Page 7 of Crossing the Line (Phoenix Ridge Medical #6)

Hailey's fingers traced abstract patterns on Carmen's stomach, light enough to be ignorable but present enough to be maddening. "Do you ever regret it? Playing classical piano and being in space are very different from what you do now."

"Surgery? No." Carmen caught Hailey's wandering hand, interlacing their fingers. "Everything else? Sometimes."

"Like what?"

Carmen stared at the ceiling, weighing how much truth to offer this woman who'd already seen her more vulnerable than almost anyone in years. "I'm thirty-nine years old, and this is the first time in months I've had a conversation that wasn't about surgical procedures or hospital politics."

"That's not true. You talked to Julia tonight."

"Julia doesn't count. She's..." Carmen searched for the right word. "Safe."

"And I'm not?"

"No." The admission came out rougher than intended. "You're definitely not safe."

Hailey propped herself up on one elbow, studying Carmen's face in the silver light. "Good. Safe is overrated."

"Says the woman who doesn't have to perform life-saving surgery in the morning."

"What time?"

"Seven a.m. Cardiac repair. It’s routine, but nothing's truly routine when you're literally holding someone's heart in your hands."

"That's beautiful," Hailey said softly. "The way you think about it. Most people would just see it as a job."

"It's never just a job." Carmen felt the familiar passion creeping into her voice. "Every surgery is someone's entire world. Someone's parent, child, partner. You can't forget that, even when you're exhausted and it's your fifth procedure of the day."

"You're extraordinary," Hailey said, and the simple sincerity of it made Carmen's chest tighten.

"You don't know me well enough to say that."

"I know enough."

They lay in comfortable silence, the harbor fog horn calling again across the water. Carmen felt herself drifting, pulled under by exhaustion and the unfamiliar comfort of another body beside hers. For once, her mind wasn't racing through tomorrow's procedures or analyzing today's mistakes.

"Stay," she heard herself whisper, already half-asleep. "Please."

Hailey's lips pressed against her temple, soft as a promise. "I'm not going anywhere."

Carmen let herself believe it, just for tonight, and slipped into the deepest sleep she'd had in months.

Carmen woke slowly, consciousness seeping in like honey.

Her internal clock, usually precise to the minute, felt wonderfully broken.

Warmth surrounded her—not just the physical comfort of her bed, but something deeper: the satisfied ache in her muscles, the lingering scent of perfume on her sheets, the memory of soft laughter in the darkness.

She reached out without opening her eyes, seeking the warmth that should’ve been beside her.

Her hand met cold sheets.

Carmen’s eyes snapped open. Morning light, harsh and unforgiving, illuminated the empty space where Hailey had been. The pillow still held the impression of her head and the sheets on that side of the bed twisted as if from recent movement, but the woman herself had vanished like smoke.

She sat up too quickly, scanning the room for any sign that last night had been real. Her clothes from yesterday lay scattered on the floor, evidence of her complete loss of control. But Hailey’s clothes were gone. No note on the nightstand, no number scrawled on the mirror, nothing.

Carmen pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to process the hollow sensation expanding in her chest. When was the last time she’d woken up with someone? When was the last time she’d wanted to?

The bathroom mirror reflected a stranger.

Her usually perfect hair was tangled, falling in waves she had forgotten it could make.

Her face, bare of the minimal makeup she wore even at home, looked younger but also more exposed.

There were faint marks on her neck that her surgical scrubs would cover but that she’d feel burning on her skin all day.

She looked thoroughly fucked. The crude thought surprised her. Carmen didn’t usually think in such terms, but there was no clinical language for what had happened last night, no medical terminology that could capture the way Hailey had taken her apart and put her together differently.

Her morning routine felt like a betrayal.

The shower washed away Hailey’s scent from her skin but not the lingering memory of her touch.

Her coffee maker gurgled its familiar rhythm, but the kitchen felt too large and quiet.

Even the coffee tasted wrong—bitter where it should have been rich, thin where it should have been full.

Carmen stood at her kitchen island, staring at the spot where Hailey had set her water glass last night. The coaster was still there, slightly off-center from where Carmen would’ve placed it. She reached out to adjust it, then stopped.

What was she doing? One night with a stranger, and suddenly her perfectly ordered life felt like a museum exhibit: beautiful, pristine, utterly lifeless.

“It was just sex,” she said aloud, testing the words. They fell flat in the empty kitchen.

Very good sex. Mind-altering sex. The kind of sex that made her remember she had a body beyond its function as a surgical instrument.

But it was also more than that. The conversation in the darkness, the easy laughter, the way Hailey had looked at her like she was worth knowing—not as Carmen Méndez, cardiothoracic surgeon, but just Carmen.

Her phone buzzed with a hospital reminder about her seven o’clock surgery. Real life reasserting itself.

Carmen moved through her preparation ritual: surgical scrubs laid out, hair pulled back in the severe style that fit under surgical caps, and minimal makeup to look professional but not distracted.

Each step should’ve returned her to herself, to the controlled surgeon who didn’t let strangers into her bed or heart.

Instead, she felt like she was putting on a costume and playing a role that no longer fit quite right.

The townhouse that had felt like a sanctuary from the world yesterday now felt like a cage. Every perfectly placed object mocked her attempt to return to normal. The piano sat silent in the living room, and Carmen remembered how Hailey’s fingers hovered over the keys, respectful and curious.

She grabbed her work bag with more force than necessary. She had a surgery to perform, a life to save. That was real, concrete, something she could control.

But as she locked her front door, Carmen couldn’t shake the feeling that Hailey had walked out with something essential, some piece of herself that Carmen hadn’t known she could still give away.

The worst part was how much she wanted it back. How much she wanted her back.

“Just one night,” Carmen whispered to the morning air. “That’s all it was supposed to be.”

But she was a surgeon. She knew better than most that some incisions, once made, could never fully heal. They left scars that ached at unexpected moments, reminders of what had been opened…and what had been lost.

Hailey had left no contact information, no way to find her again. A clean cut, surgical in its precision.

Carmen should’ve been grateful for the simplicity.

Instead, she felt hollowed out, as if Hailey had performed her own kind of operation last night, removing something Carmen hadn’t known was diseased until its absence left her feeling more alive than she had in years.

And infinitely more alone.