It’s just sex.
It’s just comfort.
It’s all lies.
Because I had sat at his bedside while he slept. I had brushed his hair back from his face like he couldbelongto me. I had held his face while he learned, in real time, that part of his body was gone forever.
That wasn’tcasual.
That wasn’tpretend.
That was the type of intimacy you didn’t get to shrug off later.
I squeezed my eyes tight, fighting off the memories of the night, but the images crowded in any way. My chest ached, and I hated how much I wanted to go back in there. To ignore the nurse. To ignore the rules. To put my hands back on him and pretend that was all that mattered.
A pair of nurses walked past, voices low, eyes flicking towards me for just a second too long. I could see the acknowledgement ofthisin their eyes.
I felt heat rise to my cheeks.
They see it. Maybe not the complete story. But enough. Enough to know this wasn’t just a colleague's concern. Enough to know I was too close.
I straightened slowly, forcing myself back to my feet. Squared my shoulders, smoothed Desmond’s old sweatshirt like I might be able to smooth out the mess inside me with the same motion.
Get it together, Volkov.That was what I told myself in a hundred different ways.
Doctor. Professional. Composed.
But my pulse wouldn’t slow.
My thoughts didn’t quiet.
Because behind all of it — behind the rules and the optics and the very real consequences — was one terrifying, undeniable truth:
If I lost him, it would break something irreparable in me.
And if I kept letting myself want him like this…
Something else was going to break instead.
Either way, there was no going back toeasy.
The door to the ICU room remained closed. And I forced myself to stay in the hallway. But every part of me was still in there with him.
Chapter 37
Desmond
The room felt wrong. Even in the pain medication haze, I noticed it before I could articulate why.
Something had shifted. The air was colder. The rhythm was off. The weight on my chest felt heavier, even though the monitors still beeped the same, and the machines still sighed, and the nurse still moved efficiently at my bedside.
She was gone.
Anya.
The realization came slow, thick with medication, but it landed all the same.
My head felt stuffed with cotton. Thoughts floated instead of marching. Time slipped sideways. But my body noticed her absence instantly, as if I had calibrated myself to her presence and was now reporting a malfunction.