Page 24 of Fierce Hearts

It was a stupid hope, but I clung to it anyway as I drifted into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

For the next two weeks,I went through the motions of my life. I worked my shifts at the hospital, came home, ate whatever I could stomach, and fell into bed. I checked my phone obsessively, both dreading and expecting Ernesto's call, but it never came. Whether or not that was a good thing, I had no idea.

But there was also no news on his funeral. Would I even be invited if there was?

Be ready.

What had he meant by that?

Maybe Ernesto had forgotten about me after all. Maybe his words that I needed to come back, that they needed me, was just his grief, and now he'd accepted he didn't want me there. Maybe I was free.

I wasn't sure how to feel about it, but I also wasn't willing to reach out and get dragged back in.

I'd replied to a handful of messages from Grayson over the days after the wedding, trying to keep our messages short and to the point. Whatever we'd shared, it was over, and we needed to move past that.

Even if my last message to him had been harsh about leaving the past behind us.

It was on the fourteenth day after the wedding, the day after shutting Grayson down completely, while I was changing out of my scrubs after a particularly hectic shift that my phone rang. My heart lurched, but the caller ID showed Meredith's name, not Ernesto's.

"Hey," I answered, trying to sound normal. "How was the honeymoon?"

"Absolutely perfect," Meredith gushed. "The island was gorgeous, the weather was amazing, and Leo was... well, Leo was Leo."

I could hear the smile in her voice, the newlywed bliss. For a moment, I envied her simple happiness.

"That's great, Mer. I'm so happy for you guys."

"We just got back this morning," she said. "I'm exhausted, but in the best way. I had to call you, though. I've missed you! How have you been?"

How had I been? My cousin was dead. My uncle had told me I needed to come back to them and then gone radio silent. I'd been avoiding talking to Grayson properly after our fun at her wedding, then shut him down fully yesterday.

I felt like a mess, like I was barely holding it all together right now. Like my carefully constructed life felt like it was beginning to crumble around me and I was desperately trying to wrap a band-aid around it and look the other way.

"I've been okay," I lied, unwilling to dampen her joy after her honeymoon. "Just working a lot."

I wanted to tell her about Marco. Wanted to unload all of it—the call from Ernesto, the unease I'd been living with for two weeks, how I was avoiding it in hopes it would fade away.

But if I said it out loud, if I acknowledged it, it would become real in a way I wasn't ready to face. Every time I thought of Marco or had memories, I'd shoved them aside, refusing to deal with it.

And stupidly, I worried that talking about it might somehow summon Ernesto, like saying Bloody Mary three times in front of a mirror.

"You work too hard," Meredith said. "You need to take some time for yourself."

"I take plenty of time off when needed."

"Yeah, true." She paused for a moment. "Are you sure you're okay? you sounded a little off. Something going on?"

Of course she could sense it. We were best friends after all.

"Yeah, just tired, the hours have been long, and we've had some tough cases. How does it feel to be a married woman?" I shifted the conversation.

"Honestly? Not that different. Except I keep catching myself staring at my ring. Then it hits that I'm actually married."

I glanced down at my own hands, at my grandmother's rings that I always wore. I twisted one around my finger, a nervous habit I'd developed over the years.

"Oh, by the way," Meredith continued, "we absolutely grilled Grayson about that mystery woman he met at the wedding while he was with us."

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