Amber
For the most part, I’d done a pretty good job pretending Rayne Hunter didn’t exist.
Which was ironic, considering he was recovering in the same hospital where I worked five days a week, twelve hours a day. But I guess that was the trick—if I kept moving, kept busy, kept my head buried in charts and scalpel reports and pre-op consults, I didn’t have time to remember that he was here too.
And on the rare occasions when the thought of him did try to creep in—like during a lull between surgeries, or when I passed the room he used to occupy—I shoved it away. Mentally. Emotionally. I threw up a wall and walked the other direction.
It wasn’t denial. Not really.
It was survival.
Eight weeks.
That’s how long it had been since I stood over his body on the operating table and chose to save him. Since I stitched him back together, closed his wound, and handed him back to the man he loved.
Eight weeks of silence. Of distance.
And in those eight weeks, I hadn’t seen his face once.
Partly becau
