Chapter 23
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After the wedding, I slipped back into my life like nothing had happened. Every morning, I put on my scrubs and went to work. My days were filled with checking on my patients, charting, and coffee that went cold before I could remember to drink it.
From the outside, everything looked the same at the hospital, but to me, it all felt so very different. Because Sullivan felt different now. I hadn’t even seen him, but my awareness seemed to stretch down every hallway, my stomach tightening every time the elevator doors opened.
I’d watch them, riveted, half-hoping and half-dreading that he’d be on the other side. It made me wonder if maybe, once someone really got to you in a way no one else ever had, your world rearranged itself around their absence.
Mine sure seemed to have done that.
Everything was suddenly about him. About where he might turn up next. I was glad I hadn’t seen him, but I wanted to run into him more than I’d ever wanted anything before. Both things were true, constantly, and it was exhausting me from the inside out.
Leaving that hotel room had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done in my personal life. Professionally, sure, I’d faced much worse, but that was a different kind of hard. It was familiar and structured. It came with rules, shifts, and handovers.
None of that was applicable to walking away from a man who’d made me feel the way he had. Honestly, leaving him right then had left me feeling cracked wide open, like I’d actively chosen to torture myself, but I’d done it because in that moment, it had been the right thing to do.
Both of us had gotten so wrapped up in each other that neither of us had been thinking straight.
When I’d realized that he wanted me to stay almost as much as I wanted to do it, I’d known that one of us had to pull back at least a little bit.
One look at him had told me that the person in question would have to be me.
What had happened between us in that suite had been nothing short of incredible, but stepping out into the world together would’ve been much more complicated. That was something neither of us could ignore, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t conflicted about it all.
By midweek, even I could tell I wasn’t hiding it well anymore, but my friends at the hospital let it go until Maya, another nurse practitioner, finally cornered me during a lull at the nurses’ station.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been staring at that screen for over a minute, but you haven’t typed anything. Do you need help?”
I blinked and looked down, realizing she was right. “I’m fine. I just had a late night. You know how it goes when you’ve had too little sleep and not enough coffee.”
She snorted. “Join the club. There’s a pot in the break room that might still be alive. You’d better go grab it before Tanya does. Her baby seems to be going through a sleep regression.”
I grimaced. “In that case, I think she needs it more. I’ll just grab some from the cafeteria later. I need to check in on Mrs. Jones first anyway.”
“I’m telling you, something’s coming,” one of the nurses was saying as she approached the nurses’ station, her voice low but intense. “My cousin is in admin and she says Crowne is looking at cuts.”
“Again?” the orderly she was with asked. “Didn’t they just restructure last year?”
“Yeah, but that was before he took over.”
I froze, my hands tightening on the keyboard I still hadn’t used. Maya propped a hand on her hip, glancing around and then keeping her voice down too, even though there was no sign of him. “Wait. Wait. Wait. What’s this now? What kind of cuts are we talking about?”
“Who knows,” the first nurse said. “Rumor has it they’re evaluating efficiency. Everyone knows that’s admin-speak for someone’s about to get screwed.”
“I heard they’re talking about merging some of the units,” Maya said slowly. “Someone also told me they’re considering bringing in external consultants, but I haven’t heard of any cuts.”
“Oh great,” the orderly said. “Because merging and external consultants always go so well. Between that and the cuts, he might as well just have built a new damn hospital.”
As I stood there, listening to the swirl of anxiety and half-formed speculation, my heart thudded against my ribs. Familiar names came up while they tossed the rumors they’d heard back and forth, departments I cared about and programs that were already stretched thin.
This was exactly why I’d walked out of that hotel room. Sleeping with Sullivan and even caring about him didn’t change any of this.
It didn’t change that he was still my boss. That I was still bound by a contract I couldn’t afford to escape. It didn’t mean that the hospital I loved wasn’t being reshaped by decisions I had no real power over.
No amount of chemistry rewrote power dynamics, despite how good it’d felt in the moment. As soon as I realized that, I spun around and grabbed Mrs. Jones’ chart. “Let’s just wait and see what happens. Not all rumors are based on fact.”
Leaving them staring after me, I went back to the floor and threw myself into work. This was what I always did when things felt impossible. I focused on vitals and the quiet victories that came from doing my job well and told myself, over and over again, that I’d made the right call.
Because I knew I had, but that didn’t mean I didn’t hate it.
By the end of the day, I felt completely drained, stuck between wanting something I couldn’t afford and standing by a decision that hurt more than I’d expected.
Every logical part of me knew walking away had been necessary, but every other part wanted me to turn around, go find him, and pretend the world would sort itself out later. Instead, I just kept working, trying to stop thinking about him and failing miserably.
A feat that didn’t get any easier when my phone chimed with a text about two hours after that conversation at the nurses’ station.
Sullivan C: How are you?
That was it. Just three, casual little words that somehow felt heavier than anything else he could’ve sent. I stared at my phone for so long, the screen dimmed twice while my thumb just hovered over it.
Finally, I tapped out a reply, then deleted the whole thing and started again. Every response I came up with felt like too much or not enough.
This is insane. Just stop.
Since I still hadn’t come up with anything to actually say, I listened to my inner voice and set the phone facedown beside me, going back to charting instead. It was a full hour later when I finally caved and picked it up again.
Me: I’m good. Busy week. Hope you are too.
I hated myself a little for how carefully neutral it sounded, but I hated myself more for the tiny sting I felt when he replied.
Sullivan C: Glad to hear it.
Knowing I was going to do something catastrophically stupid if I stayed alone with my thoughts any longer, I met up with Ellora and Mercedes for drinks after work.
At the very least, it would distract me for a couple more hours from texting my boss something honest. We met at our usual haunt and Ellora slid a margarita toward me the second I sat down.
“You look like someone who’s been holding a secret hostage,” she said. “Drink.”
I picked up the glass and drank. Deeply. With a disproportionate amount of gratitude.
Mercedes leaned forward, her eyes bright as they met mine. “Okay. Start talking. How was the wedding?”
I exhaled slowly. “I, uh, well, the wedding didn’t happen.”
Ellora frowned. “What do you mean it didn’t happen? I thought you were headed straight there from my place.”
“I was, but I wasn’t the problem. It turned out that we were all there. The guests. The bride, but not the groom. He, uh, he didn’t go.”
Mercedes’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish, but no. The asshole stood her up. He texted Sullivan when the damn music was already playing.”
Ellora’s eyebrows lifted. “Sullivan, huh? How do you know when he got the text? Were you… with him when he got it, perhaps?”
“No, but I was with him minutes before and then again a few minutes after.” I groaned. “Things might’ve escalated.”
She smiled knowingly. “Escalated how, exactly?”
“With me and Sullivan.”
Both of them froze, but Mercedes recovered first. “When you say Sullivan, you do mean your Sullivan, right? Your boss, Sullivan Crowne?”
“My Sullivan,” I confirmed. “Unfortunately.”
Ellora leaned back, chuckling as she reached for her cocktail. “Oh, my God. I had a feeling this was going to happen. Tell us everything.”
I took another long sip of my drink, but then I started talking, and once I did, I couldn’t stop.
I told them everything. About the church.
The reception turned liberation party and the dancing that had become so much more.
I very intentionally did not describe details, but I even told them about the closet and ending up back in his suite.
When I finished, Mercedes was staring at me like I’d just confessed to robbing a bank. “You slept with your boss.”
“Yes.”
Ellora grinned. “Your boss who also happens to be a grumpy billionaire you hate.”
“Also yes.”
She clutched her chest like I’d just made her dreams come true. “I love this song.”
“I hate this song,” I said. “This song ruins lives.”
She waved me off. “No, it doesn’t. It just feels like it will, but then it all works out and your life is better than ever. Trust me on that one.”
Mercedes chuckled. “Let’s shelve that for now. How are you feeling, Bree? How did it go, you know, after?”
I laughed, but the sound was humorless. “I’m feeling like I made the best, worst decision of my life. Or the worst, best one. I don’t know.”
Ellora raised an eyebrow. “The worst, best one? Yeah, you’re going to have to elaborate a little bit.”
“I really don’t know. Look, I don’t like him. He’s infuriatingly arrogant sometimes and he’s actively messing up the hospital. Just today, I heard more rumors about what he’s planning to do, and if they’re true, it’ll be awful. Plus, he’s my boss, which makes what I did monumentally stupid.”
“And?” Ellora prompted when I stopped talking. “There’s more. I can tell.”
I paused for a beat, but while I knew I should’ve just told them there was no more, I also knew they’d help me reason this out if I told them the whole truth. If anyone could talk me through it, it was these girls.
“He held me after. Like I mattered to him,” I said quietly. “I can’t unknow what that felt like.”
Mercedes reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “That’s the problematic part, right?”
“Yep. I can’t be with him, guys,” I said firmly. “I won’t. Hospital politics alone make it impossible. If anyone so much as suspects I’m sleeping with him, my credibility is gone. I fought too hard for this job.”
Ellora nodded. “You’re right.”
“Of course, I am.” I rolled my eyes at her. “You don’t have to sound so surprised about it.”
“I’m not, but as much as I agree that you’ve worked too hard to have the other staff members start questioning your dedication now, I also think this is unfair and deeply annoying that life keeps doing this thing where it hands good people impossible men.”
Mercedes laughed. “Welcome to the club.”
Ellora lifted her glass. “We really do have a type. Grumpy. Powerful. Emotionally constipated until we unblock them.”
“Please don’t romanticize this,” I said. “He’s a walking HR violation.”
“Is he?” Mercedes asked gently. “Do you feel taken advantage of or like he forced you into it in any way?”
“No.” I frowned. “That’s not at all what happened.”
“That’s what I thought.” She smiled, but it was a lot more tender than usual.
“You don’t look like someone who slept with the boss to get ahead at work, Bree.
Frankly, you look like a girl who’s falling and I know exactly what it looks like because I saw it every day in the mirror for a long time before I was ready to admit it. ”
I opened my mouth to deny it, but that wasn’t quite what came out. “I didn’t plan for it to happen and I won’t do anything about it.”
Ellora let out a soft sigh. “You don’t have to plan for everything. You also don’t have to plan for forever right now. It’s okay to just plan for what comes next.”
“What comes next is nothing,” I said. “We have to keep things casual and professional. Distant would be better.”
“Yeah?” She looked straight into my eyes. “What does your heart have to say about that?”
“It might be in disagreement.”
Mercedes flinched a little, like the mere thought of what I was admitting to physically hurt her. “You’re doing the smart thing. There’s no doubt about that, but if your heart keeps disagreeing, you might want to think about whether the smart thing is the right thing.”
“Hear, hear,” Ellora said, then looked at me again. “Whatever you decide to do, we support you. Just say the word and we’ll be there with all the ice cream, snacks, and wine you could ever need. No matter what the situation.”
Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes as I smiled back at them, so emotionally thrown out of whack that I honestly thought I might cry. They were awesome friends, though.
Awesome enough that they could obviously tell I needed a distraction right about now or I’d start bawling my eyes out.
Ellora launched into telling us about her new ideas for Second Story Sunday, a weekend market she’d started in her neighborhood.
Mercedes regaled us with more tales of attempted baby making.
By the time I left, I was slightly buzzed, but I felt replenished, like I’d gotten out all the stuff that had been bothering me and they’d refilled my cup with optimism and it’s all going to work out energy.
On the walk back to my apartment, I was replaying the evening in my head when I noticed the figure leaning against the brick wall near the entrance.
My heart nearly stopped, but not because I thought the person was a threat.
I wasn’t scared, but I was suddenly feeling way more excited than I should’ve been.
Sullivan straightened when he saw me, his sandy hair disheveled. He was wearing his usual suit, immaculate in theory, but the tie was loose, the jacket torn at his shoulder, and there seemed to be a bit of blood at the corner of his mouth.
My stomach plummeted at the sight. He looked rough, like he’d been in a fight—or lost one.
Every sensible thought and phrase I’d practiced evaporated. My heart slammed against my ribs, loud, traitorous, and terrified, because I knew suddenly that whatever this was, it wasn’t casual or professional anymore, and there was no way it ever would be again.