Chapter 25 #3
Before I can verbally answer, Serena claps her hands. “Hey, you two. Trivia starts in five. No cheating. And yes, Robyn—that includes your sexy doctor brain.”
“I barely watch anything other than baking shows,” I mutter
Ellie adds, “We’re relying on Zac for useless pop-culture knowledge. We’ve heard he’s good at that.”
Zac glances at me, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his eyes. “You talk to your friends about me?”
I shrug. “Don’t let it get to your head.”
He better not because it’s not about how cute and great he is, but more about how I worry I’m getting in over my head, no matter how much he says he’s got his own crap to unpack.
Somewhere around the third question, whatever tension existed fades into the background.
There’s laughter. Markers squeaking as answers are scribbled down.
A heated debate about ’90s boy bands. Max insists the most popular food in the states is corn syrup.
And it all folds into an easy, ordinary kind of fun.
Until two male voices rise near the bar.
Behind the counter stands a woman. She’s a short redhead with a thick ponytail brushing the middle of her back.
A simple black T-shirt clings to her frame, outlining the curve of her bra in a way that’s more vulnerable than suggestive.
Her green eyes hold steady on the two men looming over the bar while she taps her fingers on the bar counter. Pretty in a quiet, unintentional way.
Both men lean in too close. One of them laughs too loudly. The other tips his shot glass toward her, inch by inch, even as she shakes her head.
Zac goes rigid beside me.
“Didn’t you used to live in the big house on the hill?” one of them says. “Didn’t you run out of town? Too good for us? Too good for your fiancé?”
Her jaw tightens, and her knuckles go white around the glass she’s holding.
Zac’s body changes completely. Tension locks his spine. His jaw clenches so hard the muscle twitches beneath his cheek. Then he bounces his leg, vibrating against the side of my knee. With a measured gesture, he places his curled hand, knuckle white, on the table.
I know who she is to Zac.
“Do you want another drink or not?” she asks, but her voice has gone thin around the edges.
Zac leans forward, halfway out of his seat already, breath sharp in his chest.
“Hey,” I murmur, still watching the scene unfold, “go check on her, if you want.”
“What?” He turns to me, startled. “Robyn, no, I—”
“It’s fine.” I place my hand on his wrist, feeling the elevated thumping of his heartbeat and his tension under my fingers. “If you want to get those guys out of her face, you should.”
“But what about … us?” he asks. His eyes don’t quite meet mine this time. “I thought we were trying to see if this could go somewhere.”
The pause, the lowering of his eyes, it makes me think of that strange way he asked to check in. I’m gentle when I say it, but I also don’t leave any room for misunderstanding, because I think he knows it too. “I think we’ve seen how far this goes, Zac.”
Sadness and gratefulness cross his face at the same time. He nods once, a quiet acceptance, then slides off the stool.
“Have a good night, guys,” he murmurs to the table. He doesn’t look back as he crosses the room and places himself between the men and the bartender without hesitation.
“Dude, aren’t you the guy she left at the altar?” the taller man says.
“Yeah, you’d think you want to see the bitch put in her place,” the other one adds.
“I think I’d rather see my fist meeting your cheek,” Zac says.
The men retreat, muttering, and the bartender exhales, so softly it almost disappears. Zac says something I can’t hear, and her shoulders lower a fraction.
He glances over his shoulder at me once, a quiet, thankful look, then I turn back toward the table.
Serena nudges my arm. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say.
And I mean it. He’s still needing to stand in front of someone else. And even if he wasn’t, Zac isn’t who I want beside me. He’s rooted to his past, and the realization settles in my chest, calm and certain: I’ve been living in mine too.
I pull into the condo lot and cut the engine.
For a moment, everything’s still and quiet.
Then a burst of laughter cracks down the row of buildings.
I slam the door of my car and look up, not to my building but to his.
He’s at his window, half lit by the amber glow of a lamp behind him, the rest of him swallowed by the dark.
Just … there, waiting for a cue I won’t give.
The path lights flicker me forward, and as I walk between them, I run through my schedule for tomorrow. A patient I need to call. An email I should’ve answered. Anything but the fact that I can feel him watching me even when I don’t look.
It’s hard to admit it, but Nate’s eyes on me, tracking my movement from a distance, takes me back to a less complicated time between us. A time that’s filled with fondness for him and no trace of anger.
We were younger then—back when everything still felt like it could fit if I just worked hard enough. I was in my third year of med school, running on caffeine and adrenaline and the kind of tunnel vision that didn’t leave room for anything else. Or at least, that’s what I told myself.
I had a plan. I always had a plan.
The first time I saw him, I’d just stepped out of the hospital, the automatic doors hissing shut behind me, the morning light too bright against too little sleep.
My scrubs were wrinkled, my ponytail barely holding in the bun I’d twisted my hair into hours ago.
The coffee in my hand was the only thing keeping me upright.
He was standing right in the middle of the ramp. Sketchbook in hand, camera slung at his side, like he had all the time in the world to just stand still and look.
I should’ve walked past him, but I didn’t.
“You’re blocking the ramp,” I said, my voice rough with exhaustion but sharp, the way I’d learn to be.
He turned, quick, as if he’d been pulled out of something. “Sorry.” He stepped aside, lifting the sketchbook slightly. “Architect. Or trying to be. I’m here for inspiration.”
I remember rolling my eyes before I even looked at him properly. I did then, and I knew in my bones I’d made a mistake. He was a distraction I couldn’t afford.
There was something open about him. Not careless—focused, but in a way that felt expansive instead of narrow.
It was like he wasn’t just seeing the building behind me, but everything around it, everything it could be.
And when his amber-red eyes met mine, he didn’t just see me, he saw what I could be for him.
Everything I didn’t want to take time to notice.
“And—did you find it?” I asked, because it was easier to keep it light than to linger on the way his attention settled on me.
“I sure did,” he said, and then he winked.
I laughed. “That was corny.” I cocked my hip against the ramp’s edge. “Is that how they play it in your department?”
He didn’t flinch or step back; he leaned into it instead, like my sharpness was something to learn, not avoid. “Why don’t you go out with me and find out?”
I took a slow sip of my coffee, buying time I didn’t need. I already knew the answer.
No. I’d sworn off distractions and detours. “Oh, sweet thing,” I said, tilting my head, letting a small smile curl at the corner of my mouth, “you wouldn’t know what to do with a wild doctor like me.”
I expected that to be enough, but from the beginning, Nate always gave as good as he got.
“I’m a quick study,” he said, stepping closer, voice lower now because the tease was just for me.
And that almost did it, but I forced me and my pounding heart to leave him there with an unfinished sketch. I told myself that was it. That I’d done what I always did—kept my focus, stayed on track.
Except he kept showing up.
Morning after morning, like clockwork, always with that same quiet certainty that I’d come back through those doors. Sometimes with coffee. Sometimes just with that sketchbook documenting something only he could see.
It should’ve annoyed me, but his persistence and his ability to slow down undid me, until ignoring him took more effort than acknowledging him ever would have.
Three weeks. It took me three weeks to break.
“Alright, Mr. Architect,” I’d said, finally stopping instead of walking past him. “Let’s see what you think a wild time looks like.”
He smiled with cockiness. His cheeks flushed, and when he walked away, his shoulders slumped before squaring again, as if he was on the verge of giving up but his energy had been renewed.
And that should’ve scared me more than it did because the truth was, I didn’t say yes because I had time.
I said yes because I wanted him.
And for over two years, I let myself believe I could have both—that I could chase the life I’d worked for and still keep him. Spend all day giving at work and then come to someone solid and patient who didn’t demand.
Nate made it feel possible. He made it easy to believe I didn’t have to choose.
Until it stopped being true.
I just know that morning, standing there with the sun catching on his sketchbook and his attention fixed on me like I was worth waiting for—it felt like the beginning of everything, and now it’s the thing I can’t stop missing.
I shake my head and keep my steps, one after another, away from him and the questions I have.
In the past few months, I’ve also realized that the kiss and Nate’s accusations weren’t the only two things that broke us.
When I reach my building, Nate’s there. Not blocking the entrance, but positioned so I’ll have to slip past him to get inside.
He lifts his hand. Two fingers. Casual. Almost shy.
I lift mine back.
Cold air flows under my jacket and clings to the back of my neck.
It smells of dewy pavement and pine, and sometimes, my breath wisps in front of me.
I tuck my hands into my sleeves, eyes on Nate’s unusually dark gaze.
As if the night has swallowed all the cognac out of his irises and left only black.
He shifts, and I notice a book beneath his arm.
“I’m not stalking you,” he says, a little breathless, like he hurried but doesn’t want to say so. The crooked hint of a wink shows at the corner of his eye. “I just … have a proposition.”
“I—”
“No, before you say anything, it’s not sexual.”
He lifts the book. The Tell-Tale Brain. The cover is pristine. No creases. No softening at the spine.
“I’m pretty sure you said, at some point, that you wanted to read this.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. “How do you know I haven’t already?”
He arches an eyebrow.
“Fine—” I sigh, uncrossing them. “I haven’t. Happy?”
He shifts his weight. His sneakers scuff lightly against the concrete. “I already finished The Only Neurology Book You’ll Ever Need.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “You did what?”
“It was … actually interesting.” He grimaces at his own sincerity. “Don’t wanna spoil it, but it broke stuff down pretty well—for people who copied answers in science class. Please don’t tell my mom.”
A breeze slices through the lot, tugging his jacket open enough to show an undershirt beneath, and it pushes my hair back from my face. He doesn’t step closer, and somehow, that makes the inches between us louder.
“So,” he says, tapping the book against his palm. His thumb worries at the spine. “I was thinking … one chapter every Wednesday. I’ll leave my curtains open so you know I’m not getting summaries off ChatGPT.”
A ghost of a smile lifts the corner of his mouth.
“If you want …” His gaze drops, then comes back up to mine.
“You could read yours too. Same chapter. And we could … text about it. What you think. What I think.” He exhales nervously.
“Or maybe we don’t,” he adds, softer, already backpedaling.
“No pressure.” He scratches the back of his head.
“I’m going to keep reading it either way.
Turns out, your field is kind of fascinating. Even when it’s for dummies.”
I reach for the book, and my fingers brush the cover—and him. His hand is rougher than I remember. Warmer. Neither of us pulls away right away.
“Even if it’s for dummies?” I murmur.
“Especially if it’s for dummies.”
We stand there until a dog barks somewhere down the block. The air feels thick with something unspoken vibrating just below the surface. He doesn’t wait for me to answer. He just turns and leaves, hands tucked into the pockets of his sweatpants.
“Good night, Robyn.”
His voice is lower now. Careful.
“Good night.”
I turn toward my building, the book pressed to my chest. The pages smell faintly like him, his cologne still clinging to the edges of the cover.
And as I climb the stairs, I realize I want to read this book with him.
Because I need to understand how everything we built caved so quickly, and every step that led to it.
Maybe this could just be about two people under separate roofs, reading the same words on the same night—and choosing to leave the light on.