The ER had been mercifully calm that afternoon. Priya and I were restocking supplies, moving through the familiar rhythm of a shift that had finally found its groove.
I walked down the corridor without hurry, already mentally running through the rest of my shift. Charts to update, patients to check on, and the persistent knot of anxiety about Xavier that I kept shoving to the back of my mind.
I pushed open the door to room four without looking up and jumped backward.
"HOLY SHIT—" hand flying to my mouth. "What are you doing here?!"
Jay sat on the examination table like he owned it, pressing a bloodied towel to his forehead with one hand while scrolling through his phone with the other. He looked up at my dramatic entrance with a grin that shouldn't have been legal.
"Hey, Doc. Took you long enough."
Behind me, Priya made a sound that was half-laugh, half-choke. I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my skull with barely contained delight. I pressed my palm harder against my chest, willing my heart rate to slow, and stared at the new cut above his eyebrow.
Fun fact, he kept appearing here injured at least two times a week and specifically requested me. Refusing to be seen by anyone else. Which is wild considering the hockey team has a whole medical staff on call 24/7 for exactly this kind of thing.
My eyes snapped to Jay's. "You have team doctors."
"I do." He didn't even have the decency to look sheepish about it.
"Who could have stitched this up in the locker room."
"Probably." He shifted the towel, and I caught a glimpse of the cut—not deep, maybe needing two or three stitches max. Definitely not emergency room worthy. "But head wounds are serious. Could be a concussion, internal bleeding… All sorts of catastrophic complications."
"You don't have a concussion, Mr. Callahan."
"Jay," he corrected, and there was something in his voice that made my stomach flip. "How many times do I have to tell you? Can we please finally go past formalities and help me. I’m probably dying over here."
He pressed his hand dramatically to his chest, and I caught Priya literally biting her fist to keep from laughing.
"You’re not dying. You need a Band-Aid and some common sense."
"I need you." He dropped his voice on that last word, just enough to make it sound intimate. Meaningful. "Only you can save me, Summer. No one else will do."
And then he smiled. Not cocky, more genuine, with just a hint of mischief at the corners that made a heat coil in my stomach. The kind of smile that said ‘I know exactly what I'm doing, and I know you know.’
The kind of smile that made everything click into place with sudden, horrifying clarity.
Oh. My. God.
Is he… doing this on purpose? Hurting himself to have an excuse to come here? To see me?
The thought should have alarmed me, should have sent up every red flag I possessed. But something dangerous fluttered in my chest—a warmth I had no business feeling for a man who'd spent years looking through me like glass.
I crushed it immediately, burying it beneath the weight of old hurt and hard-won self-preservation.
He only sees you now because you're finally pretty enough to notice.
Don't forget that. Don't ever forget that.
"Priya," I said, my voice impressively steady, "could you go grab the suture kit while I assess the damage?"
"But we already have the suture kit he—" My meaningful look hinted without words. “OH. Right. The suture kit we left in room four. Be right back.”
The air felt thicker once the door closed behind us.
Priya is a terrible actress. Probably that’s why she didn’t precue this career.
I gathered supplies in silence while Jay sat on the examination table and watched me with unsettling intensity. "This might sting," I began cleaning the wound, focused on the task rather than his proximity.
Or his soft-looking dark hair, or his nose with a slight hump, or his full mouth, or…
"I've been hit in the face with frozen rubber traveling ninety miles an hour. I can handle a little sting," he interrupted my inappropriate thoughts and then was quiet for a moment, watching my face as I worked, then: "Do you like hockey? I realized I never actually asked."
"I don't hate it." The antiseptic revealed a clean cut, easily sutured. "I grew up watching it. My older brother played, so I didn't have much choice."
"Your brother played hockey?" Interest sharpened his voice. "What level? Would I know him?"
I hesitated, needle poised over his skin. "You might, small world and all that. Hold still, I'm going to numb this now."
The injection made him wince slightly, but he kept talking through the discomfort. "Okay, so you grew up watching hockey… That means you have a team. Everyone who grows up watching hockey does. Who's yours?"
The question was so earnest, so genuinely curious, that I almost smiled. "The Boston Bruins."
"The Bruins? Boston?" Jay's expression shifted into exaggerated betrayal. "You're killing me here, Summer. That's our biggest rival! I'm sitting here bleeding, letting you stab me with needles, and you tell me you root for the enemy? I thought we had something special…"
"You thought wrong." I began the first suture, keeping my voice clinical even as amusement threatened to crack through. "And I didn't say I root for them now. I said I grew up watching them."
A slow grin spread across his face. "You're still checking the Bruins scores, admit it."
"I will admit nothing of the sort."
"Your silence speaks volumes, Dr. Ellis."
I focused on the sutures, on the precise movement of needle through skin, on anything except the way his eyes kept searching mine like I was a puzzle he couldn't quite solve.
"You keep doing that," I said quietly. "Staring at me."
He didn't look away when I glanced down. "You still feel familiar, Summer. Not in a cheesy pickup line way, but… something real. Like we've met before, in another life or something."
"Maybe you just have déjà vu," I said, finishing the last suture and not letting memories to surface. "The brain makes connections that aren't really there. It doesn't mean anything."
"Or maybe it means everything and we just need to figure that out."
I set down the needle, reached for the bandage. "You're all done. Keep the wound clean, come back in a week to have the sutures removed. Try not to get hit in the face again."
His hand caught my waist when I began to step away—gentle and warm. His calloused fingers settled inches higher from my hips and I froze, watching helplessly as his other hand rose slowly and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
The touch sent electricity cascading through my entire body. His fingertips grazed the shell of my ear, trailed down to brush my jaw, and for one suspended moment, we existed in a universe where history didn't matter.
Then reality crashed back in and I jerked away too quickly, nearly knocking the suture tray off the counter. Something flickered across Jay's expression—confusion, interest, a flash of hurt he quickly masked.
"I have other patients," I managed, voice steadier than I felt. "The discharge paperwork will be at the front desk."
I didn't wait for his response. Just walked out of the examination room with my heart slamming against my ribs and his touch still burning on my skin.
The nurses' station was crowded with the usual afternoon gossip when I approached, water cup in hand and desperate for something to anchor me back to normalcy. Priya stood at the center of a small cluster, all of them speaking in the hushed tones that meant someone's personal life was being dissected.
"—never see him at any of the staff events," one of the nurses was saying. "Always has some excuse, you know? It's weird."
"Maybe he's just private," the medical assistant offered. "Some people don't like mixing work and personal life."
"Summer." Priya's eyes found mine as I joined the circle, something careful in her expression. "We were just talking about Dr. Hale. Jessica thinks he's secretly a vampire because no one's ever met anyone from his personal life."
My blood ran cold. "That's ridiculous… He's just professional, there's nothing wrong with maintaining boundaries."
"I'm so sorry to interrupt." I turned and saw a woman that approached us with a polite smile. "My husband works on this floor, and I happen to need an appointment. I didn't make it with him specifically, but I'm sure he can squeeze me in."
"Of course," Jessica said. "I’ll let him know. What’s his name?"
"Xavier." The woman's smile widened—warm and completely devastating. "Dr. Xavier Hale."
The room tilted on its axis, reality reorganizing itself around a truth I'd never suspected. I heard someone respond—directions to his office, something about checking his schedule—but the words reached me through water, distorted and meaningless.
Xavier had a wife.
Six months of secret touches and whispered promises and believing I was the exception. The special one, worth the risk. Six months of thinking our secrecy was romantic—necessary, temporary, building toward something real.
It wasn't romantic, I'd always been the other woman. I just hadn't known it.
The wife departed with a graceful wave, off to surprise the man who'd been inside me just two nights ago in my bed. Priya's hand found my elbow, steadying, but I couldn't feel anything except the cold spreading through my chest.
"Summer." Her voice was low, urgent. "Summer, breathe. You need to breathe."
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