I don't like weak men. Especially ones who beg.
Okay—change that.
I want one man to beg.
Ethan Connors.
I want to see him crawl.
Mile nine of ten, and my lungs burned like open wounds. The air tasted like metal—the kind of ache that reminded me I was still alive. Eight years later, and he still lived in my head, rent-free—the bastard.
That image—the last time I saw him—was seared into the back of my eyelids: Ethan between my best friend Kayla's legs in the haystack behind his family's barn. Her laugh. His groan. My humiliation.
I'd been thick then, soft in all the wrong places, with glasses that slid down my nose and a voice too careful to be noticed. That night changed everything. My revenge didn't come with screaming or tears. It came with a treadmill, a calorie counter, and a hunger that never shut up. I lost the weight, then more. I fixed my vision with LASIK, my confidence with pain, and built a body that didn't ask permission to be seen.
Now running was my drug and my penance. My compulsion.Ethan had ruined a part of me, and unfortunately, he was still the reason I ran.
My playlist pounded against my skull—drums, bass, fury.Someone once said, I don't run because I like it. I run because one day I may have to. That was me. Prepared. Ruthless. Ready for anything.
The city was still half-asleep, morning light washing the sidewalks silver as I cut through downtown. The last mile always hurt the worst, but pain was the point. Pain was progress. Pain was proof. I could almost see his face if I closed my eyes—the smirk, the dimple, that quiet arrogance he wore like armor. The one I used to love. The one I would destroy one day.
When I finally stopped, bent at the waist, hands on my thighs, sweat dripped from my chin to the pavement. Ten miles. Done. I checked my watch—05:17. Still time to shower, scrub, and face another day of blood, chaos, and human wreckage.
Mercy General waited.
I jogged through the ambulance-bay entrance, steam rising from the asphalt as sirens wailed in the distance. The motion lights flickered when I passed beneath them. I didn't slow.
The doors hissed open, spilling me into the sharp, sterile air of the ER.
"Morning, Dr. Maren," a nurse called, voice clipped and tired.
I nodded, heading straight for the doctors' lounge. The shower was quick—cold, merciless, necessary. The water stung, washing away the salt and sweat but not the thoughts. Ethan. Always Ethan.
I was in the lounge, eating my salad standing up like always, when my new best friend walked in—Anthony Michaels.Yeah, I know—two first names. We can't have everything.
Gorgeous, tall, tan, and blessed with those ridiculous hazel-green eyes—the kind that happen when Italian and African-American genes decide to make art.Yum.Nope. Off-limits. Been there, done that. Better off besties.
We'd talked about it; I was even trying to set him up with one of my closest friends, Tyra. They'd look good together, and hell, they'd probably balance each other's chaos perfectly.
"Hey, Rachel," Anthony said, chewing on a granola bar. "Trauma consult just came in. Motorcycle versus guardrail, no helmet. Head injury—pretty bad."
"Dumbass. When will they learn?" I muttered, shoveling the rest of my salad down. "Thanks. I'm on it."
By the time I hit the ED, adrenaline had already replaced the lettuce. I grabbed the chart off the counter and flipped back the sheet.Male, around thirty. No ID. John Doe.Great.
"Let's get him scanned and page Neuro," I said, my voice on autopilot as I checked the monitors and glanced at the images behind him.
The X-rays made me wince. "Oof. Looks like a bad one."
A low moan broke through the noise.
I looked down.
His face was a ruin—swollen, bruised, torn across the forehead—but there was something beneath the blood and distortion that punched me straight in the chest. The curve of his jaw. The faint scar near the temple.
My stomach dropped.
"No," I whispered. "No. The fuck. Way."
I leaned closer, heart hammering.
"Ethan?" I breathed.
Then louder—professional again, sharp enough to cut glass.
"Page Neuro now! Unequal pupils—possible bleed. Get him to imaging and start fluids. Let's move!"
The team jumped into motion. A nurse fitted an oxygen mask over his face; another checked the line while Anthony appeared beside me, gloves already on.
"Need a hand?"
"Yeah—help me keep him steady, we need to establish an airway."
The monitors beeped faster, his pulse unsteady.
"Damn it," I muttered, repositioning his head.
For one wild second, I couldn't move, couldn't breathe. The boy who'd wrecked me lay broken on my table.
Then the professional in me took over again, cold and precise.
"You stay alive," I said quietly. "Dammit, stay with me."
The room erupted into motion—machines humming, nurses calling numbers, Anthony firing off instructions beside me.
But all I could hear was the pounding in my chest and the echo of his name in my head.
Because under the bruises and blood, I knew that face. I knew that jaw, that scar, that ghost of a smirk that had once shattered me.
The man on my table—the John Doe—was Ethan Connors.
The same Ethan who'd torn my heart out in a barn all those years ago.
And now he was bleeding and possibly dying on my table.
For a single, suspended heartbeat, everything else went silent—the alarms, the commands, even my own breath. Just him. Me. And the cruel joke of fate.
"Pressure's dropping again," Anthony called.
"Wide open," I ordered, snapping back to the moment. "Keep him breathing."
I pressed my gloved hand against Ethan's shoulder, felt the tremor of life still there, fragile but stubborn.
Another day, another fight with death.
Only this time, it wasn't a stranger.
And I went to work.