Page 17 of Careless Whisper

We finished in silence, moving through the cool-down. After, I headed for the locker room, towel slung over my shoulder and skin still warm from the workout. My muscles ached in a good way. I didn’t bother to linger. Just hit the showers, quick rinse, then home.

I stepped out ten minutes later, hair damp, gym bag slung across my body, when I nearly collided with a wall of muscle that had ice-blue eyes…and a bone to pick.

Fuck!

“Seriously?” Elias snapped.

“Huh?” That seemed like the most appropriate response.

“You and Luther?” he said, voice low but sharp.

I blinked slowly. “Huh?”

“I saw you in the gym. Frankly, if you’re involved with someone on my team, HR needs to be made aware of it. It’s disruptive. It compromises dynamics. It creates bias?—”

“Are you serious right now?”

“Very,” he retorted tightly. “Relationships between staff complicate things—especially when one party is on probation.”

I just stared at him. For a full beat. Then another. And then—I laughed.

It started as a huff of disbelief, but then it rolled out, fullandsharp, echoing in the corridor outside the locker room. Elias’s expression darkened.

“Oh my God.” I pressed a hand to my stomach. “You actually think I’m sleeping with Luther?”

His jaw locked. “It’s not unreasonable to?—”

“Luther,” I sputtered, still half-laughing, “has a partner. His name is Giovanni. They’ve been together for six years. I’ve been to their Christmas brunch. They wear matching sweaters.”

Elias didn’t say anything. Just stood there, shoulders tense, eyes narrowing like he was recalculating everything in real time.

“Unbelievable,” I muttered, suddenly not finding his accusations even remotely amusing. “You don’t know me. Youneverdid. I really didn’t think you could get any more arrogant, and here we are.”

He opened his mouth, but I was already walking.

“Reggie—”

“You’re not my boss outside the OR,” I snapped over my shoulder. “And even if you were, I’d still tell you to go tofucking hellfor making comments about my private life.”

Son of a bitch!

CHAPTER 6

Elias

Ifelt like an absolute ass, and notonlybecause of what I said to Reggie outside the locker room but because of what it revealed.

Jealousy.

Raw and stupid.

God, I’d actually accused her of sleeping with Luther, who I’d learned—after—from the grapevine, had a long-term partner and made gingerbread houses with him every damn Christmas. The worst part wasn’t that I was wrong; it was that I’d let her see I gave a damn about who she was fucking.

She’d laughed, and it hadn’t been out of amusement but pity.

I needed a drink. Or a lobotomy? However, since lobotomies had become obsolete in the country in the early eighties—nineteen eighties, so that’s its own kind of fucked up—I went for the drink option,ending up at The Triangle Pub, a spot just off Boren Avenue near the hospital.

The place had dim lighting, good whiskey, always a few scrubbed-up residents hunched over nachos, and a back booth that had somehow become sacred to Harper Memorial’s attendings. I’d come with Sanjay (neuro) and Zara (peds). They’d been trying to rope me into trivia night. I didn’t understand their fascination or interest in it, but they swore by it as a stress reliever.

---