Page 102 of Falling into Place
Madison Princeton. Brooks had mentioned a Madison but couldn’t remember her last name. She was the woman he’d gone out with the day after these photos were taken.
“She believes you and Brooks were together when he went out with her daughter and that he got her hopes up for no reason. Understandably, she’s extremely upset about it.”
This was bad. Even though Brooks had said Madison wanted to be with someone else and was using Brooks as a pawn to get her mom off her back, it wouldn’t help for Carly to bring that up. The truth of the matter was, she had gone against company policy and there was photo evidence. She could try to explain the images away—say they looked worse than they were—but they had done much worse in private. Either way, the damage was done.
First with Chet, now this. Mai deserved her honesty.
“I didn’t expect to feel this way about him,” Carly admitted quietly, staring at the image on the phone still in her hand. “I never meant for this to happen. It’s real, what I feel for him. If that even matters.”
Mai sighed. She took the phone, laid it on the desk, and massaged her temples. “You’ve put me in a terrible position, Carly.”
“I’m sorry.” And she was.
A few moments of silence passed before Mai spoke again. “I believe that none of this was deliberate, and that you weren’t acting with sinister intent. But you broke company policy. Someone else saw, and you confirmed it. Even if you and Brooks are in a genuine relationship now, I can’t ignore those facts. Even if I wanted to, HR wouldn’t let me. I hope you understand ... my hands are tied.”
Carly knew what was coming, but she still flinched at Mai’s next words.
“I’m going to have to let you go.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brooks
When I’m at a loss for how to manage a patient, I phone a friend. Medicine isn’t independent work, it’s a group project. You’ve got access to a whole host of experts and specialists in this building, so for the sake of every patient you take care of, use them every chance you get.
—Dr. Brooks Martin to the critical-care fellows, last winter
Brooks peeled his eyes open in tiny increments, allowing his pupils to adjust to the light and the room to slowly come into focus. His temples throbbed and his mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. His stomach was on edge, and it was a toss-up whether he was hungry or needed to vomit. Puffy eyes and a dry throat rounded out the disgraced picture he must make.
Oh, and he really had to pee.
He grunted as he rolled to the side and put his feet on the floor.
Easy. Definitely not hungry.
Oreo jumped onto the bed with ease and sat on his haunches, staring with his flat copper gaze.
“Don’t judge me.”
He used the restroom and after washing his hands, planted his palms beside the sink and locked his elbows, studying his reflection in the mirror.
He hated himself.
It had been a day and a half since Coach had died and he’d shown up at Carly’s door.
He didn’t even remember driving to her apartment yesterday morning. He’d called Linda to deliver the news himself, and her anguished howl would be burned into his brain forever. He’d just sort of left the hospital in a haze and found himself there, like going anywhere else hadn’t even occurred to him.
She was the only person he’d wanted to see. He’d just wanted to be in her general vicinity and nothing more. To hug her and hear her voice and lie down beside her and sleep for days with her body breathing and living next to his.
But as he’d lain there with her in his arms, his lips on her hair and her sweet breath warm against his chest, the excruciating hole in his chest hadn’t abated.
Not even a little.
Maybe grief turned him a little mad, or maybe the frenzy had been there all along and he’d just suppressed it. Either way, he’d ended up using her body to drive away the demons, chasing the relief only sex could bring, even if just for a moment. It hadn’t worked out for him the way it used to, though. With Carly, it wasn’t just about the physical. It never had been.
He was in love with her. When he closed his eyes, he saw her, and when he went to sleep, he dreamed of her. No part of him wanted to be apart from her, even the dark ones. And that was the whole problem. Even as he was sinking lower and lower, he just pulled her along with him. Instead of talking about what had happened or how he was feeling, he’d fucked her to forget.
When that didn’t work, and the combined memories of Linda and his dad’s reactions to learning the loves of their lives were goneforever pushed front and center in his brain, he’d panicked. As much as he’d told himself she wasn’t, Carly had become that person for him. Someone he couldn’t imagine living without, and he’d resonated more with his dad in that moment than ever before.
