Page 6 of Tangled Up

Every summer he came here with an entourage of staff and caretakers, and I pause in the street to lean forward and stare at the dark windows. I half-expect to see his face gazing back at me. My chest tightens, and heat floods my stomach.

I shake it away. Beck Munroe is long gone, and those days are far behind me in the rearview mirror. Still, touching them aches like a bruise.Is this why I haven’t returned since the day I left?

“Ridiculous,” I grumble.

I’ve worked hard to categorize Beck Munroe and everything that happened between us as a learning experience and nothing more. I won’t allow this time at home to upend all the progress I’ve made.

“Go away, ghosts,” I whisper, shoving my dark hair behind my ears and steering the truck towards my aunt’s house. “You’re in my past, and that’s where you’ll stay.”

CHAPTERTWO

BECK

“Ihaven’t been able to let it go.” Lifting the tumbler of scotch, I take a long pull, not particularly wanting to revisit my moment last week.

Shook me hardis an understatement. It’s more like a tiller was run through my insides, plowing right through the neat, controlled rows of my life, upending everything I’ve worked so hard to establish since I launched my practice in Tampa.

I actually believed I’d made peace with that mistake. I didn’t think about it anymore. I didn’t think about her. Much.

Now it’s all lying naked and bare, roots on top of the soil, frying in the punishing heat of the Florida sun.

“The old man in the ER?” Larsen Belle studies me with her clinical, psychiatrist eyes.

We became friends when I started at Bayside. She’s focused and controlled, from her starched white coat to her blonde hair sleek in a tight bun. She’s no-nonsense, and I appreciate it.

“It was more than that.” I clear the gruffness in my throat with another sip of scotch.

Classic rock blasts from behind us, and we’re leaning against the polished-wood bar at Shipwrecked, our go-to after-hours sports pub.

It’s all polished wood and big screen TVs and young professionals blowing off steam at pool tables or dartboards or seated in the worn-leather booths that line the back walls.

“But you got him back, right?” Her response is calm, scientific reason.

“Yeah, but it took a minute.” Lowering my chin, I scrub my fingers over my forehead.

“So what’s the problem?”

I should stick tointernalmedicine. Turning the word over in my brain, I think about the meaning. I think about my own internal wounds and wonder if I’ll ever find relief from the fucking skeleton that refuses to stay buried.

Larsen doesn’t miss a thing. “That was a long pause.”

Exhaling a rough chuckle, I push away from the bar. “We’re off the clock, right?”

“You tell me.” She rests a hip against the bar, crossing her arms. “We face the possibility of death every day. It comes with the territory. In this case, you won. Why aren’t you happy, or at least relieved?”

I nod, pressing my lips together. “You’re right. I’m overthinking it.”

She’s not satisfied. She’s too good at her job, and I wonder if that’s why I’ve never told her the whole story about my past.Am I that fucking scared to own it?

In a rush that refuses to be contained, the memories flood back. A young man, the same age as me, rushed into the ER with multiple trauma wounds from a head-on collision with a streetlight. I was only a resident doing my rotation in trauma. I needed a more experienced doctor backing me up, but none were there.

He died right in front of me.

The official record says he “succumbed to his injuries”—it wasn’t my fault.

It’s what I tell myself when the memories get too punishing.

If only that were all of the story.

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