Chapter 1

When I came out of surgery room, I found Adrian crouched over Chloe, dressing a cut on her arm.

The door was wide open. He didn't move to close it. He glanced up as I came near, then bent back over her, blowing gently on the wound, tender as a man soothing a child.

Chloe was tucked against his chest. The instant she saw me, the corner of her mouth lifted.

A second later she buried her face in his shirt and said, in a voice already breaking, "Adrian, I don't want to wreck someone's family. I should go."

Two seconds, start to finish. I saw the whole switch.

I didn't make a scene.

I turned, unsteady on my feet, and walked to the restroom to splash cold water on my face.

He followed me in. He used a director's authority to clear everyone out, and only then did I say, "So we've dropped the humble-assistant act now?"

To chase Chloe, Adrian had told the whole hospital he was nothing but "an assistant just back from working overseas." He'd even moved his office to the worst corner of the inpatient wing. The first time Chloe met him, he was "helping carry oxygen tanks," and she'd said there were so few young men left who didn't care about where you came from.

From that day on, he held the role with both hands. He was terrified that if Chloe ever learned he was the director, she'd decide the striving, earnest assistant had been a con, and despise him.

He didn't answer me. His eyes were tired, already cold.

"I'll explain everything. Just don't tell her yet."

"And don't tell Annie."

His gaze slid away from mine, but he couldn't stop himself from defending her. "Vivi, Chloe's different. She has dreams. She wants to go run clinics out where nobody else will. After her shifts she takes night classes, learns languages. She's exactly like you used to be."

You used to be. Those three words went into me like a needle.

He kept going. "You were like that once. You walked away from a life of money and society to become a frontline surgeon. You used to talk to me about field medicine for hours, with that light in your eyes. And now? Now you spend your days on face masks and TV dramas. You turned into the exact kind of woman you used to hate."

I stood there. I wanted to shout: do you have any idea why I "changed"? Who told me to quit field medicine? Who said carry the baby carefully, who said Annie has a heart condition and can't be away from her mother, who dragged me off the operating table and back into the kitchen?

But it all curdled into grief, and my throat closed like it was full of needles, and I couldn't get out a single word.

Adrian left fast. Chloe's procedure was almost done. He wanted to be holding her hand the second it ended. He never once looked at my arm, swollen from the IV.

I stood in the restroom, fumbling with my pants one-handed.

I don't know if it was pain or panic, but the tears came on their own.

"What rotten luck. Can't even use the bathroom without the director clearing us out so he can chase his girl."

"He waved a hand and gave every one of us two grand, scared we'd say something in front of Dr. Bennett. Two thousand a head, three-thousand-plus staff, six million total. The man does not skimp."

"Keep it down. You took the money, so zip it. You think the director handed out six million himself? He's sharper than that. He had a private lawyer wire it all as a 'special year-end bonus,' called it a 'director's goodwill fund.' Dr. Bennett still thinks it's some hospital welfare reform. She has no clue the money came straight out of his own pocket."

Another nurse scoffed. "He plays it well. If Dr. Bennett knew the man she fell for paid off the whole hospital with six million to keep her in the dark, she'd be sick on the spot."

I looked down at the IV line, blood already backing up into the tube, and let the tears fall against the needle.

They were warm, but they burned down to the bone.

I pulled myself up on the edge of the sink. The second I pushed the door open, I saw Chloe alone at the end of the hall. Adrian wasn't with her.

She saw me and put on a sympathetic face. "Don't be too hard on yourself. Adrian told me how wonderful you used to be, how brilliant. Now, though, when he talks about you, his eyes go so disappointed. He says what he misses is the woman who'd cry all night over wounded soldiers in a war zone. Not the one who checks his phone."

Before I could answer, Adrian's footsteps came up the hall.

Chloe's eyes went red instantly. She stumbled back two steps and choked out, to the man walking toward her, "Adrian, I shouldn't be standing here. Seeing me only makes it worse for her."

He pulled her into his arms, aching for her, and turned a cold look on me. "You're a grown woman. You're really going to corner her like this?"

The man who had wept the day I said yes to him, in a foreign country far from home? That didn't seem like him at all.

The man who married me with a rushed signature and a quick lunch? Maybe that was the real one.

He never liked introducing me in front of others. Even when someone confessed feelings for me in public and I looked straight at him, he'd only smile and wave it off.

"Vivi, they're waiting for your answer. Why are you looking at me? I've got nothing to do with it."

Even when I needed a family member's signature for surgery at his own hospital, he pushed the form away.

"Call her parents."

Never public. Never jealous. Never there for the life-and-death moments.

It wasn't that I'd never broken down and asked him why.

He'd said, "Vivi, your mother's powerful, she's a politician. Give me time. When I'm strong enough, we'll be together out in the open."

So I waited. I understood. I understood his bind, I understood his pride.

But now I'd worked it out.

He wasn't waiting to be strong enough. He had never once intended to be with me in the open.

He resented that I'd "changed," but every bit of my change had been for him. He loved Chloe's "pure, striving spirit," but that pure, striving girl had once been me.

It wasn't that he couldn't set down his pride.

It was only that the person worth setting it down for wasn't me.

He'd give up everything for Chloe, even rebuild himself into another man. For me he had never gone public, not once.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I reached up and unhooked the pearl earring, the token he'd given me when we first fell in love.

I dropped it in the trash without a second of hesitation.