I head to the hospital’s break room in blood-splattered scrubs. As I pass the ER beds, a few patients side-eye me, but not because of the red stains. They scrutinize my dyed white hair and my visible tattoos: the inked symmetric wings on my neck, the writing on my fingers, and more. Basically, I’m far from looking like a poster boy for Doctor of the Year.

But I’m not about to slow down or glance back at these patients unless they’re coding or I’m called to help.

I know better.

At Philadelphia General Hospital, I’m used to the constant gawking, and that shit bugs me about as much as water would a shark.

I just do my job. I save lives and watch some end. I go home, and unsurprisingly, it starts all over again.

See, being a doctor shouldn’t feel mundane. It shouldn’t feel anything close to ordinary, but it’s all I’ve ever fucking known, and it’s getting to me.

Really getting to me.

I push through a door. 11:54 a.m.—medical interns and residents jam-pack the break room. Standing and sitting, talking loudly and eating. Pizza boxes overflow the few tables and counters where a pot works overtime to brew coffee.

I don’t ask about the spontaneous pizza party. It’s always someone’s birthday in the hospital, and there’s always cake.

As hungry as I am, I need to change out of these scrubs. I’m about to reach the door to the men’s locker room but a voice stops me.

“Keene, what’d you get?” Tristan asks from across the crowded break room.

I comb a hand through my bleach-white hair. Some of the residents quiet down, listening for the answer.

Short and stocky Tristan MacNair leans on the windowsill, pepperoni pizza in hand. His sideburns touch his jaw as though he’s stuck in the 1970s, and his curious eyes flit to the bloodstains on my scrubs.

I wouldn’t say we’re close friends or even enemies, but he’s a Med-Peds intern like me.

“Thirty-year-old male,” I tell him, “stab wound to the neck with a key and to the upper abdomen with a knife. Couldn’t intubate or ventilate, so he needed a cric. Morris did the chest tube.” Apparently this fucker attacked a female runner this morning, and she keyed his throat. He fell on his own knife.

Karma is a beautiful bitch.

“Who did the cric?” Tristan asks.

My brows rise. “Me.”

Dr. Leah Young, a second-year resident, almost drops her pizza. “Morris let you do an emergency cricothyrotomy?”

“Yeah.” I made an incision between the cricoid and thyroid cartilage in the patient’s neck to obtain an airway. Normally my lips would upturn, but my excitement towards medicine has waned this whole month of August.

I grab the doorknob, about to leave.

“Your shift ending?” Tristan asks, quickly straightening up and balling his napkin.

I nod. “Done for today. You?”

“Just starting.” He stuffs his mouth hurriedly with pizza. He wants in on that patient.

Too bad for him. “The guy was tachycardic and hypotensive,” I tell Tristan. “We just sent him to the OR for surgery.”

“Dammit,” he groans, then slumps and swallows his food. “I always miss the good ones.”

I wouldn’t have minded trading places with Tristan, and that—that’s a fucking problem. For most of my life, I’ve wanted in on the action. Excited to learn new things, to do new things with medicine.

To help people.

Now I’m willing to just hand over an emergency cric and tube thoracostomy.

I want to blame it on my 28-hour shift, but I’ve had much longer shifts and been more tired than this.

When I enter the locker room, I shut the door, drowning out the commotion. Cedar lockers line every inch of wall; most cubbies house white coats, extra clothes, toiletries, some books and snacks.

I find mine in a corner.

It takes me a couple minutes to change out of my scrubs and into a Smashing Pumpkins V-neck and black pants. My mind tries to reel, but I’ve done a great job most of my life not overthinking shit.

I’m not starting now.

By the time I pocket my keys and grab my motorcycle helmet, my phone rings. I check the Caller ID and then put the cell to my ear. “What do you need?”

My father rarely calls to shoot the shit, and I’d rather cut to the chase.

I hear him rustling through papers. “What rotation do you have this week?” he asks, his tone warm and relaxed. One of the many reasons why the three famous families (Hales, Meadows, Cobalts)—his patients—essentially love him.

He even has a small ponytail and drinks fucking mint juleps and mojitos on the weekend, but simply put, he’s not a laidback, soon-to-be-retired physician. He’s constantly working, and I can hardly picture my father hanging up the white coat.

I sling my backpack strap over my shoulder. “ED.”

He knows that stands for emergency department. “Does your shift end soon?” He must be typing on a laptop, keys click click click.

“Just ended.” I shut my locker.

“I’m in Spain for the week—”

“I heard,” I cut him off. “Ryke Meadows is climbing a five-hundred-foot cliff.” He’s a skilled professional climber, but the Hales, Meadows, and Cobalts like to ensure if the worst happens, their concierge doctor is present.

“Right,” my father says a little bit distantly, his attention split. “I got a call, and you’re in distance.”

Finally, we’ve reached the point. “Call” means “medical emergency.” And I know exactly where this conversation is going.

I lean my shoulder casually on my locker. “I just got off a twenty-eight hour shift. Ask Uncle Trip to take your calls.”

“He’s here with me in Spain.”

I roll my eyes. Shit. “I’m not a concierge doctor.”

“You will be after you’re board-certified,” he says more clearly, loudly—assertively. “You’ve joined me on enough calls. Think of this as a test-run for when you take over as their primary physician.”

I shake my head on instinct.

I know what I want to say.

I quit.

Two words.

Two words that I should be able to spit out. I can tell the old man fuck you fine, but I can’t say I quit.

It has more to do with me than my father. Once I tell him that I want to quit my residency and change career fields, I have to be sure that I’m ready. I have to be able to burn the white coat and be completely satisfied.

I can’t vacillate between maybe and I don’t know. I have to fucking know. Or else my father will try to convince me to stay, and I need to confidently shut that shit down.

He’s the gateway to my freedom from medicine. From a generational legacy that has consumed me for an entire lifetime. Once I open that gate, I need to walk through and never turn back around.

Right now, in this moment…I’m not a hundred-percent sure yet, and I’d rather speak to my father face-to-face than say those permanent words over the phone.

I tuck my helmet beneath my arm. “Let me call you back when I get to my apartment—”

“Farrow,” he says quickly, concern tensing his voice.

I push into the break room and snatch a piece of pizza on my way out. Using my shoulder to prop my phone against my ear, I tell my father, “I’ll call you back—”

“Wait.” He stops me from hanging up.

“Hold on,” I say and wait to speak again until I’m outside, sun beating down on the pavement. Sirens blare as an ambulance speeds towards the emergency entrance, and a couple women in teal scrubs smoke on a wooden bench.

I put the phone on speaker to free my hands. “Okay.” I bite into my pizza, the first thing I’ve eaten in over twelve hours. The food sits like lead in my empty stomach.

“Listen to me, Farrow. I’ve been where you are.”

No shit. I check traffic before I cross the street to the parking lot.

“I know being a med intern is hard,” my father continues. “You work long, excruciating hours, and you leave a shift exhausted. But whatever you saw and did today, don’t bring it home with you. Don’t let it torture you.”

He assumes that I’m emotionally unavailable to handle his call. I may’ve had a fifteen-year-old girl code seven times in the past five hours, but I’ve never let any of that affect my job.

The problem: if I plan to quit medicine someday soon, then I shouldn’t be setting myself up to be a concierge doctor.

It’s that simple.

I approach my black Yamaha motorcycle in the parking lot. “I’m not that spent,” I tell my father. “I’m just not exactly excited to take house calls and check a little kid’s flu symptoms.”

“The call isn’t about one of the little kids, and it’s not an illness.”

My brows arch, and I find myself frozen in place. Not an illness.

I can’t ignore this call. No part of me wants to sit on the sidelines when I have the ability to help. But it’s making walking away from medicine that much harder.

I kick up the Yamaha’s stand. “Who’s hurt?” I ask for details, subtly agreeing to what my father wants.

He knows it too. “We’ll talk more when you’re at your apartment. Call me back.” He hangs up first, but only after he dangled a giant carrot in my face.

I pocket my phone and put on my helmet, flipping down the visor.

And like a stupid ass, I hunger towards the temptation.

* * *

When I graduated medical school, I decided to save on rent and room with other doctors from Philadelphia General. I live a little north of Center City in an old gothic school that was converted into lofts. I don’t really give a shit about the “original chalkboards” or the dark walnut paneling or a city view.

Basically, it’s cheap with three roommates and close to the hospital. Good enough for me.

Inside my apartment, I set my motorcycle helmet on the kitchen counter next to a Post-it note and then dial my father’s number.

The note is for me, the same one I see every other day. I barely skim the scribbled words:

Leaning on the cupboards, I bite off the cap to a pen and then push my phone to my ear with my other hand. I fill up the Post-it with two large letters.

I’m rarely at my apartment. Someone else staying here in my place shouldn’t be a problem, and to be honest, I doubt I’ll even be living in this apartment long anyway.

The phone line clicks.

“I’ll email you the patient’s medical history over a secure server,” my father starts right where we left off, “and then—”

“Back up,” I interject, not wanting to read anyone’s medical files if I don’t have to. Because I’m quitting on them soon. Flipping through their med history is invasive. “Who and what am I treating?” I tear open a packet of oatmeal and grab a paper bowl in case I need to leave in a hurry.

My father must be moving around, his loafers click clap on the floor. “Excuse me,” he says faraway to someone else. “Thank you…okay, perfect. I’ll be out at the cliff site in fifteen minutes.”

I pour oatmeal powder in the bowl and turn on the faucet.

More loudly, my father says, “Farrow?”

“Still here.” I hold the bowl beneath the faucet.

“The patient is Maximoff Hale.”

My brows furrow, and my face scrunches in motherfucking confusion. “Moffy really called you for help?” I ask.

It would take two seconds around Maximoff to understand how much the guy dislikes needing to be saved. For any reason. Even if he were in cardiac arrest, I can’t see him phoning my father.

But say Moffy did, then it’d have to be serious.

“Yes, he really called—”

“Shit,” I curse as water overflows my bowl of oatmeal. Quickly, I shut off the faucet, and I overturn the watered oatmeal mess into the drain and wash my hands. Rarely does anything distract me like this.

“He was asking for instances where he should go to an emergency room,” my father explains.

I dry my hands on a dishtowel. “I don’t know Moffy that well, but he seems like the kind of person who’d make lists to prepare for things that haven’t happened yet.”

“You do know him,” my father refutes. “You know all of the Hales, the Meadows, and the Cobalts. We both do. Getting to know your patients is why we’re able to provide the best care.”

I roll my eyes.

I’m used to the daily medical lectures, but I don’t need or want one right now. My father never removes the white coat. Metaphorically and literally. It’s who he is, and shit, I don’t want it to be who I am anymore.

I can’t only exist as another name in the Keene dynasty. It means that my life isn’t mine, and that scares the fuck out of me. Life is finite; we all die, and when you’re dead, you’re dead.

I couldn’t wish my mom back. I have a single memory of her and a handful of pictures. I know that I have only one life, and I need to live for what I love.

Not what my father loves.

Not what the Keenes need me to be.

I have to live for me.

I quit medicine.

I quit.

But I picture Maximoff Hale hurt, alone. In need of someone.

And I know I’m not quitting today.

Still, my father hasn’t convinced me that this isn’t just wolf scout earning a “preparedness” merit badge. I pass the phone to my other hand and say, “Okay, but this could still be Moffy over-preparing like he always does.”

“If you heard his voice over the phone,” my father says, “you’d know he wasn’t calm. He was tense. And you know Maximoff. So now what do you think?”

There’s a reason for concern.

I rub my jaw, my pulse hiking a fraction. No more delay, I leave the kitchen for the hall closet. “Did you narrow down the problem or am I going to have to pack a bag with everything?” I gather my black canvas trauma bag and check supplies: gauze, sutures—shit, if he needs an IV…

“It could be a fracture, maybe possible head trauma.”

I hurry. “Did he sound disoriented?”

“He sounded worried and distracted.”

I remember the last time I saw Maximoff. I can still smell the salt water and feel the heat from the torches. July, just last month. His family threw a summer party on a yacht, and I talked to Moffy for a minute.

I remember how he stared off into space. How it took me thirty seconds just to catch his attention.

My lips upturn at the memory. “That guy is always distracted.”

“More distracted than usual,” my father notes.

My smile fades fast, and I stuff a blood pressure cuff in the bag. I search for my missing stethoscope, unzipping sections.

Maximoff fought with his cousin on that yacht. Both threw punches. And he’s been caught in more than a few brawls before, mostly with hecklers. “Do you think he was in a fistfight?” I ask my father, just as I find my stethoscope in a front pocket.

“No,” he says. “He never calls me after any fight.”

I zip up the bag, stand and grab my keys off the counter. Then I remember… “He’s at Harvard.”

A six-hour drive from Philly.

If he’s badly hurt…I shake my head. Six hours feels too long. Before I think of alternatives, my father speaks again.

“I already booked the private jet,” he says. “I’ll email you the details. You should be arriving at Cambridge in a little over two hours.”

I nod. “Good.” And I can sleep on the plane.

“Before you board, I need you to stop by the house and get more supplies.” He means my childhood house in Philly, where he still lives and keeps medicine for emergencies. “Moffy’s blood type is B-positive, and if he has a serious fracture, give him lidocaine intravenously and assess. He’ll refuse an opioid.”

“I know.” His parents are recovering addicts for alcohol and sex, and he’s cautious around addictive painkillers.

My father lists all the supplies, and I mentally file the information. When he’s finished, he says, “After you treat him, make sure to write a report and email me.”

“Sure.”

“And if you have any questions, I won’t have cell service. You can always call your grandfather or Rowin—”

“I’m not calling Rowin,” I cut him off. “We broke up last week.” I sling my bag on my shoulder and check the plane schedule on my phone. Calculating how much time I have. Not much.

The phone line is silent.

I head down the narrow hall towards my bedroom, phone back to my ear and say, “If that’s it—”

“You shouldn’t let work affect your relationship. If you need help balancing the two, you can talk to me.”

“Not everything is about medicine,” I say more coldly than I meant. My jaw muscle tics. “I know you liked him, but it’s over. If there’s nothing else I need for Moffy, then I’ll let you go.”

“That should be it,” he says, his tone still warm. “Take care.”

I hang up and slip into my small bedroom that I share with Cory. A six-foot metal bookshelf separates his side from mine, medical texts stacked on each shelf.

The friend that Cory hates is currently passed out in my single bed, tangled in my black sheets. And he’s not alone. A mystery blonde girl sleeps beneath his tattooed arm. Her bra and red dress litter the floorboards.

I don’t care. At this point, the bed is more Donnelly’s than mine.

But I’m in a fucking hurry. I chuck my motorcycle keys at him, and they land with a thud on his chest. “Donnelly.”

He squints and pats at the keys while glancing at the nightstand clock. It’s past noon, and the potent scent of Lucky Strikes and bourbon lingers.

“Fuck,” Donnelly groans and runs a hand through his tousled chestnut hair.

The blonde girl underneath his bicep starts waking. Rubbing her eyes, her mascara and lipstick are smudged. I spot the Zeta Beta Zeta keychain attached to her leather purse.

This isn’t the first sorority girl Donnelly has brought to my apartment to fuck.

She eyes me skeptically while stretching off the bed and grabbing her dress and bra. “Who are you?”

“I’m about to leave,” I say more to Donnelly, but he’s not looking at me.

“He lives here,” Donnelly tells her with a yawn. He sits up against the headboard and watches her collect her shit.

She tugs on her dress, checks her phone and stands, not paying that much attention to him. “Okay…thanks, Daniel.”

“Donnelly.” He mouths to me, great lay.

My brows spike and lips rise. I mouth, didn’t ask.

He grins and unscrews a nearly empty water bottle. Downing the last drop, he swallows and motions to the girl, then me, with the bottle. “He’s a resident at Philly General.”

She surveys me head-to-toe while tying her tangled hair in a pony. “You’re seriously a doctor?”

I lean my shoulder on the doorframe, loosely crossing my arms. I may be constantly relaxed, but I’m keeping track of the very last second that I can waste before I need to leave. “I’m seriously a doctor, but I’m just a first-year resident.” I look to Donnelly. “Which is technically called an intern.”

He tosses the empty water in an arch, and the bottle clatters in a trash bin. “Same thing.” His South Philly accent is thick.

“Sort of,” I say. “I haven’t taken my Step 3 exam to become licensed yet.”

I’m twenty-four-years-old and I’ve already graduated medical school and I have that MD. But I won’t become a licensed physician until I complete the USMLE exam.

Donnelly shakes his head. “Unnecessarily complicated.”

The girl frowns. “What?” She can’t understand what he just said with his Philly lilt.

He tries to enunciate. “Unnecessarily—”

“Forget it,” she cuts him off and checks her phone.

I’d like this girl to make a quick exit about as much as she wants to make one. I cock my head. “Need me to call you an Uber?” I ask.

She texts quickly. “My friend is picking me up. Can I have the address?”

I tell her the address of the apartment complex, and then Donnelly swings his legs off the bed and reaches for his jeans. “Hey,” he says to the girl, “if you wanna come along, I’m going to Wawa for lunch—”

“Wawa?” she cringes. “Ew.”

I almost laugh. Fuck, she hates Wawa. My smile stretches, decently entertained because Donnelly is going to lose his shit.

“Ew?” he repeats. “Girl, Wawa is a great wonder of Philly—”

“It’s just a convenience store. God, I don’t understand people’s obsession with it.”

Donnelly cringes. “Didn’t you see my tattoo?” He rotates slightly and flashes her the inked Wawa logo on his shoulder blade.

She tucks a flyaway piece of hair behind her ear. “Boy, it was just sex. I don’t care if a one-night stand is creepily obsessed with a gas station or not—and don’t act like this was anything more for you. You don’t know my name either.”

“You’ve gotta be a Betty,” he says. “Betty sounds like the name of someone who’d trash Wawa.”

She struts past the bed with her high heels in hand. “My name is Sylvia.”

I turn a fraction of an inch to let her pass through the door. She eyes my trauma bag and then disappears to the kitchen. Three minutes left.

I unpocket a stick of Winterfresh and peel the foil.

“See ya never, Betty!” Donnelly calls, and the front door slams shut. He jumps into his ripped jeans. “Can’t believe I stuck my dick in a Wawa hater.”

I pop my gum in my mouth. “You’ve stuck your dick in worse.” I straighten off the doorframe.

Donnelly buttons his jeans. “Nothin’ worse than a girl who hates Wawa.”

I whistle. “And your fucked-up standards persist.”

He grins and tugs his ragged shirt from last night over his head. He notices my trauma bag, and his mouth downturns.

I don’t unearth this thing from the closet every day.

Two minutes.

“Bike keys are on the bed,” I explain, chewing my gum. “I’ll be out for a while. You can use it if you need to.”

Donnelly doesn’t own a vehicle of any kind, and if he’s not borrowing my Yamaha, then he’s stuck on foot or with public transportation.

I veer into the kitchen, not loitering around any longer.

Donnelly follows close behind. “You tell your old man about being a bodyguard yet?”

I steal Cory’s apple out of a fruit bowl, and I glance back at Donnelly. “Not yet.”

A while back, Akara Kitsuwon suggested I try security training. He owns the Studio 9 Boxing & MMA gym, which became a hub for the famous families’ security team.

Donnelly and I were sparring on the mats, like we sometimes do, and in a break, I offhandedly mentioned being burnt-out from medicine to Akara.

Next thing I know, I’m in security training and Donnelly joins the ride. Now we’re both in the final course of training, and I’m one foot in medicine, one foot out.

Donnelly takes a jug of milk out of the fridge. “Been thinking about when you’ll tell him?”

I bite into the apple and hold Donnelly’s gaze for a short beat.

Once I tell my father that I’m quitting medicine to become a 24/7 bodyguard, I’ll lose him, and Donnelly knows this.

My relationship with my father is built on the notion that I’d become a doctor. That’s my worth. My life’s purpose. Remove it, and nothing is left.

Let’s put it this way: I was his student first, son last. Small talk was typical; anything deeper almost never happened, and sure, he was always busy like most fathers are. But I didn’t have a mother, and he didn’t hire a nanny or babysitter to look after me.

Instead, he put me in dozens of extracurricular activities. Made me fend for myself more than half the time.

And one of those activities was martial arts. I started at five-years-old and never stopped. It’s ironic that my love of MMA is what eventually led me to the Studio 9 gym, and ultimately, what opened the door to security training.

I can’t even be upset that I’ll lose my father with this career change. Because I don’t feel like I ever had a good one to begin with.

When will I finally tell the old man that I quit? I don’t make regimented plans like that.

I spit out my gum into a trash bin. “It’ll happen when it happens,” I tell Donnelly and eye the oven clock. One minute left.

He unscrews the milk cap, but his attention stays on my bag. “What’s with that?”

“My father got a call. I’m helping out one last time.” I take a large bite of apple.

He chugs milk from the jug. “Tell whatever Hale needs you that I say what’s up.”

“No,” I say easily and head for the door, “and man, stop assuming the worst about the Hales.” The parents are addicts, but they’re in recovery and sober. And they’re better than most mothers and fathers that Donnelly and I grew up around.

“Can’t help it.” He wipes his mouth on his bicep. “They’re the Bad Luck Crew.”

I roll my eyes and clutch the doorknob. “You may be assigned to one of them.”

“Nah, I already requested the Good Luck Crew.” He means the Cobalt family.

I smile into another bite of apple. “Have fun with that.” I kick open the door, en route to Maximoff Hale.

When I’m in the elevator, I pull out my phone and contemplate calling or texting Moffy for more information, to ensure he’s okay, but I don’t even have his number.

Fucking hell.

I pocket my phone. Not long after, I take a cab to my father’s house in Northwest Philly, pack the supplies and medicine in my bag, and I reach the airport in plenty of time to board the private jet. Moderate turbulence and decent shut-eye later, I’m on the ground.

An unknown source has already granted me access to Moffy’s dorm hall. If I made an educated guess, I’d say Security Force Omega is on top of this clandestine emergency. But Maximoff isn’t aware that any doctor is coming, as far as I know.

His dorm room is on the fourth floor next to the communal bathroom. I knock on the scratched wood. Waiting. No noise.

Answer, wolf scout.

I knock again. Complete silence, even inside the hall. Most students must be on campus, the old dorm quiet in the afternoon.

After another knock and more silence, my jaw hardens. In the email my father sent, he left an instruction: if Moffy doesn’t answer the door, call his bodyguard to open it.

He could be unconscious on the floor. I’m not wasting time or handing over that easy task to someone else. I turn the knob. Locked.

No hesitation, I pound my boot in the wood. The door bangs, but it needs a couple more kicks to bust in.

I don’t even prepare for the second kick before the sound of footsteps echoes on the other side. He’s moving.

Good.

I expel a heavier breath through my nose.

The door opens to a nineteen-year-old, six-foot-two celebrity with a jawline cut like marble.

Instantly, his forest-greens catch my brown, and I meet his questioning gaze. I run my tongue over my silver lip piercing and break eye contact.

Quickly, I sweep his swimmer’s build for visible signs of a wound. His jeans are loose on his legs, his green tee tight on his chest. I don’t see an injury, and an earbud cord dangles over his shoulder.

He must’ve been listening to music, unable to hear me knock.

“What are you doing here?” Moffy asks, voice firm. He even peeks over my shoulder.

“It’s only me, wolf scout.” I push further into the cramped dorm room before he can shut me out. I whistle at the unmade bed to the left, a Harvard crimson comforter rumpled and sheets balled. “Bad roommate?” I ask and drop my bag to the floorboards.

Maximoff crosses his arms, his biceps bulging. “That could be my bed.” He nods to the messy area.

“No,” I say matter-of-factly. “That’s your bed.” I point to the orange comforter tucked into the wooden frame. “And that’s your desk.” His oak desk is wedged nearby, a philosophy textbook cracked open and a highlighter uncapped like I caught him in the middle of studying.

“Great.” He rakes a hand through his thick, dark brown hair. “Now that you’ve Sherlock Holmes’ed my dorm, you can leave happy. Mission accomplished.”

“I’m not leaving,” I say seriously.

Maximoff isn’t an idiot. He sees my trauma bag. He knows I’m here because of the phone call he made to my father. I don’t need to spoon-feed him this information.

But we’re at a slight standstill because he’s not forthcoming about his injury. I examine him from about four feet away. He usually has a tan complexion, but he’s lost color in his face. And he’s sweating.

“You look pale,” I tell him.

He blinks slowly. “Thanks.”

I tilt my head. “That wasn’t a compliment.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

My brows rise, a smile at my lips. “I know.”

Maximoff grimaces and rests his hands on his head like communicating with me is brutal. The times we talk, I like irritating the shit out of him, but today’s different. He’s my patient.

“Jesus Christ,” he growls under his breath.

“Moffy—”

“I’m fine,” he says strongly, his hands dropping to his sides. “If I thought I wasn’t, I would’ve gone to the ER. Alright, you can go do whatever the fuck you do on a Wednesday afternoon. I’m sorry you had to come up to Cambridge.” His apology sounds extremely sincere.

“Don’t be,” I say. “I’m supposed to be here.”

Right here.

Right now.

This was my choice. I could’ve told my father no, but I said yes to this call. To Maximoff, and I’m not leaving until I’m sure he’s safe.

He cracks a knuckle and stares off, lost in thought.

I wait and comb a hand through my dyed hair. A few pictures line his desk, most of siblings or with his best friend Jane. I recognize one group photo from St. Thomas with all the families squished together, a summer vacation. The picture leaked on the internet a few years back.

“So you’re not leaving then?”

I look back at him, his attention focused on me again. “Not until you tell me what’s wrong, and man, you don’t need to describe why anything happened. I can work with a bare-bones story.” Not having the full picture will irritate me a little bit—shit, normally it wouldn’t. But I’m already craving to know more about him.

I skim Moffy in a short once-over and look away.

He’s Maximoff Hale.

I almost laugh to myself. Fuck, he’s too pure. Too wholesome. And I just got out of a long-term relationship—there are reasons I wouldn’t. So many more reasons that he wouldn’t.

Not now.

Possibly not ever.

“I cut my leg,” he suddenly says, but the words come out slowly like thick tar on his tongue.

I eye his jeans while his rigid stance hardly shifts. “Where?”

“My thigh.”

“That’s a problem,” I say easily. “Your femoral artery—”

“I would’ve bled out hours ago if I cut my femoral artery. I’m okay.”

I try not to smile because it’ll just agitate him. “Web M.D. says you’re okay, but I haven’t yet.” I squat and unzip my trauma bag. “I still need to see the wound. What’d you cut yourself on?”

Maximoff stops protesting, and he unbuttons his jeans. “I don’t know.”

I frown and open the packaging on a pair of gloves. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I was off-campus last night with some guys on the swim team. It was dark.” He steps out of his jeans. Bandage is wrapped around his muscular thigh, gauze thick beneath. He dressed his wound perfectly.

Maximoff notices me staring, and he starts smiling. “Better than you would’ve done, huh?”

I snap on one medical glove. “I’m still better than you at everything, wolf scout. Don’t get excited.”

“Excited around you? Yeah, I’m never even close.”

I didn’t mean it sexually, but here we are.

I look up, just as he looks down, and he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Shit, our banter hasn’t exactly taken this route before.

Since I’m older and wiser, I decide to eliminate the strange tension with “professionalism” and I ask, “Did you clean the wound?”

“Yeah.”

“Take a seat on your desk chair.” I stand and slide my trauma bag closer with my foot, just as he sits like a fucking board. His gaze plasters to my movements. I lean over his chest, the smell of chlorine rushing towards me, and with my ungloved hand, I grab his Fundamentals of Philosophy textbook.

“What are you doing?” he asks, hating to be in the dark. Clearly.

I put the textbook in his palms. “Read, take notes, study. Don’t watch me.”

“Farrow—”

“Trust me, wolf scout.” I crouch, snap on my other glove, and start undressing his bandage that edges close to his gray boxer-briefs. I pause not even one-fifth through when I catch him staring and overthinking. “You don’t need to overanalyze what I’m doing, Moffy. Just focus on your own shit.”

He glares. “My leg is my own shit, thanks for asking.”

I roll my eyes into a smile. “You’re welcome.” I continue unwrapping the bandage while his gaze is attached to mine. Trust me, trust me, I try to emote until he finally gives in and reads his text with a frustrated breath.

I concentrate on his wound, blood seeps through—fuck. I unwrap faster. “You bandaged your thigh without stopping the bleeding first?”

He glances down. “It was stopped.”

I reach for my suture kit. “When’d you cut it?”

He shuts his book and thinks. “Uh…” Maximoff pinches his eyes. “Three, four in the morning. I was out—”

“With your swim teammates, I heard that part.” I kneel on one knee for a better angle. Blood completely soaks the gauze, and I try to gently pull it off the cut.

He winces and grips the edge of the desk. “Fuck.”

“Sorry.” I discard the gauze in a plastic bag and squeeze his cut closed with my fingers. A couple inches higher and that would’ve sliced through his artery. “You were lucky.”

“I know.” He rubs sweat off his forehead with his arm. “I wasn’t drunk last night, if that’s what you think.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking.” I pull out more supplies. “You’ve been bleeding out consistently since early this—what’s your pain level from one to ten?” I cut myself off and ask since he’s sweating and gritting his teeth.

His nose flares, wincing. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t take a painkiller.”

“It does matter.” I planned to disinfect the wound first, then administer a shot of lidocaine, then suture, but I change the order and hurriedly unpackage a syringe and needle.

He white-knuckles the desk, the room deadens while I work and he concentrates on breathing. I give him a shot of lidocaine to numb the wound. Then I wipe the area with an antiseptic and irrigate with saline.

In less than two minutes, I’m done with both, and I start suturing the deep cut. I break the quiet first. “When was your last tetanus shot?”

“I was eight.” Too long ago.

I look up. “You sure?” I really don’t want to open his medical records, and I need him to be sure.

“Pretty positive.”

I trust him enough. “I’ll give you a tetanus shot before I leave.” I pierce his skin with the needle and weave the stitch.

Maximoff clears a ball in his throat. After I finish the sutures, I redress the wound with clean gauze and bandage. He slides forward on the chair.

“I can do that,” he says and reaches for the gauze.

I put a hand to his chest, my gloves new. “Just relax.”

He lets out a short laugh. “Right.” He cracks a crick in his neck and stares faraway again. Where’d you go, Moffy?

I watch him for a second, then wrap the bandage. “No swimming until the stitches are out—”

“What?” His voice spikes, eyes snapped towards me.

That woke him up. “You can’t swim in a chlorine pool with this kind of cut.”

Maximoff breathes out a weighted breath, and he keeps shaking his head. His eyes strangely carry a mountain of emotion and then no emotion at all. Like he’s fighting to show me something and then nothing. “I’m on the Harvard swim team.”

I expect him to say I need to swim, but he stops there.

He opens his mouth, then shuts it, conflicted.

I raise my brows. “Sad?” I ask.

“No.” He shakes his head repeatedly. “You know…” He licks his lips. “Last night, one of my new teammates shoved me in a pile of trash. There was metal and…” He was cut. He looks away, then his tough eyes meet mine head-on. “They don’t want me here.”

“Do you want to be here?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer. His face is blank.

I crave to hold his gaze longer, but I force myself to look down. And I tape his bandage. “You should’ve gone to Yale. Everything is better there: the people, the dorms, the alumni.”

He feigns confusion. “Really? I heard they churn out white-haired know-it-alls with pretentious lineages and asshole tendencies.”

“Asshole tendencies,” I repeat with a laugh. “I think you mean heroic tendencies.”

“I tell you I got pushed into fucking metal, and you take that moment to tell me Yale is better than Harvard.”

Yeah, I’m an asshole. My smile stretches as I stand up, snapping off my gloves. “It’s still accurate.”

His gaze lingers on me for a long beat. “Maybe,” Maximoff admits.

It’s hard not to stare at him.

I clean up, and I don’t let him help, even when he asks. He’s still a little weak.

“Why are you here anyway?” he asks after I give him a tetanus shot in the deltoid. “I know your father is with my Uncle Ryke, but I thought Trip would be here instead.” I’m known to tag along to calls, not pick them up on my own like I’m in-line to be a concierge doctor.

I pack up the suture kit, and I toss him a bandage for the small spot of blood. He’s been dying to do something himself, and he can at least stick a Band-Aid on his shoulder. “My uncle is with my father,” I tell him. “They needed extra hands. This is a one-time thing.”

Maximoff thinks hard.

I’m going to be a bodyguard, wolf scout.

The truth weighs inside of me, and as I get ready to leave, I recognize how much is about to be left unsaid.