Chapter Text
Samira Mohan’s life is divided cleanly into two distinct halves: before PittFest and after it. She will never again be the person she was when she clocked in for that shift. She will never forget the give of her patient’s skull beneath an EZ-IO or the slip of the pigtail catheter between her fingers. Even months later, she’s still struggling to unpack all the ways that day changed her life.
Perhaps the strangest residual effect is that Jack Abbot sort of, inexplicably, becomes her best friend.
She’s not sure how it happens, exactly. She thinks maybe it really started long before that.
She still remembers the first day she met him, just three days into her R1 year. Fresh out of med school, she’d been painfully naïve and ready to take on the world—not yet beaten down by the reality of practicing medicine.
He’d caught her eye when he’d appeared at handover, auburn hair faded mostly into silver. Samira had always been good at reading people, and she could tell he was ex-military by the way he was standing at Dana’s desk, his face carefully blank as his eyes surveyed the hub.
Adamson made the introduction.
“Samira Mohan, Jack Abbot. Dr. Abbot’s our senior attending on nights. Jack, this is our new R1, the brilliant Dr. Mohan. She comes to us fresh from Rutgers.”
Abbot nodded, reaching out to shake her hand with his large, calloused one. He held an intense amount of eye contact as he did it. It would have been intimidating if not for the tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth.
“Dr. Mohan,” he said. “Welcome to the Pitt.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Excited to be here.”
They didn’t see much of each other after that. At least not for a while. She’d cross paths with him at handover most mornings, but they rarely actually spoke. Sometimes, he’d give her a little salute on his way out, his mouth curling in that same secret smile.
A few months later, she started pulling doubles.
By then she’d heard the stories. Abbot was a widower, an amputee, a psych case—someone who liked to flirt with the edge a little too often.
But Samira found the reality of him something else entirely. She was, frankly, a little bit smitten. Not in a real way, but in the way she’d spent her college years fawning over professors she’d admired. She wanted to pick his mind, to absorb some of his talent. It felt like a gift just to be in his orbit.
Who could blame her? Abbot was charming and kind and incredible with patients. He was the exact sort of doctor that she desired to be.
What she most admired was his skill, his bone-deep calm under pressure. He could cric a patient in seconds, could place a chest tube with his eyes closed, had a whole arsenal of tricks he’d picked up in the military that she’d never learned in med school. It never ceased to impress her.
Samira was a rule follower, but Abbot bent them in ways she had never even thought to: flubbing measurements on an ultrasound to save a teen from a miserable future, finding workarounds to protect patients from untenable expenses.
He had a profound well of empathy, even if he preferred to hide it behind snarky quips.
She sensed a kindred spirit.
The first layer of professional propriety chipped away on her very first night shift. He’d called her in to Trauma One to assist with an MVA—a 39-year-old woman who wasn’t wearing a seat belt and crashed headfirst into the windshield.
They didn’t need scans to know there was an intracranial bleed. Her pupils were evidence enough. She also had a dislocated shoulder, and, Samira suspected, multiple broken ribs.
“Push one milligram TXA,” Abbot said, eyes scanning the monitors.
Samira frowned, hesitated. “Is that advisable?”
She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. She was an R1; who the hell was she to question an attending? But Abbot didn’t seem to take offense.
“It’ll reduce the likelihood of clotting in the brain,” he said.
She still didn’t understand, but she knew better than to push. TXA wouldn’t just prevent clotting in the brain, but everywhere in the body. They didn’t have imaging yet, and if the patient was bleeding out somewhere else…
“Trust me,” Abbot said, sensing her hesitance.
She nodded, taking the syringe from Donnie and pushing it into the line. Her hands shook a little as she did it.
Once the patient had stabilized, she found Abbot out in the hall.
“I’m sorry,” she said, anxiety twisting low in her gut. “I didn’t mean to undermine your authority in there.”
He gave her an amused look. “God forbid.”
Her shoulders relaxed a little.
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he said. “It was a fair question. And this is a teaching hospital, Dr. Mohan.”
She should have left it at that—should have taken his grace and fled with it—but curiosity got the better of her. “How did you know it would work?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “But there was a study about it in AMJA a while back that was promising.”
Her fingers tapped against her stethoscope. “She could have bled out.”
“She could have,” he agreed. “But sometimes emergency medicine is about swinging in the dark and hoping for the lesser of two evils. Her only chance at a meaningful recovery was contingent on saving her brain.”
Later that morning, after she’d forced herself to eat something and collapsed into bed, her phone chimed with an incoming email.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: articleTo prove I wasn’t talking out my ass.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2810001
-JA
She stayed up another hour reading it, ignoring the way her body buzzed. When she woke again in the late afternoon, she thumbed a response.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: REPLY / articleThank god. I was starting to wonder.
Dr. Samira Mohan
Emergency Medicine Resident
Pittsburg Trauma Medical Center
They were more openly friendly after that. They traded articles and studies, argued about them via email or on the rare shifts they worked together.
She started picking up more nights.
She hated what the night shift did to her sleep schedule, but there was something about it that she also kind of loved. Nights were quieter, so there was less pressure to keep a relentless pace. When people did come in, however, it was often the worst of the worst. No one ventured to the hospital at two in the morning unless it was dire.
She could tell her instincts about Abbot had been right just by the ragtag staff he’d curated. They shared an easy comradery and inherent trust that didn’t always exist on day shift. There was less of a hierarchy, too. Everyone laughed and teased and ragged on each other without fear of consequence. Ellis and Shen were doggedly loyal to him.
“Flotsam and Jetsam,” Samira called them one night, her smile wide and dimpled.
Ellis cackled as she’d dropped onto a stool. Beside her, Abbot frowned.
“Like the metal band?” he asked
“No, you geezer, like the eels,” Ellis said.
He didn’t look any less confused.
It didn’t take long for Samira to be folded into their inner circle. It was a sense of belonging she now realized she’d been chasing all her life.
Things shifted again after PittFest—after the pigtail catheter and his unwavering faith. No one had ever believed in her like that.
That night, they sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a park bench, his prosthesis propped between them. His hair was curlier than she’d ever seen it, the roots of it dampened with sweat. Hers wasn’t any better. She’d given up on trying to tame it. They made a rag tag pair, the two of them—like the before picture in a curl cream add.
“How you holding up?” He asked when they were the last two left.
Every muscle in her body ached, but she couldn’t shake the buzzing in her veins. Her leg bounced anxiously.
“Is it weird that I feel like I could run a 5k?”
He laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “That’s the adrenaline talking. You probably won’t sleep much tonight.”
She nodded, already resigned to her fate. She checked her phone with a sigh.
“I’ve gotta go. Last bus is at 10:30.”
“I’ll give you a ride,” he said, moving to reattach his leg. She didn’t miss the wince that twisted his face. “You deserve better than the bus after a day like this.”
She should have argued with him, maybe, but she didn’t have it in her. It felt good to be taken care of.
“Thank you,” she said.
His car was almost exactly what she’d imagined: an ancient, but well-maintained Bronco. She bit back a smile at the sight. The interior smelled just like him, and she ignored how comforting that was as she curled into the leather seat.
When they pulled up to her building, he gave it a look like it was causing him physical pain.
“Are you fucking with me?” he said.
She froze, her hand halfway to the door handle. “No?”
“This is where you live?”
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked, feeling suddenly defensive.
“I’ve lived in barracks better than this.”
“Yeah, well, take it up with payroll if you’ve got a problem. I know it’s been a million years since you were a resident, but they barely pay us.”
His frown only deepened. “This is a terrible fucking neighborhood.”
“It’s not that bad,” she said. “Plus, the rent is cheap and there’s no roaches.”
“Not that you’ve seen, anyway.”
She knew she needed to make her exit, but she was surprised to realize that she didn’t want to leave, would have happily stayed in his truck and argued with him until the sun crept back over the horizon. She reached for the door handle anyway.
“Mohan,” he said, stopping her as she climbed from her seat. She glanced back at him, shifting her bag on her shoulder. “You were incredible today.”
She smiled, her face stretching wide with it.
“Thanks,” she said. “You too.”
Abbot was right. She wouldn’t sleep at all that night, but she damn near floated to her front door.
#
There are things about Samira Mohan that are imperative to her identity. She is an emergency medicine physician, the daughter of Indian immigrants, she is empathetic to the point of self-destruction. She lost her father when she was thirteen and has never fully healed from it.
There are smaller pieces, too. She volunteers in the clinic at Planned Parenthood once a month, she has a deeply complicated relationship with her mother, she suffers from pathological perfectionism.
Somewhere near the bottom of the list is this:
Samira has never had sex.
It is, unquestionably, one of the most uninteresting things about her. It is still a secret she’s learned to keep.
Truthfully, it’s not something that bothers her all that much.
She never had crushes as a kid, was never boy crazy like her friends in high school. The grief over her father was too fresh, and she’d decided at fifteen that she wanted to be a doctor. She spent her free time in National Honors Society and studying for the SATS.
Things didn’t change much in college.
She played the role of college girl like a performance—went to frat parties and football games because it was what was expected of her—but she’d been too wrapped up in her future to try and really date. Maybe things would have been different if she’d met the right person, but none of the boys in her orbit were intriguing enough to tempt her away from her plans.
She had even less free time in medical school, and she wielded that like an excuse. A few of her classmates showed interest, and she briefly considered sleeping with one of them just to tick that box, but she couldn’t be bothered to actually go through with it. She’d never had an itch her vibrator couldn’t scratch.
She wonders sometimes if she’s aro or ace, but that doesn’t feel right either. There’s an unspoken part of her that’s a hopeless romantic, that craves love more than she’d ever admit. She reads book after book to satiate the ache, has watched the second season of Bridgerton an unhealthy number of times. She sees herself in Kate Sharma—the good girl, the sacrificial lamb, the daughter without a father—and god, does she want that kind of love for herself. She’d rather be alone than settle for anything less.
When she really lets herself think on it—usually after several glasses of wine—she thinks maybe it’s all just a fucked-up coping strategy. A trauma response to never being an object of desire during her formative years. She’d often been the only brown girl in her class, and boys had never looked at her twice. She doesn’t think she knows how to be wanted. Isn’t sure she’s capable or worthy of it.
There will be time for it later, she keeps telling herself. Except maybe there won’t be. Her youth is slipping away from her, her fertile years dwindling. She thinks about dating, but what would that even look like? It’s one thing to admit you’re a virgin at 20. It’s another thing entirely to admit it at 31.
She is comfortable on her own. It’s what she’s grown used to. She has no one to rely on but herself, and she’s okay with that. She has to be.
It doesn’t bother her on a daily basis, but it does hit her at certain moments: a friend’s engagement or baby announcement, waiting for an uber at the airport because there’s no one to pick her up. She is no one’s person, not even her own mother’s, and god does that sting.
Still, the rest of her life is too busy for moping, for wallowing in what-ifs. She is a doctor, for fuck’s sake. She spends her days saving lives. That’s far more important than anything.
Therapy is an option, but she resents that she’s supposed to feel broken. Resents the idea that she’s not whole without a man.
It’s easier to be avoidant. To push it all to the back of her mind and ignore it completely. It’s why there’s been an unopened brochure about egg freezing on her kitchen table for weeks.
“You have to have a life outside this place,” McKay tells her, and Samira begrudgingly admits that she’s right.
She doesn’t need romance to be content, but she does need human connection. She needs friendship. She needs to build a life.
#
The first step in her plan, she determines, is to make more of an effort with her co-workers.
The residents have happy hour once a week, but Samira’s never been. When she shows up on Thursday night, they all look a little startled to see her.
She wonders if she made the wrong decision before Santos breaks out into a grin.
“Holy shit! Mohan in the house!”
Cassie gives her a proud little smile as Whitaker pulls up another chair.
It turns out to be a lot more fun than she anticipated. They chat and laugh and air out their grievances, and Samira is desperately relieved to learn that she isn’t the only one who feels victimized by Robby. It’s a massive weight off her chest.
She starts going to movie nights at Mel’s when she extends an invite, discovers that she likes Mel’s sister nearly as much as she likes Mel. There’s something refreshing about Becca’s candid honesty, even if she’ll never understand her obsession with Elf.
She nearly collides with Langdon one morning when she’s out for a run at Emerald View Park. He has to grab her by the shoulders to keep her from careening off the path.
“Are you out here by yourself?” he asks, concern flickering across his face. “What if I was a serial killer?”
He’s still on leave, and it’s the first time she’s seen him in months. His sweaty hair is plastered to his head, but there’s a brightness to his eyes that she hasn’t seen since their first year of residency. She’s touched that his worry seems genuine, then ashamed that she hasn’t checked up on him since he left.
She cants her head, hands planted firmly on her hips. “How do you know I’m not a serial killer?”
“Fair enough,” he says.
They end up finishing their run together, and then agree to meet twice a week. She’ll never admit it, but it does make her feel safer. She’s grateful for the companionship.
Santos is the hardest nut to crack, but she gets there eventually. It doesn’t start the way she expects. She walks into the locker room one morning to find Santos halfway through changing, and it’s impossible to miss the scars crisscrossing her thighs. Santos pulls her scrub pants on and bolts out of the room without making eye contact.
They don’t talk about it until they go for drinks a few days later.
“Look, about the other day—” Trinity starts.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Samira tells her. She only hesitates a moment before holding out her hand, tilting it so that the overhead light catches the long-faded scar over the knuckle of her index finger. The darkest secret of her teenage years. “We all survive however we can.”
Trinity’s eyes soften.
“I’m here if you ever want to talk about it,” Samira says. “And I’m still here if you never do.”
Samira thinks she might understand Trinity Santos in a way other people simply can’t. They are two sides of the same coin, the two of them. They both feel far too much, they’ve just developed different ways of coping with it.
She takes Santos under her wing after that, and when Samira starts signing on for more nights, she takes Santos with her.
Santos takes to night shift like a duck to water, though she spends much of her time following Ellis around like a puppy. Ellis acts put out by it, but Samira knows she secretly loves it.
Abbot is the last person on Samira’s list. They’re walking out a few nights later when she finally gets the nerve to ask him.
“Do you want to get breakfast?”
His step falters for a brief second, his eyes sliding to hers.
“I’m trying to be better about having friends. Figured maybe we could take the article discussions off-line.”
He studies her for what feels like an eternity before he smiles. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
It becomes a regular thing after that. They start getting coffee once a week or so, dependent on their schedules, bickering over case reports until they’re both blue in the face. It takes her a while to realize that he sometimes argues the opposite side just to get her riled up. She doesn’t know what to make of that.
It doesn’t take long for their topics of conversation to reach beyond the academic. Tucked into booths and at tiny café tables, they talk about anything and everything.
It’s shockingly easy to open up to him. Cathartic, even. She tells him about her father and the grief she still struggles with, tells him about her strained relationship with her mother and the resentment that still festers. She shares her anxiety over her future and the insecurities planted by Robby.
Much to her surprise, Abbot confides in her too. He tells her about the army. About how he survived three tours in the Middle East only to come home and lose his wife a few months later. A car accident over Labor Day weekend. The drunk driver who hit her survived—they always did.
He tells her how he grieved by reenlisting, and then subsequently got his leg blown off. She learns that he still sees his in-laws once a year, that his wife, Gen, was their only child, and that they still consider him a son. She learns that Emery Walsh is the closest thing he has to a sister.
“We were in Iraq together,” he tells her one warm afternoon in September. “She was in the car behind me when the IED went off. Got blasted with shrapnel, took a four-inch shard to the upper left arm, and still somehow managed to stabilize me. I was pinned. She had to amputate in the field.”
She stares at him, processing.
“God,” she says, her voice tinged with awe. “What an absolute bad ass.”
His jaw drops. “That’s what you’re taking away from this?”
“I just… sorry, yeah. I think she might be my hero.”
Jack tries his best to look put upon and fails. His hazel eyes twinkle.
“Yeah, fair enough.”
When Samira watches the two of them fight now, she understands it in an entirely different way. They yell and claw and antagonize each other, but there is profound love there. They are siblings, and every argument becomes a game.
She sees it on full display a few days later as they face off over a patient.
“He needs to go upstairs!” Emory yells, her dark brows tight with anger.
“No, he doesn't,” Jack says.
“Yes, he does!”
Jack reaches nonchalantly for his coffee cup. “Last I checked, I’m the senior attending of this ED.”
“Yeah, well, you’re also an idiot. “
“For fuck’s sake, Emery. He’s stable. White count and inflammation markers are decreasing. You know as well as I do that there’s a plethora of evidence to suggest that antibiotics are the better intervention for appendicitis. I’m not letting you slice and dice him just because you’re bored.”
It’s like watching a tennis match.
“Give me the patient, Jack.”
“Or what?” Jack goads. “What are you gonna do about it?”
Samira is speaking before she even realizes it.
“She could always cut off your other leg.”
There’s a beat of silence where the horror of what she’s said settles, a burning heat spreading up her neck. Across the breakroom table, Jack gapes at her, but Emery throws her head back and cackles.
“Oh, I like this one.”
“Et, tu?” Jack says. But even he can’t hide that he’s beaming. He looks both delighted and proud, the grin on his face is infectious.
It fills her with a strange sort of warmth.
#
She gets clothes-lined by the flu in October.
It hits her with almost no-warning. She comes home from work on Saturday morning feeling more exhausted than normal, but without any other symptoms of note.
She’s normally the sort of person that won’t let any outside clothing touch her bed, but she collapses atop her duvet still in her scrubs. She just needs to close her eyes for a few minutes before she can muster the energy to shower and make something to eat.
She wakes to a hand on her shoulder, and a voice loud in her ear.
“Samira,” it says. Her head pounds violently in her skull. “Samira.”
She blinks her eyes open to find Santos standing over her bed.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, but the words send her into a violent coughing fit.
It’s dark outside her window, but that doesn’t make any sense.
“What time is it?”
“8:30pm,” Trinity says. “You were supposed to be at work two hours ago.”
Samira flies up off the bed, her heart pounding violently. The motion causes such a strong wave of vertigo that she nearly vomits.
“Easy,” Trinity says, reaching out to steady her.
Samira blinks, swallows past the way her mouth waters. “I think I’m sick.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
She feels like she’s been hit by a truck. Her whole body aches, her chest is unbearably tight.
“Don’t worry, they called in Langdon to cover. You’re not in trouble, but you do have a lot of people worried. Abbot’s been out of his mind. He was about to send the cops before I told him I had a spare key. You’ve really got him wrapped around your finger, don’t you?”
Samira is far too out of it to make sense of what she means.
Instead, she scrambles for her phone, guilt twisting sharp in her stomach when she sees all the missed calls and texts from her co-workers. She thumbs open her text thread with Abbot.
Jack Abbot [4:48pm]
You want to grab coffee before work?
Jack Abbot [7:06pm]
Hey, you okay? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you late for shift.
Jack Abbot [7:28pm]
Mohan, can you please call me? I’m worried.
Jack Abbot [8:11pm]
Santos is on her way.
“Fuck,” she says.
Trinity uses the opportunity to stick a thermometer under her tongue. She must have brought it with her from the hospital, because Samira doesn’t even own one.
The thermometer beeps angrily, the display flashing red. Trinity clucks her tongue and holds it up so Samira can see it.
“Come on,” Trinity says. “I’m taking you in.”
Samira doesn’t argue. She knows a lost cause when she sees it.
#
Jack is waiting in the ambulance bay when they arrive, she can read the tense line of his shoulders even from several yards away. He’s opening the passenger door to Trinity’s car before they’re even fully stopped.
He sighs when he sees her, his eyes scanning her face.
“Jesus, Mohan.”
He helps her out of the car and onto her feet, unsticks the hair from her sweaty brow before placing his hand to her forehead.
“You’re burning up,” he says. All she can think about is how awful she must look.
“104.3,” Trinity reports.
“Go get a wheelchair,” he tells her.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking,” she wheezes, despite the fact that her legs feel like jelly.
Abbot must decide it’s not worth the fight, because he loops an arm around her waist and helps her walk on her own through the doors.
She can feel people’s eyes on them as they cross to an open room.
“Don’t you assholes have better things to do?” Santos barks.
Their audience scatters. Samira feels such a strong wave of gratitude that she nearly starts the cry.
They put her in North 12, and Abbot scoops his arm beneath her knees to lift her onto the bed. She has to close her eyes against the sudden wave of vertigo.
“Have you been keeping fluids in you?” he asks.
“I found her on her bed still in her scrubs,” Trinity says, clipping a pulse-ox to her finger. “Didn’t even take her shoes off.”
Jack scrubs a hand down his face.
“Alright, bring me an IV kit,” he tells Santos, “Let’s run a CBC, a respiratory panel, and then get her started on the usual protocol. Tamiflu, guaifenesin, acetaminophen, Zofran--”
The pulse-ox beeps, and Samira can tell by the way his brow pinches when he looks at it that the reading isn’t good.
“Put her on low-flow oxygen and then do a chest X-ray.”
Santos nods and slips out the door, reappearing a few seconds later to pass him an IV kit before she disappears again.
Abbot wipes an alcohol swab along the underside of her forearm before prepping the needle.
“Isn’t there a nurse that could be doing this?” she asks.
He ignores her. “Little pinch,” he says.
She barely even feels it, but for some inexplicable reason, she starts to cry. The tears carve scalding trails down her cheeks.
“Shit, sorry,” he says. “Guess I’m a little out of practice.”
“It’s not-” she swallows past the lump in her throat. “I’m fine.”
He rests a careful hand against her face, his thumb brushing at her tears. He’s never looked at her like this before. It starts a low hum inside her. “You’re crying.”
The last of her restraint breaks.
“I don’t feel good,” she whimpers. It’s maybe the most pathetic she’s ever sounded.
“I know, honey,” he says. “I’m gonna get you feeling better as fast as I can.”
Add fever-induced hallucinations to her list of symptoms.
He drops his hand a split second before Trinity comes back through the door with an armful of medications. They talk in low voices, but Samira doesn’t understand what’s being said. The world around her has gone fuzzy, and she’s already drifting off by the time they push the meds through her IV line. The last thing she feels is someone pressing a kiss to the crown of her head.
She sleeps the rest of the night, doesn’t even remember the nurses coming in for checks. It’s just after 6am when she blinks awake to find Abbot sitting in the chair beside her bed. He looks utterly exhausted.
“Can I go home now?” she asks.
“You’re fever’s down to 101, but I’m not comfortable releasing you to go home by yourself. Test came back positive for Flu A, by the way.”
“I’ll be fine,” she says, though the hacking cough that escapes her doesn’t help her point. “It’s hardly the first time I’ve gotten myself through being sick.”
His eyes on her are heavy. “That doesn’t make it okay.”
“So what, I’m trapped here indefinitely?” The thought of having to see Robby like this makes anxiety slide like ice down her spine.
“That’s one option,” he says. “The other is that you let me take you to my place.”
She blinks, her sluggish brain trying to process what he said.
“I have a very nice guest room and enough medical supplies to stock a small clinic. I also have the next three days off.”
“That’s- you don’t have to do that.”
“Have to? No. Want to? Yes.”
They way he’s looking at her makes her feel like she’s been flayed open.
“I can take care of myself,” she says.
“I’m sure you can,” he says. “But you don’t have to, Samira.”
Her eyes burn.
“Ok,” she says.
He reaches out to squeeze her wrist, his face relaxing for the first time since she was brought in.
“Let’s get you out of here.”
#
She spends three days recovering at Abbot’s condo. It’s the strangest three days of her life.
He cooks her meals and administers her meds, checks on her at the top of every hour. Insists she use his accessible shower to wash off the fever sweat because it has a bench she can sit on. It’s the first time someone’s cared for her in years.
She’s afraid to leave the guest room at first, but by the second day, he’s coaxed her out onto his couch.
She learns a lot about him in those three days. He mostly uses arm crutches when he’s at home to get a break from his prosthetic, he does yoga every morning, he’s half blind without contacts or glasses. Every new piece of him she unearths fills her with overwhelming affection.
Jack Abbot, she realizes, is her best friend.
She keeps offering to go home, but he keeps reassuring her that he’s not bothered by her presence.
She thinks maybe he’s been lonely to
When she does finally make it back to her place on Thursday morning, it’s to discover that he’s had it professionally cleaned. She’s so taken aback that it’s another hour before she realizes that her leaky kitchen faucet is no longer dripping, and an alarm system has been installed by the front door.
#
The dreams start a few weeks later.
By then, she’s off the meds and fully recovered. She can’t even blame it on that.
It starts as a patchwork of images.
Jack Abbot is on top of her, his weight braced on one forearm, the other hand cradling her jaw. He uses his hold on her to tip her head back, exposing her throat so that he can slide his mouth along the delicate skin there. He sinks his teeth into the dip where here shoulder meets her neck, and it sends a white bolt of heat through her gut.
He doesn’t say anything, and it’s too dark to make him out, but she knows it’s him in that amorphous way you just know things in your dreams. The weight of him pinning her to the mattress is electric.
His thick fingers slide between her thighs.
She wakes mid orgasm, her toes curling beneath the duvet and her hips pressing into the mattress. It’s not strong enough to be satisfying, but she’s too mortified to do anything about it. She grabs a pillow and covers her face.
She lays there for a long time and tries to calm her breathing, tries to ignore the swollen mess between her legs. =
What the fuck.
She’s supposed to meet him for coffee in a few hours, and the thought makes her a little queasy. She seriously debates canceling—surely that’s the only sane option?—but she can’t stomach the thought of sabotaging her time with him. She swallows her pride and goes anyway.
She doesn’t even put any make-up on, just slaps on some ChapStick on her way out the door. She can’t stomach looking at herself in the mirror.
They meet at the café off Mellon Green that’s become their favorite in recent months. Jack’s already at a table when she arrives. It’s a brisk October day, and he’s wearing a charcoal grey coat. He’s already ordered their drinks.
He grins when he spots her and tugs his sunglasses off his face. His hazel eyes crinkle.
“Hey,” he greets, standing up to hug her like he’s done it a million times. He smells woodsy and warm, and she has to fight the bizarre urge to press her face into his neck. “You’re looking a hell of a lot better.”
It’s like she’s seeing him for the first time. Framed by the late afternoon sun, she can see the last threads of auburn in his hair. It’s gotten grayer since they met three years ago.
Has he always looked like this, she wonders? Beneath the thick wool of his coat, she can make out his compact musculature, the broad stretch of his chest. He’s watching her with eyes that are unbearably soft.
It starts a humming inside her, a buzz beneath her skin. She doesn’t know what to make of it. Doesn’t recognize it.
“Did you read that article I sent you?” he asks.
Their hands brush as he passes her her coffee, and she feels it like an electric shock. The pieces finally slot into place. She recognizes what it is she’s feeling.
Desire.
“Sorry, what?” she says.
He grins, unbothered. “The article on racial disparities. Did you read it?”
She thinks she might be in deep, deep shit.