Chapter Four—Ethan
Day two, and she turns the kitchen into her command center at three-thirty. Laptop, second monitor, power strip, notebook bristling with sticky tabs. She claims the far end of the table without asking. This is her brother's penthouse and she arrived first. She simply takes the space.
I'm already seated when she walks in. I should keep my eyes on the spreadsheet.
I'm trained for this—years of residency drilled into me how to compartmentalize, how to push aside anything that isn't the immediate task when focus is everything. Distraction costs lives. Distraction ends in regret that follows you into the next shift, the next year. I know that regret exactly. I made every right call too many times where the patient died anyway. Eventually, I handed in my badge. I rebuilt in LA. Four years in the same apartment in Los Feliz. The same clean white walls. The same route to the office every morning. A refrigerator stocked with identical meal-prep containers every Sunday night because it was easier not to think about food during the week. Real estate suited the part of my brain that liked systems and outcomes and numbers that stayed solved once you solved them. No trauma bays. No phone calls to families. No walking back into another room ten minutes later like your hands weren’t still shaking.
It works. Or it has so far.
Connor trusts me. He asked me to keep an eye on things, not to notice the exact way she moves through a room like she's claiming territory that wasn't built for her. Not to wonder what it would cost if that focus ever turned fully on me.
Don't look. Don't catalog. She's Connor's sister. This ends one way: badly.
I force my gaze back down before she even finishes plugging in.
“Is this okay?” she asks anyway, not quite meeting my eyes.
“It's fine.”
She glances up—quick, assessing—then nods and settles in with one earbud already in.
Work first. Always.
She types in fast bursts, then goes quiet for long stretches, leaning closer to the screen, lips moving faintly. She's efficient. Focused.
Liam drifts through around four, takes one look at us, raises an eyebrow, and leaves without comment. Wise.
A few minutes later she makes a small, satisfied sound under her breath and sits back from the screen.
I look up at the same moment she does. Our eyes meet.
“One earbud in the kitchen. Two everywhere else,” I say.
She tilts her head, a slow smile spreading. “You've noticed that?”
“I notice patterns.”
“Yeah?” Her mouth curves. “Well, I do too.” She tilts her head, focusing her expression. “You haven't moved in two hours,” she says, a faint challenge in her voice.
“Neither have you.”
She leans forward a little. “Same mug. Same amount every time you refill it.” Her eyes narrow slightly, playful but sharp. “And you keep adjusting your chair like you're pretending not to look at me.”
“Guilty,” I say, keeping my voice level.
She studies me for a second too long, then adds, “You do that thing where your shoulders stay perfectly still even when you're reacting—like you're running a mental diagnostic on yourself before you allow any expression through. Doctors are terrible at hiding it once someone knows what to look for.”
The observation lands cleanly. I'm genuinely caught off guard; most people see the steady hands, not the machinery behind them. A flicker of real surprise breaks through before I can lock it down.
“At least we're both honest about it,” I say.
She holds my gaze one beat more, then returns to her screen. The corner of her mouth stays lifted.
An hour later she stretches her arms overhead. The oversized hoodie rides up, showing a brief strip of skin at her waist. My gaze catches there before I force it back down.
“You were right, by the way,” she says without looking over. “About the gap between what people expect users to do and what they actually do.”
I set down my cup.
She glances at me. “I've been redesigning this checkout flow for six weeks because the client swears the conversion rate is wrong. Users are dropping at the confirmation step, not payment. No one asked them. Everyone just assumed.”
“What did the client think the problem was?”
“Friction at checkout.” She rolls her eyes lightly. “So they simplified the payment form. Thirty-six percent completion. Confirmation step sat at eleven percent. Three meetings and nobody checked where people were actually leaving.”
I nod.
She angles her screen toward me slightly. “I'm adding a progress indicator, cutting the form fields in half, and moving the security badges higher. People abandon when they're unsure the transaction actually went through.”
I lean in. The fixes are clean. Logical.
“That will work,” I say.
“I know.” A small, satisfied smile touches her lips.
I shift slightly in my chair, then catch myself.
“Humans don't read the manual. They feel their way through fear and uncertainty. The ones who make it are usually the ones who felt seen along the way.”
She holds my gaze a moment. I stop tracking the spreadsheet entirely.
The smile lingers in my peripheral vision longer than it should.
“What's the timeline?” I ask, even though I know I shouldn't keep the conversation going.
“Client wants it Friday. I told them Thursday.” She pulls one leg up onto the chair, elbow on her knee, completely comfortable in the space. “I build in a buffer day. They feel like they got an early win. I don't spend Friday panicking.”
“You color-code your tabs,” I say. “Deadline order.”
Her eyebrows lift. “You caught that.”
“I read everything.”
“That's either impressive or mildly concerning.”
“Both,” I reply.
She laughs, quick and unguarded. The sound catches me off guard in a way I don't trust.
Just before seven we both reach for the carafe.
Her hand closes around the handle first. Mine settles over hers.
Unexpected.
Neither of us moves right away.
A half-second of stillness stretches between us.
Her skin is warmer than I anticipated, soft against the back of my knuckles, and the faint citrus scent of her sleeve hits me all at once.
My pulse kicks hard once, twice—loud in the sudden quiet of the kitchen.
I almost say something. Almost ask if she feels it too, this pull that has no business existing.
Then the rational part of my brain slams back online. Connor's sister. Your best friend's sister.
She pulls back quickly, like the contact carried more weight than she wanted.
I give it a beat, then lift the carafe, pour her cup first, and set it beside her. I pour my own and return the carafe to its exact spot.
She stares hard at her screen.
“Thank you,” she says, quieter now.
“Of course.”
I return to typing, but the numbers feel secondary. All I can still feel is her hand and the speed with which she pulled away.
That speed tells its own story.
Across the table, she slips in her second earbud.
I don't like it.