Page 158 of The Clinch
That would be amazing
Thank you
The answer comes almostat once.
NATE
No problem
See you in a few
There’snothing pushy in the offer. Nothing strange. Nothing I could point to and call too much.
It still feels off.
I put my phone away.
It’s such a small thing. A ride. A practical offer from someone I genuinely like. That’s what makes it so hard to argue with.
We reach the lobby doors, and I stop, turning to Nia.
“Actually,” I hear myself say, “I think I need to head out. I’m wiped.”
Nia gives me a sympathetic look. “Day two hitting hard?”
“Something like that.”
“Coffee tomorrow after anatomy lab?”
“Definitely.”
Rebecca waves without looking up from her phone. Mateo gives me a mock salute. I watch them head toward the library—my new people, my new life—while I walk back toward the familiar.
The feeling that follows isn’t guilt exactly, but it’s close enough to sour everything.
Just the sense that I have stepped out of my own day again, and that it took almost nothing to make me do it.
That’s the part I can’t stop feeling in my teeth.
Nate pulls upfive minutes later in his SUV. Liam is in the back seat, still buzzing from the hospital visit.
“Doctor Adler! How’s med school treating you?”
“Ask me again in a month.”
Two blocks later, Liam peels off to his Tesla, and then it’s just me and Nate heading toward Brooklyn.
When I ask, lightly, how he knew where I was, he says Leo mentioned my orientation started this week and shrugs it off like it’s nothing.
Which somehow makes it worse.
I give him nothing and steer the conversation to his farm share and the new hockey season gearing up.
By the time he drops me in front of Leo’s building, I’m smiling my thanks and trying very hard not to think about how apparently everyone in Leo’s orbit knows where to find me.
The skyoutside has turned a deep twilight blue when I let myself into the apartment.
I hear the shower running, but it turns off within a few minutes and the bathroom door opens. Leo comes down the hall in black sweatpants and a white T-shirt, hair damp, shoulders still carrying the hard set of camp. He’s cleaner than he is when he walks in straight from training, but not softer. If anything, the shower only strips him down to something quieter and more dangerous—less sweat, less noise, the same contained force. There’s still something tightly controlled in the way he moves, as if his body hasn’t fully gotten the message that the work is over for the day.
