Page 117 of Undeniably Enemies

“What?” everyone cries at once, staring at me as if I just spoke to them in ancient Greek.

I move straight into the kitchen and right up to the counter. “Wren and I are together. We have been for a couple of weeks now.”

Silence. I’m greeted with a heavy, deafening silence.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” Katy’s hurt, and I hate that look on her face.

“It was new for us after a lot of fighting and tension and, well, a lot of hate, at least on her part and maybe some on mine too. We wanted to see where it would go between us before we involved the world.”

“Except something happened that brought you here tonight,” Layla surmises, and I stare down at my hands on the cold stone.

“Yes. And admittedly, it shouldn’t have come to this, and I’m sorry about that.”

“What happened?” Callan asks, coming in to stand beside me. “Is Wren okay?”

“She’s fine. We were in a grocery store shopping for dinner when we ran into Harrison Marshall.”

“Ah,” Callan says with a knowing lilt to his voice. “So he discovered your secret. Let me guess, he was ecstatic.”

I peer up at him. “To put it mildly.” I sigh. “Look, I didn’t come here to try to save myself or explain away what I did and somehow salvage my shot at chief. I came here for Wren. She wants to match in the ER, and I don’t want her reputation tarnished because I wasn’t smart or man enough to come and speak to you or the board about it when things began with us.”

Callan’s lips twist into a wry grin, and he looks at Layla. Bennett is throwing Katy a similar look.

“What? What am I missing?”

“You love her,” Katy says plainly.

“Yes,” I tell her just as simply. “I do. Very much.”

“How weird is that? You and Wren.”

I crack a smile, and Katy bursts out laughing.

“We all saw it, you know.”

“What?” That catches me by surprise.

She shrugs. “We did.”

“I didn’t,” Bennett states. “I seriously had no clue and feel totally blindsided by this. Does Owen know?”

“Not yet, but we’ll tell him the next chance we get.”

Willow twirls around the kitchen and tugs on Katy so she’ll pick her up.

“You know I was Callan’s student,” Layla offers. “He was also my med school professor, and we were pretending to beengaged, so if you really want to get into inappropriate relationships, I think we win.”

“I don’t think I knew that about the fake engagement.” The words make my lips twitch. How is that even a thing? A fake relationship? But here she is telling me that, and Sorel and Mason got married in a similar way, and Tinsley was fake engaged to Stone for a bit.

Layla shrugs. “It was so Callan could keep Katy.”

I blink, a bit stunned by that.

“Katy was trying for her fellowship while we were trying for Willow, and I was chief. That certainly wasn’t on the up and up.”

“But you told them you had to be taken out of the running for decision-making,” I counter.

“Not immediately, I didn’t.”

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