Page 8 of Carter
I blinked. “You brought food?”
His mouth tugged in that half-smile again. “What? You don’t think I know how to be neighborly?”
I didn’t answer. Mostly because my throat was tight, and my heart had kicked into an inconvenient gallop. He crossed the room, set the bag on the table, and lingered there—close enough for the warmth of him to seep into the cold corners of the break room.
“You look tired,” he said softly.
I bristled. “That’s what twelve hours in triage does to a person.”
“Not what I meant.” His eyes caught mine, steady, unflinching. “You carry everyone else’s weight. You ever put any of it down?”
I should’ve brushed it off. Should’ve told him he didn’t know me well enough to ask questions like that. But something in his voice—gentle, sure, like he already knew the answer—made me falter.
“No,” I admitted quietly. “I don’t.”
For a beat, the hum of the lights filled the silence. Then Carter nodded, like I’d just told him a secret worth guarding.
“Well,” he said, pulling a bottle of water from the bag and sliding it toward me, “maybe let someone else carry it for a minute.”
I stared at the bottle. Then at him. “And who exactly do you think that someone should be?”
His smile was small but wickedly sure. “Take a wild guess.”
Before I could respond, a nurse stuck her head in the door, calling my name. Duty pulled me back in an instant. I grabbed the water, tucking it under my arm as I passed Carter.
“Thanks for the… neighborly gesture,” I said, brushing past him.
“Anytime, Harper,” he said, voice following me down the hall, low and certain. “Anytime.”
And damn him, I knew he meant it.
8
Carter
The sliding doors hissed shut behind me, and I let the night air wash over me—cooler than I expected for Southern California, tinged with salt and exhaust from the freeway.
I hadn’t meant to stay that long. Hell, I hadn’t even meant to go in. I could’ve dropped the food off at the front desk and left. But the second I saw her name on the whiteboard outside the trauma wing, my feet didn’t listen to reason.
Harper Vale.
She looked tired, yeah. Bone-deep, twelve-hour-shift tired. But she carried it with a kind of grit that made most people fold. I’d seen it before in soldiers on their fourth tour, in teammates dragging themselves through fire because quitting wasn’t an option. Only with Harper, it wasn’t duty. It was a choice. She chose to stay in the trenches. She chose to carry the weight.
And damn if it didn’t pull me like gravity.
I leaned against my truck, watching the glow from the ER bay cast long shadows across the asphalt. I should’ve just gone home. I should’ve told myself she was a nurse Ihappened to meet on a mission, nothing more. But the truth was that I was already tangled too deep.
She remembered me. The way her eyes caught mine, sharp and cautious, then softened when she realized I wasn’t going anywhere. That look had hooked me in the ER, and tonight it yanked the line tighter.
“You ever put any of it down?” I’d asked her.
The way her voice had dropped onno… it was too honest to forget.
I ran a hand over my jaw, cursing under my breath. This wasn’t the plan. I’d come to Carlsbad to work, to keep my head down, to bleed out the ghosts from Idaho. I hadn’t come here to notice the way a woman’s braid slid over her shoulder or how she steadied the world for everyone but herself.
But I noticed. Every damn detail.
A group of interns cut across the lot, laughing too loud, breaking the spell. I climbed into my truck and sat there a minute, hands on the wheel, eyes on the hospital doors.
