Page 16 of Careless Whisper

I didn’t respond, which was answer enough.

He didn’t push. Luther wasn’t like that. He never asked for more than I was willing to give, and that’s probably why I tolerated him in my inner circle—or as close to one as I had outside of my family.

We started working out together a year ago and had become friends. He liked the discipline and routine, and I liked that he didn’t try to fix me.

“Every time you come in here after a shift with him, you hit PRs.” He wiped down the bench. “If this keeps up, we’ll have to thank the asshole.”

He was right, thanks to Elias, I was hitting personal records every day. “Maybe we can shove the thank you up his asshole?”

He laughed again, then gave me a sideways glance. “You ever gonna tell me what really went down with him? Back in Boston?”

“Maybe. But I don’t want to talk about it right now.” I took another sip of water. He waited, just in case I changed my mind. I didn’t.

He sighed and leaned back against the bench. “You know, not every dude’s an asshole.”

“Yeah, well, thatonewas enough.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You’re making meverycurious, Sanchez.”

“A little mystery is good for the soul,” I replied laconically.

He knew I had walls, and he respected them…mostly. The thing was, I trusted Luther, well, as much as I could trust anyone these days. But even he didn’t know the whole story of what happened in Boston with Elias and Maren. No one did.

My parents and grandparents knew something had goneverywrong in Boston—that I’d had to leave Stratford, that I’d been treated unfairly. But they didn’t know about Elias. About the nights in the on-call room. The coffee runs. The plans that never entirely made it out of whispered promises. I’d let them believe it was just a professional fallout. It was easier that way. They would’ve asked why I didn’t fight harder, why I didn’t burn it all down, or let them do it for me.

But if I had told them, I would have broken down—and they would have been devastated. My family loved me, and no matter what I did, they supported me. Seeing me in pieces would hurt them, and I didn’t want that on my conscience.

“So what about you?” I asked, changing the subject. “How’s the night shift on telemetry?”

Luther shook his head. “Boring. I caught a kid trying to sneak a vape pen into the oxygen room, though.”

My eyes widened. “Jesus.”

“Right?” He rolled his eyes. “I was like, my man, do you want to blow us all upandfail rehab?”

We both laughed, and for a second, the tension inside me eased.

I stood up and grabbed a towel from my bag that I had randomly thrown in.

I groaned when I realized it was one from my college years that I rarely used. It was one of those expensive embroidered ones my grandmother had insisted on monogramming because “Darling, you should never look like you’re borrowing towels.”

Luther raised an eyebrow when he saw the stitching. “Is that towel fucking embroidered with your name?”

I shrugged. “It was a gift.”

“From?”

“My grandmother.”

“Yourabuelamonogrammed your towel?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Myothergrandma.”The one with a gazillion-million-dollar apartment in Manhattan.

Luther eyed me carefully. “You know you don’t talk about your family. Most people who don’t…it’s because they don’t like their family. You are close, but I hear fuck all about them.”

“They are…fine?” I suggested mockingly.

“Yeah, okay, Nurse Mysterious.” He grinned, but there was curiosity behind it—like he wanted to ask:who are you really? But he didn’t. And I didn’t tell him. Usually, when people found out my mother’s last name, they changed how they behaved around me. I’d seen it often enough while I was growing up, so I didn’t talk about it, and now it had become a habit.

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