Chapter 19
Caroline Atkins?
“Mr. Wagner, we’ve talked about this. Again. You can’t just lift jello cups like you’re pulling a heist at the Bellagio.” I deadpan, standing over this defiant raisin of a man who is clenching three cherry gelatines like his life depends on it.
He grunts. “They never give me the cherry ones. It’s all lime and lemon—like I’m a damn goat.”
It’s ridiculous. It’s always ridiculous. But today it barely cracks a smile out of me.
Because it’s been two months.
Two goddamn months since I kissed a man named Crash goodbye before he clocked in to his shitty gas station shift.
And poof. That was it. No smoke, no trail, no body. Just—vanished.
Only, he didn’t.
He just turned into someone else.
Alex-fucking-Vanderbilt.
And now? Now I’m folding towels next to IVs while somewhere uptown he’s probably sipping cocktails with trust fund babies and casually forgetting the woman who let him bleed on her pillowcases.
Not bitter.
Not even a little.
Okay, maybe just enough to want to throw one of Mr. Wagner’s stolen jellos at a wall.
Instead I sigh, take two of the gelatines from him, and leave him one. A treaty offering.
“Enjoy it while it lasts, cherry’s off the menu next week.”
“Communist,” he mutters.
I smirk. Barely.
Because I’m still here.
Still waiting.
Still wondering what the fuck I meant to a man who kissed like salvation and disappeared like a fucking ghost.
Some days are easier. I can laugh when some drunk asshole tries to flirt while bleeding from his forehead and calling me “Nurse Angel.”
I can roll my eyes when Rhonda makes another crack about how I need to “get laid before my ovaries turn to stone.”
I can even make it through a fourteen-hour shift running on caffeine, adrenaline, and spite alone.
Because some days, the noise is enough to keep me from thinking.
It’s the quiet that kills me.
It’s when I unlock the door to my shoebox of an apartment, drop my bag, and hear…
nothing. Not the sound of Crash singing off-key in the shower.
Not him cursing the coffee machine like it personally wronged him.
Not the thump of his dumb ass knocking something over with that arm cast he somehow weaponized for chaos.
Just silence.
And that silence is loud.
Too fucking loud.
I’ve been seriously eyeing new places lately. A real one-bedroom maybe. A kitchen with counter space. Somewhere I can’t see every square inch of my life while sitting on the loveseat.
But my lease? Oh, my lease is Satan’s horcrux. Ironclad, non-negotiable, New York rent-controlled bullshit.
If I even breathe about breaking it, my landlord sends me passive-aggressive emojis.
So I stay. In the same space where he dried his hair with my towel, shoved frozen pizza in my freezer, and whispered “baby” like it was sacred.
Some days I survive.
Other days I want to burn the place down just to stop remembering how fucking happy I was.
For my own goddamn sanity, I stopped stalking the Vanderbilt tabloid parade. Cold turkey. No Page Six, no glossy gossip sites, no Instagram reels that somehow always knew to show me his smug, chiseled face like the algorithm was in on the joke.
Because I can’t do it anymore.
If I see one more photo of him in a perfectly tailored Tom Ford suit, standing next to that brunette Stepford mannequin with her dead-inside smile and her knees always pointed at the camera like she’s contractually obligated to pose—I swear to God,
I will gouge my fucking eyes out with a tongue depressor.
It’s not healthy. It’s not normal. I’m a nurse, not a stalker with a crush on a man who used to eat tuna sandwiches and use Walmart underwear.
But fuck, the rage that bubbles up when I see him standing at some gala, arm wrapped around Genevieve Fucking De Vere, like he didn’t once sleep on my loveseat, like he didn’t once come in my mouth and say I made him feel real.
Like I didn’t matter at all.
So yeah, no more Vanderbilt news. No more peeks. No more punish-myself-and-call-it-closure scrolling at two a.m.
I deleted the bookmarks, I muted the hashtags, and I told Rhonda to slap me if I so much as glance at the society column.
Because this shit? This whole masochistic spiral of “what-if-he’s-happy” while I microwave leftover pasta in a robe that still smells like him?
It’s gonna kill me.
Shift is dragging like molasses on a cold-ass Monday, and I’m running on stale coffee and spite. I check on two post-op patients, chart like my life depends on it, and finally roll the vitals cart out of 207, ready to fake-smile through whatever fresh hell the ER has waiting.
And that’s when I see him.
Alex.
Alex fucking Vanderbilt, talking to our cherry-cheeked front desk girl like he didn’t ghost me for two goddamn months.
He’s in a suit—of course he’s in a suit—charcoal grey, tailored within an inch of its billionaire life, those shiny dress shoes clicking against the linoleum like they don’t belong in a hospital.
Watch glinting. Hair perfectly tousled. And in his stupid, perfect hands?
Fucking flowers.
Peonies.
My favorite.
I grip the cart like I’m about to flatten a doctor with it. My heart is a car alarm, screeching, “What the actual fuck.” My stomach flips like it’s trying to bail. He’s looking down the hallway, nodding, thanking her—Jesus, is he smiling?
Motherfucker brought peonies.
I haven’t even processed the fact he’s here, breathing the same goddamn air as me, and already my fight-or-flight response is playing dubstep in my chest. What the actual fuck do I do?
Do I hide? Behind the crash cart? Real subtle, Carol. Do I scream? Start sobbing? Hit him with the goddamn peonies? I could. I really could. They’d make a very poetic weapon.
Wait—shit—what if he’s here to thank me?
Like, “Hey Carol, thanks for letting me crash at your place for six weeks, eat your food, shower with your shampoo, and uh, get my dick sucked regularly. I really appreciated the free therapy, mind-blowing sex, and emotionally available adulting you provided.
Couldn’t have asked for a better transitional girlfriend. Anyway, here’s some flowers—cheers!”
Oh God.
What if this is closure?
What if he’s here to say goodbye?
I knew I should’ve called in sick today. Or committed minor arson. Something. Anything other than existing in this moment with a traitorous heart that’s already trying to beat out of my chest and tackle him.
Before I can decide on something. Like anything, he sees me, grey eyes locking on mine, the air sucked out, the blaring beeps of the hospital muted as he walks up to me. There’s no hesitation, no second guessing, no lost puppy aura anymore.
This is Alex Vanderbilt.
Sure of himself. Confident.
He stops in front of the cart like it’s not a giant metal barricade full of latex gloves and stolen jello cups.
And God—God—he looks like sin wrapped in a fucking Tom Ford suit.
Black on black, no tie, collar popped open just enough to flash the expensive sliver of that smug billionaire throat I used to fantasize about licking like a damn popsicle.
Hair slicked back just slightly, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, and those fucking eyes—steel grey, locked on me like they’ve got my name tattooed on the inside of his skull. No confusion. No fog. No Crash.
This is Alex Vanderbilt. The heir. The strategist. The man who could buy the building and probably already owns the damn block.
And here I am, in my hospital scrubs, with a cart of used blood pressure cuffs and my heart doing the Macarena inside my chest.
“Hey, Carol,” he says, voice low and smooth and devastating.
I blink. “Hey,” I reply, and wow, look at me, wordsmith extraordinaire. Fucking Shakespeare.
He holds out the peonies like a peace offering—or a bribe—or an apology wrapped in petals. “These are for you,” he says.
And for a second, I almost say something clever.
Instead, I stare at the flowers like they’re about to explode.
Because holy shit, this man disappeared from my life, turned out to be Alexander-fucking-Vanderbilt, and now he’s standing here looking like he’s about to confess something or propose or ruin me all over again.
I clear my throat, finally, voice coming out more brittle than I’d like. “You bring flowers for all the women you ghost, Vanderbilt?”
“Only the one I’m in love with” he says, cocky, smug.
And I want to beat living shit out of him.
My jaw drops so fast I think I hear it crack.
“Excuse me?” I hiss, gripping the cart like it’s the only thing stopping me from launching a defibrillator straight at his beautifully smug face.
“You—you disappear for two months, no calls, no texts, not even a fucking smoke signal, and you waltz back in here in your billionaire-ass suit with peonies and that line?”
He actually has the audacity to smile. “You like peonies.”
I blink. Hard. “You remembered that but not my number?”
“I remembered everything,” he says, stepping around the cart, closer. “Your number. Your laugh. The way you smell after a twelve-hour shift. The sound you make when you’re about to fall asleep but don’t want to admit it.”
I inhale sharply, because fuck. Because I hate that he still knows how to aim for the soft parts and I hate that all of it’s true.
I shake my head, laughing bitterly. “You remember me, and still didn’t fucking reach out?”
His jaw ticks. “I wanted to. I tried. Reginald made it a full-time job to keep me under watch. I got my memory back and suddenly I was a liability. They locked me down like I was some goddamn stock option.”
“Boo-hoo,” I say. “Welcome to the consequences of having a billion-dollar dick.”
“Carol,” he says, eyes sharper now, jaw tight. “I didn’t just leave. I escaped. I clawed my way out of that life, out of those people, because the only thing that felt real was you. I remember who I am now. But I wanted to come back as the man you fell for. Not their fucking puppet.”
I swallow, chest tight, eyes stinging.
“And what now, Vanderbilt?” I whisper. “What’s your brilliant comeback plan?”
He steps closer again, close enough I feel his breath, the scent of expensive cologne and poor decision-making.
“Crash is yours,” he says, voice low. “But I’m not leaving until Alex is too.”