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I puff out a breath. “I have a broken wrist and approximately five months left of my residency. I have boards to study for and take. I don’t have time to be an author.”

“Or maybe you need to figure out where your heart and passion truly lie and make adjustments around it.” With that, she walks away to get ready for her shift at Brigham and Women’s, where she’s a pediatric neuropsychiatrist, and I’m left here with my closet like it’ll answer all of my questions if I stare long enough.

My lips twist into a scowl. I think I just need some time away to really think and figure this out. It feels nearly impossible to do that here. I can’t just sit in this apartment, and I can’t go to work. I did two telehealth visits yesterday, but I had trouble documenting in the patients’ charts, and truth be told, I don’t want to sit here for six weeks doing that. Plus, Alden is everywhere here. His ghost is imprinted all over my bed. It’s like I can’t escape him either, and legit, what could he possibly want to talk to me about?

When someone breaks up with you because they don’t love you back, that’s it. You shouldn’t be forced to see them after that.

With a heavy sigh, I strip down and throw on some running clothes. Maybe a jog will help. It’s sunny and not too cold today. That is until I run straight into Alden as I exit my building.Literally. It’s like my mind conjured him up again and spat him out at me. Only he’s not the only thing being spat at me. He was attempting to open the front door since I obviously forgot to get my fob back from him, balancing two coffees in one hand, and I had my head down as I searched for my running mix on my phone. I didn’t see him, and he didn’t see me.

We plowed straight into each other, and the two cups he had been precariously holding smashed straight into my chest, right on my boobs. And now I’m covered in coffee. Again. Hot coffee this time, though thankfully, it’s not hot enough to burn me.

Jesus Christ. Can’t a girl catch a break this week?

Okay, I didn’t mean that literally.

I stare balefully down at my chest, the cloying scent of hazelnut and French roast mocking me.

“Shit, Keegan. I’m so sorry. Crap, look out.” Alden grabs my shoulder and yanks me forward so the heavy building door doesn’t bump into my back. “Are you okay? I didn’t see you. Did you get burned?”

“No. Not burned.” Just wet and hot and cold and annoyed all at the same time. Ugh. “That makes three, right?” I mumble to myself as I do some mental math. He broke up with me, I slipped and fell and broke my wrist and hand, and now this. That makes three, especially if we cluster my last coffee incident and ruined coat with this one. I’m hoping that means I’m done, and Karma will sail on and leave me the fuck alone. “I deliver babies. I save lives. I’m a nice person, dammit!”

“Huh? Wait, what happened to your wrist?”

“I fell the other night and broke it,” I say absently, staring down at my boobs that, even with my sports bra, make it look like I entered a wet T-shirt contest. And lost since this is coffee and not water, and it’s forty-two degrees outside in Boston instead of eighty in Miami during spring break. I’m not even making sense anymore.

He cups my chin and lifts it until I look at him. “How’d you break it? Do you need surgery?”

It’s kind of funny. He was there right after I broke it, and not only did he not notice I was gingerly holding my wrist that night, he didn’t see that I had a coat covered in frap. Was he always this oblivious? I didn’t notice until now. I fell for him hook, line, and sinker, and fast too. So smart and funny and charming.

And he wanted me.

The girl with a lot of extra curves and not a lot of straight lines. So unlike the women he dated between our relationships.

He goes for my wrist, gently taking the brace in his hand and turning my arm this way and that as he examines me. I pull my wrist free of his grip, and he frowns like I just sucker-punched him. Is he kidding me with that?

“I fell outside the café the other night right before you got there. It’s nondisplaced and nonsurgical. Four to six weeks, and I should be right as rain. Or coffee.” I snort. I think I’ve officially lost it.

“Why didn’t you say anything to me? That’s awful. I would have brought you to the hospital.”

“That’s why I didn’t say anything.” I give him aduhlook. “Why are you here? Why are you coming to see me at the hospital, my coffee shop, and now here?”

“I was hoping to catch you before your shift, though clearly you’re not working today. You haven’t been replying to my texts and don’t pick up my calls.”

“Yeah, that’s what people do after a breakup. They avoid their ex.”

He shifts his weight and glances down as if that was yet another sucker punch. “Are you really seeing that weird British guy? Is he actually your boyfriend?”

I don’t know what to say. I’m not a very good liar. Maybe it’s the pale-skinned redhead in me, but my ears turn neon, and my face flushes like I have a sunburn.

“We’ve been seeing each other recently,” I go with because that’s not a lie.

He grunts, not liking that at all. “We broke up last week. How can you move on so fast?”

“What do you want me to say? I wasn’t going to sit around and mope over the fact that you didn’t want me the way I wanted you.”

“That’s not how it was, Keegan. Dammit.” He drags a frustrated hand through his hair. “Can we go inside and talk? I have stuff to say to you, and I’m betting you’d like to change.”

I wasn’t ready to see him yet. Not this soon. I figured in a few weeks we could start trying to be friends the way we said. Or at least some of the dust would have settled and I’d have moved on, and I wouldn’t care that one week after I told him I loved him, he broke up with me.