He took a step toward her, then stopped himself. He’d just lost any headway he might have made tonight. Nothing he said would change anything, and he couldn’t tell her about Allison, not yet.
Breaking boundaries and tearing down walls couldn’t be done in a day, including his own.
IT ONLY TOOK FIVE MINUTES to arrive at the familiar brownstone off Broadway in northern Manhattan. Five minutes of dread. Regret. Guilt. He wished it had taken longer.
He stepped out of the cab and slid on his sports coat, then made his way up the small walkway to her front stoop.
At one time, this place felt like home. Not anymore. That was another lifetime.
His stomach roiled as he rang the doorbell and waited. The sound of footsteps grew closer, followed by the click of the lock. The door swung open, and he stood face-to-face with a woman he once loved. The woman he was supposed to marry.
“Allison.” His voice rattled in the brisk air.
She offered him a saccharine smile in response and waved him inside.
He entered with a tentative step. Familiarity swept over him. Little had changed in the space throughout the years they had been apart.
“Can I get you a drink?” Allison stopped by the wet bar and lifted a decanter of an amber-colored liquid.
“No, thanks,” he said as she poured some for herself into a fresh glass. But she wasn’t fooling him. By the smell of it, this wasn’t her first drink. Nor would it be her last.
“You never were much fun,” she said with a laugh.
The insult rolled off his back. There were a million cutting remarks he could throw back, but bitterness and anger were exhausting. He had learned a long time ago to let go of both.
“How about some dinner? Are you hungry?” she asked, taking a sip from the tumbler. The ice rattled in her glass, grating on his nerves.
“No, I was actually at dinner when you asked me to stop by. You said it was urgent.”
“You were on a date?”
Logan swiped a hand through his hair, uncomfortable with the trajectory of her questions. “Something like that.”
“With that girl from PopNewz?”
So she had read the papers.
Logan assessed her interest with caution. “It’s . . . new.”
Allison curled her lip in disgust, then turned away from him. Making her way to the sofa, she sank down into the soft brown cushions, staring intently at the contents of her glass.
He gave her a minute. It was clear she was collecting her thoughts.
A moment later, she lifted her amber eyes. “Did you forget?”
“No,” he rasped. He didn’t forget. Forgetting would be a blessing. He wished he could. Then maybe he could get through a single day without this weight on his chest holding him down.
Instead, he simply chose to cover it up in the hopes it would remain hidden. There was a huge difference between ignoring something and forgetting it.
“It’s only two weeks away,” she added.
“I know.” Logan swallowed. It was barely three years ago—at the midpoint of his residency. The one where he helped deliver her child—still, lifeless, blue—his first patient lost.
“What do you think she would look like?” Tears filled her eyes. The pain darkened the amber of her eyes to molasses, and his stomach lurched.
“Like you.”
She stared a moment longer, her throat bobbing with emotion before she swallowed it down, then blinked. And just like that, she tucked it away.