16. Amiyah
Chapter sixteen
Amiyah
The front door of the on-campus pet hospital swings open with the particular pneumatic hiss that all institutional doors seem to share.
This is unfucking believable. The universe must have it out for me, because standing at the check-in desk in dark blue scrubs is Jae Kim.
His sleeves are pushed up past his elbows, wrinkled at the cuffs where he’s probably been washing his hands all morning. He’s crouched at eye level with a beagle puppy that’s just had its shots, letting it sniff his palm before he straightens back up to finish whatever he’s saying to the owner.
My pulse spikes. I stand frozen in the doorway looking like an idiot—or a creep, depending on how you choose to decipher it—my body refusing to move forward or backward. Upon seeing Jae in scrubs, my central nervous system has executed a total motor shutdown.
No man has any business looking that good in utility wear. Especially not a man I have spent weeks filing under irritating. Yet here he is, broad-shouldered and relaxed, looking like he walked straight off a calendar layout.
He straightens up. The movement is fluid—one hand on the counter for balance, the other giving the beagle’s head a final, gentle scratch behind the ears.
He says something to the owner that makes her nod, relieved.
She gathers the puppy’s leash, thanks him, and turns toward the exit.
Jae watches them go for a second, his expression holding that same soft focus, and then his gaze lifts.
Right to me.
For a fraction of a second, his dark brows pull together, but he doesn't look shocked. He just walks over like finding me rooted to the tile of a vet hospital is the most normal thing in the world.
“Amiyah,” he says, stopping a few feet away.
“I had no idea you were a vet med student,” I say before I can stop myself. The words come out genuine, stripped of my usual polished sarcasm. We share two classes—both business-adjacent electives—and neither has ever given a single hint about this. Not that I’ve asked, either.
Jae watches me process the information, a lazy, unprompted amusement curling the corners of his mouth.
“Well,” he says, shifting his weight, “now you know. What are you doing here? Are you stalking me?”
The audacity.
“Of course not!” I snap, my fingers tightening over the canvas strap of my tote bag.
“Just checking,” he says, his voice dropping into a low, easy rumble. “So what brings a law student to the animal clinic on a Tuesday?”
I pull a breath through my nose, trying to force my heart back down to a normal rhythm. “I come here sometimes. To visit the animals when I need to—”
I catch myself before I finish that sentence. Before I admit out loud that I come here when I need to decompress. When the cold, dark compartment where I keep the things I’ve done threatens to crack open and spill into my civilian life.
“When I need some quiet,” I correct smoothly.
“Well, I don’t know how any sane person finds an animal hospital quiet, but I was actually just heading to the back to finish my post-op rounds,” he says, gesturing toward the swinging double doors with his clipboard. “Want to come?”
My internal alarms go off immediately. Stepping into his actual world—where he isn't wearing his usual armor—feels like walking onto thin ice.
My mouth opens before my brain can veto it. “Sure.”
He leads me through the doors into the back, and I fall into step beside him.
The contrast between this careful, attentive version of Jae and every other version I’ve carefully catalogued is dizzying.
“Spay,” he says, pointing toward a recovery bay on the left.
“She came in this morning. Doing great.” His finger shifts toward the quiet boarding runs further back.
“Boarder. Owner’s on vacation. Very dramatic about the whole situation.
” A small smile dances on his lips. “The cat, not the owner. Though the owner left seven pages of instructions, so.”
A soft laugh escapes me before I can catch it. I immediately press my lips together, trying to play it off as a cough.
A dog whines from somewhere down the row. Another answers with a short, punctuated bark. Metal doors clank as bodies shift against them.
We stop at a kennel halfway down. The dog inside is medium-sized, some kind of shepherd mix with a shaved patch on its flank and a plastic cone around its neck. It sees us and immediately presses its full weight against the door, tail thumping the mat with desperate enthusiasm.
“Hello there,” I say softly, extending my hand toward the wire mesh.
The dog’s tongue finds the gap in the grate and licks my palm. I can’t stop the smile that hits my face.
“You are the cutest,” I murmur.
The dog responds by pressing harder, its entire body vibrating with the effort of expressing joy within a three-foot space. Something in my chest gives way in a manner I am completely unprepared for.
“She likes you,” Jae says. He hasn’t looked up from his chart, his pen moving across the paper in quick, efficient notations. “Dogs are good judges of character. Usually.”
I withdraw my hand slowly. The dog whines, leaning into the empty space.
“Her judgment is terrible,” I say. “I’m objectively unlikeable.”
Now he looks up. His dark eyes find mine over the top of the clipboard, warm and slightly challenging.
“Even animals can see you’re not as cold as you like to act, hotshot.”
“The dog is on pain medication,” I counter, keeping my tone clipped. “Its judgment is chemically compromised.”
He laughs. The sound is rich and smooth, like melted honey, and a sudden, sharp drop of heat hits me low in my stomach before settling deep between my thighs.
Shit.
Get a fucking grip on your vagina, Amiyah. Have you no self-control?
A cold spike of panic washes over my system. I am not used to losing control, and this infuriatingly fuckable man is unraveling my composure thread by thread. I can't afford to look at him like this. I can’t afford a distraction and that’s exactly what he’s becoming.
“I—I have to go,” I say, taking a step back. “I really have to study for an upcoming assignment in Criminal Theory.”
Jae pauses, his pen hovering mid-note. He doesn't press or pry. His dark eyes just search my face for a quiet second, taking in the sudden rigidness of my posture.
“Alright,” he says softly. “I’ll walk you out.”
“It’s okay! You don’t have to do that. I can let myself out.”
The words come out too fast, too sharp. The air in this narrow hallway is suffocatingly thin, and the walls of my carefully constructed compartments are warping around me.
Jae holds my gaze, a quiet nod confirming he sees the retreat for what it is. “Okay. I’ll see you in class, Amiyah.”
“Yeah. See you.”
I turn on my heel and march toward the exit with the deliberate, measured pace of a woman who is absolutely, under no circumstances, fleeing for her life.
The afternoon sun hits me like a physical blow when I push through the front doors.
I blink, disoriented, the warm glow of the pet hospital’s lights still burning against my retinas.
My feet carry me across the quad on autopilot, my left hand white-knuckled around the strap of my tote bag, my right hand twisting a strand of my blonde hair around my index finger so tightly the tip goes numb.
I need to recalibrate. Fast.