“I’m going to head out,” I announce, feeling like an interloper on their moment. “You and Bennett need your time together and to go see little Callan.”
Katy’s head twists to me. “Thank you, Brae. I have no words beyond that but thank you so freaking much.”
“I’d say anytime, but let’s not do this again.”
I get a watery smile from her.
“Do you want me to let people know for you?”
I get a nod from both Bennett and Katy and that’s that.
I walk myself out of the OR. Bennett is here and Baby Callan is doing okay and so is Katy. But fuck was that scary. As ridiculous as this sounds, I want to get to the fight, watch Roman beat whomever he’s hopefully going to beat, maybehave a glass of wine or eight, then go home, snuggle in bed, have hot sex, and sleep this shift and day away.
I text everyone I can think of, all of Katy’s closest friends and even my Fritz people since Katy is technically a Fritz, to let them know what happened tonight. I think about how they named their baby after her uncle, who took her in when she lost her parents, and wonder how Roman would feel about naming a baby Nash when—if—we ever have one.
It’s so odd to me to even think that way. I never did with Adam. I never thought about our children, which in retrospect, maybe is an odd thing. I was going to marry him. Kids, if you want them, sort of goes with that. But it didn’t with Adam, and it is with Roman, so there you have it.
I head down to the ER and finish out my shift, answering questions about Katy and Bennett and Baby Callan. I check in on Katy and Bennett in the NICU, and everyone seems to be about as good as they can be. When my shift is finally over, I grab my stuff from the locker room. I want to go home, shower, and eat something before I need to go to Roman’s fight. Except I’m met with the last person I ever thought I’d see here.
I come to a halt, my eyes wide and my blood cold. “What are you doing here?”
34
BRAELYN
My heart pumps faster as I take in the lines of Anne Sharpe standing in the hall of the patient area outside the women’s locker room. It’s just past change of shift, the night nurses and doctors are hard at work, and the day staff are already gone. But all that means is that no one is back in this part of the floor.
Except for us.
“How did you get back here?” I press since she didn’t answer my first question.
“I requested you as my nurse, but they told me you were busy with other patients.” She gives me a disdainful once-over. “You don’t look busy.”
I swallow thickly. “I’m off for the night now. And you shouldn’t be over here.”
She makes a sardonic noise. “What is it with you medical people always wanting to kick patients and their loved ones out? I got discharged to follow up with a cardiologist. This hospital is such a waste of time. I could have died. I could be having a heart attack right now.”
“Except you’re not, so how about you tell me why you’re here?”
She shrugs, pushing her blonde hair back over her shoulder. “I told them I was having chest pains.” She takes a step toward me. “That gets you in the door quickly. Whether they keep you here or kill you is another matter.”
“Are you here for me?”
“Yes,” she answers, her tone neutral. Almost conversational. But her eyes tell a different story. Reflexively, I take a step back toward the locker room.
She doesn’t seem to care about my uneasiness. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
The way she’s saying that I know she’s not talking about how I found her faking her orgasm on top of my ex-fiancé.
She takes my moment of hesitation and continues. “I think that’s part of what’s so frustrating for me about you. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to catch your attention. To you, he was just another patient, and I was simply the wife. To me, you’re the monster who said my husband was going to die minutes before he did. It was like you knew it was going to happen and made it so. You’re the angel of death.”
I blink at her, studying her face, and it comes racing back to me. The dreams I’ve been having. The feeling I haven’t been able to shake. It was her who triggered it. I knew she looked familiar when I saw her with Adam, but I was a bit too preoccupied at the time to try to place it. When she showed up in Vegas, I never saw her face. She talked to Roman, and that was that. But perhaps subconsciously, I recognized it was the same woman. Who knows.
“Your husband was a patient here a year ago, Christmas. He had a heart attack. He was only thirty-four.”
“Thirty-three,” she corrects, her posture so still it’s eerie. “Do you remember his name?”
“I don’t,” I admit. “I’m sorry.”