourth?
The sheet has slipped down, revealing the elegant curve of her back, and I have to physically restrain myself from tracing it with my fingers.
This is precisely why I don't do this. Why I keep my liaisons brief, controlled, compartmentalized. But Claire...
She murmurs something in her sleep, shifting closer to my warmth, and my chest tightens with an unfamiliar sensation. I need to leave. Now. Before she wakes up and those green eyes make me promise things I can't deliver.
Moving carefully, I ease out of bed, gathering my clothes from various corners of the suite. My shirt is a wrinkled mess and is missing two buttons—a casualty of Claire's enthusiasm. The memory of her hands tearing at it, desperate to touch skin, sends an unwelcome surge of heat through me.
Stop. She's twenty-five. You're forty-five. She deserves someone who can give her more than I can.
I dress quietly in the living room, then find the hotel stationary to write a note. My handwriting, usually precise from years of surgical notes, wavers slightly.
Claire,
Thank you for a memorable evening. Here’s my card in case you ever need anything.
-S
It's inadequate, clinical even, but what else can I say? "Thanks for the best sex of my life, let's never do this again"? I leave the note where she'll see it, along with my business card—the personal one with my cell number, not the hospital line.
The walk of shame through the St. Regis lobby is mitigated only by the fact that I'm a regular here, keeping a suite for when hospital emergencies require me to stay in the city. The concierge doesn't even blink at my disheveled appearance.
"Shall I have your car brought around, Dr. Miller?"
"Yes, thank you, Robert."
The drive to my Westchester home takes forty minutes in the early morning traffic.
I use the time to compartmentalize, filing last night away in the locked section of my mind reserved for things that can't be repeated.
By the time I pull through the gates of my estate, I've almost convinced myself it was just a momentary lapse in judgment.
It’s still early so I'm surprised to see lights on in the kitchen, even more surprised to hear Jonathan's booming laugh echoing through the space.
"There he is!" Jonathan calls out as I enter. He's at the stove making what appears to be a twelve-egg omelet, because Jonathan doesn't understand the concept of moderation. "Someone didn't come home last night. Very unlike you, Stuart."
Dane looks up from his laptop at the breakfast bar. "Hospital emergency?"
"Something like that." I move to the coffee maker, needing the ritual of my morning cup of joe. Eighteen grams of beans, ground to precise coarseness, water heated to exactly 195 degrees. Control in small things when larger things feel chaotic.
"Bullshit." Jonathan grins, pointing his spatula at me. "You got laid."
"Don't be crude."
"Your shirt's missing buttons, there's a hickey on your neck, and you have that look."
"What look?"
"The 'I just had sex multiple times' look."
Dane glances up again, interest piqued. "Spill.”
"Claire from last night. It was nothing serious." I focus on my coffee, wishing the damn machine would hurry up already.
"Ah, yes. Now I need the details," Jonathan demands. "How many times, positions, bra size—"
"You're a pig."
"I'm curious. There haven’t been that many women since the divorce."
The mention of my failed marriage kills the conversation momentarily. Jonathan knows it's a sore subject—how Trisha left me for her yoga instructor after deciding I was "emotionally unavailable" and "married to my work." The fact that she was right doesn't make it sting less.
"We went back and forth a lot over drinks," I offer, hoping to deflect. "One thing led to another."
"Oh, yeah. Jonathan and I had to get out of there," Dane chuckles, amused. "I’ve never seen you like that with a woman before."
"Holy shit, you took her to the hotel, didn’t you?" Jonathan's omelet is forgotten, burning slightly at the edges.
"Yes, I did."
"You going to see her again?" Dane asks.
"No. She's too young. I'm too busy. It was just—"
"A one-night thing," Jonathan finishes, disappointed. "Classic Stuart. Find something good and immediately run from it."
"I'm not running. I'm being practical. Can we discuss something else?"
"Fine." Jonathan returns to his now-definitely-burnt omelet. "Lottie invited us for drinks tonight. Seven sharp."
Lottie Pemberton is our new neighbor who bought the estate next door six months ago.
She's somewhere in her seventies, eccentric as they come, with five ex-husbands and a tendency to day-drink.
She's been aggressively friendly since moving in, constantly inviting us to various social events we usually decline.
"Why did you agree to that?" I mutter, pouring my coffee into the mug I always use—black ceramic, perfect weight, optimal heat retention.
"Because she's a sweet old lady who's lonely," Jonathan says.
"Because her cousin is on the hospital board," Dane adds more pragmatically.
"Because we're trying to get you to be less antisocial," Jonathan continues.
He's not wrong. Of the three of us, Jonathan's the only one who actively enjoys people.
His YouTube fitness empire requires constant engagement with fans, and he thrives on it.
Dane can manage public appearances for book tours but prefers his fictional worlds.
And me? I interact with people when surgery requires it, nothing more.
I spend the rest of the day in my home office, answering emails and reviewing notes for next week's procedures.
A complex tumor resection on Tuesday, a disc replacement on Thursday.
Things I can control, outcomes I can predict with reasonable certainty.
Not like last night, where control went out the window the moment Claire kissed me.
Stop thinking about her.
But my mind keeps drifting. The way she challenged me intellectually, never backing down. The look on her face when I opened the hotel door. The way she looked spread out on those sheets, thoroughly satisfied but still wanting more.
"You're distracted," Dane observes from the doorway. I didn't hear him approach—a lack of attention that would be catastrophic in surgery.
"Just thinking about Tuesday's procedure."
"You're a shit liar." He enters uninvited, settling into the leather chair across from my desk. "Want to talk about her?"
"No."
"She really got to you."
"She was interesting. That's all."
Dane studies me with those dark eyes that see too much, probably already writing this scene in his head for some future book. "You know, it's okay to want something beyond work."
"I want plenty of things."
"Name one that doesn't involve the hospital."
I open my mouth, then close it. The truth is, I've structured my entire life around surgery. It's safer that way. Tumors don't leave you for yoga instructors. Surgical procedures don't make you question everything you thought you knew about yourself.
"That's what I thought," Dane says, standing. "We leave for Lottie's in an hour."
I groan in response.
After he leaves, I remain at my desk, staring at the surgical notes without really seeing them. I have an hour to transform myself from the man who lost complete control last night into the composed surgeon who makes small talk with elderly neighbors.
My phone buzzes. A text from the hospital about Tuesday's surgery—the patient wants to move the consultation to Monday. I respond quickly, grateful for the distraction. This is what I'm good at. Schedules, procedures, predictable outcomes.
Not like last night.
I close my eyes and immediately see Claire above me, her hair falling around us like a curtain, her expression as she—
Stop.
I stand abruptly, needing movement. I head to my bedroom to change, selecting clothes with the same precision I bring to everything. Black slacks, not the charcoal ones that Claire said she liked last night—
Christ, I'm pathetic. One night and I'm thinking about what she said about my clothes.
I choose a different pair entirely, adding a navy sweater that Trisha gave me years ago. Safe. Familiar. Nothing that reminds me of last night.
Downstairs, I find Jonathan in the kitchen again, this time making what appears to be pre-dinner protein shakes.
"Want one?" he offers. "Chocolate peanut butter. Extra protein for all that social interaction you're about to endure."
"I'm capable of being social."
"Sure you are." He continues blending, the noise making conversation impossible for thirty seconds. When he stops, he gives me that look—the one that means he's about to psychoanalyze me despite having absolutely no qualifications to do so.
"You know," he says, "it wouldn't kill you to actually pursue something with this woman."
"I told you, she's too young."
"Twenty-year age gaps are practically standard in New York."
"Those relationships are transactional. This would be—" I stop, realizing I'm about to say 'real.'
"Different?" Jonathan supplies. "Meaningful? Everything you've avoided since Trisha?"
"We had one night. Don't make it into something it's not."
"One night where you debated medicine as foreplay, had athletic sex multiple times based on that hickey you're trying to hide, and actually seemed happy this morning before you remembered you're supposed to be miserable."
"I'm not miserable."
"You're not happy either." He hands me a shake I didn't ask for. "You exist. You work. You sleep. Occasionally you socialize when Dane and I force you. That's not living, Stuart."
"I save lives. That's living."
"That's work. Living is what happened last night. Living is taking risks on people who might actually matter."
I take a sip of the shake to avoid responding. It's too sweet, too thick, too much like everything Jonathan does. But there's affection in the gesture, in his constant attempts to pull me out of my self-imposed isolation.
Dane appears in the doorway, ready to go next door. "She matched you intellectually, challenged you. That's rare."
"It doesn't matter how rare she is. I'm not in a position to offer anyone anything beyond—"
"Beyond what?" Jonathan interrupts. "Money? Success? Stability? Orgasms that make her scream your name?"
"Jonathan."
"I'm just saying, you have more to offer than you think. And from the way you've been distracted all day, she definitely got under your skin."
That’s true and I think about the comparison between Claire and my ex-wife.
Trisha and I made sense on paper—two successful professionals, similar backgrounds, complementary ambitions.
But there was never fire between us, never the kind of intellectual sparring that made my blood heat the way it did last night with Claire.
"Can we please just get through tonight without dissecting my psychological state?" I ask.
"Fine," Jonathan agrees. "But I reserve the right to bring this up again when you're inevitably miserable about never contacting her again."
Dane checks his watch—a vintage piece that probably cost more than most cars. "We should head over. It's rude to show up late."
"Since when do you care about social niceties?" I ask.
"Since our new neighbor might provide excellent material for my next novel. Elderly woman with five ex-husbands? That's gold."
We gather our things—Jonathan insists on bringing wine despite my reminder that Lottie specifically mentioned martinis—and head out into the evening.
The October air is crisp, carrying the scent of woodsmoke from someone's fireplace.
The walk between our properties is only a few minutes, but Jonathan manages to fill it with chatter about his latest video series.
"I'm thinking of doing something on exercises for older adults," he says. "Maybe I could interview Lottie, get her perspective on staying active in her seventies."
"Absolutely not," I say immediately. "You're not using our neighbor for content."
"It would be tasteful! And helpful to my audience. Do you know how many people over sixty follow my channel?"
"No, and neither do you."
"I have analytics, Stuart. Very detailed analytics."
Dane snorts. "You two argue like an old married couple."
"We argue like people who've known each other too long," I correct.
The truth is, Jonathan and Dane are the closest thing to family that I have left.
My parents died years ago—car accident when I was in med school.
No siblings. Trisha got the friends in the divorce, not that I was particularly attached to any of them.
These two insufferable men are all I have, which is probably why they feel entitled to comment on my personal life.
Lottie's house comes into view, every window blazing with light. I can hear music—definitely Sinatra—and something else. Laughter. Young, feminine laughter that somehow sounds familiar.
"Sounds like she has other company," Dane observes.
"The more people, the less attention on us," I say, though something about that laugh is strangely familiar.
We reach the front door—a massive oak thing that probably weighs five hundred pounds—and Jonathan rings the bell as I begin to suggest we leave and claim emergency surgery.
"Too late now," he says cheerfully, reading my expression perfectly.
"I hate you both," I mutter.
"No, you don't," Dane says. "You love us. You just hate that we're right about your inability to process emotions like a normal human being."
Before I can respond, there are footsteps inside, the sound of heels on hardwood getting closer. The lock turns, the door begins to open, and I find myself holding my breath for reasons I can't explain.