Page 4 of Forever Fighting
She waves me away. “Anyway, that’s ancient history. Roman and I are way better like this. Bad boy Roman doesn’t date, and I’m about to become an old married lady.”
There’s a reason bad boy Roman doesn’t date, and I’m looking at it. And her becoming an old married lady is why I’m leaving the country for a while. Only Braelyn doesn’t know about that yet. No one does.
“Seven weeks,” Forest says, noticeably changing the subject. “You might want to schedule your next couple of matches around Brae’s wedding.”
“Oh my god!” Braelyn turns on me, a finger jabbed in my direction. “You freaking better. If you show up to my weddingas our best man maid of honor with a black eye and ruin my pictures, I will kick your ass. And win.”
I hold up a hand in surrender. “I promise I’ll be the handsome guy in the tux standing by both your sides. I’ll be the best best man maid of honor ever.”
“Excellent. Now I need to get home. I have a shift starting at eleven tomorrow and I promised Adam I wouldn’t be home too late.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
I toss on my T-shirt, foregoing the jeans and leather jacket because I’m still overheated. The four of us walk out together, both Forest and Hayes saying good night, knowing I’ll walk Braelyn to her car. I give her a sweaty hug, and she kisses my cheek.
“Get home safely on your deathcycle.”
I give her a sardonic look but smile all the same. “Yes, Nurse Albright.”
She climbs into her car and starts it up but rolls down her window. “Hey, Ro?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“It was a good match tonight.” She lingers on my face for a moment, then rolls up her window and drives off. I watch the taillights fade into the dark Boston night, but her words from earlier sit heavily on me, unshakable. I did reject her that night. But not because she was drunk, though she was, and not because she threw up, because oddly enough, I didn’t care about that. It wasn’t because I was being noble either, though I tried to be.
It was because she was twenty and I was twenty-six and we’d lost Nash only two years prior. I was in no shape to be anything good to her. Nothing that she deserved or needed from a guy. I was a fucking mess, and she was my lifeline, and I knew she’d regret it the next morning.
I was certain of it.
That was the first and only time she ever tried anything like that with me or even hinted at something. She was so trashed and likely would have kissed a garden hose if it showed interest.
But the truth is, our timing never lined up, and my guilt kept me away. After that, it was too late. Our lives perpetually diverged, only intersecting at all the wrong points. But now, with her marrying Adam in seven weeks, I can’t help but wonder. What if Ihadkissed her that night?
2
BRAELYN
Ican tell when my patient is going to code before they do. It’s a sixth sense I have. A gut feeling and it’s never led me astray. Not ever. And I have that feeling now as I look at my sixty-eight-year-old rule-out heart attack, or MI as we call it, who is seemingly stable except for some minor agitation she says is from arm pain.
“Hey,” I say to Wren, an attending physician here in the ER. “Can you keep an eye on my patient in room eight for a minute? She’s agitated, and I want to give her a bit more morphine.”
Wren gives me a look. She’s a new attending, but she did her medical school rotation as well as her residency here, and she’s known me for our entire lives since our families are friends.
“Why?” she questions warily, squinting slightly at me.
“Because if she codes in the next five minutes, I’d like to have a doctor nearby, and you’re standing here.”
“Shit,” she hisses. “You and these fucking intuitions. Yes, I’ll watch your patient.”
“Thanks. The code cart is right outside the door.”
She makes a noise that’s similar to a grunt and a groan, andI head over to the Pyxis machine to pull out the morphine and draw it up. The drawer isn’t even open when I hear “Code Blue, room eight. Code Blue, room eight.”
Shit. I fucking knew it!
I slam the door on the machine and race back down the hall, getting caught up in the swarm of doctors and nurses as they all enter the room at once.
Wren is already doing chest compressions. “You owe me an ice cream sundae for this,” she tells me.
