Chapter 46
Forty-Six
Madison
The treadmill starts up just before two in the morning.
I know because I’m still awake.
I’ve been staring at the ceiling for almost an hour, counting the rhythm of my own pulse.
Normally, the treadmill is background noise. Annoying, sure, but persistent. It’s become familiar enough that it usually feels like a tether. A reminder that I’m not the only one awake and restless in this building.
Tonight, it’s different.
It’s too fast and aggressive. There’s no steady cadence to it, just a hard, relentless pounding. It sounds like he’s trying to outrun a ghost.
I sit up and listen.
The pace changes abruptly. A frantic sprint, then a dead stop. The silence that follows is thick enough to choke on. Then come the new thuds.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The punching bag.
I’ve heard him use it before, but tonight, it sounds like he’s trying to break the chains. Each hit is a physical blow to the quiet of the night. It sounds like pain with nowhere else to go.
I don’t think about boundaries. I don’t think about the fact that we’ve only recently moved past noise complaints to sleeping together. I just know I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts tonight, and I know for a damn certainty that he shouldn’t be alone with his.
“Beckett,” I call out, my voice tight as I reach the fourth floor and hammer on his door. “It’s me. Open up.”
The pounding stops.
When the door finally swings open, the heat from the apartment rolls over me like a fever.
He’s shirtless, sweat slicking the hard planes of his chest, his hair plastered to his forehead in dark, damp clumps.
But it’s his eyes that stop my heart. They’re glassy and unfocused, looking right through me like I’m a ghost he hasn’t managed to shake yet.
He’s wound so tight I’m afraid that if I touch him, he’ll shatter into a thousand clinical pieces.
“Fuck, Madi. I didn’t mean to wake you—”
“I was already awake,” I say, stepping past him before he can give me an excuse to leave. “I just didn’t want to be alone tonight. I’m guessing you didn’t either.”
I walk straight to his couch and lie down, curling onto my side. I don’t ask questions. I just exist in his space, offering the only thing I have: a witness.
He hesitates, his shadow looming large against the wall. “Madison—”
“I’m fine, Doc,” I say to the back of the sofa, my voice steady despite the somersaults my heart is doing. “Do your thing. I’m just taking a nap.”
At first, the hits are controlled. He’s aware of me, keeping the mask on. But then the rhythm fractures. The sound turns desperate, the strikes landing with a sickening, hollow weight. I can hear his breath hitching, the air catching in his lungs until the dam finally breaks.
One sound.
A low, guttural sob that sounds like it was ripped directly out of his chest.
He freezes, his forehead dropping against the bag. It’s just one sob, but in the silence of the apartment, it’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
My throat tightens until it hurts. I get up and cross the room, stopping just behind him.
He steps back, his legs shaking with a visible tremor.
When he sinks into a chair at the kitchen table, it’s a total surrender.
That’s when I see his hands. They’re wrapped in clean, tight white gauze.
Even in the middle of a breakdown, he’s a doctor first. He protects the tools.
I pull up a chair and reach out. “Can I?”
He dips his chin, nudging his hands toward me.
I start to unwrap them. It feels more intimate than anything we’ve done with our clothes off. Layer by layer, the gauze falls away, revealing knuckles that are red and swollen, but the skin hasn't broken.
“You didn’t lose control,” I murmur, tracing the line of his thumb.
“I did,” he rasps, finally meeting my eyes. His pupils are blown wide, filled with a grief so old it’s become part of his DNA.
I reach for the first-aid kit he’s already left on the table, and clean the skin with a cool cloth. “What happened?”
“I lost a patient.”
I keep my eyes on his knuckles, wrapping them in fresh bandages with a focused, steady hand. “I’m sorry, Beckett.”
“He looked like him,” he whispers, the words barely audible. “My father. He was the same age. He had the same laugh. It was like watching it happen all over again.”
I stop wrapping, but I don’t say a word. I just let the silence hold the space for him.
“I was nineteen,” he says, his voice cracking.
“First year of college, and before I ever went to med school. I was in the car with my father when we were hit. I worked on him for twenty minutes before the sirens arrived. I did everything right. Every compression. Every breath. I followed the protocol to the letter.” His eyes fill with a sudden, jagged heat.
“He was my first patient, and I failed him.”
Oh, Doc.
“Beckett, look at me.”
He raises his head, the raw vulnerability in his expression making my lungs feel tight.
“You didn’t fail him. You gave him twenty minutes he wouldn’t have had otherwise. You gave him a son who cared enough to try. You didn't lose him; you fought for him.”
He reaches for me suddenly, his hands sliding to my waist and pulling me off my chair until I’m standing between his knees. He leans forward, burying his face in my stomach. My fingers tangle in his damp hair, holding him as he finally lets go of the sixteen years of held breath he’s been carrying.
His whole body is trembling, a silent earthquake of sixteen years of held breath. I stand there in the quiet of the kitchen, being his anchor, until the tremors stop.
When he pulls back, his face is pained, but his eyes are clear for the first time tonight.
“Can you tell me about him?” I ask softly, brushing a stray tear from his cheek with my thumb. “Tell me something about your dad. Not the patient. The man.”
He leans back, his hands still resting on my hips like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go. A ghost of a smile plays on his lips. “He whistled. Always off-key. Drove my mother insane, but he never stopped.”
I smile back, my heart aching for the nineteen-year-old boy still living inside this man. “That’s the man you should remember tonight.”
Later, after he’s showered and the adrenaline has finally drained from the room, we lie down in his bed. We’re both fully clothed, facing each other in the dark.
“Stay?” he whispers, his hand finding mine under the covers.
“I’m not going anywhere, Doc,” I promise.
He leans forward, resting his forehead against mine. For the first time since I met the man who thuds above my head, I hear his breathing deepen and even out as he finally falls into a sleep that isn't a chase.
For once, he isn't running.
He’s just here.