Chapter 8 – Smoke and Mirrors

Dr. Cole

The charts are supposed to calm me.

Stacked neatly on my desk, patient histories, lab slips, and scribbled notes—order in paper form. Normally I like the ritual of working through them at home, a glass of scotch at my elbow, my dog‑eared pharmacology texts within reach.

Tonight, it’s not working.

Because wedged between two folders is the biohazard bag.

I don’t even realize it until I lift the next chart and the plastic crackles, the little red symbol staring up at me like an accusation.

For a heartbeat I just sit there, staring at it.

Then I peel it open.

The pantyhose slide out into my hands, soft and sheer, still holding the faint shape of legs. Her legs.

Elizabeth Monroe.

Miss Monroe.

I roll them between my fingers without thinking. The fabric is weightless, like smoke. My chest tightens.

Do they still smell like her?

I bring one leg to my nose, quick and almost innocent. Just a trace of perfume, soap, and something warmer I can’t quite name.

My pulse stutters.

I know what she smells like.

Having been between her thighs, gloves on, speculum in, I know the real scent of her skin. Intoxicating. Clean but rich. The kind of scent that lingers in your memory for no goddamn reason.

“No,” I mutter to myself. “Don’t be a pervert.”

I should stop. Fold them. Put them back in the bag. Bring them to the office tomorrow, pretend I never saw them.

Instead, my fingers find the gusset.

My nose is there before I can talk myself out of it.

The scent hits me—faint but unmistakable.

My cock twitches so hard it hurts.

“Fuck,” I hiss, dropping the fabric onto the desk like it burned me. I scrub both hands over my face, dragging my palms down until they cover my mouth.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

I’ve been doing this job for over twenty years. I’ve seen everything, heard everything. I’m careful. Professional. Controlled.

But this girl—this woman—has me twisted up like an intern with his first crush.

I stand, pacing the office, trying to shake it off. The pantyhose lie in the middle of my desk like a crime scene. My body is still hard, my brain still full of her.

I need to get her out of my head.

Now.

My eyes land on the top shelf of my closet, where a small black box sits tucked between two binders. I reach for it, pop the lid, and pull out the mask.

Full black. Sleek. Rabbit ears.

Originally bought for a very different kind of night.

I heard one of my patients telling the nurse about a new club—Masquerade. No names, no faces, everyone masked. Anonymity wrapped in velvet and bass.

Perfect.

I pull on a crisp black shirt and leave the top buttons undone. Dark jeans. Boots. Cologne. The mask slides easily into my jacket pocket, smooth leather against my palm.

One last glance at the pantyhose on my desk.

Then I kill the lights and walk out.

Tonight, I’m not Dr. Stacy Cole.

Tonight, I’m no one.

⸻

The club pulsed like a living thing.

Outside, the line curled down the block—women in lace masks and stilettos, men in sleek suits and black velvet hoods. Inside, it was dark and feral, drenched in red light and sex. Music thrummed low and liquid, vibrating through my ribs like a second heartbeat.

I flashed a borrowed invitation card—perks of overhearing too much at work—and the doorman waved me through.

No questions. No names.

Just the mask.

I pulled it on as I stepped past the threshold. The familiar slip of leather over my face was grounding, even with the absurd ears. People didn’t look twice. Not here.

Good.

I didn’t want to be seen.

I just wanted to forget.

I headed for the bar, easing into the shadows just left of center, letting the bass swallow me whole. Ordered a whiskey. Neat. No conversation.

Then I saw her.

At the far end of the bar, halfway turned from me, laughing as she sipped something electric pink. Her mask was gold filigree—intricate and feminine—but her profile was unmistakable.

Elizabeth.

God, she looked unreal.

Hair pinned up in soft waves, a few curls clinging to the nape of her neck like whispers. A short dress that shimmered like oil when she moved. Legs that looked longer than they actually were in those heels—giving her five foot three frame the illusion of height.

She looked younger here. Freer.

Like she wasn’t anyone’s patient.

And for a moment, I let myself forget that she was.

She hadn’t seen me. But I didn’t approach. I just… watched.

She danced her fingers along the rim of her glass, twisting her hips slightly to the rhythm. When her friend leaned in to say something, she tilted her head back and laughed—mouth open, carefree, radiant.

It hit me like a punch to the chest.

I could leave. Should leave.

But I didn’t.

She slid off her barstool, and the friend tugged her toward the dance floor.

I followed.

From a distance at first, through the maze of bodies and smoke. The lights stuttered—red, gold, blue—and then there she was again, right in the center.

Dancing like sin.

Like summer.

Like she belonged to the night.

I stood at the edge for too long, gripping the back of my neck, trying to breathe through it.

And then she turned, and our eyes met.

Or I thought they did.

She couldn’t see me. Not really. Everyone wore masks. But something in the tilt of her head made me certain.

Recognition.

Not of me. Just of energy.

Something primal.

Her hips moved like an invitation.

Fuck.

My body moved before my conscience could stop it.

I stepped forward—closer. Her back turned. I found her rhythm. My hands skimmed her hips, featherlight at first. She didn’t stop me.

She leaned back.

Into me.

Her ass pressed to my pelvis. Her hair brushing my throat.

My hands slid down to her thighs. Not groping—anchoring. Holding her dress in place.

Because if I didn’t, it was going to ride up. She had no idea how much she was giving away.

She ground against me and I bit back a groan.

Her hand reached behind her, testing me. She wasn’t even looking. Just… feeling. Exploring.

And then—

Her fingers closed around my cock.

Through my jeans, yes. But it didn’t matter.

The jolt was instant.

My body lit up like a live wire.

But her fingers were sloppy. Too eager.

Too drunk.

I shifted my stance just enough to break the contact.

Then leaned down and said low into her friend’s ear, “She needs water. And maybe to go home.”

The redhead blinked up at me. Sharp. Sober. Protective.

Good.

She nodded once and grabbed Elizabeth’s arm.

They were gone a minute later. Swept out of the crowd, heading toward the exit.

I stood there like a fucking statue.

Hard as a rock.

Mind spinning.

Mask hot against my face.

I didn’t follow.

But I knew I’d see her again.

Because I wasn’t going to be able to stay away.

Not anymore.

Early mornings belong to the gym. It’s where I go to make sense of the noise.

Five a.m. has been my ‘me time’ for thirty years. The city is still half-asleep, the air outside the window tasting of iron and potential.

Inside the little box of clanking metal and mirrors, there’s a ritual: coffee black, warm-up stretches, measured sets, breath on a cadence. It keeps everything predictable. It keeps me predictable. It’s how I hold the rest of my life together.

I’m on the treadmill when I see them — the same faces, the same scant smiles. A couple of young women from Pilates flirt at the free weights; they know me, I know them, we trade the harmless banter of people who pass each other’s glossy perimeters. I would usually give them something back — a lifted brow, a joke, a compliment. It’s part of how I disarm my loneliness without letting it in.

Today the banter lands like confetti on stone.

Because my eyes keep finding a different curve, a different line. The memory claws at me, vivid and embarrassing: Masquerade, the bass, the gold filigree mask. Her back turned to me, her hair catching the strobe. Her hips moving like she could pull the moon closer by sin.

She’d ground herself on me — right then and there, between strangers and strobe light. She’d grabbed me, both hands, as if she’d been waiting all night to find something to hold onto.

I should have left that memory at the club. Should have let it be an odd, anonymous diversion — a single night’s electricity with a stranger I would never see again.

But she wasn’t a stranger.

She was Mrs. My-Chart-Notes, a name in my schedule, a file in my drawer. She was Miss Monroe.

That changed everything and it changes everything still.

On the squat rack I go deeper, the burn letting me think in simpler units — rep, breath, release. The smaller women at the rack laugh and ask me what my secret is, and I mouth something about discipline, about moderation. They don’t see the part of me that’s not discipline at all, the part that reels at the memory of her hand where it shouldn’t have been. I could have taken it further. I could have stepped in and seized the moment. God knows I could have.

And I didn’t.

That should be the end of the list of reasons to be proud: restraint. Ethics. Common decency.

Instead, it sits there like a bruise. I could have had her, easily. The thought is stupidly, ruinously flattering and then immediately filthy. I clamp the thought down every time it tries to bloom.

She’d been too drunk to consent. That fact—unambiguous, clean and sharp—knifes through me. The right thing to do in that situation is not a question. It’s an obligation. I told her friend she needed water. I told her friend to take her home. I didn’t take advantage. I didn’t follow.

I feel the pride in that decision like an aching splinter. Some small professional self congratulates me. A larger, baser part of me hates that the same choice leaves me haunted. Because restraint doesn’t cure desire; it just rubs it raw.

Between sets, I stare at my reflection like it will offer counsel. Salt-and-pepper hair. Lines at the corners of my eyes earned by years of squinting into sun and hospital lights. The jaw I keep rigid against feeling. A man who has spent a lifetime teaching other people to keep their boundaries has his own that are suddenly porous.

I wonder about her life beyond my office. About nights that aren’t mine but that end up on my schedule because she shows up in my exam room. Does she go out like that often? Is this a pattern? I know the cynical part of myself — the part that reads charts and picks up silence in someone’s social history — and it begins to stitch conjecture together. If she does change partners frequently, if she leaves multiple men in the wake of a weekend, she’ll be in for more tests. I’ll see it in the lab slips and the follow-ups. I can already imagine the neat columns: date, result, repeat. Again. Again.

Part of me bristles at the thought — as if the behavior I’m imagining is a failing she can correct — and part of me feels a prickle of misguided ownership. It’s ugly. Self-aware, I tell myself. Horribly human, in the worst way.

The barbell climbs and drops. My breath steadies. I force myself back to ordinary things — charts to sign, a call with the nurse, a meeting with a representative about new screening protocols. Tasks. Small, finite things I can finish.

But the gym has a way of letting the rest of your life seep in between plates and pulleys. I find myself wondering what she smelled like again, replaying the soft scrape of fabric from the exam room, the way I had to douse the clinical sheen with professional distance. I think of the pantyhose in the biohazard bag, the ridiculous intimacy of holding them and then folding them away like contraband. I think of the way she laughed at the bar, the tilt of her head when she didn’t know she was seen.

I am a doctor. I am a man. I am tired. Those three facts orbit each other in a taut, uncomfortable triangle.

When I shower later, the water doesn’t wash it away. Muscle, steam, towel — discipline through movement. I get dressed in pressed shirts and the armor of cologne and a clean-shaven certainty that I can be in control at least until the next time her name appears on my day’s list.

I have a patient roster to keep, and a code of conduct that is an actual line on which everything else depends. I have to respect it. I do respect it. Even while my skin remembers what hers felt like under gloves and my head fills with questions about her nights outside my exam lamp.

I tell myself I’ll put the thought away. That I’ll return the pantyhose to the office in the morning and stop letting her be a private, warm torment in my head.

But restraint does not mean absence. It only means I’m still here, still human, still watching.

And somewhere between the treadmill and the elevator, the memory feels less like regret and more like gravity.