Page 7 of One Night Only

“Which must have been a while ago,” she says.

I bark a laugh. She did it to puncture the building tension, to give us both a moment to breathe. Which means she can feel the avalanche building around us, propelled further by every stolen glance.

Her fingers follow the patterns the light fixture casts on the oak grain. “I-I have never done this before, either.”

“So, you’re considering it,” I say, pouncing on the distinction.

She grins. Then something flashes across her face, and the grin drops. “To be honest, I have no place to go tonight. The friend whose couch I was supposed to sleep on this week…” She catches herself. “I can’t go there now. For reasons.”

As if the very universe is conspiring to help me, lightning flashes across the sky, visible through the revolving doors at the entrance. The boom of thunder is close behind, a more visceral warning to speed this conversation up.

“We can reach my hotel via the skywalk,” I say, rising. “I insist, for your safety.”

She looks out the doors and then back at me. “Can we take it as we go, Dr. Cross?” Her gaze zooms to my lips and holds. “As slow or as fast as I want?”

I drag a deep breath in. Fuck, if only I could show her what her trust does to me. “Yes, absolutely.”

She pulls the collar of her flimsy jacket closer around her shoulders. “I’m notorious for making poor decisions, and I don’t want this to be another one.”

That lightning bolt might as well have struck me because energy fills me in fizzy, electric tendrils. I grab her hand, turnit over, and rub my fingers over her knuckles. “Then I’ll make damned sure it’s not.”

She clasps my hand tighter. “Martha will be okay?”

I nod and drag her with me.

No time to waste.

I only have one night to see where this leads, one night to make her mine.

Chapter Five

Annika

I can’t believeI’m doing this.

Going to a near-stranger’s hotel suite could win the gold medal of all my questionable life decisions.

As if to reinforce my misgivings, rain lashes against the glass walls in wild, frantic rhythms that drown out our footsteps. The air is cool and carries a faint, metallic tang.

Is it a bad decision though,a small voice pipes up—the voice that Martha said I should encourage, the one that fights the narrative that all my decisions lead to disaster

For one thing, Dr. Cross isn’t a stranger. For eleven months, we talked on the phone about Martha practically every day. The only reason I haven’t met him is because every time he visited her, Arthur, his cousin who lives two towns over, would relieve me earlier.

Second, with Rahul and Zach loving each other up, I have no place to go tonight. I’m stuck in a cupid costume, which looks more stupid than slutty.

Nor will I pretend that this is purely the damsel saved by the doctor situation.

All these months of hearing that deep voice on the phone, I developed a little crush on Dr. Cross. And he’s better than I imagined.

Sexy as sin, considerate, and, through a bizarre twist of fate, interested in knowing me.

Still, this is just a blip in my timeline, I tell myself as we walk beneath the covered skywalk. Nothing I do tonight will change the plans I made for the next few months.

Beginning with unraveling the mountain-sized heap of lies I’ve told my family.

They think I’ve been at nursing school for the last three years—not true.

They think I’ll graduate this summer—refer to the above.

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