Hush (Just This Once 1)

My mind has been reeling since he drove away. I didn’t go into the building that I saw Chloe enter. I couldn’t. I’m the fucked up reason her husband left her. He goddamn left her the night her mother died.

I need the big picture before I can go to her and confess that I’m the guy who told her husband to look out for himself and leave her.

The conversation I had with him has always stayed with me.

He was alone in the chapel when I walked in. I sat next to him because he looked like he could use a shoulder and I needed one.

Solace can be found in the walls of that place with strangers.

I’ve sought counsel there on many times and I’ve offered advice to the families of patients who are either praying for a miracle or trying to accept the unthinkable.

When he started talking about life, death and regret I listened. He said his wife couldn’t give him what he needed and it was tearing him apart. He hated her for it and the resentment that had started as a drop had grown into an ocean.

I wasn’t in a good place so I told him to do whatever the fuck made him happy. I told him that life was too short to waste it on relationships that weren’t fulfilling.

He mentioned leaving his wife, I gave him my friend Griffin’s name and number and he told me he’d call him that night to start the process of divorcing his wife.

Chloe. That was Chloe.

She was the woman who couldn’t give him what he needed and I now know with certainty that he was talking about a child.

“I said what do you need?” Jordan spins around and looks right at me.

I ignore his freshly plucked brows because I don’t have time to ask him what the fuck happened to his face. “I’m trying to find a patient. It was around two years ago. Her last name would have been Jones. She collapsed on a street. I need to know her cause of death. You know someone in records, right? You can give them that and they’ll figure it out?”

He holds my gaze. “I don’t need to go to records. I was there when she died. You were too.”

Tension tightens my shoulders. There’s no fucking way. “I wasn’t there.”

“She was brought in after collapsing on a sidewalk,” Jordan begins.

“You’re not thinking of the woman with the abdominal aortic aneurysm?” I interrupt.

“That’s her.” He rests his hand on my shoulder. “Irena Jones, aged fifty-five. I’ll never forget that one. She coded on the table right after we opened her up. We were too late, Evan. She died right in front of us.”

She did. I remember everything about that night. The piercing sound of the monitor as her pulse stopped;

the wails from the waiting room when Jordan went to tell her family that she was gone. I’ll never forget the sight of a woman with her head buried in the chest of her father while she wept for the mother that she’d never see again.

I caused all of that. I was the man who changed Chloe’s life forever that night and fuck if I know how I’m going to tell her.

Chapter 43

Chloe

I slam the desk of my drawer before I rest my face in my palms. “Dammit. Just dammit.”

“That’s not the greeting I was hoping for but I’ll take it.”

My head pops up to see Rocco standing in the doorway of my office with a basket of fruit in his hands.

“Is that for me?” I tilt my head. “I hope it is because I’m starving.”

He strolls in and places it in the middle of my desk. “I have no fucking idea what a pregnant woman likes so I picked a few of everything and shoved it in there for you.”

I blow him a kiss. “You’re the best. I haven’t been eating enough fruit and now I don’t have an excuse.”

He sits on the edge of my desk and scoops an apple from the basket. “What had you upset when I walked in?”