by Parker, Ali
“For starters, you don’t work there.” My head titled back, my eyes closing. “Apparently, you weren’t there looking for me. There’s only one other reason you could have gone there, and that’s because you’re a client. There’s a rule about not getting involved with clients, and you’ve made me break it.”
Rylen didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to deny it in order for me to know it was true. I had been thinking about this for hours, and there were only so many options that made sense. A sob worked its way through me and despite my best efforts, a tear rolled from the corner of my eye.
“Fuck, Olive. What the hell is going on? If it’s the rule that’s bothering you, I’ll talk to them. It will be fine.” He sounded anguished now. When I opened my eyes and saw the emotion reflected in his, I came really close to wrapping my arms around him and comforting him. But I can’t do that. Maybe never again.
The thought tore the last few pieces of my heart that had been trying to cling together apart. There was now only a gaping hole where the organ used to be.
“I’ve already told you, I can’t be with someone who’s not honest with me. I also can’t be with you if you’re a client.”
“How am I not honest with you?” he asked, incredulity ringing in his tone. “We don’t know everything there is to know about the other yet, but isn’t that kind of the way relationships go? You start with the small stuff and work your way up to everything else.”
“Yeah.” I sniffled, managing a small smile. “Yeah, I guess that is how relationships go. You know what else happens in relationships, though? You get asked questions and if you can’t—or won’t answer them—that says something about who you are. If the other person doesn’t like who that is, they’re entitled to call it off.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” A deep crease appeared between his eyebrows. “Are you calling us off because of this or because of the rule thing?”
Taking in a deep, fortifying breath, I nodded. “Yes. I am, because of both of those things.”
“Why?” Confusion joined the pain in his eyes and his biceps bunched under his scrubs like he was actively fighting to keep his arms across his chest. “Don’t do this, Olive. Please don’t fuck up something great because of one thing that I have to keep to myself.”
“It’s one thing for now.” I sighed and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. “It will never stay just one thing, though.”
“What are you talking about?” Exasperation dripped from his voice. A big, warm hand closed gently over one of my wrists and pried my hand away from my eye. “Would you just look at me and tell me what the hell is going on? Yes, I was at your office. No, I can’t tell you why, but I am asking you to trust me. It’s one thing that I can’t tell you. I don’t understand where all of this shit is coming from. As for the client thing, I said I would talk to them.”
“It’s not shit.” I finally gave up trying to fight it and looked into his eyes, but what I saw there made the gaping hole throb painfully. “It’s not shit, Rylen. I’m telling you that I can’t be with you if you’re keeping things from me. It might only be the one thing now, but there is always more. I don’t want you to talk to them. I’m new at the firm and I like it there. I don’t want to jeopardize my job. It doesn’t matter anyway, because once people start keeping secrets, that’s it. The end of their relationship. It’s just the way it is.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” He gave my wrist a gentle squeeze. The pain I was in was causing my body to become numb. I hadn’t even realized he’d still been holding on to me until I felt the pressure of the squeeze. My eyes dropped to where we were joined and, after I glared at the point of contact for a few seconds, he let me go. “Come on, Olive. Please. You won’t lose your job; I’ll explain the situation to your bosses. We were together before I became a client. The secret doesn’t have anything to do with you. One day, I will tell you everything. That day just can’t be today.”
“By the time that day comes it will be too late.” Tears were leaking steadily from my eyes, but I didn’t bother wiping them away. One advantage of breaking up with a doctor at a hospital was that I could cry, because people would simply assume he was giving me bad news. No one would bother us.
In a way, I supposed that was exactly what he was doing. It just wasn’t the kind of bad news people in his profession regularly doled out in rooms just like this one.
At least there weren’t any other people in the waiting room with us, only people passing by. I didn’t know too much about the hospital, but as I had made my way toward the break room, where I knew Rylen and Edgar went for coffee after surgeries, I had noticed that it was rather isolated from the busy areas where the patients and their families were.
“If you have to keep secrets from me, I don’t want to be with you. I never want to be in that kind of relationship.” I tried sucking in a breath between the sobs, but the air wouldn’t fill my lungs all the way. “I vowed to myself that I would never be involved in a relationship like that. It was one of the big reasons why I avoided relationships, the messy drama. I told you that. Keeping secrets leads to the messiest drama there is, and now my job is on the line too. It’s just too messy.”
“I’m pretty sure cheating would qualify as the leading cause for the messiest relationship drama,” Rylen said dryly. “Will you just a take a breath here, babe? Please. I’m crazy about you. I took one fucking meeting with one fucking lawyer about something that doesn’t concern you. I didn’t cheat on you, didn’t hurt you, didn’t lie to you. I won’t let them take your job away from you. I’m sure if I explained things, they would understand. I don’t understand where this is coming from. Being pissed off at me about it is one thing, but breaking up with me?”
“I’m crazy about you, too, Rylen.” I felt a small, sad smile spreading on my lips, but the tears kept flowing. “But that doesn’t change my decision. I can’t be involved with a client and I won’t be involved with someone who keeps secrets. My parents kept secrets, a lot of them. I made myself one promise when I was a kid, and I’m not about to break it now. I won’t be involved in a relationship like theirs was, not ever.”
Pushing to my feet without looking at him for fear that I would change my mind if I did, I bit back another sob. “I’m sorry, Rylen. Don’t call me, okay? Goodbye.”
After that, I practically ran away from him. Again, a hospital seemed like a really convenient place for a public breakup. People reacted in all kinds of different ways in hospitals. They were a little like airports in that way: ordinary social rules and convention didn’t really apply.
A sobbing girl running for the exit didn’t even get more than a couple of looks, and even then, the looks that I got weren’t even puzzled. Everyone knew what it meant: in one way or another, I had just gotten my heart broken.
Maybe if they knew why my was heart was broken, I would have gotten a few puzzled looks. I was sure a lot people wouldn’t understand why I had broken up with him, maybe they would even think it was an overreaction on my part.
But those people hadn’t grown up in my house. They hadn’t seen the devastation that could be caused by secrets or how a family’s entire life could be ripped apart by them. I had been there, seen it, and promised myself that I would never put myself in that position. Not for anyone.
Personal issues set aside, there was also the unavoidable fact that he had gone to see a criminal lawyer. I didn’t know what he had done, but I knew the kinds of cases my bosses dealt with. Whatever Rylen had done, it couldn’t be good.
Chapter 33
Rylen
“What’s going on with you, man?” Edgar asked as we sat down in the outside section of the cafeteria and slid our trays onto the table we had chosen. “You’ve been looking like someone kicked your puppy ever since the other day when Olive came by.”
“Still don’t want to talk about it.” I climbed onto the bench and sat down, staring at the hamburger I had bought but didn’t feel like eating. “Let’s just get th
rough lunch so we can get back to work, okay?”
I felt Edgar’s dark eyes on me, questioning as they had been for days now. I wasn’t looking at him, but from the corner of my eye, I saw his jaw clench and his head shake. “No. Nope. No can do, sorry, buddy. I’ve been watching you mope for the better part of this week and I can’t do it anymore. What happened?”
I sighed, but I knew he wouldn’t leave it unless I told him. The truth was that I didn’t want to say the words out loud. A part of me still felt like everything that happened that day had been a dream, that after work tomorrow it would be the weekend and I would be spending it with Olive.
Saying the words out loud felt like it would cement the fact that I wouldn’t be spending the weekend—or any other time, for that matter—with her. My head still swam when I thought about what had happened on that day.
I had known it would be a risk to make an appointment at her office, but I’d needed legal advice and I had done some research on the firm after she’d told me where she would be working. They were the best of the best.
I set it up so that she wouldn’t be there. I hoped it would work and that she wouldn’t know I had been there at all. Unfortunately, life had a funny way of being the thing that happened when you were making other plans.
At worst, I figured she would be pissed if she found out I had been there. I never imagined she would kick me to the curb over it. Fuck.
I hadn’t known about the stupid rule about getting involved with clients. If I had, I would have sought the advice I needed elsewhere despite the firm’s reputation of being the best. She had told me time and again how much she was enjoying her new job; I never would have knowingly put it in jeopardy.
Deep down inside, I still thought that if she had let me explain the situation to her bosses, we could have found a way to stay together despite the rule. She hadn’t broken it on purpose, and I was sure they would have understood the situation I had unknowingly put us in.
In the end though, it hadn’t mattered. I was a client of her firm and knowingly or not, I had put her in breach of their rules.
Every time I even thought about being broken up with her, it was like someone was taking a blowtorch to my fucking heart. Speaking about it was going to be even more painful. I had no doubt that it would feel like taking that roasted, raw flesh and pulling it off layer by layer.
“You’ve been down for days now, Rylen. It’s not like you.” Edgar held his burger in his hands, but he hadn’t taken a bite of it yet. “I’m starting to get worried.”
And there it is. That magic sentence. Hospital policy dictated that if we were worried, like really worried, about one of our coworkers, we had to report it. I knew Edgar wasn’t trying to use that policy to make me talk, but he was warning me that he was that kind of worried about me.
It had been a hell of a week and even I could see why he would be thinking along the lines that he was. My streak still stood, but I had been snappy and irritable. I didn’t talk to anyone outside of what I was required to do, and I was caught up in my own head. All of these things were symptoms that could point to something far more dangerous than a breakup.
“Olive and I split up.” Saying the words was like gurgling with fucking acid. They hurt like a bitch. “I haven’t really wanted to talk about it because… Fuck.”
“Shit.” Edgar’s dark eyes became sympathetic and soft. “I know. You don’t have to explain it to me, man. Ripping off a Band-Aid is better, but it hurts like a fucking bitch.”
“That it does,” I agreed. “Especially if you didn’t see it coming.”
“Wait.” He lifted a finger from his burger. “Was that a breakup lasagna she brought you?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t know if it makes it better or worse that it was so fucking delicious.” Edgar sighed. “Guess we won’t be getting any more homemade food from her, huh?”
I shook my head. “I don’t see it happening. Sorry.”
Edgar had been raving about the lasagna all week. To me, it had tasted like cardboard. Just like everything else did that I had eaten since. It was weird how emotional pain could affect your entire body, even your taste buds. There was actual science behind it too.
I didn’t really want to think about what the science was, though, since that would mean acknowledging things I was trying my best to keep buried. Work didn’t seem like a good place to finally unearth them.
Edgar leaned back in his chair, setting his burger down. I hadn’t so much as touched mine yet. “What happened? I thought you guys were in that moonbeams-and-roses phase.”
“We were.” And I fucking loved every sappy second of it.
“So?” he prompted, lifting his eyebrows. “What went wrong?”
I shrugged, pressing my lips into a thin line. I had heard what Olive had said, but I was still struggling to accept it. Totally in denial.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to make sense of the mess in my head so I could explain it to Edgar. “Have you ever had to hide something from someone you care about?”
His dark eyes widened. “Ah. I see. But yes, I have.”
“How did it work out for you?” It was a stupid question since I knew Edgar’s relationship status was “single and ready to mingle,” but I still wanted to know the answer.
He shrugged, giving me a pointed look. “I think you know the answer to that. There’s a reason why I was so against you getting into a relationship.”
“You knew I was going to have to hide something from her?” I tried to joke, but it fell flat.
Edgar smiled anyway, but it was a sad smile. “Maybe not, but I knew you shouldn’t have made her your girlfriend. This is what I was trying to tell you and warn you away from. Breakups fucking suck.”
“Yeah, they do.” It had been some time since I’d been through a breakup and an even longer time since I’d been the one to get broken up with, but I didn’t remember it hurting this badly. This felt like I was being flayed alive. “I was totally blindsided, man. I really didn’t think she would dump me over this.”
“Girls are big on honesty.” He lifted his shoulders, flashing me a half smile. “Anything they perceive as being a lie is a big no-no.”
“Yeah, but—”
He cut me off by slashing a hand through the air. “That’s just the thing, there are no buts. Zero. You might not even think you were lying to her, but you were. Keeping shit from them counts as lying.”
“I don’t see it that way.” For fuck’s sakes, part of the reason I was doing this was for Olive. Not telling her was for her own protection, but I knew she wouldn’t believe me if I’d told her that. I could see it from the derision in her expression when she asked me if that was the part where I told her it was for her own good.
This really fucking was for her own good, though. If I told her, there could be serious consequences for her. I knew accepting those consequences should have been her choice, but I couldn’t put her in that kind of danger, so I made the choice for her. Ultimately, I supposed that in doing so, I had made the choice to break us up, even if I hadn’t realized it at the time.
If I added the broken rule on top of everything else, I really only had myself to blame for this. It sucked, and it fucking hurt to know. Especially since I didn’t know how to fix it.
“I didn’t see it either,” Edgar said, his face more serious than I had seen it in a long time. “But that’s the way it goes. If you have to keep something from someone, it’s probably best you’re not with them anyway, right?”
“No, that can’t be right.” Nothing about being away from Olive felt right to me. In fact, everything about it felt very, very wrong. I woke up at night looking for her, only to have to relive the big breakup every time.
When I opened my eyes in the morning, there was that one moment of reprieve where I still thought of her with a smile on my face. Then reality would come slapping it right the fuck off. Not fun.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Edgar.” It had onl
y been about a week, but I was still lost.
It was weird how Olive had embedded herself so deeply in my life and in my heart in such a short amount of time, but she had. Removing her from it felt like a surgery so delicate even I wouldn’t be able to perform it.
“You’re going to take it one day at a time,” he said, picking up his burger again. “One day, you’re going to wake up and realize that it’s better this way. Relationships are hard and they never end well. It won’t be today, but someday you’ll realize that I’m right.”
I nodded, but I didn’t agree. Despite the pain I was in and the hell I had been through this last week, I still believed that relationships could end well. Yep, total and complete denial.
Sighing, I picked up my own hamburger and ate with a vigor I didn’t feel. It tasted like nothing, just as I’d expected.
Edgar didn’t mention Olive or the breakup again for the remainder of our lunch. He told me about random things, presumably as a distraction. We talked about his boat and a girl he had met at the marina, the surgeries we had left to do that day, and other stuff that had nothing to do with Olive.
The distraction was welcomed, but it didn’t take the burning pain in my chest away. Only Olive would be able to do that, and it seemed highly unlikely that she would be interested in doing it for me anytime soon. My own fucking fault.
By the time we were done with lunch, we had to go scrub in for our next surgery. Edgar begged off after we’d thrown away our trash, mentioning something about having to meet up with another nurse to finalize a prank on someone.
I smiled and let him go, hoping the person they were pranking wasn’t me. My sense of humor seemed to have checked out.
My phone buzzed in the pocket of my scrubs, and the name I saw reflected on my screen banished whatever humor might have been trying to creep back in as a result of my lunch with Edgar.