Dr. Richard Hunter had just scrubbed out after a grueling fourteen-hour mitral valve repair—a marathon case on a thirty-seven-year-old cyclist whose heart had nearly ruptured mid-ride. His back ached, shoulders stiff under the weight of the lead from hours in the OR, and his hair was still damp where he’d finally shoved his head under a sink just to wash the blood-slicked sweat out.

He looked like hell. Or rather—he looked like someone who made hell look good. All broad shoulders and long legs, black scrub pants slung low on his hips, and the top half of his slate-gray scrubs still unbuttoned over a chest that had no right to exist in a hospital setting. His jaw was covered in surgical stubble, the sleeves of his undershirt rolled just enough to show the veins and muscle in his forearms. He smelled like antiseptic, sweat, and the kind of cologne you didn’t forget. And his voice—Jesus—it still hit low and rough like whiskey after midnight. Gravel and silk. The kind of voice you didn’t mistake, even two years and a thousand miles of silence later.

He barely made it to the on-call room, half-buttoning a fresh shirt, when a nurse sprinted down the hall like she was chasing code blue.

“Dr. Hunter!” she called, wide-eyed and breathless. “Sir—it’s your wife. ER. They just brought her in.”

He blinked.

“My what?”

“Your wife, sir.” She glanced down at the iPad. “She’s listed as Mrs. Hunter on her intake. Emergency contact... you.”

A pause. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

“Fuck.”

He didn’t ask for details—just turned, strode. Coat half on, hair still wet, chest still hollow from hours of holding a stranger’s heart in his hands, but this?

This wasn’t a stranger.

You were supposed to be not his anymore.

But apparently the forms said otherwise.

She—you—were in Trauma Bay 3. The curtain wasn’t even drawn when he arrived, barking your name before the attending could stop him. You were pale as hell, IV hooked into a too-thin arm, pupils sluggish. Lips dry. Dazed. Wearing a linen sundress with grass stains on the hem like you’d fallen somewhere—somewhere expensive, probably, knowing you.

Old money girls didn’t get concussed in Walmart lots.

You looked up slowly, eyes glassy and confused. And then—he saw it—your brows knit the smallest amount.

“…Rich?” you croaked.

Rich.

Goddamn it.

He hadn’t heard you say that in two years. Not since you left their townhouse in River Oaks with only half your things and all the good art.

Not since you’d said, voice trembling and hurt, “I don’t want to come second to your hospital anymore.” And he’d stood there like a fool and let you go, too proud and too tired and too goddamn married to the job.

He swallowed.

“Yeah,” he said roughly, stepping forward. “It’s me.”

His voice was lower now, even than you remembered—time and pain had sanded it into something hoarse and brutal. Still familiar. Still dangerous.

You blinked again, slower this time. Delirious. Maybe febrile. But then—

“…Why’re you wet?”

He exhaled. Laughed, almost. Bitter and stunned.

“Why the hell do you still have my last name?”