Page 136 of Love Sick

“Yes! Why would you—”

I abandon my bag on the bed to stand tall, staring down at her. “Did you stop to think for one tiny second that maybe hers wasn’t the heart that was broken?”

Alesha jerks back, eyes wide.

“I didn’t choose this. I wouldneverchoose this. I would choose her all day, every day for the rest of time.” I sit at the edge of the bed, dropping my head in my hands. “She—she didn’t want me.”

Cracks form in Alesha’s cold facade. “Julian—”

“I tried to stop her.” I stare at the floor. “She broke us anyway.”

Alesha is silent, but the bed dips beside me. Her arms settle around my shoulders and her purple hair falls over my scrubs as she leans in.

“Do you know why?” Alesha asks.

My entire body droops. “That latest rumor—she found out and she just lost it. Started talking like being with her will hurt me. She said she can’t trust me. That I don’t even know her. She said if I really knew her, I’d leave.”

“Shit.” Alesha squeezes tighter. “I’m sorry, Juju.”

“I need to go, Alesha.” I pat her arm. “Need some sleep.”

She releases me.

“Have a good shift.”

* * *

At first, I convince myself Grace will realize her mistake and apologize, but two weeks pass without so much as a glance from her, and my hope dims. How did I fall so hard for a girl who would do this? When did I become this pathetic?

“Get your head in the game, Santini!” Maxwell barks after a poorly tied pedicle on my side of the uterus bleeds.

“Fuck.” I shake my head and go about fixing it.

Once the bleeding is under control, Maxwell pauses to stare at me. “Take a breath and get it out of your system. We have a job to do.”

“I know. I’m here. I’m in it.”

After surgery, I sit in the men’s locker room rubbing my face when his hulking form clunks onto the bench beside me.

He thumps my shoulder. “She fuck you up?”

“Yeah.”

Maxwell lets out a long breath. “Come have dinner with me and Cat tonight. It’ll get your mind off it.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say, even though any social interaction sounds like nothing but work.

A long silence follows as I stare at the green tile floor, trying to remember how normal people converse.

“Did I ever tell you Cat left me once?” he asks.

I turn toward him and shake my head.

“Yeah. During second year, actually.” He chuckles. “It’s a shit year, isn’t it?”

I let out a single bitter snort as my answer. I haven’t had a day off since Raven had her baby. At least work is a distraction from the train wreck Grace unleashed on my life.

Maxwell shrugs. “Under all that stress, I was probably a dick to her. She couldn’t take it anymore. Left for a couple months and moved in with her mom. I was a wreck.”

---