chapter 1. My heart raced as the ambulance doors swung open, revealing a face I never thought I'd see again. At first, I didn't recognize him. All I wanted to do was save a life—his life—because he had just been rescued from a burning building.
Running on caffeine, I was exhausted and halfway through a double shift. The ER tonight was a whirlwind, more chaotic than usual. The blaring sirens outside melded with the frantic shouts of medical staff. Stretchers lined the hallways, and every available hand was busy treating patients.
Earlier, I had been moving from one patient to the next, mostly those rescued before him. I had barely paused to breathe and it felt like any other grueling night at the hospital until those doors burst open, and everything changed.
I rushed to the stretcher. The man before me was a grim sight—his clothes were singed, and his skin was covered in soot and blisters. The burns, while not covering his entire body, were severe enough to warrant immediate attention.
For a split second, everything else faded away—the noise, the urgency, the flashing lights. All I could see was him, lying there. He looked like someone who had been to hell and back. His body was limp, barely clinging to life.
I pushed down the rising tide of panic and focused on what needed to be done. "Let's get him into trauma one," I called out.
As we wheeled him into the trauma room, I noticed a paramedic holding a small, scorched wallet. He handed it to me with a grim look. "Found this on him," he said. I nodded, slipping it into my pocket. We had more pressing concerns right now—keeping this man alive.
We worked fast. IVs were started and the harsh lights of the ER illuminated every desperate attempt to save him. I was in my element, my hands moving almost on autopilot, guided by years of training and experience.
But something nagged at the back of my mind. As I glanced at his face again, a strange sense of familiarity tugged at my memory. I shook it off, focusing on the task at hand. We were fighting against the clock, every second crucial in the battle to stabilize him.
"BP's dropping!" someone shouted, and my heart skipped a beat. We couldn't lose him. "Push another round of epi," I ordered. The room fell into a tense silence as we waited.
Finally, the monitor beeped, signaling a steady rhythm. A collective sigh of relief swept through the room. He was stable, for now. But the fight was far from over. We had to get him to the burn unit and hope for the best.
As we prepped him for transfer, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the wallet. I flipped it open, expecting to find some form of ID. What I saw made my blood run cold. Staring back at me was a driver's license with a name I hadn't thought about in years: Colter Jameson.
My heart pounded in my chest as memories flooded back. Colter, the hotshot business student every girl wanted, the one who had swept me off my feet in college all those years ago. The one I had never told about the son he had fathered. I felt the room spin around me, the past crashing into the present with a force that left me reeling.
I had to pull myself together. There was no time for personal drama, not when a life hung in the balance. I took a deep breath, shoving the memories back down.
We wheeled him out of the trauma room, the team moving as one. As we handed him off to the burn unit, I couldn't shake the feeling of dread settling in my stomach. Colter Jameson, the man who had unknowingly changed my life forever. And I was the one who had to save him.
I stayed late, lingering in the hallways of the burn unit, watching through the glass as the specialists worked on Colter. The beeping of the monitors grimly reminded me of how close we had come to losing him. I felt a strange mix of emotions—fear, anger, sadness—all bubbling up to the surface.
It all started twenty-five years ago when I met Colter at a friend's party. I had known him for a long time; of course, everyone knew him. He was the hot, popular senior.
At that party, he was the life of the event, charming everyone around him effortlessly. I was just a nursing student, shy and focused on my studies. But that night, he noticed me, and it felt like I had won the lottery because I had a secret crush on him.
He walked up to me with his broad shoulders and well-built frame. His devilishly sexy smile lit up his strikingly handsome face, and the naive young me immediately melted. He kept looking into my eyes with his grey eyes and crumpling his hair, all of which left me foolishly entranced.
It quickly became a whirlwind romance that felt like it could never end. But it did, abruptly, when he graduated and moved on without looking back or reaching out. I guess I was just another name on his long list of conquests.
I discovered I was pregnant shortly after, and I wanted to tell him, but the news I heard about him made me hold back. I decided to keep it a secret, making up my mind to build a life for myself and my child alone.
Now, as he lay in the hospital bed, he didn't seem like the same man I knew from college. He seemed somewhat different in this vulnerable state, probably because he had never let himself be vulnerable before.
As the hours passed, I finally tore myself away, heading home to my son, James. The drive was a blur, my mind replaying the events of the night over
and over. How had this happened? Why now?