Page 65 of Dr. Fellow

“Thank you, Doctor Doubtfire,” I mutter, loud enough for him to hear.

“Good one.” I hear him chuckle as I turn to put the bottle back in my bag. “Can we talk?”

I glance around for a distraction but everyone else is now in the pool, leaving me cornered with the devil incarnate.I need to remember to always travel with a buddy—it’s basic safety.

Eventually, I nod and gesture to the beige sofa beneath the cabana. The sooner we get this conversation over with, the sooner I can get back to pretending that he doesn’t exist. I sit down, making sure to leave plenty of space between us because the last thing I want is for this to feel like a cozy chat.

Parker follows, awkwardly studying the sleek pool deck before meeting my gaze with his irritatingly gorgeous blue eyes.

“Look, Cass told me not to make this a big deal,” he starts, letting out a heavy sigh. “But I know it’s been weighing on her, and she would never say anything to you directly, so I’m stepping in.”

My stomach lurches as I wait for him to spit out whatever it is that he has to say, and I pick at the dry skin on my cuticles, trying to keep my hands busy.I’ve had this habit ever since I was a kid, and uncomfortable situations just make it worse.

“She’s worried that you don’t want us to get married.”

I swallow hard. If she brought it up to Parker, it’s clearly been bothering her. It’s not like I hadn’t considered the impact of my words, but hearing the truth out loud makes my heart hurt. I’ve been acting like an asshole, and she doesn’t deserve that—she deserves a better friend.

“Listen, I just want her to be happy,” I finally say as I look over at Cass, thinking about how much joy she’s brought into my life. “If you do that, and she wants to deal with your irritating ass for her entire life, I’m not going to stand in the way.”

Parker cracks a smile. “Well, she deals with your irritating ass too. Must be something she’s into.”

I don’t laugh, but my lips quirk ever so slightly against my will.

His face becomes solemn as he follows my gaze. “You know I love her more than anything, don’t you? I love her more than our bad days. I love her more than any fight or obstacle that’ll come between us. There’s nothing in this world that I love more than her.”

His words make my brain feel fuzzy because I can tell he means them. But that doesn’t erase how he’s treated her—how I’ve had to be there to pick up the pieces when he wasn’t.

“I’m sure you do—”

“She’s taken the very worst pieces of me and transformed them into something better. I’ve grown into a better man, friend, doctor, all because of her.”

“And what have you done for her?”

The words come out before I can stop them, but now that they’ve been said, I don’t regret them—I’ve been wondering for a long time.

Parker shifts as he stares at his fiancée with a wistful look on his face. “It’s not what I have done for her, because I’ll be the first one to admit that it’s not enough. But it’s what I will do for her.”

He turns to me, his voice softening with sincerity. “I’ll cherish her, the way that she cherishes me. I’ll be her rock, the way that she’s been my rock. I’ll be everything to her, the way that she’s everything to me. And I know she knows that, but I need you to know it too.”

The tension in my shoulders eases slightly. Maybe I’ve been too harsh, too quick to judge based on snippets and moments of frustration. Maybe, just maybe, Parker Winters isn’t the devil I’ve painted him out to be in my head.

“Good,” I say after a pause. “Because she’s the best of us. She deserves that and so much more.”

Chapter 26

Walker

There’s a zero percent chance that I wake up tomorrow without a hangover, but I can’t bring myself to care. It feels good to let loose, even if Beau keeps trying to pimp me out to every group of females at this damn pool party.

“What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever seen at the hospital?” a raven-haired girl with fake tits asks, batting her also-fake eyelashes at me.

If I wasn’t already feeling my liquor, I would audibly groan and walk away because that’s the absolute worst question you can ask someone who works in healthcare. It’s not like the shit we see most days in ortho is even as traumatizing as other specialties. But we all have that one story that comes to mind—the story that haunts us, and will continue to haunt us, for the rest of our lives.

Usually, I make up something about a professional athlete, but I’m still in a foul mood after last night so I answer honestly.

“A college kid was on Lake Lanier with his friends and backed his boat into a telephone pole. Most of them died instantly from the live wire, but he survived. They flew him to the trauma hospital where I was on rotation, and we had to amputate all of his limbs. He would have done fine, but his electrical burns were so bad that he was permanently disfigured and in a fuck ton of pain, so he ended up killing himself a few weeks later.”

I don’t add the fact that I can still see his face and the screams of his family. I’m drunk and irritated, but I still know when I’ve gone toofar . . . which it appears that I have because fake tits face goes white, and she excuses herself to go get a drink.

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