Page 53 of Infamous
The hallway feels colder. The fluorescent lights hum too loud. Every step echoes like a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me anymore.
By the time I reach the stairwell, I can finally breathe. I press my palms to the wall and stare at the faint shimmer of my reflection in the metal door.
They cornered me. Smiled while they did it. And left me with no choice but to go along with their plan.
The humof fluorescent lights needles at the edges of my skull. I’m walking fast, too fast, but if I stop, I’ll crumble.
Kellerman’s words keep looping in my head.It’s dinner. That’s all.
Except it isn’t.
Nothing about Senator Graves feels likejust dinner.
My chest feels tight. I can still see his smile and the way it didn’t reach his eyes. I can still hear the soft, patronizing tone Kellerman used, like I was a child who needed coaxing instead of a woman being cornered.
Dinner. With a man who could probably ruin my career if I say no.
I press a hand to my ribs, trying to calm the tremor beneath my skin. The air feels too thin, too sharp. Every thought is a blur, colliding and reforming into the same question:Why me?
There are dozens of other doctors in this hospital. Better-connected, more senior. So why invite me? What could a senator possibly want with me? Besides whatever ego boost comes from watching a woman squirm across the dinner table?
My shoes click down the corridor, each sound too loud, too fast. I need to sit. I need air. My fingers twitch against the clipboard I don’t remember picking up.
By the time I turn the corner, the walls are starting to close in. The smell of disinfectant is suddenly unbearable. The hum of machines, the chatter of nurses all melts into white noise. My breath comes too quick, shallow and uneven.
I shouldn’t have to feel afraid of dinner. But fear doesn’t listen to logic. Fear remembers. It crawls up from the places you thought you’d sealed shut.
My vision wavers for a second from the bright lights, sterile halls, and the echo of my own heartbeat in my ears. I’m halfway to the nurses’ station, focused only on getting to the break room, when someone steps into my path.
I don’t see him until impact.
My shoulder collides with solid muscle. My clipboard clatters to the floor.
“Oh - sorry - ” I start automatically, but the word sticks halfway up my throat.
Because when I look up, everything stops.
He looks exactly the same, yet somehow nothing like the man I met two days ago.
His phone slips into his pocket as his gaze lifts, steady and deliberate. Those eyes… they hold a quiet gravity, the kind that pins you in place and makes the air feel too thick.
For a heartbeat, neither of us speaks. The corridor noise fades, swallowed by a familiar tension that sits between us - unspoken, electric, real.
“Jude,” I breathe, his name slipping out before I can catch it.
He smiles, faint and cautious, like he’s trying not to show relief. “You remembered my name.”
Just like that—four words—and the world steadies.
It shouldn’t. Not after the day I’ve had. Not after Kellerman. Not when I’m one dinner away from drowning in political small talk with a man who makes my skin crawl. But something about Jude’s his voice, his calm, cuts through the static in my head.
He gives me a half-smile, cautious. “Visiting my aunt. She’s on this floor.” He nods toward the private rooms. It’s a smooth lie; I see it in the way his gaze flickers to the chart board. Probably the same kind of lie he told when he tried to convince me he was a serial killer.
Haha girlfriend, the joke’s on you. What are the chances that you would meet not one, but two serial killers in your lifetime?
I brush off my internal voice and cross my arms. “Your aunt, huh?”
He shrugs, the corner of his mouth curving. “What can I say? I’m a family man.”
