Chapter 30
The Adjustment
Nate
I don’t wait for Robyn’s silent, violent sobs to stop.
I wrap my arm around her shoulder and get her into the car.
The drive back to the apartment complex is silent except for her hiccupping breaths from the passenger seat.
She’s on autopilot even as we walk up the lit path to her glass door.
Holding the door, I dislodge the keys and offer them back palm up.
When her hand lands over mine, she interlaces our fingers, cocooning her keys in the middle.
Her eyes are shining the way iolite does on the Tribune building when the sun hits it just right.
The gold ring around her pupils stretches and blends in with the other tones of her irises.
“Please,” she murmurs. “Just … come in. Stay with me.”
She leads me silently up the stairs, our hands still linked until she slips her fingers free to grab her keys. When she opens the door and makes room for me to enter, I draw in a deep breath of her comforting orange blossom scent.
Fourteen months without being invited in her space.
The door clicks shut behind us, and the space feels both familiar and wrong. It’s a place filled with trinkets and furniture I recognize but no longer belong with. Her coat ends up draped over a chair. I line my shoes up with hers by the door, and the normalcy of that nearly makes me collapse.
She doesn’t say anything before walking into the bedroom.
I don’t follow at first, telling myself to let her run this show so I don’t turn into another thing she has to manage.
She peeks out the door, not calling for me, tugging the chain she left hooked to the hollow place in my chest that still carries her name, and I feel it all the way down to my gut, obeying with hesitation.
When I get to her room, she’s curled into herself on the bed, knees tucked to her chest, face buried against her sternum, shoulders shaking.
I drop to my knees beside the bed, lining my height to hers. “Hey,” I whisper. My nose is a hairsbreadth from hers, fingers itching for something to do so I can remedy the turmoil in her eyes. There’s nothing to do but taste the salt of her tears.
This isn’t the Robyn I know. Not the woman who commanded the scene earlier today. My Robyn plans for contingencies, controlled beyond medicine. I don’t know what she needs from me.
“I’m going to get you some water,” I murmur. “Why don’t you take a shower?”
She sits up and takes her shirt off, her gaze fixed on mine as her hair falls in wavy locks past her shoulders. One curl lands right at the juncture of her breasts, above the hem of a black sports bra.
“Take your time.” I swallow around the words. Before leaving, I look back, eyes firmly on the floor, and add, “I’ll—I’ll make something to eat and come back.”
Over the sink, my hands shake when my fingers hover over my phone as I think of the time difference.
Fuck it. I call Julian. Voicemail. I find a can of chicken noodle soup and dump it in a saucepan, then try calling again. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up. Still nothing. I text instead. Three dots appear almost instantly.
Julian: Give me two minutes and I’ll call.
Setting the phone down, I turn the stove lower.
While the soup burbles, I find her spices.
No turmeric, so I grab the cumin and ginger instead.
I pretend for a minute I know what I’m doing, that it’s just another Tuesday over fourteen months ago, even when a lock of hair drops behind my ear, reminding me it isn’t.
The phone buzzes, and I snatch it off the counter.
“Julian,” I whisper, glancing at the bedroom door. “I don’t know what to do. I-I need help.” The words tumble out fast, breathless. I sound young and scared.
“Back up,” he says. I hear a door click, a hinge sigh—him stepping somewhere private. “Catch me up.”
“It’s Robyn.”
There’s a sharp exhale on the other end. “The fuck did you do to her?”
“Nothing.” I grip the edge of the counter, knuckles whitening. “Nothing. She—she lost a patient. I don’t know the full story, but—Matthews. Or Mattson. Something like that.”
“Dude,” Julian says slowly. “I wouldn’t know. It’d break HIPAA.”
“What do I do? I’ve never … She’s never crumbled in front of me.”
“Losing patients is hard, and Robyn—” He shifts, maybe pacing. “She’s newer to carrying it solo. She’s always been part of a team, so I don’t know if she’s ever quite had it land as her patient loss.”
“Will you talk to her?” The soup froths, and I turn off the stove. “I-I’m not sure what to say, and I don’t want to fuck it up.”
Julian scoffs without humor. “Wasn’t this your whole thing? You wanted her to need you. Well, she needs you now. You gonna pass the buck because you’re not feeling confident?”
I swallow. “I just—” My voice cracks, and I hate it. “I don’t want to make it worse. She never needs me, Julian.”
There’s a pause. Not dead air but a thoughtful silence.
“Look,” he says, softer now. “I’m not Robyn.
But I get what she’s going through. It’s not about you getting it right.
It’s just—” His exhale rattles against the speaker.
“Some patients hit harder than others. If you want to be with her, you need to withstand this with her. We—she—need someone to weather these losses with us.”
“To fumble through with …”
“Yeah, exactly that.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then you tell me,” he says, steady as stone. “And let her go. For real this time.”
The hollow at the center of my chest aches with his words. A life without Robyn’s not what I moved to Bend for. “Better not fuck it up,” I mutter.
“It’s okay to fuck up,” he says, a rhythmic tapping coming down the line. “It’s not okay to disappear.”
“I hear you.” I nod at the soup in front of me. The bubbles have subsided, so has my uncertainty. “Loud and clear.”
“Hey,” Julian adds just before I hang up, “if she wanted me, she’d have called.”
He hangs up, and I ladle the soup into a bowl, then cover it with a slice of bread.
I breathe in, wiping the rim because that feels important.
I’ve made Robyn laugh and held her through bad days, but I realize now most of my tricks are about overriding how she feels, brushing it aside so I can feel good about what I did for her.
I don’t want that anymore. I want to feel with her, and that’s new territory.
Let’s fucking conquer it. I knock once before pushing her bedroom door open.
Robyn’s curled on the bed, knees tucked to her chest like she’s trying to make herself smaller. Her hair’s loose, a mess of dark waves against the pillow. Her shoulders rise and fall unevenly.
My gaze trails the familiar slope of her outer thighs, the place where her hips curve and disappear beneath fabric.
It’s my hands remembering the feel of her, though, the smoothness of her skin, how it’d prickle under my touch.
The way I’d slip my fingers under the hem of that same thin shirt.
Heat pulses low and fast, uninvited, then stalls under the pressure of everything this isn’t.
This isn’t an invitation, no matter how I want to pretend there’s a version of us that didn’t crumble.
I place the bowl in her hands.
“You always try to make things better with food.” There’s a sad curve to her mouth, one that doesn’t quite lift her eyes.
“At least it isn’t coffee this time,” I tease.
She doesn’t lose the smile, but it doesn’t deepen either. Fuck.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she murmurs. “You only made one bowl.”
I shrug. It honestly never crossed my mind to make anything for myself. She shifts, scooting back against the headboard, and pats the space in front of her. I sit, careful, aware of every inch between us as she sets the bowl and the slice of bread between our knees.
We eat in silence. Tearing bread. Dipping.
Sipping straight from the bowl or slurping from the spoon.
It’s unbearably sad and unexpectedly comforting.
I keep thinking I should be doing more—saying more—but somehow, her breathing steadies.
The red rims of her eyes fade. Her shoulders relax a fraction. Could it really be this simple?
When we’re done, I reach for the bowl, but before I can stand, she catches my wrist. Her eyes lift to mine—glassy, stripped of everything but need.
A need I would have killed to see before our collapse.
I can’t tear my eyes away from her lips, slack with exhaustion, and there’s something terrifying in how unguarded she looks.
How vulnerable she’s allowing herself to be around me.
“Will you stay tonight? I don’t want to be alone.”
The words land heavy and sacred. I’m trusted enough for this. Needed. The feeling settles in my chest, tight and electric, tangled with fear that I’ll do this wrong but threaded with the certainty I’m not walking away. Time to fumble through.
“Of course.”
Months ago, I’d have gone and washed; today, I’m not letting her out of my sight.
“I just want to lie down,” she murmurs. “Is that okay?”
I nod and move to climb onto the bed.
She stops me with a look, one brow lifting faintly. “Aren’t you going to get more comfortable?”
I swallow. My traitorous eyes drop to her legs. “I—yeah. I guess.”
I pull off my flannel button down, but leave the gray undershirt on, and our eyes meet again. I take another step toward the bed.
She licks her lips. “In chinos, Nate?”
“Robyn—”
She gestures to herself. “Look at what I’m wearing. Meet me halfway.”
My breath stutters. I unbuckle my belt, slide my pants down, and stand there in boxers and my T-shirt feeling more exposed than I’ve ever felt naked.
Her eyes don’t leave mine when she nods once and lifts the covers.
I hesitate, a flash of the past tightening my chest. It lulls the want I feel, and I climb in.