Page 6 of Happy Trails & Honey Pots

I don’t know what it was, but it was still hard for me to believe that he was gone. Sometimes I still thought it was a mistake and he was going to walk through the door.

Tears began to fill my eyes as I walked down the hall to the locker room, but I quickly wiped them away. That was another reason I didn’t want the movie made of his life. What good would bringing up the past do? I was having a hard enough time trying to go on with my life. Truth be told, I was barely getting by as it was. Reliving the worst days I’d ever had was not something that I wanted to sign up for.

“Zoe.”

A deep voice sounded behind me. Before I turned, I knew exactly whose it was. Dr. Elias Russell.

We’d hooked up several times over the years. Not anything serious. In fact, we’d never even gone out on a date. The only time anything had happened between us had been in the on-call room. I liked Elias. He was sexy, funny, and an all-around good guy. He was not the typical narcissist that surgeons tended to be. But it was not serious. It was just physical. And it had only happened a handful of times scattered over three years.

Lately, he’d been texting me. Asking me out for dinner. Trying to push for more than just the occasional sex in the on-call room, but that was all I had to give.

I turned and put on my most professional voice, “Dr. Russell, what can I do for you?”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” He motioned to the break room door.

“I just got off of a twelve-hour shift and?—”

He pushed the door open and held it. “It’ll only take a minute.”

As I walked through it and inhaled his musky scent, I told myself that I was an idiot. He smelled good. He was age appropriate. He was a pediatric heart surgeon. Every ovary-carrying human in the hospital wanted him to impregnate them, and even those without ovaries wanted to have his babies.

And I was actively avoiding him.

What in the name of Tom Hardy was wrong with me?

If Nadia, Ashley, and Daphne knew that I’d been secretly hooking up with Elias and was now doing my best to ghost him, they would be arranging an intervention.

He shut the door and then took a step toward me. “I heard about the movie. I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing.”

Shit. Now I felt doubly bad. I thought he was going to ask me out again, but he was genuinely concerned for my well-being.

“It’s not the greatest, but it is what it is.”

“Well, I’m here if you ever want to talk.”

“Thanks.” I started to walk around him and reached for the door handle.

He moved, blocking my path. “Have you ever talked to anyone?”

“What?” I glanced up at him.

“About Austin,” he clarified. “Have you ever talked to anyone?”

“Um…”

“Even your friends? Family?”

I stared up at him, not sure why this conversation was taking place. We never talked about personal things. That was part of the appeal of our relationship, or should I say situationship. It was only physical. No feelings. No complications. No nothing. Just sex.

So, where was this coming from? Why was he asking me this? He’d grown up in Firefly, so of course he knew Austin. He knew everything about my situation and had never once made any reference to it. So why was he bringing it up now?

“I think you should. I know you never wanted to talk to me, but you need to talk to someone. Especially if this movie is going to happen.”

He reached out to touch my arm in support, but I pulled it back out of his grasp.

“It was a long time ago. I’m fine.” I stepped around him, pulled the door handle, and walked through it.

Anger bubbled up in me as I continued down the corridor. With each step I took, I could feel the tension coiling inside of me like a rattlesnake ready to strike. I wasn’t sure exactly where the emotion was coming from. Maybe from the place of Elias not having a clue about my life and it not being any of his business. Or maybe it was because I had no say over a movie being made about the worst part of my life. Yeah, that was probably it.

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