Chapter Three
KONSTANTIN WAS ALREADY expecting Kazeyuki when he entered his office.
The hospital director was seated behind his desk, a pen turning between his fingers.
The desk itself was a sprawling dark wood thing that Eve had chosen for him when they'd moved from New York, and it was the only piece of furniture in the room that didn't look like it belonged in a hospital.
There were toys under it. Kazeyuki could see them from the doorway: a stuffed bear with one ear chewed flat and a plastic stethoscope that their son Stefano liked to use on anyone who sat still long enough.
“Are you busy?” Kazeyuki didn’t see any point in beating around the bush.
“On the contrary, I’ve been waiting for my turn to congratulate you and Ms. McKenna.”
Kazeyuki crossed the room and settled on the leather couch across from the desk.
Konstantin waited patiently.
"You're supposed to tell me this is illegal."
And there it was.
Konstantin set his pen down on the desk and leaned back.
"Not when there's documented evidence, over a prolonged period, attesting that it was the patient who took the initiative to pursue her physician.
" He picked up his coffee, took a sip, and set it back down like a man who had rehearsed this conversation long before it arrived.
"And not when said physician's hospital director had the foresight to transfer the patient's care eighteen months ago, making said physician no longer her doctor of record. "
It was rare for Kazeyuki to struggle with comprehension, but that was exactly what he found himself doing after what his friend had just revealed. A part of him wanted to think Konstantin was simply pulling his leg, but...
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“If that’s your way of asking if your relationship with Ms. McKenna is illegal,” Konstantin drawled, “then the answer is no. It’s not.”
Kazeyuki’s mind started putting things together. Konstantin asking for Katherine’s records out of the blue and, a week later, Konstantin telling him that he would appreciate if Kazeyuki were to keep him updated. Regularly.
At that time, Kazeyuki had simply thought it was because Katherine’s case was of interest to Konstantin, being a neurosurgeon himself. But now?
Kazeyuki slowly shook his head. “You anticipated this would happen. And yet instead of taking steps to stop it, you actually made sure of the opposite. Why?”
“I wasn’t making sure of anything.” Konstantin’s voice was calm but firm. “All I’m saying right now is that nothing’s happened that requires my involvement. Ms. McKenna has been my patient for the past eighteen months, not yours—”
“And so all the times that she consulted me?”
“I appreciate your assistance, but that’s all you’ve done. I’m her doctor, not you, and so no physician-patient relationship was ever violated. Whatever happens between you and Ms. McKenna is, as far as this hospital is concerned, a private matter between two unaffiliated individuals."
"It seems everything's going my way, then."
Kazeyuki’s tone was perfectly courteous, but Konstantin wasn’t fooled by it at all.
He rose from his desk, took his coffee with him, and joined Kazeyuki in the sitting area, lowering himself into the chair opposite.
The leather creaked under his weight. Between them sat a low table with a glass surface, and on it a small wooden car that Stefano had left behind after his last visit to the office.
Konstantin picked it up, turned it once between his fingers, and set it back down.
When William had offered him the position as hospital director of Stanhope's Vancouver satellite, Konstantin had accepted it with only minimal reservation.
Eve had still been pregnant then, but they'd both agreed they couldn't see themselves raising their child in New York.
Vancouver had been an ideal alternative.
Close to the mountains Eve loved. Far enough from Manhattan that Stefano wouldn't grow up thinking yellow taxis were a force of nature.
Almost perfect, except for the fact that Konstantin was friends with Kazeyuki, and he'd first wanted to make sure that his promotion wouldn't cause any professional misunderstanding between the two of them.
Kazeyuki had been at the Vancouver satellite ahead of him, as well as a few years older.
He could have made things difficult. He could have viewed the appointment as a slight, an outsider being placed above him in the hierarchy of a hospital where Kazeyuki had already established himself.
He hadn't.
"Do you remember the time I asked you to meet me at the Aehrenthal?"
"Of course." Kazeyuki's tone was solemn. "It was a beautiful place to catch up."
Konstantin could only flush at the dig. “The timing could have been better.”
“Indeed.”
Konstantin was starting to feel defensive.
How was he supposed to know that the same night he'd suggested the Aehrenthal's lobby for a drink, Minuit Rogue, one of the world's most popular bands, would be performing at the hotel?
The lobby had been a sea of photographers and camera flashes when they'd arrived, and within minutes of those photos being posted, the usual women in search of a wealthy benefactor had followed.
Some tried from a distance, finding excuses to drift close with drinks in their hands.
Others simply walked up and introduced themselves with smiles that promised everything.
Konstantin at that time had been of a mind to simply call it a night, cancel the whole thing and reschedule.
Kazeyuki, however, had been the one to suggest they stay.
And so they'd stayed. They'd taken their drinks to a quieter corner of the lobby, and Konstantin had watched, over the course of the evening, as his friend handled every unwanted advance with the same mild, impeccable courtesy that never once wavered, never once sharpened, never once revealed even a trace of the irritation that any man in his position would have been entitled to feel.
A woman touched his arm; he smiled and moved it.
Another sat uninvited in the empty chair beside him; he stood, offered her his seat with a small nod, and excused himself to get another drink.
Each time, effortless. Each time, kind. Each time, leaving the woman feeling she'd been treated with grace rather than rejected.
It was the first time Konstantin had realized there was something very wrong with how right Kazeyuki always seemed.
The conversation they'd had that night, after the lobby had finally emptied and it was just the two of them with whisky and the city glittering through the tall windows, had stayed with Konstantin ever since.
"It's fine, Konstantin. You have a family now. I don't. I should be the one to continue as the hospital's chief neurosurgeon."
"And what of the future?"
"I will never have a family of my own. Trust me."
That was the first time Konstantin had heard his friend speak in a tone that was as gentle as it was cold, and with a smile that didn't reach his eyes at all.
That smile was now making its second appearance.
"I owe you a favor," Konstantin said.
Kazeyuki frowned. “There’s no need—"
"It's the truth. You could've made things difficult for me back then,” Konstantin acknowledged. “But you didn't. And it's a favor I'm more than willing to pay back. What I still haven't figured out is how."
"There's nothing—"
Konstantin cut him off, saying simply, "Kitty has been in love with you for the past two years."
Kazeyuki's gaze narrowed. "Since when have you been on a first-name basis with her?"
"She's friends with Eve and me." Konstantin watched Kazeyuki's shoulders resettle at his answer and nearly raised a brow. Did his friend not realize how jealous he was acting?
"I wasn't aware of that."
"Because you went out of your way to not know anything about her," Konstantin murmured.
“I was being professional.”
“But you don’t have to be unprofessional to see what everyone sees.”
Kazeyuki’s jaw clenched. “She’s young. Girls her age—”
“She’s not infatuated, Kazeyuki—”
“You can’t be certain—”
“It’s because of how she looks at you, Kazeyuki. She looks at you the same way Eve used to look at me when we weren’t married.”
“Extremely infatuated then?”
It was clear to Konstantin that Kazeyuki was doing everything he could to keep himself from hearing the truth. But since Konstantin had never been a fan of wasting time by talking in circles—
“She’s in love with you, Kazeyuki—”
Konstantin could see a muscle start ticking in his friend’s jaw at the words.
“And that's why I need you to tell me clearly." Konstantin leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and the wooden car sat between them on the glass table like a small witness. "What do you want me to do with how this is playing out?"
Konstantin's question, which Kazeyuki had chosen not to answer, was still playing in his mind when he opened the door to his consultation room and found Katherine standing at his coffee station with a cup in her hands.
What do you want me to do with how this is playing out?
For one moment, he allowed himself to look at her. And most things about her were...familiar.
The auburn waves. The green eyes. The face from her chart, the vitals from her file, the scar on her left temple from the surgery he'd performed to save her life.
He knew these things the way he knew any patient's details: accurately, clinically, and at a distance that kept them from becoming anything more.
But that distance had been a wall, and Konstantin had just told him the wall didn't exist.
So he looked. And what he saw wasn't a chart.
Her hair was longer than he remembered it being, or maybe he'd never let himself notice.
It fell past her shoulders in loose copper waves, and her hands around the cup were small, the knuckles white from gripping too hard, and there was a faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose that he'd somehow never registered in two years of examinations.
She was wearing a green sweater that made her eyes even greener, and she'd rolled the sleeves up past her wrists, and her wrists were so narrow that the sleeves wouldn't stay, and one was already sliding back down.
She was twenty-three years old. She was alive because of him. And she was standing in his office and looking at him like she was about to say something that would break her own heart.
“It’s okay,” Katherine blurted out to him. “You don’t have to explain anything.”
“Explain what?”
“I’m saying you don’t have to go through with it.”
He took a step towards her and noted how she visibly struggled not to back away.
“Because I get it, I really do—”
“You’ll have to be more speci—”
“I know you’re not in love with me!”
Kazeyuki went still.
First, Konstantin. And now, Katherine. Two people giving him a way out because, apparently, he looked like someone who needed their help to escape a mess of his own doing.
In front of him, Katherine’s eyes were starting to shine with tears, and his chest started tightening at the sight. Just tightening and tightening the way it had the day his father knocked on his bedroom door and told him that something bad had happened.
Could this be a fucking test?
He didn't believe in God, but he was starting to believe in the Devil because of how diabolical things had turned out, with history repeating itself despite his every effort to be good. Gallant. Gentle. So he wouldn't end up causing someone to lose their life again.
Kazeyuki took a step forward.
And Katherine...
She'd never shied away from him. In two years, she'd never once backed away from his presence.
She had instead pursued him in varying ways, sometimes shyly, most times awkwardly, and at times, even rather.
..sweetly. Showing up hours early with terrible scones and transparent excuses.
Faking heart conditions to scare off women who smiled at him.
Sitting in the same window seat in the same co-working space, week after week, pretending to work while watching for him through the glass.
The Katherine he'd known for the past two years was always moving forward. A little star that never stopped glowing.
But this time...
This time, that same Katherine backed a step away from him when he came close.
And that was all the answer he needed.
Because if what was happening now was enough to make her back away from him, then what would be the next thing she did?
Back another step. And another. And another. Until she was somewhere high enough to take one last step before falling and falling and falling—
Never again.
So he took another step forward, and this time he caught her wrist and pulled her close so he could cup her face, and when his gaze met hers, green eyes wide and wet and looking up at him like he was the whole world, he heard himself swear—
"I will never let you go."