Chapter 8: Rides That Became a Habit
That ride home became another, then another. Alexander never pushed and never asked for anything in return. He simply appeared at the end of her worst shifts with quiet consistency. Sometimes they talked about nothing important — the weather, the terrible coffee in the hospital break room, the book she kept meaning to finish. Sometimes Olivia fell asleep again within minutes of sitting down and he simply let her rest, waking her only when they reached her apartment building.
He began to learn the small details of her life: the way she always carried extra pens in her pockets because doctors constantly borrowed them and never returned them, the reason she drank the terrible hospital coffee without complaint (there was never time for anything better), the quiet pride she took in every patient she helped stabilize even when she was running on empty.
In return, Olivia slowly learned that the man in the expensive suits carried his own kind of exhaustion — the kind that came from never being allowed to stop, never being allowed to show weakness, and never being allowed to need anyone.
One rainy night, as the car moved slowly through traffic, Olivia looked over at him and said quietly, “You don’t have to keep doing this, you know. I’m not your responsibility.”
Alexander met her eyes in the dim light.
May you like
“I know,” he said. “I want to.”
Something in the way he said it made her chest feel tight.
