Chapter 33
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Ihadn’t expected him to take this long, but I didn’t mind. The conference room was quiet and cool, a reprieve from the constant beeping in the halls and chatter out in the breakroom. Five minutes stretched into ten. Then fifteen.
Eventually, I tipped my head toward the windows overlooking the parking lot, but I couldn’t see properly from here. Standing up, I figured I might as well do some people-watching while I waited, so I walked to the other side of the table where the view was better.
Staff filtered in and out of the employee entrance, some laughing with others, some scrolling on their phones, and a few moving with the purposeful strides of people already running late. As I watched them, I realized I should probably be getting back to work myself.
I was still on shift and my break was almost over.
I glanced over my shoulder, hoping to see him coming back down the hall, but there was still no sign of him.
Deciding to give it five more minutes so I could at least say goodbye, I was turning back toward the window when my gaze drifted across the laptop he’d left open on the table.
I wasn’t trying to snoop, but the spreadsheet filled most of the screen and the bold red column was impossible to ignore. My eyes snagged on the header. Projected Staffing Adjustments.
My stomach tightened and I leaned forward before I could stop myself. Names filled the list, organized by department, seniority, and salary brackets. Notes filled the adjacent column and my heart stammered when I saw a name I recognized.
Emily Hart.
The air left my lungs in a sharp, silent burst. I stared harder, hoping I’d misread it or that it was another Emily, but the notes beside her name confirmed it. Twenty years of service. Senior intake nurse.
Twenty. Years. That was how much of her life she’d given to this place, and a memory slammed into me so vividly it almost made my chest ache.
Emily gripping my hand while paramedics wheeled my father through the ER doors, her voice calm and steady while my world teetered on the brink of destruction.
She’d stayed past her shift to update me after his surgery and she’d gotten me a bag of peanut M&M’s from the vending machine. This was the same Emily whose birthday party he’d interrupted so rudely and now he was firing her. Just crossing her off like a number that didn’t balance properly.
My fingers curled around the edge of the table. I can’t fucking believe this.
Heat crawled up my neck, sharp and furious. I scanned further down the list, bile rising as more names blurred together. So many people had been reduced to bullet points and percentages, their hours cut or their jobs about to be gone.
Did he even care who these people are outside of a payroll line? Has he looked them in the eye and engaged them as human beings?
Of course not. He just swept in with his tailored suits, talking about sustainability and efficiency like those words didn’t translate into mortgages, groceries, and kids’ school fees. He crossed names off a list, not caring it meant someone’s world would come crashing down.
Every time I started thinking there was something softer under that polished exterior, he proved exactly what he was.
A cold, calculating businessman. He claimed to care about people, saying his technology would help patients heal, but it seemed his compassion didn’t extend to the people who actually provided the healing.
My pulse hammered as I reached for my bag.
My hands trembled with adrenaline, rage, and something that felt a lot like betrayal even though he’d never promised or even implied this wouldn’t happen.
But I couldn’t just sit here. I couldn’t breathe in the same room where he’d casually decided people like Emily were expendable.
“Bree?” Sullivan’s voice was edged with confusion, sharpening a moment later. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
I spun to face him, the words bursting out of me hot and jagged around the edges. “What’s wrong? You’re firing Emily Hart, Sullivan. Emily and so many other people I care about.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “You were looking at—”
“She’s worked here for twenty years,” I snapped, stepping toward him. “Twenty. She helped save my father’s life. She’s one of the kindest people in this hospital and you’ve got her listed under position elimination like she’s a broken printer you’re tossing out.” I shook my head. “I feel sick.”
Annoyance flashed in those vibrant blue eyes I’d come to love staring into so much. The same eyes I’d looked into when I’d come apart underneath him and while we’d been laughing in the waves. It seemed impossible that they could belong to the man who was doing this.
“It’s not that simple.”
My chest rose and fell too fast, my anger feeding on itself and rapidly turning into fury. “Do you even know who these people are? Or are they just numbers you shuffle around so the quarterly report looks prettier?”
“Bree—”
“No.” I narrowed my eyes, my chin coming up.
“You have no idea who she is. Who any of them are. If you did, you’d know how much Emily actually does around here.
Do you know who shows the new nurses around and helps them get settled?
Emily. Do you know who even the young doctors go to when they need help?
Also her. It’s not just about the fact that she was here the night my father came in, Sullivan.
It’s about the fact that without her, this place’s foundation would crumble, but you don’t even know that. You don’t even care.”
“I’m restructuring departments to keep the hospital operational long term,” he said, his voice carefully calm and even. “If we don’t make changes, more jobs disappear later. Entire units—”
“It’s funny how it’s never your job on the chopping block,” I seethed. “You’ll cut hours, cut benefits, and cut people’s entire livelihoods, but I’m guessing your salary isn’t taking a hit. Or your penthouse. Or whatever obscene amount you spend on those suits.”
Color crept across his cheekbones, but I plowed forward. The dam wall had already shattered. My voice shook despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “The problem isn’t the nurse making forty grand a year. It’s the CEO making forty grand an hour.”
Silence dropped between us like a guillotine.
His expression shuttered, something wounded flashing too quickly for me to name before it disappeared behind that impenetrable control.
I slung my bag over my shoulder, my throat burning with rage.
“Every time I think you might actually be a decent man, you remind me exactly who you are.”
“Bree, please, we can talk about this.”
“We’re done,” I said, the words tasting like metal, regret, and fury all at once. “I was dead wrong about you.”
I stormed past him with my vision blurring, leaving him standing there with his precious spreadsheet and the shattered remains of whatever fragile understanding we’d been building. And to think I bought that son of a bitch a muffin.
I felt like a fool.
In a daze, I told my shift supervisor I needed to leave.
She took one look at me and didn’t argue.
I didn’t remember getting to my car. One minute, I was striding down the hallway, ignoring the curious glances from staff who’d probably already heard whispers about restructuring.
The next, I was in my car with my engine running, my hands gripping the steering wheel hard enough to make my knuckles ache.
My chest felt hollow, like someone had scooped everything out and left nothing but sharp edges behind. I pulled out of the parking lot without looking back. Traffic blurred past in streaks of brake lights and afternoon sunshine. My vision burned, but I refused to cry. Not yet.
Instead, I focused on red lights, turn signals, and staying in my lane. Anything that required just enough concentration to hold back the storm brewing inside, but when I walked into my apartment, my composure cracked clean in half.
I barely made it through my front door before the first sob tore out of me. I kicked off my shoes and stumbled down the hall toward my bedroom, my bag sliding off my shoulder and hitting the floor with a dull thud. Collapsing face-first onto my bed, I hugged my pillows and finally let it all out.
Hot, humiliating tears soaked into the fabric as every moment with him replayed through my mind with brutal, mocking clarity.
The Bahamas and the laughter. The nights we’d spent together right here in my bed, quiet conversations while he looked at me like I was something rare and worth understanding.
The careful way he’d listened when I talked about my father, about the hospital, and told him that to me, it was more than a job.
God, I’ve been such an idiot.
I curled onto my side, clutching the pillow against my chest like it could hold me together. I’d convinced myself there was something different about him. That beneath the immaculate suits and ruthless reputation, there was a man capable of actual human emotion.
“He showed you on the very first day that he has a black heart,” I whispered into the empty room, my voice cracking. “You stupid, stupid girl.”
The tears kept coming until my head throbbed and my throat felt raw. Exhaustion eventually dragged me under, pulling me into a dreamless sleep that felt more like shutting down than resting. When I woke, the room was dark except for the orange glow of sunset leaking through the curtains.
For a few disoriented seconds, I just stared at the ceiling, unsure what had jolted me awake. Then my phone buzzed again on the nightstand, vibrating loud enough to rattle against the wood.
I rolled over and grabbed it, squinting at the screen. Six missed calls and nine text messages were waiting for me. All from Sullivan.
My stomach twisted violently, grief and fury tangling together like barbed wire. I opened my messages long enough to see his name at the top of the thread, but I didn’t read a single word. I couldn’t.
The idea of seeing him try to explain, justify, or worse, apologize, made something fragile inside me splinter further. Another notification popped up, a voicemail, but I deleted it without listening. Then I deleted the rest, dropping phone on the mattress when I was done.
I picked it up again almost immediately and scrolled to Ellora’s contact. She answered halfway through the second ring.
“Well, hello, stranger.”
“I need wine,” I said hoarsely.
There was a brief pause. “Say no more. Mercedes is with me. We’ll be there in twenty.”
True to her word, my doorbell rang twenty-two minutes later. I opened it to find Ellora balancing two bottles of wine and a paper bag that smelled suspiciously like garlic bread. Mercedes held an armful of groceries that crinkled with unmistakable promise.
They didn’t ask permission before pulling me into a double hug. Mercedes whispered against my hair. “Oh, honey. He really did a number on you, didn’t he?”
Fresh tears burned behind my eyes, but this time, they didn’t spill over. I just nodded and stepped aside to let them in. Within minutes, my coffee table transformed into a chaotic spread of wine glasses, chocolate, chips, and what Ellora proudly declared was an emotional support bruschetta.
We curled onto the couch with our legs tucked under blankets. Ellora poured the wine with almost surgical precision, her eyes full of concern.
“Start talking,” she said. “What did he do?”
I told them about the spreadsheet and seeing Emily’s name on it, the words coming out uneven at first, snagging on the parts that still hurt too badly.
They listened without interrupting. Mercedes’ jaw tightened a little more with each detail.
Ellora’s eyebrows climbed higher and higher until they practically disappeared into her hairline.
“He fired a twenty-year nurse?” Mercedes said flatly when I finished.
“Apparently, it’s called restructuring,” I muttered bitterly.
Ellora snorted. “Ah yes. Corporate speak for I sold my soul for quarterly profits.”
A reluctant, watery laugh escaped me and Mercedes nudged my knee with hers. “Look, I know what you’re going through right now and you didn’t imagine the good parts. It just means you’re capable of seeing the best in people. That’s not a flaw.”
“It feels like one,” I admitted.
Ellora shoved a chocolate-chip cookie into my hand. “You trusted someone who worked very hard to earn that trust. That makes him the jerk. Not you.”
The wine burned pleasantly on the way down when I took my first sip, loosening the tight coil around my chest just enough to let me breathe.
We spent the next hour cycling between outrage, ridiculous speculation about his inevitable miserable love life, and increasingly dramatic declarations about men in general.
By the third refill, I was smiling for real, even if the ache in my heart never fully disappeared. Eventually, their voices blurred into comfortable background noise as I stared down at my phone resting on the coffee table.
Sullivan’s name still hovered at the top of my recent calls and my chest tightened one last time. I picked it up, opened his contact, and hit Block. The confirmation prompt flashed across the screen, giving me a final chance to hesitate, but I didn’t.
The contact vanished from my call history and I set my phone facedown on the table and reached for my wine again. Ellora smiled softly. “Done?”
“Done,” I said, forcing myself to say the word.
The asshole could keep his spreadsheets, his depressingly empty, massive penthouse, and his perfectly tailored lies. I was finished with him. Once and for all.