Chapter 2

Sam

“You're sure that’s the one?”

My gaze trailed Lainey Carmichael's back from head-to-heels. That familiar, curly ponytail swung as she walked over to the rubber mats. Her profile reflected in the mirrors was as familiar as my own. Pouty lips, cheekbones sprinkled with freckles. The tick in her jaw from clenching her teeth.

Oh, yes. “That’s the one.”

She smiled at a guy in a red shirt as she plopped down to stretch. They struck up a conversation. It never ceased to amaze me how comfortable Lainey was talking to strangers. Even when I knew she wanted to punch something (like me, right now), she still managed to work a room without breaking a sweat. It was one of the things that had first drawn me to her. Years later, watching her shine still hadn't gotten old.

Beside me, Will cursed. “I was really hoping.”

“Hmm.” I dragged my attention away from Lainey to frown at him. “And how many Lainey Carmichaels do you think work in my department?”

“I don’t know, man. Stranger things have happened.” Will and I both turned to sneak a glance at where Lainey was rolling her shoulders, mixing among the handful of people ambitious enough to make it to the gym at six a.m. on a Saturday morning. “Well, I’ll back off.”

I grimaced. Conner and I had given him shit for weeks when he’d started talking about a new member at the gym who had caught his eye. Even with his policy not to mix business with pleasure, he’d seemed interested enough to make an exception with Lainey. Once he’d learned she worked at Cedar, he’d begged me to come see if it was my Lainey. Just in case.

Well, case closed. She was. But that didn’t mean I had any claim on her. “Dibs is for the last slice of pizza, William.” Not for people, and definitely not for her.

“Sam.” My brother lowered his voice and leveled a penetrating stare in my direction. “You’ve been in love with her for years. I'm not going after her.”

I shrugged, even though my stomach pitched at the idea of Will “going after” Lainey. Where I was quiet enough to cross the line into awkward, Will had personality in spades. Everyone loved him. If he set his sights on her, it would be game over for me. Not that the game had ever really gotten started to begin with.

“I’ve hardly even spoken to her outside of work. She doesn’t know...” that I’d already named our hypothetical future children. All three of them.

Will waved a hand in the air. “Doesn’t matter, bro. I’m not going after your girl. You’ve been mooning over her for long enough that she’s practically already a member of the family.”

“You make me sound like a loser,” I muttered, bending to retrieve the towel and water bottle from my bag. Yes, maybe I’d been aware of—even attracted to—Lainey for a long time. But my brother didn’t have to make it sound like I was pining after her.

“Not a loser. Can’t date residents or fellows. I get that.” Will gave me a sideways look. “Might be for the best right now. She didn’t seem happy to see you.”

“She’s not.” Lainey hadn’t outright glared at me when she’d walked in, but the smile had slipped right off her face. In Lainey’s world, that was as good as a middle finger. Yeah, I’d known she’d be pissed about me sending her to Jones, but she hadn’t been in the mood to listen to me, anyway. And the EVLP wasn’t even my gig. I was just the messenger.

“What’d you do?” Will waved at a few stragglers jogging in before the class started.

“Gave her some work she won’t enjoy. Had to pull her off a big surgery.”

“Seems like you should apologize. Something like, ‘Hey, sorry about that thing. But I see your face in my dreams and I want to build you a house like in The Notebook and fill it with our babies.’”

“William—”

“Besides, isn’t her program almost done? Surely this close to the finish line, the attending/fellow dating rule doesn’t apply.”

Yes, in fact, her program was almost done. Only two months and she’d be fair game. We had two open attending roles and one of them was practically hers for the taking. Then, once she had settled into her new job, maybe I would start thinking about ways to work The Notebook into our conversations. If she ever let me speak to her again.

“A few weeks won’t matter, bro. Ask her out.” Will clapped me on the back, then turned to the rest of the room. “Hey! Let’s have some fun today. Not many people brave the elements this early on a Saturday, so let’s make it count!” Will called to the five other attendees for today’s class.

“Let’s start on the bags for a treat. Pair off for me, Lainey and Sam, Erica and John…”

I carefully schooled my face to stop from glowering at my brother. Lainey’s expression turned sour for a heartbeat before she rose from the floor and stationed herself by a bag. She paid unnecessarily close attention as Will explained the warm up—a simple kick box combo that we’d switch back and forth. She fiddled with her hair and tied her shoe. Frowned down at her gloves as she pulled them on. Anything to avoid looking at me.

Finally, when she took a test punch at the bag, I stepped forward to stabilize it. My face was only a few inches from her fist. She couldn’t avoid me now.

“You’re mad.”

Punch, punch, kick. “No.”

I sighed, watching her execute a near-perfect combo again. “You’re upset about the EVLP.”

“I’d prefer”— kick —“not to speak about work things”— punch —“while I’m not at work.” Punch.

“Switch!” Will called. Lainey shook her hands out and took her spot behind the bag. I lobbed a few punches at it.

“It might help if you didn’t consider me your attending right now,” I offered. She laughed out loud. Yeah, right. I threw a few more combinations at the bag as she watched my feet in silence.

“Switch!”

She moved to the front and paused, swiping a small curl off her forehead. Some hairs had gotten stuck in her long, brown eyelashes. I held my breath, but she threw another punch without saying a word. Again, and again, and again. After a few rounds of that quiet, focused repetition, she started laying down a real beating. The next kick to the bag would have sent me staggering to the side if I hadn’t readjusted my hold.

“Aim a little higher. You can pretend it’s my head.”

A huff of laughter burst out of her lips even as she scowled. I wanted to make her angry-laugh until the day I died.

“I don’t…want to kick you…” she panted, throwing more combinations and mixing in a few new kicks, too. Sweat shone on her forehead, her cheeks glowing from the exertion.

“Arguable,” I muttered when her sneaker landed mere centimeters from my nose. Another huff, then more silence.

“Switch!”

Something about making her laugh made me bold. “Take my turn. You have more aggression to work out.”

“Reese…” she hissed, pacing away with her hands on her hips. She grimaced before throwing a few more punches.

“I’m sorry about the EVLP. And Jones,” I started once she got back into a rhythm. She cut me off before I could get any momentum going on a real apology.

“Jones is a buttface.”

I wasn’t going to touch that one. Jones was an entitled brat, but it didn’t mean he was a bad doctor. “I just went through this same thing with him a few months ago. Surgery isn’t always the answer. Check out his notes and you’ll see for yourself.”

I stumbled when she slammed a kick into the side of the bag. Her roundhouse made me want to fall to my knees and weep. Gorgeous.

“You could have”— punch —“just told me”— punch —“that.” Kick.

“You’d just have gone to Cooper.”

She scowled again, which told me I’d hit on the truth. The guy would have approved her surgery in a heartbeat. “A bypass might feel like the right move now, but it won’t fix the underlying issue.”

“Switch!”

We ignored my brother’s command. Lainey aimed a halfhearted jab at the bag. “Okay, maybe…you’re right.”

I’m not sure what my face betrayed, but I was exactly right and we both knew it. Her scowl deepened. I wanted to trace the little lines between her brows with my finger.

“Fine. But”— punch, punch, punch, punch —“my freaking EVLP?!”

“Orders from above. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“You’re practically in charge of the fellowship program. You could have pushed back.” She wouldn’t be glaring at me so much if she knew just how much I’d pushed back on that mandate from the board.

Jones’ grandfather had pitched an everloving fit when he noticed Lainey got better surgical cases than his grandson did, and he’d put Lainey directly in his sights. After sitting through his winding, half-hearted speech about equal learning opportunities, I’d kicked up enough of a racket that the director of the program had pulled me aside.

“Your points are valid, Reese. We can’t let the quality board choose the people in the room with the patients. We can’t do anything about it now. Let me handle the next one. ”

It was nice to know the director had my back. But that didn’t do shit to help Lainey now.

“I was integral”— punch —“to that”— punch —“case. And you humiliated me”— punch —“with frickin’ Jones.” Kick.

“I tried to get them to change their mind. When that didn’t work, I got you a quad bypass. It won’t be a walk in the park. And Jones isn’t half bad, either,” I offered. She didn’t even deign to look at me, scowl or not. And I hated that. “Come on, Carmichael. Don’t get a God complex on me now.”

She wasn’t. She wouldn’t. She was a helluva doctor. I’d gotten about four requests for her to assist with surgeries next week within hours of the EVLP clearing from her calendar. The bypass had been the most complicated, the only bone I could throw to her.

She paced away again, resting her gloved hands on her head. That little curl had escaped again. Will strolled into my line of sight and gave me a what is happening here? look. I ignored him, as I did, often.

“I am sorry that I compared you to oatmeal. It was unkind and I regret it. It was undeserved.”

“Excuse me?” I wasn’t sure what threw me most: that she’d chosen this moment to make eye contact with me for the first time all morning, or the words she’d blurted. “Oatmeal?”

She swallowed, eyes round. Contrite. “I was angry yesterday. And I compared you to oatmeal, which is inexcusable and unprofessional. So I apologize.”

“For…comparing me to oatmeal?”

“Switch!”

“Yes. Kind of, you know…bland.” She had the decency to look away as she said this. All the better, because she’d just roundhouse-kicked me right in the proverbial nuts.

“Ouch.” Bland. It was just another word for boring. Or shy or uninteresting. Things that people had been calling me my whole life. It rarely bothered me anymore. I knew I wasn’t oatmeal, so to speak. But I’d hoped that maybe Lainey, who I’d worked with for several years, might have seen that, too. “Are the residents going to give me a new nickname now?"

Her shoulders bunched up to her ears. “No, I only said it to Rija. I was just venting. Listen, I’m really sorry. But this is maybe the longest actual conversation we’ve ever had with each other, like, ever. And I’m realizing just now that I haven’t given you enough credit. I tend to be fairly single-minded.”

I already knew that. Sometimes I shuffled a little closer to her in the OR just to make sure she was still breathing. She got so caught up in the procedure she nearly forgot about basic vital functions. “Single-minded” was putting it lightly.

“But you’re being really honest and you’re right. You’re right about all of it, with Jones and the collaborating and all the things. Insulting you is childish and if you’re being honest, I will be honest, too.” She bit her lip, looking up at me. “Again, I’m sorry. I hope this doesn’t affect our working relationship.”

“Break! Sam, you decide you’re not participating today?” I held my hand up to Will. I didn’t want him intruding on whatever was happening in this moment with Lainey. Oatmeal aside, she was standing there with her hip cocked, staring right at me. And something about it felt new. She’d looked at me almost every day for the past three years, but right now, right this second, was the first time she’d ever seen me.

“Oatmeal is pretty brutal.”

She hid her face in the gloves. “I know. I’m so sorry. I really hope we can move past this. I wasn’t myself yesterday.”

So many things ran through my head, mostly some variation of “you can make it up to me over drinks later.” But I wasn’t that guy. Never had been.

“I’ll forget the oatmeal if you don’t hold the EVLP against me.”

“Deal,” she answered without hesitation, which made me smile. I stuck my glove out for her to tap. She smiled, too. Her eyes sparkled and despite never being that guy, something about this moment felt pretty ideal. I opened my mouth to say…I don’t know. How beautiful she was or how her sutures were impeccable and that made me want to buy her flowers on a weekly basis, or that she was warm and kind and everything I wanted in my life. Or maybe just to ask her to grab that drink with me.

“Sammy, what the hell? Burpees, dude. Now. Not even my big brother gets to slack off during warmup.” Will punched me in the shoulder hard enough to hurt, pointing to the mats in the other corner like he was sending a puppy to its crate.

“William—”

“No excuses. You’ve taken enough of the good doctor’s time. And you”—he turned to Lainey, giving me his back—“gorgeous form. You done a lot of kickboxing before? Tell me about it while you’re on the battle ropes.”

I wanted to wrangle my brother into a headlock, but Lainey shot a smile at me from over her shoulder. It didn’t matter how many burpees I did, I still felt lighter than I had in ages.