Page 29 of Undeniably Enemies

Me: See, I knew once I gave you my name you’d remember me.

Wren: Har, har. Were you this witty before?

Me: Only with you.

It’s sadly true.

Wren: Now I know why I didn’t text you again.

Me: Why’s that?

Wren: I always had a thing for Lancelot.

My lips curl into a grin, and I rub my thumb over my bottom one. This girl.

Me: Ouch. And all these years I was left to wonder at the reason.

Wren: Just tell me. What’s with all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?

My finger hovers over the keyboard on my phone, and my heart starts to pump a little harder in my chest as I type out my name. How do I tell her this? She’ll be furious—rightfully so. We have to work together for the next three-plus weeks, and I have to see her enough through Owen and everyone else that I don’t want to escalate the hatred between us.

Because I’m so tired of her hating me and me hating myselffor why she hates me and me saying that I hate her along with it just to keep it even when it was never even to begin with.

Shit. I never should have responded to her damn text. Again.

I delete my name and respond with…

Me: Good night, Wren. Do us both a favor and don’t text again.

I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and toss it back on my coffee table.

Tomorrow is a fresh start. No more texts. Minimal and professional only interactions. And in a few weeks, Wren will be off my service and out of my daily life. It’ll be fine. It has to be.

10

The worst thing about the emergency department is that it’s not very big. It’s one floorsectioned off into different patient areas with the waiting room on the other side of two giant metal,you shall not pass until we allow you to, doors. There’s a reason they call it a room, and it’s been feeling smaller and smaller every day.

“You never answered my text,” I say to Sorel, who’s floating down here from the family medicine department. She does that a couple of days a week, and it’s a bright spot for me. Sorel is awesome and has become one of my closest friends. And just as I said to Wren over text, I’ve never once pictured her naked or imagined fucking her. But even better than that, she’s a female, and with that, I get a different set of thoughts and opinions on things than I do with Owen, Bennett, or any of my other male friends.

“Text?” she questions and pulls out her phone only to remember before she searches it. “Right. Yes, I can do that. But you realize Serena has picked out every piece of furniture I’ve ever bought, and that isn’t a lot. I’m not surehow much help I’ll be.”

Serena is Sorel’s identical twin sister. She works for Monroe Fashions and lives in Paris, so that doesn’t surprise me.

“I do realize that, but you’re my only female person who isn’t my family, and my mother has a lot of opinions, especially when it comes to design and color. It’s a couch. It shouldn’t be an exploration of every furniture store in the city. I need a moderator for her, and she likes you.”

“I like her too, but yeah, I can see how she’d be a lot when it comes to interior design. I’m there with you. I’m very good at sitting and feeling if it’s too firm.” She cackles and smacks my shoulder. “That’s totally what she said.”

I smile and laugh lightly. “It is. But in my world, is there ever a thing as too firm?”

Her nose scrunches, and she tucks her blonde hair behind her ears. “With couches? Yes. Anything else I’m unwilling to discuss with you.”

“Same.”

“Dr. Fritz-Reyes, I have the lab results for your patient in curtain three,” one of the nurses says.

Sorel rolls her eyes at me because the nurses still call her Fritz-Reyes even though she’s asked them not to since her marriage to Mason is fake, though obviously the nurses don’t know that part. She turns to the nurse. “Excellent. Please tell me they’re good, and I don’t have to admit this patient up to med-surg for observation. His wife will lose her fluffing mind, and we’ll have to admit her for anxiety management.”

“They’re good,” she assures her, and Sorel wipes at the imaginary sweat on her brow.

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