I’d met Ella at her most vibrant—bathed in golden firelight, teasing me over a spilled drink, challenging me with every kiss, her body tangled in mine. She was young and full of life, experimental and adventurous. The woman I met on the island had captivated me with her body as much as her personality.
And now, I was seeing her at her most vulnerable, recovering in a hospital bed after bringing two lives into the world. She was exhausted, pale, bruised from the ordeal of labor, and yet—God help me—she was still the most fascinating woman I had laid eyes on in a long time.
That should have been a problem. Because the last thing I should have been thinking about was how much I wanted her when she had just given birth to another man’s children.
I didn’t have some birthing fetish or anything like that. My attraction to her was purely due to her. That fiery personality. Her clever mind. As I walked to the nurse’s station to find the Zofran, I kept telling myself to give her the pills and walk away.
Her situation was too messy and convoluted for me to stick my nose into her business. I had no right. I had to walk away.
But the attraction was there, deep and insistent, crawling under my skin like an itch I couldn’t scratch. A base, gut-deep craving that had never fully gone away. If anything, seeing her now—alive, strong, still so inherently her—reignited something inside me I had tried to bury.
There was no cure for this. No treatment short of a lobotomy. Attraction was a hell of an unkillable beast, and I was merely a mortal.
I had a dozen reasons to walk away. I had already stayed too long. I was her doctor, or at least, I had been in the emergency phase. There was no medical reason for me to be here. I’d done my job.
I walked back to her room, knocking gently before entering. She beckoned me inside, and just hearing her voice did something to me. Once inside, I just stood there. I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
She shifted slightly against the pillows, wincing as she adjusted. Her every wince made my gut tighten up. I wanted to take her pain away. My hands twitched at my sides, wanting to reach for her, help steady her—but I kept still, watching her instead.
There was no cure for what I had. But I had one for her.
I passed her the Zofran. “Here, let this dissolve under your tongue. It’ll help with the queasiness.”
“Thanks.” She took the tiny pill and sighed.
I wasn’t sure where to begin again. I’d stuck my foot in my mouth earlier. I had to do better this time. “You look good.”
She gave me a wry, tired smile. “Bet you say that to all the girls.”
“I’m not lying.” I leaned forward, resting my forearms on my knees, letting my gaze travel over her. “You should see some of the guys they wheel out of here after surgery. You look better than all of them. And they didn’t have to push out two tiny humans first.”
That earned me a quiet chuckle, soft and genuine. The sound did something to me, a low heat curling in my spine. Her brow arched as she weakly smirked. “Flirting with a woman fresh out of surgery? Really, Dom?”
I shrugged and teased, “Forgive me—I failed out of my medical ethics course twice.”
She exhaled a small laugh, shaking her head. “What about your common decency course? Did you bomb that, too?”
“Well, in my defense, I lost most of that the first time I kissed you.”
She stilled at that, her fingers twitching against the hospital blanket. For a split second, I thought I had pushed too hard, but then she surprised me.
“That’s funny,” she murmured, a subtle vulnerability slipping into her tone. “I lost mine the moment I met you.”
Something tightened in my chest. I was in trouble.
I shifted slightly in my chair, watching her closely. “So…you’ve been doing this on your own?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. Nothing new about that.”
There was something in the way she said it—dry, but edged with truth. I’m alone. I’ve always been alone. A pull of emotion tugged in my chest. I didn’t want a lonely life for Ella. Or anyone, for that matter.
I knew what it was like to be alone. After my wife had died, I was alone for a long time. I had my kids to worry about, but that was very different from having a partner. The loneliness didn’t hit me until three years after Jodie’s death.
Someone stole a kiss under the mistletoe at a company Christmas party, and the moment she did, I leaned back in shock. It didn’t mean anything to her, but that wasn’t why I had pulled away. The last person who had kissed me was Jodie, so feeling a pair of lips on me felt foreign. Wrong.
I didn’t know how to handle it, so I made an excuse and rushed out of the party. Somehow, the kiss had made me feel all the loneliness I’d bottled away for years. The weight of that threatened to crush me.
After the stolen kiss, though, I knew I had to start dating, or I’d be alone forever. While the idea of being alone was fine, the pain of loneliness was too much to bear. There was a big difference between being alone and being lonely, and I was the latter. If my kids had been young when I went through that emotional turmoil, I would have been a rotten parent.
Ella had no business being alone.
I hesitated, feeling the shape of my next question before I asked it. “The father—he’s not involved?”
A flicker of something crossed her face, something unreadable. Her left hand tightened, but she took a practiced breath before she said, “No. And he won’t be.” She didn’t elaborate.
And I didn’t push. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about him. Maybe it was messy. Maybe he was a mistake. Maybe he had bailed. I didn’t know. All I knew was that she looked relieved I hadn’t pried.
Before I could speak, my pager went off. I glanced at it. Bowan. I snorted derisively and tucked it back into my pocket. That bastard wasn’t going to tear me out of here for anything. “So, no trips back to the island?”
She exhaled a soft chuckle. “No. I’ve been working my ass off to save for this. Kids are expensive.”
“Yeah. Pity, though,” I mused, stretching slightly in my seat. “I was thinking of going back soon.” I let my eyes lock onto hers. “But it won’t be as much fun without you.”
Her lips parted slightly in surprise, her fingers fidgeting with the hospital blanket. She let out a nervous, breathy laugh, and I realized once again, too late, that I was hitting on a woman who had just gone through hell.
Shit.
I cleared my throat, shaking my head. “Sorry. That was…inappropriate.”
She snorted softly. “A little.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I admitted, running a hand through my hair. “You just had twins, and here I am, acting like—”
“Dom,” she interrupted, a small smirk playing on her lips. “It’s nice to be appreciated.”
That shut me up.
I let out a low breath, meeting her gaze. “I do appreciate you. And I have since that night. You left me some incredible memories.”
She didn’t say anything at first. Just watched me, her expression unreadable. Then, finally, she spoke. “Why are you still thinking about that night?”
I held her gaze. “I never stopped thinking about it. I don’t think I could if I tried.”
Something flickered in her eyes—something wary. If she was happy to hear that, I couldn’t tell. Not from her lip biting, not from the spike in her blood pressure on the machine. Her voice was little more than a ghost. “Oh.”
That wasn’t the encouragement I needed to hear, but I wasn’t about to stop myself from saying what had been on my mind since I realized it was her on the stretcher. The words fell out of me, and I wasn’t able to stop them.
“I’ve never connected with someone the way I did with you that night on the island…” I couldn’t turn back now. I had to finish the thought, no matter the consequences. “It wasn’t just… good, Ella. It wasn’t just a one-night thing to me. It meant something.”
Her fingers clenched around the blanket again.
“And you vanished the next day without a word. I don’t mean to harp on this—”
“And yet?”
I sighed. “And yet, it has confused me for the better part of a year. Tell me what I did wrong that night. Did I hurt you, did I say something—”
She shook her head, interrupting me. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were wonderful.”
“I didn’t push you too far with the thing on the balcony?”
Her perfect lips twitched at that. “No. I liked it.”
“Then what was it?”
She took a breath to speak, but then stopped herself. A line formed down her brow as she thought about what to say.
Which meant she was conjuring a lie. To spare my feelings? To obfuscate some other detail I hadn’t thought of? I wasn’t sure. But I wanted answers. “The truth doesn’t usually require so much forethought.”
“I didn’t know what to say to you, Dom,” she murmured. “I’ve never—” She exhaled, shaking her head. “It scared me.”
“What we did?”
“The connection. Between us. I’m not…I’ve never felt that before.”
“You’re not the only one.”
She let out a soft, self-deprecating laugh. “What are we doing?”
“Talking,” I said simply. “Catching up.”
She looked at me, her expression softer now. Sadder for some reason. “It was a long time ago, Dom.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
Silence settled between us like an invisible wall I wanted to tear down with my bare hands. I saw it in her eyes—the conflict, the same push-and-pull I was feeling. I wondered if the spark still burned in her the way it did in me.
But now was not the time or place. I had to tread lightly here, given her medical condition. This was a fragile, unnamed thing. I’d already been inappropriate—who flirts with a woman who just gave birth to someone else’s kids?
Evidently, I did.
I had to be better than that, or she’d think the worst of me. “Your family? Anyone around to help?”
She exhaled, shaking her head. “No. I’ve always been on my own.” A small, sad smile ghosted over her lips. “Except for my sister. But we hardly have a relationship. So, I guess…now I have a family.”
Her hands settled over her stomach, over the space where her babies had once been, and something inside me clenched. She had done this alone. Was still doing this alone. And yet, the way she said it…now I have a family…
She looked at peace with it.
Before I could say anything else, the door opened, and a NICU nurse stepped inside, wheeling a chair. “Miss Green?”
Ella’s face lit up, and my breath caught in my chest. “Yes?”
“We can take you to see them now.”
She gave me a quick glance, her expression unreadable.
I stepped back, clearing space for the wheelchair. I didn’t want to leave, but I had to. A debate raged in my head about going with her, but that would have raised too many flags throughout the hospital. It was bad enough that I was in here when the nurse entered.
As Ella was carefully helped into the wheelchair, I watched her, my fingers flexing at my sides. I wanted to help her into the chair. I wanted to be the one to push her to the NICU.
I wanted her.
This wasn’t the end.
It couldn’t be.
I had let her slip away once before. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
