Page 46 of Crossing the Line
The question sent heat through Harper's chest. "Terrifying. And necessary."
"Most worthwhile things are both," Lavender observed with a smile. "The question is whether you're brave enough to ask for what you need."
Harper looked around the café one more time, seeing not just what she couldn't have, but what she refused to accept as impossible. "I think I am," she said, and heard the determination in her own voice.
"Good," Lavender said, standing and squeezing Harper's shoulder. "You deserve someone who's proud to love you, Harper. Don't settle for someone who's merely comfortable hiding with you."
As Lavender moved away to tend to other customers, Harper remained at the bar, processing the conversation with growing resolution. The wine tasted better now, the café felt warmer, and the couples around her looked less like reminders of what she lacked and more like examples of what she deserved.
She wasn't asking for public declarations or professional recklessness. She was asking to matter enough to be worth a risk. And if Carmen couldn't understand that, then maybe Harper needed to reconsider whether this love was as mutual as she'd believed.
The thought should have been devastating. Instead, it felt like stepping into her own power for the first time in her adult life.
13
CARMEN
Carmen's pen hovered over Mrs. Kovacheva’s post-operative report, the same sentence unfinished for the third time in twenty minutes. Her concentration had been fractured since discovering Harper's message after finishing a valve replacement three hours ago. The text had been waiting when she'd finally checked her phone in the locker room, and its contents had been occupying her thoughts ever since.
“I know we agreed to keep things professional during work hours, but I'd like to talk when you have time. About us and what we're building together. Let me know when works for you.”
It was different from their usual exchanges. More direct. Harper had acknowledged their relationship explicitly, used the word "us" without deflection, and asked for something Carmen wasn't sure she was ready to give: a real conversation about their future.
Carmen closed the patient file with more force than was necessary and pushed back from her office desk. The surgical wing was quieter during night shift, with only essential staff managing post-operative patients and emergency cases. She'ddeliberately stayed late to avoid the daytime bustle, but solitude wasn't providing the clarity she'd hoped for.
Her response to Harper had been immediate, almost involuntary: “Tomorrow evening? My place?”But now, twelve hours later, Carmen was second-guessing everything about that invitation. Her townhouse was their private space where professional boundaries dissolved and she could be honest about her feelings. It was also where they'd agreed to their current arrangement, and Harper was clearly planning to challenge that.
Carmen gathered her things and made her way through the hospital corridors, but instead of heading to the parking garage, she found herself climbing the service stairs toward the building's roof access. The rooftop garden had been her refuge during residency, a small oasis where she could think without the constant demands of medical education. Now, fifteen years later, she still sought it out when hospital walls felt too confining.
The evening air hit her face like relief as she stepped onto the rooftop. Phoenix Ridge spread below her in a carpet of lights, the harbor stretching toward darkness punctuated by the lighthouse beam sweeping across the water. The garden itself was modest—raised beds with hardy perennials, a few benches positioned to take advantage of the view, solar lights creating pools of warmth along the walkways.
Carmen settled on the bench facing the harbor and pulled out her phone, reading Harper's message again. The professional politeness was still there, but underneath lay something new: expectation. Harper wasn't asking for permission or apologizing for wanting more. She was stating her needs and assuming Carmen would want to address them.
The shift should have alarmed Carmen's protective instincts. Instead, it sent heat spiraling through her chest in ways thathad nothing to do with the evening air. Harper was becoming the confident woman Carmen had glimpsed during their first night at Lavender's—direct, unafraid to ask for what she wanted, secure in her own worth.
The problem was that what Harper wanted might be more than Carmen could safely give.
Carmen's phone buzzed with a text from Julia:“Heard you're still at the hospital. Everything okay?”
Carmen stared at the message without responding. Julia had been asking variations of the same question for days, noting Carmen's distraction and increasing isolation. But how could Carmen explain that she was falling in love with someone she was supposed to supervise? That every professional interaction felt like betrayal of something precious? That she was terrified of wanting something so much that losing it might destroy her?
She exited out of Julia's message and opened Harper's again, studying the words for clues about what tomorrow's conversation might bring. Harper had said"about us, about what we're building together,"which suggested she saw their relationship as something with potential rather than just a complicated situation to manage. But building required foundation, planning, and commitment to something beyond the careful boundaries they'd established.
Carmen looked out over Phoenix Ridge's lights, many of them homes where couples lived openly, planned futures together, and made decisions as partners rather than secrets. She'd convinced herself that professional discretion was protection, but sitting alone on the rooftop while Harper presumably prepared to ask for more, Carmen wondered if she'd been protecting herself right out of the best thing that had happened to her in years.
A harbor fog was beginning to form on the horizon, promising the kind of thick white cover that would wrap the cityin intimate silence. Perfect weather for the kind of vulnerability that could change everything.
Carmen's hands were steady as she typed her response to Julia:“Just thinking. I’m leaving soon.”
But she made no move to leave the rooftop garden. Tomorrow evening felt both too soon and not soon enough, and Carmen found herself hoping that whatever Harper planned to say, it would be brave enough for both of them.
Because sitting under the stars with the fog rolling in and her phone full of Harper's increasingly confident words, Carmen was beginning to suspect that Harper had found something Carmen had lost months ago: the courage to demand more from love than just the safety of hiding.
Carmen heard the rooftop access door open behind her, the soft scrape of metal against concrete cutting through the evening quiet. Her shoulders tensed involuntarily, a sharp breath catching in her throat before she turned to see who had discovered her refuge.
Harper stood in the doorway, still wearing scrubs from her late shift, her hair slightly mussed from what had probably been a long day in surgery. She looked uncertain for a moment, as if she hadn't expected to find anyone up here, but when her eyes met Carmen's, something shifted in her expression.
"I saw your car in the parking garage," Harper said, stepping onto the rooftop and letting the door close behind her. "I thought you might have gone home hours ago."
