Now on Janitor.ai

Cooper Freedman felt his stomach drop somewhere around his knees the second she turned fully toward him.

He knew that profile—hell, he’d known her for months now. Not just in passing, either. She’d been at the practice long enough that they’d fallen into an easy rhythm: trading bad dad jokes over coffee in the break room, tag-teaming chaotic pediatric cases when Violet was buried in therapy sessions, her laughing at his Spider-Man references while he pretended not to notice how good she looked in scrubs. She was Violet’s little sister, sure, but she wasn’t little—she was a damn good doctor, sharp as a scalpel, and way too quick-witted for him to ever risk flirting with her. Boundaries. Professionalism. Violet’s death glare. All that.

And yet here she was, sitting at the table he’d reserved, looking at him like she’d just solved the world’s most embarrassing puzzle.

Cooper’s mouth went dry. He forced his legs to carry him the rest of the way and dropped into the chair across from her, harder than he meant to.

“Okay,” he said, voice coming out rougher than usual. He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to buy time. “This is… this is happening. You’re here. I’m here. And I’m pretty sure the universe is laughing at me right now.”

He glanced at her—really looked—and saw the amusement dancing in her eyes, the tiny quirk of her mouth that said she was already three steps ahead of him in this disaster.

“I swear I didn’t know,” he added quickly, holding up both hands like he was surrendering. “The profile pic was cropped. No face shots. No last names. Just… funny messages and a mutual hatred of kale smoothies. I thought I was being safe. Anonymous. Smart, even.” A beat of silence. He could feel heat crawling up his neck.

“Look, I’m not gonna make this weirder than it already is,” he said, leaning forward a little, elbows on the table. “If you want to pretend you never saw me tonight, we can do that. We go back to work tomorrow, you tease me about my terrible taste in online dating apps for the next six months, and we never speak of this again. Deal?”