Chapter 1: The Coldest Surgeon

The 405 freeway is a special kind of hell.

I'm pretty sure I thought that exact thought right before the truck rear-ended my poor little Honda Civic at roughly sixty miles an hour. The sound was unreal. A crunch, a scream of metal, and then my body doing something it had no business doing, which was spinning. We spun. Twice. Maybe three times. I lost count somewhere between "oh my god" and "this is it."

The airbag tasted like chalk and regret.

The last thing I remember before everything went black was the radio, still somehow playing, some sad indie song about people who didn't deserve each other. Fitting, honestly. My ex had just moved out three weeks ago. I was on my way to Trader Joe's to buy overpriced salted caramel ice cream to feel better about the fact that my twenties were ending and I'd be turning thirty in a hospital bed. Probably.

Spoiler: I was right about the hospital bed.

Waking up is not the gentle, soft-light moment people make it look like in the movies.

Waking up is pain, then confusion, then more pain. Like someone had pressed the restart button on my entire body and forgotten to install the "gentle wake-up" software.

My mouth was dry. My neck hurt in a way that made me wonder if my head was still attached to my shoulders. There was something taped to my arm, and a weird beeping somewhere to my left. I tried to open my eyes. The lights were too bright, like staring into the sun, and I squinted against them.

"I'm" I started, and my voice came out like I'd been chewing on sandpaper for a week. "Where..."

A nurse appeared, middle-aged, kind eyes, the kind of scrubs that had seen things. She smiled at me in the practiced way people smile at people who almost died.

"Welcome back, sweetie. You're at Cedars-Sinai. You were in an accident. You're safe now."

Safe. That's a big word for a Tuesday.

I blinked. The ceiling was the kind of bland white that only hospitals can produce. Somewhere down the hall, a phone was ringing. Someone was laughing probably a doctor, because nobody else laughs in a hospital.

"What... what happened to me?"

"You're okay. Broken ribs, some internal bleeding the team got under control, a couple of fractures, but you're stable. You're going to be okay."

Okay. I closed my eyes. Okay was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

There was a knock at the door. Not a polite little knock. A confident one. The kind of knock that belonged to a person who was used to people moving out of their way.

A man walked in.

Very tall, the kind of tall that makes you feel like a hobbit. Dark hair, almost black, pushed back a little, the kind that probably looked perfect in the morning without trying. Late twenties, maybe early thirties. Wearing surgical scrubs and a white coat that had actual weight to it, like he'd earned every thread. He had a face that belonged in a movie sharp jaw, the kind of cheekbones you could cut yourself on, and eyes that were... tired.

So tired.

But so cold.

"Dr. Black," the nurse said, almost breathlessly. "She's awake."

He didn't look at the nurse. He looked at me.

Directly at me.

Like he was reading a chart that happened to have a face.

"Hi," he said. His voice was low, calm, completely steady. Like nothing in the world could rattle this man. "I'm Dr. Aiden Black. I'm the one who operated on you."

"Oh," I said, which is what you say when a tall, extremely good-looking surgeon tells you he saved your life and your brain is running on about thirty percent capacity. "Hi. Thank you for, um, not letting me die."

Something that might have been a smile or might have been a muscle spasm flickered across his face. Gone in a second.

"You're welcome. How's the pain?"

"A nine."

"Out of ten?"

"I want to say ten but then I think about the eleven my ex gave me when he said he 'needed space to find himself,' so. Nine."

He blinked. Once. Twice.

Then he actually made a sound. Not a full laugh. Just a small, soft exhale through his nose. Like his body had responded without his permission.

"I'll up the morphine," he said. "Try not to do any more interviews with exes until your ribs heal."

Was that... humor? From the human popsicle? I'd hit my head too hard. I was hallucinating.

He checked my chart. Asked me a series of questions, can you feel this, can you move that, what's your name, do you know where you are. Standard stuff. I answered them all. Mostly correct, except I called my sister by my cat's name, which he did not laugh at, which I thought showed incredible restraint.

Then he stopped at the foot of my bed and looked at me. Really looked. Like I was a problem he was working on.

"You gave us a scare," he said. Quietly. Almost softer. "Don't die on me, okay?"

And before I could say anything before I could ask if that was actually something doctors said, or if that was an "Aiden Black" thing, he walked out.

The door clicked shut.

I lay there, staring at the ceiling, drugged, broken, and absolutely certain I'd imagined that whole thing.

The next three days are a blur of Jell-O, vitals, and my mom crying into her phone while she FaceTimed me from Phoenix. Apparently, I'd been unconscious for almost a day before I woke up. Apparently, my car was totaled. Apparently, the truck driver had been on his phone. Apparently, I was trending on a local L.A. Reddit thread as "the girl who got spun out near Westwood."

My ribs ached. My arm was in a sling. I had a small scar above my left eyebrow that the nurses told me would "fade in time," which is what they say when they mean you'll have it forever but we'll pretend we helped.

I kept thinking about him. Which was stupid. I was hopped up on painkillers and trauma and the most absurd realization of my life, which was that I'd almost died and a beautiful, cold, exhausted-looking surgeon had told me not to.

"Don't die on me."

Like I was something worth keeping alive.

It sat in my chest next to the broken ribs and just... didn't move.

Three days later, I got discharged with a list of instructions longer than my wedding invitations folder. (Empty, by the way. Still empty.)

I had a follow-up appointment at 10 a.m. in his office.

I'd spent an embarrassing amount of time deciding what to wear, which is crazy, because I was in a sling and a soft sweater and I wasn't trying to impress anyone. Except apparently I was trying to impress a man who'd spoken nine sentences to me and remembered none of them.

The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center parking garage smelled like gasoline and existential dread. I hobbled to the elevator, gripping the railing. The lobby was bright, all glass and marble, the kind of place where rich people came to feel like their health insurance was paying off.

The fourth floor. Surgical wing.

A receptionist smiled at me. I checked in. I sat.

And then I saw him.

Coming down the hallway. White coat. Tall. Dark hair. Tired eyes.

Dr. Aiden Black.

I sucked in a breath gently, because my ribs and sat up straighter.

He walked into the waiting room, didn't look at anyone, didn't acknowledge anyone and stopped in front of me.

He was holding two coffees.

One black.

One with an obscene amount of caramel drizzle, oat milk, and a little heart sketched in foam that I am not okay about.

"Hi," he said, like we were old friends. Like he hadn't ignored my existence for three days. "I didn't know how you take it. I guessed."

He held out the sugary one.

I stared.

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

The caramel was still warm.