“I’ll be right there,” I mutter, smoothing down my scrubs. “Dr. Langford, you need anything else before I grab the ear drops?”
“Nope.”
I finish up with Charlie, pressing one last kiss to his nose because he’s earned it, and head for the lobby.
And then I see him.
I stop cold, the door bumping my shoulder as it swings back. I barely feel it—my attention is already locked on the figure in front of me.
Standing in the middle of our cramped, cluttered waiting room is a man who looks like he took a wrong turn on his way to a high-stakes poker table or a high-fashion photoshoot—or maybe both. He’s holding a massive dog in his arms like it weighs nothing. Which is rude, frankly, because I know that dog weighsa lot.
He’s tall, broad-shouldered, and too intense for a place that smells like peanut butter treats and flea shampoo.
His black baseball cap is on backward, dark hair curling at the edges. The T-shirt he’s wearing clings to his chest and arms,and I do meanclings. It hangs on for dear life over muscle that wasn’t handed down by genetics but carved out with grit and maybe a little rage.
But it’s the ink that catches me. His arms are sleeved in tattoos that aren’t the generic ones you point to on a wall at some shop off the highway. They trail all the way down to his wrists, curling around forearms and smoothing over veins and tension.
Then he lifts his head.
And sweet mercy.
Glacial blue eyes slice straight through me, sharp and searching and so achingly familiar. I swear the floor shifts beneath my feet. My mouth goes dry. My heart fumbles a beat. I forget how tobreathe.
I used to see those eyes across campfires and gym bleachers and from the passenger seat of a beat-up Chevy truck with broken AC. This isn’t just some tattooed stranger with a dog the size of a baby horse.
It’s Rowan Wolfe.
I saw him for the first time on a Tuesday afternoon before I knew his name, before I knew how deep he’d get under my skin.
Freshman year had just started, and I was the kind of girl who clutched her books like armor and triple-checked her class schedule. I’d gotten lost, again, and wandered too far past the science wing when I saw him leaning against a dented locker that never quite shut all the way.
He was flipping a pen through his fingers with this lazy rhythm, a bored kind of focus that made it look effortless. Hoodie too big, hair too long, shoes scuffed and unlaced. He looked like trouble in the kind of way that made your stomach flutter.
He didn’t look at first. But then he did.
Those eyes. Curious and unreadable all at once. He looked at me like I’d interrupted something important, even though he didn’t say a word. And something in me shifted.
I walked past him without a sound. But even then, part of my heart stayed behind.
Eventually, I’d find him watching me like I was something precious and dangerous. I used to memorize that look behind closed eyelids and whispered prayers that maybe, someday, he’d look at me like that on purpose.
Those eyes have crept into my dreams on restless nights, and worse, they’ve seeped into my waking thoughts, too. Everywhat if, everyalmost, every time I tried to give my heart to someone else, it felt like I was betraying a ghost.
I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can only stare at him, trying to force myself back together before I come apart in front of him. I spent my high school years loving him from afar, always holding onto the words I never had the courage to say, never feeling the warmth of his lips on mine, never knowing what it might’ve been like to have him see me the way I saw him.
“Rowan?” His name slips from my lips, barely more than a whisper.
God, he looks the same, and yet…completely different. Time has changed him, but somehow, I know him. My bones know him. My heart knows him. My memory, my pulse, and the ache I swore I buried all those years ago hasn’t forgotten a thing.
There are too many feelings trying to claw their way to the surface, and I’m not sure which one to deal with first. Relief floods me. Shock, too. The one that hits hardest, though, is the longing. So deep and raw it’s almost like grief.
Then there’s the anger, hot and bitter, curling in my chest, because he left. He disappeared without a word, leaving me with years of unanswered questions.
I spent six years wondering if he was okay. Now, here he is, standing in front of me like no time has passed at all.
He smirks.
And that smirk almost pulls the sob out of me before I can stop it.