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@abbotcodyyy
SHAWN HATOSY Streaming Consciousness for GQ
The actual ray of sunshine that is Shawn Hatosy. 😍
You good? THE PITT (2025–) 2x15 “9:00 P.M.”
THE PITT (2025–) 2x14 “8:00 P.M.”
sammy bryant doesn't do casual. he spotted you, and decided 'that's my wife.' he’s been on you like a dog every since.
new dad!Jack Abbot doing skin to skin with your newborn baby <3
It's quiet in the hospital room. Jack's been sitting by the window for a long time now, watching the snow fall and looking over to check on your sleeping form ever so often.
The last 24 hours have been a lot on you. You're sleeping, getting well-needed rest, your little puffs of air the only sound in the room. This and the little coos coming from the bundle in Jack's arms.
Jack smiles down at yours and his baby, his heart hurting with overflowing unconditional love for the little worm resting easy against him. His hand is so large against baby's head, it baffles him how something so loved can be so small.
It's a good thing he runs warm in general because the little worm seems to be very comfortable like this, snuggled against his naked chest and soaking all that loving attention up like a sponge. Baby coos once more and Jack hums, his knuckles brushing over the soft peachy cheek that isn't resting over his heart.
"Let's give mommy some more rest, okay, sweety? Cuddling with daddy is nice, isn't it? No need to make a fuzz, hm?"
Baby blinks at him, thinking about it for minute before seemingly agreeing and snuggling back into the warmth Jack provides.
God, his heart is so full.
His beautiful strong supergirl is finally sleeping and her and his baby is with him, all cozy.
Jack leans back and closes his eyes, letting the bliss wash over him. Baby's hair is whispy soft against his hand and your lips part peacefully in your sleep...
His heart is so, so full.
oh🥹🥹🥹🥹
"You've been acting for more than two decades. I remember you as a younger man."
SHAWN HATOSY on CBS Mornings (▶ prev interviews)
😻😻😻😻
JACK ABBOT x READER - SWEATER WEATHER
summary: What starts as you “borrowing” Jack’s hoodie turns into heated confessions, desperate kisses, and him fucking you on the counter like he’s been waiting all this time to claim you.
wk: 3.1k
tags: Smut (18+ • MDNI), rough/dominant sex, choking/breath play, possessive dirty talk, creampie, breeding kink, semi-public sex (risk of getting caught, strong language, nicknames like: babygirl, good girl, beautiful and mine
notes: this is my first time writing smut, soo i tried. don't flame me. thank you. have fun <3
The Nightshift in the ER is cold. Not because the temperature drops, but because exhaustion sinks into your bones and makes everything feel sharper, even lonelier. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead like static in your skull. Somewhere around midnight the department grows quiet for a moment, and that’s when the cold really creeps in.
Under your scrubs, behind your eyes, into the spaces between heartbeats.
Maybe it's the exhaustion.
Maybe it's the lack of sunlight.
Maybe it's just this place.
You’re halfway through triaging a sprained wrist when Jack brushes past you, close enough that his arm grazes your shoulder. He muttered an apology and carried on with a chart tucked under one arm.
"Room four needs labs” he says, still moving towards the bay.
"You say good evening to all your coworkers like that?"
Jack glances over his shoulder, dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes.
"You've been here six months and still think this is evening?"
"It's called optimism”
"It's called concerning"
"Concerning? Naaaahh”
“I see, you're in denial. Now, that's concerning” he laughs before sorting his clipboard into the stack of more.
You grin despite the tiredness and watch him take off into the opposite direction, catching a glimpse at the way the corners of his lips turn upwards.
That's become normal lately.
The little almost-smiles.
The lingering eye contact.
The strange awareness you've developed of where Jack is at all times.
You try not to think too hard about it. It means nothing and everything all at once.
There's a lull around eleven-thirty that the veteran nurses call the false peace.
You've learned not to trust it.
You spend it charting at the nurses' station, stealing sips of lukewarm coffee, half-watching Jack across the department as he talks to a family in the hallway outside room seven. He keeps his voice low, controlled but you can read the conversation in his posture. The slight drop of his shoulders. The way he turns his body toward them like a shield.
Bad news. Fuck.
He's good at delivering it. Better than most people you've worked with. He doesn't rush through the words or hide behind clinical language, he's honest while people fall apart.
It shouldn't surprise you by now but it does. A little.
He looks up and catches you watching. As always. You just really can't help yourself.
You drop your eyes back to your chart immediately. There has always been this tension between the two of you, but neither ever tried to go after it. Whether it was out of fear, judgement or simply because neither of you knew if the other one felt the same.
When you look back up, he's already gone. The family left behind in the room he just left, collecting the pieces of their kid's life. Or whatever is left of it.
The shift gets worse around one in the morning. Just when you thought of grabbing a coffee, a multi car accident floods every single bed in the ER. Everything is filled with noise, blood and adrenaline, no one is staying still.
Nurses are shouting vitals, yelling for crash carts and a doctor to assess the case
And by the time the chaos finally slows down, your scrubs cling uncomfortably to your skin and your head throbs behind your eyes. The familiar aching pain that spreads through your head would stop eventually, at the latest when your head hit the pillow in the morning.
You make your way toward the break room like a ghost.
The room is blessedly empty, a single hoodie catching your attention.
Gray. Oversized. Familiar.
Jack's.
You recognize it because he wears it constantly during overnight shifts, usually sometime around four a.m. when exhaustion starts winning.
Your fingers brush over the sleeve before you can stop yourself.
It looks warm. Of course it is, why else would he wear it?
You can't help but take it into your hands, smiling and eventually slipping it over your head. The warmth of the fabric hits you immediately.
Oh, I'm so stealing this one.
If he didn't want someone stealing it, maybe he shouldn't leave it lying around in a hospital full of sleep-deprived thieves.
It even smells like him.
You stand there for a moment longer than necessary.
He'd drop some comments about that hoodie later, or not at all. You decided you're willing to take the risk before making your way over to the coffee pot.
Halfway through pouring coffee, the break room door swings open.
Of course it does. And who else could it be, but him?
Jack stops dead.
His gaze lands on the hoodie first, then slowly lifts to your face.
"You rob people often" he says finally, voice rough with exhaustion "or am I special?"
"You left it unattended." you shrug your shoulders and continue to pour.
"That's your legal defense?"
"You work in emergency medicine. Surely you support survival-based decision making."
Jack shuts the door behind him, still staring at you in his hoodie.
It does something unfortunate to your heartbeat.
"You know” he says slowly "most criminals at least try to be subtle."
You hold your arms out dramatically. "It was cold."
"It's seventy-two degrees in here."
"Emotionally, Jack. Keep up."
That finally earns a laugh from him.
A real one.
Low and tired and warm enough that your stomach flips embarrassingly hard.
Jack moves farther into the room, grabbing himself a mug from beside the microwave.
His words made you painfully aware of the fact that you're wearing his clothes.
And worse, he keeps looking at you in them.
Not annoyed. Distracted.
Like he's trying very hard not to think about something.
"You're staring," you say, trying to hide your smile behind the hood you slipped over your head before pouring your coffee.
"You're wearing my hoodie."
"You noticed?"
"Hard to miss."
“I tactically acquired it”
“Tha- Jeez, that's not how that works” he chuckles.
“Thats exactly how that works and besides, you left it unattended,” you say. “So, I’d say that’s basically consent.”
“That’s not how theft works.”
“You’re a doctor, not a cop.”
“Still pretty sure this is a felony.”
You take a sip of coffee to hide your smile since the hoodie wasn't doing enough.
"Well now I'm definitely keeping it."
"That hoodie cost me forty dollars."
"You're a doctor.” you remind him again, now finally turning towards him. “You make trauma surgeon money, you'll survive
"That's exactly why I can't afford it." he huffed while grabbing the pot right next to you, pouring it and taking a sip of it before setting down the mug.
Jack leans against the counter across from you, shoulders visibly sagging now that the rush has died down. Up close, he looks exhausted in a way that settles deep beneath your ribs.
His hair's slightly messy from running his hands through it all night and there's dried blood near the cuff of his sleeve he probably hasn't noticed.
He catches you looking and tilts his head.
“What?”
“You doing okay?” you bite your lower lip, giving him a faint smile.
"Yeah, hanging in there"
"You look terrible."
"Wow."
"You know what I mean."
"Do I?"
You roll your eyes. "You look tired."
"So do you."
"That's different."
"How?"
"I'm charming when I'm sleep deprived."
Jack's mouth twitches again "That confidence is concerning."
"That family tonight," you say without responding to his previous tease "The one you were talking to before the accidents came in."
Jack looks at you.
"You were good with them."
A beat of silence.
"You were watching."
"Hard not to. Seeing someone's life fall apart is not for the weak. You did well"
“Oh thank you for the praise, I thrive on that” he jokes, trying to lighten up the mood but immediately looking down to his hands.
Something in his expression shifts into something quieter, more unguarded than he usually allows in the department.
"It was their kid," he says finally. "he was twelve."
You don't say anything. There isn't anything to say.
Jack nods, almost to himself. Then takes a sip of coffee and looks back up at you, and the wall slides back into place, softer now, somehow. More deliberate.
"Do you wear everybody's clothes” he asks casually, "or should I feel honored?"
You smile into your cup. "Jealous?"
"Of who?"
"Imaginary hoodie competitors."
Jack huffs out another laugh, shaking his head, but then, quieter: "You look good in it."
Your breath catches a little.
There's no teasing in his voice this time.
No sarcasm to hide behind.
Just honesty.
The sudden tension in the room feels almost tangible.
You try to laugh it off anyway. "It's literally three sizes too big."
"Didn't say it fit."
The way he says it makes heat crawl up your neck.
Jack notices immediately.
Of course he does.
His gaze drops briefly to your mouth before flicking back up again.
Something shifts then.
Something that's probably been shifting for months now.
Every late-night coffee together.
Every lingering glance across trauma rooms.
Every time he checked if you'd eaten.
Every moment that felt just slightly too intimate for coworkers.
You look at him - really look at him - and it hits you all at once, quiet and devastating, like something you should have noticed a long time ago. Did he…like you back? Did he notice all those little things as well or did you just imagine the closeness that you so desperately wanted?
Jack raises an eyebrow. Waiting for you to say something. Reading your face as if it's all he's ever known to do.
"Nothing," you say. "Never mind."
But something must show on your face anyway, because his expression shifts too. Recognition, maybe. Like he's watching you catch up to something he already knew.
"You're very confident for a man who hasn't made a move," you say instead, and your voice only wavers slightly.
It catches him off guard, a little confused but he clearly knew what you were talking about. He sighed.
"I didn't think you wanted me to."
The honesty in that almost knocks the air out of you.
And suddenly, the break room felt unbearably warm and small.
You set your coffee down carefully before you spill it everywhere.
Jack's eyes flick to the movement, then back to you again.
"Well..i-i.. i didn't know if you.. fuck “ you run your hand through your hair before continuing. “I wasn't sure if I was just imagining things. All the little glances and- I'm sorry. I don't mean to make this complicated, Jack.” you take a step back before he comes around the counter, grabbing your wrist to prevent you from moving away.
“Nah-uh. You stay right here”
“But-”
“Nope” he answers, taking another step closer, coming to a stop only inches away from you. “You didn't imagine things, i just didn't know if you..”
You swallow hard when his hand came up to your face, cupping your cheek in his right hand.
“If you wanted me” he whispered, his face close, the tip of your nose touching his.
“I've wanted you since the day I walked in here, six months ago” you whispered back, your hands shooting up to the hem of his scrubs.
“I am right here, beautiful”
“I know.. i want you so fucking bad, Jack” you wisper against his face and he cant help himself but smile.
“Oh yeah?” his smile turns into a grin, his hand coming up to your throat, pressing his index finger into your pulse point. “You want me, huh? The pretty girl that's been eye fucking me the entire time, every single time i walk through that door?”
He earns a whine from you, practically begging him to squeeze your neck a little more. He follows your wish instantly, making you wet before touching you where you really wanted him.
“You want this?” he rasps against your lips, taking your lower lip between his teeth to nibble down on it, breathing hard. “Right here, right now?”
“Yes,” you whisper. “Please, Jack. I really need you”
“Oh, babygirl, I won’t be gentle.” His voice is low and rough against your ear as he begins kissing and sucking down the column of your neck, marking you with slow, deliberate bites that make you shiver.
Jack walks you backward until your hips hit the counter, then lifts you onto it with ease. His mouth never leaves your skin.
One hand stays wrapped around your throat - possessive, steady pressure that makes your pulse throb against his palm - while the other slides under the oversized hoodie to cup your breast, thumb brushing over your nipple until it pebbles.
He takes his time, even as his breathing grows ragged. He kisses you deeply, tongue sliding against yours while his fingers work your scrubs down your legs.
When you’re bare from the waist down, he steps between your thighs and finally frees himself. His cock is thick and heavy, flushed dark, the head already glistening.
“Look at me,” he commands softly, tilting your chin up with the hand still around your throat. His eyes are dark with lust but warm with something deeper. “You’re mine tonight. Understand?”
You nod, whimpering as he rubs the head of his cock slowly up and down your soaked folds, teasing your clit until your hips jerk.
“Words, baby.”
“I’m yours, Jack. Please, i-”
He pushes in, slow, relentless, stretching you open inch by inch. A low groan escapes him as your walls flutter around his thickness.
“Fuck… so tight. So perfect for me.” He keeps one hand collared around your throat, the other gripping your hip hard enough to bruise as he bottoms out, holding himself deep so you can feel every inch.
He stays there, buried to the hilt, letting you adjust while he kisses you sweetly, murmuring praise against your lips. “That’s it… taking me so well. Such a good girl.”
Then he starts moving - deep, powerful thrusts that rock the counter. Every stroke is controlled but rough, hitting that spot inside you that makes stars burst behind your eyes. His hand tightens around your throat again, just enough to make everything sharper.
You can barely breathe, but the way he watches your face - hungry, attentive, making sure you’re still with him - makes it feel like safety wrapped in possession.
“Eyes on me,” he growls when your lids flutter. “I want to watch you fall apart on my cock.”
He moves his hips deeper, harder, snapping forward with urgency, the wet sound of skin meeting skin filling the small break room. One hand slides between you to circle your clit with practiced precision while the other keeps its commanding grip on your throat. The dual sensation pushes you right to the edge.
“Come for me, babygirl. Let me feel you.”
Your orgasm crashes over you violently. Your walls squeeze around him, pulsing, but Jack doesn’t stop - he fucks you through it, deep and steady, murmuring filthy praise. “That’s my girl… squeezing me so fucking tight. Good girl, just like that.”
Even as you shake and cry out, he keeps thrusting, drawing out every wave until you’re in tears, legs shaking from the sensation.
When you finally start to come down, he slows but doesn’t pull out. His hand loosens on your throat, thumb stroking the marks he left as he kisses you tenderly.
“Where do you want me to come, beautiful?” he rasps, voice strained with the effort of holding back. His hips still rock shallowly into you, cock throbbing inside your sensitive heat.
You wrap your legs tighter around him, pulling him deeper.
“Inside,” you beg, voice hoarse, begging him to finally release himself. “Please, Jack - come inside me. I need it. Fill me up.”
A possessive groan tears from his chest. “Fuck… yeah? You want me to breed this pretty pussy?"
“Yes - please, Jack. I’m yours.”
He slams back in, losing the last threads of control. A few brutal, deep thrusts later he buries himself to the hilt and comes with a guttural moan, pulsing hot and thick inside you. He keeps rocking through it, pushing his release deeper, claiming you completely while he kisses you slow and sweet, whispering your name like a prayer.
When he finally stills, he rests his forehead against yours, still buried deep, hand gently stroking your throat and cheek.
“Mine,” he breathes, soft and certain. “All fucking mine.”
You stay like that for a long moment - his cock still twitching inside you, your legs wrapped around his waist, his hoodie bunched up around your chest - both of you catching your breath in the quiet hum of the fluorescent lights.
Then reality slowly trickles back in.
Jack pulls back just enough to look at you, his eyes widening a fraction as the same thought seems to hit you both at the same time.
“We just fucked in the break room,” you whisper, half-laughing, half-horrified.
“Anyone could’ve walked in,” he finishes, voice low and rough. His gaze darts toward the door, then back to you, a slow, wicked smirk tugging at his lips even as a flicker of concern crosses his face. “Fuck… I didn’t even think about locking it.”
You bite your lip, heat rushing back to your cheeks as you realize just how exposed you still are - his cum slowly leaking out around his softening cock, your scrubs discarded on the floor, his hoodie the only thing barely covering you.
Jack lets out a breathless chuckle and presses one last possessive kiss to your lips.
“Worth it, but lets get you cleaned up” he murmurs against your mouth, thumb brushing tenderly over the marks he left on your throat. “and then we should probably get dressed before someone actually does walk in and sees exactly how unprofessional we just were.
He stays inside you for a few more seconds, reluctant to pull out, before finally easing back with a low groan. His eyes stay locked on yours the whole time - still dark, still hungry, still sweet.
“Later,” he promises quietly as he helps you down from the counter, steadying you on shaky legs. “My place after shift. No interruptions. No risk of anyone walking in.”
You smile up at him, heart still racing. “Deal.”
He presses soft, almost reverent kisses to your lips, your cheeks, your temple, his hands gentling as he strokes your back and thighs.
“You okay?” he whispers, voice hoarse but tender, making sure he didn't go too far fucking his attending to tears in the break room.
You nod with blushed cheeks. “Yes. But you're right, we should get dressed.”
His mouth curves slightly. "Then put your clothes back on before I decide whether to report you for theft."
You laugh under your breath while collecting your clothes off the floor. "Still stuck on the hoodie thing?"
"What can i say, you look amazing and comfortable in stolen property."
"Maybe I'll give it back."
"Maybe I don't want you to."
random moments of sammy bryant's hands
Hate | Titus Danforth
Pairing: Titus Danforth x f!reader
Words: 4.7k
CW: canon typical violence and gore, explicit sexual content, nsfw, 18+, mdni
Tags/warnings: "enemies" to lovers, jealous!Titus, reader is just as bad as Titus, pet names (Titus calls reader bunny), murder, hunting, violence, getting turned on by murder, reader getting tied up, bondage, sex toys, edging, orgasm denial, lil bloody, unprotected piv sex, biting, claiming, possessiveness, ownership, breeding kink
Summary: Titus fucking despises you. That is until he notices a huge ass rock on your finger.
a/n: Titus Danforth I love you so much
Disclaimer: YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO REPOST MY WRITING ANYWHERE ELSE WITHOUT MY CONSENT. REBLOGS ARE ENCOURAGED THOUGH. YOU MAY NOT FEED MY WORK TO ANY AI DATABASES OF ANY KIND OR TO USE MY WORKS TO TRAIN AI. FUCK AI.
Titus doesn’t hate you.
No, that would be an insult to hatred itself.
Titus loathes you.
Absolutely despises you.
Every time one of his stupid cousins has the misfortune of getting married and they’re forced to play gracious hosts for a weekend, you’re somehow always here.
Right next to him.
And Ursula, who gets pleasure from making his life miserable even more than she hates having to play nice with their father’s business partner’s daughter, feeds right into it, having taken you under her wing almost instantly.
His dislike of you started a few years ago. Your father had been adamant to keep you as far away from their family business as long as possible, but when you finally graduated from college, he decided it was time to practically throw you right into the slaughter.
Literally.
It had been a wedding, as you’d established in your pattern moving forward. One of the Danforth cousins, twice removed or some shit. It didn’t matter. If they had Danforth blood, they needed to come to the estate and get married under the watchful eye of the family, foregoing any semblance of games and going straight for the hunt.
Titus watched you diligently as they explained the rules to the groom, some finance guy from Westchester that had moved to the city and now pretended to work at Wall Street.
His father didn’t approve of the union but unfortunately couldn’t do so out loud so Titus had already been ordered to put an end to him.
No, what had captivated him had been you, this new addition to their inner circle, their family affairs.
You who didn’t flinch. Who didn’t react at all. Who simply listened as the Lawyer, the most powerful man in the whole world, told a human being that he was about to be hunted for sport, and you didn’t even falter in your breathing.
You were too calm. Even if your father had coached you beforehand, there would’ve still been a reaction, a missed breath, a thick glob of spit to swallow.
But there was nothing.
It intrigued him.
He was even more surprised when your father pushed you to join the hunt and Titus’s own accepted.
What the actual fuck?
Your gaze turned to his then, as if you could read his mind, and the faintest smile curled the side of your mouth upward.
Titus spent the next six hours making every single mistake imaginable. He couldn’t get you out of his head. Couldn’t understand why his brain had become so useless.
This is what he did. Where he excelled. So why the fuck were you the only thing he could think about?
After losing the groom to the woods next to the golf course, Titus was forced to go on foot, following the faint smell of blood through the thicket, the graze he had inflicted earlier soaking the earth.
He would bleed out soon, definitely. But he was still alive.
Titus was close, so close to his kill.
And then he heard it, the unmistakable scream of pain from the spineless motherfucker followed by the sharp impact of a spear going through skin and cracking bone followed by eerie silence.
By the time Titus reacted, you were retracting the weapon from the groom’s lifeless corpse.
He should’ve allowed himself to be turned on by the sight. You, blood splattered all over your purple dress and your supple skin, eyes almost covered in darkness, panting deliciously—
But he didn’t.
All he saw was red.
You had taken his kill from him.
“Oops,” you said as you spotted him. “Better luck next time, I guess.”
Rage filled his entire body. You conniving little—
He blinks away the memory as his eyes narrow on your hand.
Why the fuck was there a rock on your finger?
At first he’s stunned by the size of it.
It’s too big, practically swallowing your finger whole in its attempt to display grandioseness but honestly it’s plain gaudy.
You deserve a classic ring. Vintage. One of a kind.
He would’ve never gotten you that monstrosity—
Why the fuck does he care so much?
What you do with your life is not his business. Better yet, if you’re finally off the market his father might stop trying to get the two of you to marry now.
This is a good thing.
A great thing.
So why the hell can’t he muster up a victorious smile?
Your father makes his way across the room towards Titus, whiskey in hand and an almost boisterous, cocky smirk on his lips.
He’s proud, egotistical, showing off the fish you managed to catch. But try as he might, Titus doesn’t recognize the doofus, which means, in the grand scheme of things, he’s a nobody really.
Definitely not deserving of you.
“Titus!” Your father slams his hand over his shoulder, squeezing too hard as he turns him around to face you and the most egregious man he has ever seen in his life.
He’s new money handsome, that overindulgence in filler, veneers and designer labels with logos that immediately give him away. He’s in his thirties, appropriate for you, more than Titus would ever be really, definitely works in tech since his hands are soft and manicured as the two of them shake hands while your father introduces him.
He almost looks out of place here, in Titus’s house, his home…your home too if he’s being honest. And you…you look right at place. Always walking perfection, a clever disguise to mask the darkness brewing within your sheep’s clothing.
Tonight you look especially radiant, rejuvenated. Your cheeks tinted with a gaudy amount of blush that highlights just how much you’re playing up your new role.
Titus fucking hates it.
Hates that your fiancé has taken your father’s introduction as an invitation to start running his mouth about some stupid, insignificant business venture, hates that you brought him here when you know these nights are sacred for his family, hates that he hasn’t let you speak a single word, so wrapped up in his own ego that he’s fully cutting you out of the conversation, hates that this is the loser you chose to spend the rest of your life with and he’s now going to have to endure him—
Your father laughs, reacts beside him but Titus simply cannot give a fuck.
It’s only when one of the waiters comes back into the ball room and rings a bell to get everyone’s attention back that you spring back to life, grabbing a hold of your fiancé’s arm and leading him away from the group, retreating upstairs.
You won’t be joining him in the festivities?
He’s never known you to hide from a hunt before.
You’ve literally made it a point to taunt him before each and every single one.
The two of you keep a scoreboard for fuck’s sake.
You’re currently tied. Tonight was supposed to be—
His sister meets you halfway up and leads you to his father’s study, it strikes him — you’re going to see his father and ask for his blessing.
Something constricts around Titus’s heart.
No, that cannot be. He cannot have feelings for you. That would be absurd.
He scowls at the thought, feet practically glued to the carpet beneath him as the rest of his family gets ready to initiate another poor fucker into their family.
That night Titus hunts like a man unhinged.
He doesn’t hold back.
Doesn’t falter.
Doesn’t make a single mistake.
Instead he quickly and skillfully finds his cousin’s formerly alive, now very dead new husband, shooting him in between his eyes because who the fuck cares.
No, there’s no use in savoring this unless you’re right there next to him. No thrill in the game anymore. No worthy opponent to fight against, to fill his heart with exhilaration, to give him a reason to be brutal.
He’s winning now. Up by one. But the success tastes bitter on his tongue.
By the time he returns to the house, a mere hour later, you’re in the family room, laughing at something Ursula said before he walks in.
“Oh Titus!” His sister greets. “Back so soon?”
He simply grunts, making his way to the bar and pouring himself another glass.
Ursula rolls her eyes. “Such a grump. You should be celebrating! Join us, congratulate her on the engagement.”
Titus doesn’t move, he simply turns to face you, eyes searing into yours.
“Congratulations,” he spits through gritted teeth.
“Thank you Titus,” you smile brightly at him, picture perfect happiness. “Can’t wait to see you at the wedding.”
That lights a fire under Titus’s ass.
Oh?
Oh.
He takes another sip of his drink, eyes shining brightly.
Yeah, he’ll definitely see you at your wedding alright.
It’s a few months later when the date finally arrives and Titus cannot contain his excitement.
He’s practically vibrating all the way through the ceremony.
You wear white.
A fucking disgusting color if he’s honest. But you still look incredibly beautiful, even if you look nothing like yourself.
Your hair has been slicked back into a low bun, your makeup is overwhelming and just that dress…whoever picked it has the worst taste of anyone Titus has ever had the misfortune of knowing.
His gaze bores into yours all throughout the ceremony and he knows you’re actively ignoring him by the way your body keeps drifting towards him subconsciously, only snapping back to face your fiancé when you realize you’re doing it again.
He smirks to himself before visibly flinching to look elsewhere as the officiant tells the two of you to kiss. He knows you do as the people around him, most definitely his family cheer and holler like a bunch of animals.
Ursula has to grab a hold of his arm before he springs to his feet, disdain already making him even more eager for the night’s coming festivities.
But it seems like he’s just being tortured. Wound up even tighter as you disappear into his home right after the ceremony, lover boy somehow not eager enough to follow you up and ravage you right then and there.
Titus honestly doesn’t mean to go looking for you.
In all honesty, it’s mostly because the Lawyer is taking too goddamn long to commence the hunt that he stalks upstairs after telling his staff to not let anyone, not even the groom, to come looking for you.
He understands why you’ve hidden yourself away the second he slides into your suite.
You’ve showered.
Taken off the mask.
You look like yourself again.
The woman Titus lo—
“Why do you want me to kill him?”
Your gaze finally snaps up to see him in the corner of your vanity mirror.
“Does it matter?” You try to play it cool. “You’re going to do it regardless.”
Titus smirks. He is, you know he is.
“Could’ve asked me to do it months ago.”
Now it’s your time to grin. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Titus stalks forward, standing right behind you now, his large, warm hands coming up to press into your shoulders, sliding closer to your neck with each movement.
“You didn’t have to marry him.”
“I did.”
Titus’s brows scrunch in confusion as he leans down to place a kiss where your neck meets your back.
“Could’ve had my lawyers bury him for you.”
You hum at the gesture. “Where’s the fun in that?”
He growls against your skin, teeth nipping now, unkind.
“I’m starting to think you just like to see me angry.”
You let out a breathy moan as his tongue soothes the barely there bite that he left behind.
“Among other things.”
That makes him bite down for real, leaving a bright and throbbing mark on your exposed skin.
“’s that all you wanted, bunny?” He groans in your ear. “For me to get jealous and kill the bastard?”
You let your head drop back against the crook of his neck.
“That and inherit his family’s fortune without having to lose a bunch of money fighting for it in court over the next decade.”
Titus groans. He’s been played, and played really well he might add.
“And my father?”
“Thrilled,” you turn your head so your lips brush against his jaw. “He couldn’t believe it was my idea.”
You plant a feather light kiss against his skin, watching intently as his eyes close in the purest display of pleasure you’ve ever seen from him.
“I don’t like being used as a pawn.”
He sounds angry but you know he isn’t.
A little embarrassed, maybe.
A little turned on, definitely.
But never angry.
You shrug. “There was no ring on my finger.”
That makes him turn his face towards yours, his lips ghosting over your own cruelly.
His gaze lowers to your mouth, watches how it quivers slightly.
Now he’s pissed.
You should’ve known better.
And the fact that you didn’t believe you were spoken for made the rage burn hotly in his stomach.
“Give it to me.”
You do as he says, never breaking eye contact as you slide both bands off your finger and hand him the weighty diamond. Your fingers brush his deliberately as you place it in his waiting palm.
“Fucking disgusting taste,” he sneers, pocketing the ring.
He opens his mouth to keep going, to finally tell you all the horrible things that he’s been thinking about doing to your husband when the unmistakable sound of the bell rings out across the cottage.
Titus almost begins to vibrate from pleasure once more and your eyes light up instantly at his reaction.
He’s always known you both derived a deeply carnal satisfaction from this ritual, but to see it up close and personal for a completely different, intimate reason almost makes him cum in his pants.
So instead he smirks, a Cheshire grin that has you practically melting into him.
“Would you like to watch, bunny?”
You’re sitting on Titus’s bed, back pressed against the headboard, arms tied up to either end while your legs are sprayed open, ankles restrained equally by soft, red silk.
He’s left you naked, your nipples perky from the cold air and the way he’d nipped at them with his teeth before forcing himself to walk away.
With one earbud secured to your ear and three different monitors in front of you displaying every single camera angle from the property, you’re practically salivating, the slick between your legs only dripping further into the silk sheets as anticipation builds.
But it’s the buzzing from the vibrator he’s left perfectly placed so it barely makes contact with your clit that’s destroying you.
You can hear Titus’s ragged breathing in your ear. It’s making you dizzy, your heart racing so fast as you watch him move through his property, pickaxe in hand.
You’ve always loved the family heirloom, the design being both regal and deadly. You also know how much it weighs, how much strength it takes to wield, and watching Titus’s arms tighten, the veins practically popping out from beneath his skin as he holds the instrument steady is only making you hornier.
“Titus,” you whine, legs thrashing against your restraints once more.
“What’s wrong, bunny?” He asks, condescendingly, the angle of the camera changing so that you can now see him straight on.
“Need you, please.”
He chuckles darkly, staring directly at you. Even in black and white he just looks delicious.
“You wanted this,” he chastises. “So be a good girl and wait for me to clean up your mess.”
You wail, tears already threatening to spill as you try to maneuver your body to catch even a hint of that comforting buzz against your aching bud.
“And so help me Satan, if you even think about cumming without my permission I will not let you find release until we’re married.”
You moan loudly, using what little you have to taunt him.
You watch him stop for a second, stiffen and shiver, shaking off the little restraint you know he’s desperately trying to hold onto.
He lets out a darkened belly laugh, hands gripping the leather handle tightly before he’s back on the move.
“Don’t worry, bunny,” he pants. “I won’t be gone too long.”
You whine again, the buzzing only getting louder and louder as you finally find a position that works.
“Or maybe I might,” he stops, crouching down to check out the way the grass has been flattened, the marks that your husband has definitely left behind. “I’d like to take my time with him, maybe beat him up a little before I watch the life dim from his eyes. He deserves it after all and you definitely deserve to get a little pent up before I have my way with you, teach you a lesson in trying to be a big girl and make choices without consulting me first.”
“Titus—” you’re losing it, half delirious from pleasure, half terrified of what it’ll mean for you to not allow yourself to come undone before he comes back to you. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—I just wanted to make you proud please.”
Oh he’s going to cave so hard.
You watch him get back on the move as you continue to babble mindless words into his ear, your cries becoming swallowed by the thick, velvet curtains of his room.
A branch snaps in the distance and both of you suddenly become quiet, predators sniffing the smallest shift in the air.
Pleasure courses through you as your heart hammers, the thrill of what’s to come making you even dizzier than the humming happening against your aching clit.
You shift forward, pushing the head away from you in the process, no longer concerned with something as pitiful as physical pleasure. No, you’re now craving something else. Something carnal and raw.
“How would you like me to do it, bunny?” He asks lowly.
You gulp loudly, saliva pooling your mouth as you’ve started to salivate. He shivers in satisfaction at your reaction. Satan, he can already taste just how wet you are everywhere, your desire intensifying because of your mutual bloodlust.
“Snap his legs,” you drool. “Break his bones, then smash his skull in.”
Titus’s cock twitches in his pants at the visual.
“Whatever my wife wants, she will get.”
You moan loudly in his ear and he takes it as his calling grace to pounce.
He dashes across the entrance to the forest and the lazy excuse of a husband you’ve married dashes out of his hiding hole like a terrified deer.
Someone’s already gotten him first, he’s bleeding from his right side, not enough to kill him or even have him bleeding out, but enough to make him angry he wasn’t the first one to draw blood.
You strain against your restraints, the silk stretching as you pull with all your might to get closer to the screens. Your eyes are glazed over, pupils dilated so much your eyes practically look black.
You hear your husband wailing a string of profanities that drip fear and patheticness.
Titus gains on him easily enough, nipping at his heels just to taunt him before he throws his body against his legs, bringing the man to the cold ground beneath.
The struggle is quick but not painless. Titus manages to pin his legs and arms to the side, the steel of his pickaxe handle pressed against his exposed throat to choke him, but your husband clearly doesn’t want to die as he thrashes against Titus’s hold, punching him square in the jaw, drawing a little blood.
You gasp, the silk burning your wrist as you snap it off the bedpost. Your hands shake as you desperately try to untie the rest of your body.
Titus can hear you distress, the rage in his belly burning hotter as he snaps back to the man beneath him.
How dare he make you feel this way?
Fucking weak, pathetic excuse of a man.
His fist connects with flesh, unrestrained and feral.
Blood splatters across his face and chest as the man beneath him slowly becomes limp. And yet he doesn’t stop, he just keeps going until the man becomes faceless and Titus has wiped his memory off the mortal plane.
You don’t even hear the door open, all your efforts on the final knot around your left ankle.
Titus watches you struggle. Watches how the fabric has left marks on your supple skin. Watches how your brow is creased in concentration, how your tongue pokes out of your mouth, how your cheeks are streaked with tears.
That’s what pushes him to move.
The heavy pickaxe slips from his grip and lands against the fur rug, the noise finally snapping you out of your haze.
Your gaze snaps towards him, relief flooding your face instantly.
“Ti—” a sob wrecks through you and he loses whatever composure he thought he’d have coming in here.
He dashes across the room to you, doesn’t even think about the blood covering his entire body as he scoops you up in his arms and holds you close to his body, your warmth instantly warming his stoned muscles.
You waste no time wrapping your arms around his neck, hands possessively bringing his face towards your own, nails digging into the creases on his neck.
Your lips are ravenous, desperately clashing against his own to make sure he’s real. He returns the sentiment tenfold, his own grip digging into you like he’s afraid if he lets go you’ll simply disappear.
It’s only when your tongue slips into his mouth, your saliva mixing with the tangy iron that your hips move on their own volition, rolling and grinding over his crotch.
He moans into your mouth, his teeth nipping at your bottom lip, a warning as much as an encouragement. He thrusts up to meet your movements, one hand slipping off your hip to undo his pants.
He doesn’t wait, he simply can’t. He just lines himself up with your entrance and breaches.
You scream into his mouth at the intrusion. It’s a tight fit even as wet as you currently are, but it’s what you desperately need.
He’s real. He’s here. He’s alive. He’s okay.
You’ve never once worried about him during a hunt. You know he can handle his own, he’s been trained for this his entire life after all. But tonight? Something snapped deep inside of you that made you realize he’s not immortal. He’s flesh and blood and he too can bleed.
“I was so scared—” you whine into his mouth. “Couldn’t even think about…”
Your thoughts disappear the second he rolls his hips up into you.
“No.” He growls against your lips. “I’m here now, bunny. I will never leave you, ever. Do you understand me?”
A runaway tear slips down your cheek then, the saltiness of it landing against his tongue. His chest thunders again as he licks up the streak. He picks up a steady pace, grueling and thorough, making sure to make you feel every single inch of him with each thrust.
He’s buried so far inside of you you can feel him bulge against your lower abdomen.
Determined to erase every single thought from your brain that isn’t his name and the feeling of absolute pleasure, his pace picks up, demanding you to submit to him, to let yourself melt into his dominance.
He pins you down on the bed, exactly how he had your husband minutes earlier, only this time he’s determined to gift you life over death, to fill you up to the brim, to force your families into a shotgun wedding before you start to show.
“Ti—” you sob, clinging to him like your life depends on it because it does.
“You’re mine, always have been,” he grunts, hot against your ear. “You belong to me, and I will make sure to remind you every single day of the rest of our lives.”
He accentuates his threat with a sharp thrust of his hips, his tip snapping against your cervix meanly.
You yelp, body instinctively shifting away from him to ease the contact but he’s having none of it. He pulls you back flush against him, his grip on your hips bruising.
“Say it,” he spits through gritted teeth. “Say you belong to me.”
Your mouth hangs open but no words come out.
So he stops, sheathing himself inside of you painfully.
“Fuck, Ti! I’m yours, I’m only yours, I’m sorry!”
He smirks against your cheek. “Good fucking girl.”
His hips begin to move again, slow and restrained, focusing on your pleasure now.
Your body relaxes under him, your hands allowing themselves to roam the expanse of his back, his shoulders, his biceps affectionately.
He shivers, a perfect pink tinting the apples of his cheeks as he leans down to capture your lips in his once more.
You smile dopily into the kiss, a little giggle escaping, snapping his eyes open to look at you.
“Whatever is so funny, bunny?”
You shake your head, the smile only becoming brighter.
“’s just funny that the—” you pant. “The great Titus Danforth is so easily undone by a little missionary and some physical touch.”
“Oh yeah?”
Fuck you should not have said anything.
In response he lies down over your chest, his body pressing down on yours to cage it underneath himself.
You whimper at the new angle, his hips picking up speed as he now nips at your neck, leaving a crime scene of bites and bruises in his wake.
Your legs open up further, heels digging into the swell of his ass, encouraging him forward, deeper.
“Look at you,” he groans. “Unravelling from a little missionary and physical contact.”
You moan loudly, pulling him further in you.
“Gonna fill you up now, bunny,” he threatens. “Gonna claim this pussy as mine and you’ll never even think about another man ever again. You’ll be so addicted to your husband’s cock you’ll be begging me to knock you up over and over and over again.”
You nod against his temple, desperate and needy, opening up for him like he’s the only path to salvation.
Your mind goes blank as it becomes consumed by pleasure. Nothing else matters. Only him and you, and the slapping of his skin against yours, the way you tighten around him, urging him to fill you up, to make you his.
And then he bites down on your shoulder and the band tightening in your belly snaps, leaving you breathless. Your legs shake uncontrollably, your tummy tightens as white bursts against your eyelids and all you can do is thank him like a prayer.
He falls off the ledge the second your walls clench around him and hold him captive. His hot release paints your insides with ease, spurt and spurt pouring from him like this is the only place he’s ever meant to put it.
He groans into your skin, tongue lapping at the indents his teeth have left behind, cleaning up the droplets of blood that he’s pulled from you.
You go limp in his arms, your beating heart the only indication that you’re still there with him. He kisses every inch of skin he has access to, reverent and humble, praying at the altar of you.
He manages to shed his clothes without having to pull out of you, a true show of his skills coming in handy. He feels you relax further into him as his skin makes contact with yours and his heart swells at the reaction.
He goes to move you further up the bed, to get you both comfortable as you come down from your high but your leg is still tied to the bed. He curses at his past self for not being more careful and pulls the hidden tab like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever done, the knot comes undone swiftly.
With your leg free, you wrap them both around his waist, settling happily against his hard chest, fingers absentmindedly counting the freckles on his arm.
Your eyes meet his and you smile, not a single wrinkle of concern, of confusion, of doubt.
“All mine,” you hum contently.
“All yours," he kisses your nose. "My wife."
"My husband."
And it’s just that easy, your fate sealed like it was always meant to be.
dividers by @/enchanthings
SHAWN HATOSY as ANDREW ‘POPE’ CODY ANIMAL KINGDOM SEASON 2, EPISODE 6
CURLS CURLS CURLS
favorite flower
Pairing: Jack Abbot x reader
Summary: Six years after losing your daughter, a patient reminds you and Jack that grief doesn't disappear. Sometimes it just waits for you to stop running.
Word count: 11k+
Warnings: grief/mourning, child loss, angst with comfort, suicidal thoughts
A/N:
Please mind the warnings. This fic deals with infant loss, grief, depression, and past suicidal thoughts.
Take care of yourselves.♥️
English is not my first language, so I apologize if I made any (grammar) mistakes. Feedback, requests, talks, vents, recommendations or just simple questions are always welcome.
Happy reading xxx
I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site.
The shift had been busy from the moment you walked through the ambulance bay doors that morning, which wasn't unusual for the PTMC.
By seven-thirty the waiting room was already overflowing. By eight there were stretchers parked in sections of the hallway that weren't technically supposed to hold stretchers, nurses negotiating impossible patient assignments, and enough monitor alarms going off at once to create their own kind of soundtrack. Someone was calling for respiratory over the intercom. A paramedic crew rolled through the department with a chest pain. A patient in triage was loudly insisting that his sprained ankle constituted a medical emergency while another complained about the wait time despite having arrived less than fifteen minutes ago.
In other words, it was a normal day.
The department ran on organized chaos, and after enough years working in emergency medicine, you'd stopped noticing most of it. The noise became background. The constant movement became routine. Even the stress settled into something familiar.
You preferred it that way.
Busy meant there wasn't time to think.
It wasn't something you admitted out loud, not even to Jack, but somewhere along the way you'd realized that exhaustion was easier to manage than silence. Silence left room for thoughts. Silence left room for memories. There were parts of your life you had spent years carefully learning how to carry, grief you had folded into neat little boxes and stacked somewhere deep inside yourself where it couldn't interfere with your ability to function. Most days you were successful. Most days you could go entire shifts without thinking about any of it.
The trick was to keep moving.
As long as there was another chart waiting to be reviewed, another patient asking for help, another crisis demanding your attention, your mind stayed where it needed to be. Focus became its own form of self-preservation.
"God, if I have to take care of one more frat boy today, I'm quitting."
Santos practically dropped into one of the empty chairs near the nurses' station, dragging a hand down her face like she'd aged ten years in the last hour.
You didn't bother looking up from your charting.
"I thought you liked that demographic."
"I like making fun of them. That's different."
You could hear the offense in her voice.
"There is nothing I like about boys. Trust me."
A laugh escaped through your nose as you continued scrolling through lab results.
"That's a strong statement."
"It's an informed statement."
Now you looked up.
"Oh?"
Santos pointed dramatically toward the waiting room.
"One more twenty-year-old with alcohol poisoning tells me he's 'built different' and I'm personally escorting him back onto the sidewalk."
"You can't do that."
"A girl can dream."
The conversation settled around you as comfortably as an old habit. One of the things nobody told you when you started working in emergency medicine was how attached you became to the people beside you. You saw each other at your worst. At three in the morning. During trauma activations. During mass casualty incidents. During the moments that broke people and the moments that saved them. Eventually your coworkers stopped feeling like coworkers and started feeling like family.
A deeply dysfunctional family, but family nonetheless.
Santos suddenly straightened in her chair.
"Oh, hey, Huckleberry."
You glanced up just in time to see Whitaker speed-walking through the department, clutching a tablet against his chest. He looked exactly like someone who knew he was already behind schedule and was desperately trying to convince everyone else otherwise.
Santos immediately lifted a chart.
"Could you take this case off me? I'd owe you a big one."
Whitaker stopped so abruptly it was almost impressive. His eyes moved from Santos to the chart and back again, his expression shifting into the same look most people reserved for unexploded explosives.
"Uh..."
"I'm hearing hesitation."
"You should be."
Santos held the chart out farther.
Whitaker actually took a step backward.
"I'm sorry, I can't. Robby's waiting for me in Trauma One."
Santos groaned.
A loud, suffering sort of groan.
"And besides," Whitaker added, already retreating down the hallway, "you already owe me. A lot."
"I'm a generous debtor."
"You're a terrible debtor."
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.
Whitaker disappeared around the corner before she could trap him in another conversation.
You turned back to your workstation and worked your way through a handful of charts, signed off on imaging results, answered a question from a nurse about discharge instructions, and approved a medication order without really needing to think about it. The rhythm was familiar enough that your hands often seemed to move ahead of your brain. Years in emergency medicine had a way of doing that. Eventually, after enough shifts, the workflow became muscle memory.
You were halfway through finishing a note when Dana appeared beside your workstation.
You noticed her immediately, not because she said anything, but because Dana had a way of making people notice her. Unlike most of the department, she never seemed rushed. The ER could be falling apart around her, stretchers lining the hallways, nurses getting pulled in six directions at once, residents asking questions over each other, and somehow she'd still move with the same steady confidence. You weren't entirely sure how she did it. Maybe nobody was. But there was a reason everyone looked for Dana when things got bad.
"Need you in Central Fourteen, hun."
You finished typing the sentence you'd been working on before glancing up.
"Sure. What've we got? Anything exciting?"
Dana checked the chart in her hand and snorted.
"Not unless you're excited by paperwork."
"Then definitely not."
"That's what I thought." She glanced back at the chart. "Six-year-old female. Poor thing took a tumble off the monkey bars. Forehead laceration."
You nodded automatically.
"Sounds good."
You pushed back from the workstation and stood, grabbing a pair of gloves from the dispenser mounted on the wall before heading toward Central Fourteen. Cases like this were usually straightforward. A worried parent. A frightened child trying very hard not to look frightened. Maybe a few stitches. Maybe some glue if you got lucky. A quick neurological assessment, discharge instructions, and home before dinner. The kind of patient you saw every day and rarely thought about again once the shift was over. As you made your way down the hallway toward the room, you didn't give the chart another thought. It sounded routine. Ordinary. The sort of case that blended into all the others by the end of the day.
At least, that's what you thought as you pushed open the door to Central Fourteen.
The room smelled faintly of antiseptic, alcohol wipes, and the unmistakable sweetness of grape popsicles.
The little girl sitting on the exam bed looked entirely unimpressed by her circumstances. Dried blood streaked down the side of her forehead, disappearing into blonde hair where a jagged laceration hid just beyond her hairline. Judging by the amount of blood staining her shirt and cheeks, the injury had probably looked much worse when it happened. Head wounds usually did. They bled dramatically, terrified parents, and then ended up requiring little more than a few stitches and a cartoon bandage.
Her mother, however, clearly hadn't gotten that memo.
She sat rigidly beside her daughter, one hand wrapped around the girl's ankle as if letting go might somehow make things worse. Her eyes kept darting to the cut, then to the monitor, then back to the cut again. Every few seconds she opened her mouth as though she wanted to ask another question before deciding against it. The little girl seemed significantly less concerned. If anything, she looked bored, which was usually how these visits went. Parents came into the emergency department imagining worst-case scenarios. Kids came in wondering how quickly they could leave.
You stepped into the room and offered a smile.
"Hi there."
Both of them looked up.
The mother immediately straightened.
The little girl barely moved.
"I'm Dr. Abbot, one of the attendings here. Mind if I take a look?"
The girl's eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Am I getting stitches?"
The question came so quickly that you almost laughed.
Straight to business.
You crouched slightly so you were more at her eye level before answering.
"I'm afraid so, sweetie." You gave her an apologetic look.
She groaned dramatically and let her head fall back against the bed.
"Oh, come on."
Her mother sighed. "Honey."
"What?" the girl complained. "Nobody likes stitches."
"That's true."
She immediately pointed at you.
"See? She gets it."
You bit back a smile while her mother shook her head.
"I'm sorry. She's been talking nonstop since we got here."
"I'm not talking right now."
The look her mother gave her was enough to make the girl grin, and that finally earned a genuine laugh from you. The tension that had been hanging over the room since you walked in eased almost immediately. The mother's shoulders relaxed a little, and the little girl looked entirely too pleased with herself for successfully making a doctor laugh. Kids had a way of doing that. No matter how frightened the adults around them were, they somehow found a way to make things lighter.
You stepped closer to the bed and gently parted her hair, getting a better look at the laceration. It was a decent cut and definitely deep enough to need sutures, but otherwise she looked good. No active bleeding. No obvious skull deformity. She was alert, interactive, answering questions appropriately, and arguing with her mother, which was usually one of the most reassuring neurological signs you could ask for in a six-year-old.
"Okay," you said as you examined the wound. "Tell me what happened."
"I fell."
You nodded seriously.
"Excellent explanation."
The little girl beamed.
"I fell off the monkey bars."
"That makes a little more sense."
"I told her not to climb up the outside," her mother added.
"I didn't climb."
"You absolutely climbed."
The girl considered this carefully.
"Okay. Technically I climbed."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
You shook your head, smiling despite yourself as you continued the exam.
"Were you knocked out at all?"
The girl's eyes widened.
"No."
"Any vomiting?"
"Ew. No."
"Headache?"
"A little."
Her mother immediately leaned forward.
"She said it was worse in the waiting room."
The little girl rolled her eyes so dramatically it was almost impressive.
"Moooom."
"What?"
"It's because I hit my head."
"I know, sweetheart."
You couldn't help noticing the way her mother's hand automatically moved to smooth her hair back from her face. The gesture was completely instinctive, the sort of thing parents did without thinking about it. Protective. Familiar. A physical expression of love so ingrained it barely required thought.
"Everything you're telling me sounds reassuring," you said gently. "I don't see any signs that make me worried about a serious head injury. We'll clean the wound, numb the area, put in a few stitches, and make sure you're feeling okay before you head home."
The relief on her mother's face was immediate.
"Oh, thank God."
"Told you," the little girl said proudly.
Her mother laughed weakly and shook her head.
For a moment, the room felt warm. Normal. Familiar. Just another worried parent and another child who was far more concerned about missing recess than getting stitches. It was the sort of interaction you saw every day in emergency medicine, and standing there beside the bed, listening to the little girl chatter while her mother worried enough for both of them, everything felt reassuringly ordinary.
Satisfied, you stepped over to the computer to update the chart. Your fingers moved automatically across the keyboard while your mind stayed focused on the next steps. The wound would need irrigation, local anesthetic, a handful of simple interrupted sutures, and discharge instructions. Routine. The sort of case you saw several times a week and usually forgot before your shift was over.
Then your eyes landed on the demographic information.
Lily Allison.
Age: 6 years.
You stared at the screen.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
As if the words might rearrange themselves if you looked long enough.
Your throat tightened.
The cursor blinked patiently in the corner of the chart while the rest of the emergency department moved around you, utterly unaware that the ground had just shifted beneath your feet.
Lily.
Six years old.
You hadn't heard that name spoken outside your own head in years. Not really. Not beyond the quiet conversations you and Jack occasionally had in the dark when neither of you could sleep. Not beyond birthdays that nobody else remembered and anniversaries that existed only for the two of you. The grief had become private over the years. Carefully folded. Carefully contained. Most people probably assumed it was gone.
Most people were wrong.
The daughter you never brought home still existed in every corner of your life.
She existed in the way you automatically calculated her age every year without meaning to. She existed in the nursery that had sat untouched for months because neither of you could bear to dismantle it. She existed in the tiny hospital bracelet tucked inside a drawer that you had never once considered throwing away. She existed in the silence that settled between you and Jack every year on her birthday. She existed in every version of the future you had imagined and every version that never happened.
And now her name was staring back at you from a patient chart.
Lily.
Six years old.
For a moment, all you could do was stare at the screen. The realization didn't hit like a sudden blow. It settled into you slowly, heavily, the way a storm settles over a landscape, until suddenly there was no part of the sky untouched by it. You'd wondered what she might have looked like at six. Wondered what kind of laugh she would've had. Whether she would've inherited Jack's eyes or your smile. Whether she would've liked soccer or dance lessons or dinosaurs or books.
But six had never felt real before.
Now it did.
Because six wasn't an idea anymore. Six was sitting ten feet away from you on an exam bed with dried blood in her hair and grass stains on her sneakers. Six was arguing with her mother about monkey bars and insisting she didn't need stitches. Six had a teacher she apparently disagreed with on a daily basis. Six had favorite games and best friends and stories about recess.
Six had become a person.
And all at once, the future you and Jack had lost stopped feeling abstract too.
Your daughter should have been six years old.
The thought came quietly, but it cut deeper than anything else.
She should have been talking too much. She should have been asking impossible questions from the back seat of the car and leaving crayons in places crayons had no business being. She should have been bringing home drawings that looked nothing like what they were supposed to be and insisting they belonged on the refrigerator. She should have been losing teeth and scraping knees and complaining about homework. She should have been doing all the ordinary things that parents spent years taking for granted.
Instead, all you had were guesses.
You would never know what her laugh sounded like.
You would never know if she was shy or stubborn or fearless.
You would never know whether she would've loved animals or hated vegetables or driven both you and Jack absolutely insane.
That was the part grief never warned you about.
People talked about losing birthdays and holidays and milestones. They talked about anniversaries and empty nurseries and all the obvious things. Nobody talked about the smaller losses. The ordinary Tuesdays. The school pickup lines. The forgotten lunchboxes. The soccer games you complained about attending while secretly loving every second of them.
Nobody talked about how grief stole an entire lifetime of tiny moments.
And somehow those were the things that hurt the most.
Without realizing it, your gaze drifted back toward the bed. Lily was still talking, still smiling, completely unaware that she'd just cracked open a part of you that had spent years trying to heal. Her mother reached over and smoothed her hair back again, that same unconscious gesture you'd noticed earlier, and the sight nearly undid you.
Because suddenly you weren't jealous of the milestones.
You were jealous of that.
Of the hand automatically reaching out.
Of knowing how your child liked her sandwiches cut.
Of helping with homework.
Of arguing about bedtime.
Of all the thousands of small moments that added up to a life together.
Lily was in the middle of explaining some elaborate disagreement she'd had with a teacher over whether "speed walking aggressively" counted as running. Her mother looked exhausted. You almost smiled.
Almost.
Then reality reasserted itself.
You weren't standing in a nursery six years ago. You weren't sitting at home imagining what might have been. You were standing in an emergency department with a patient who needed you. There was a frightened mother depending on your reassurance and a little girl waiting for her doctor to stop staring at a computer screen.
So you inhaled slowly, forced the grief back behind the walls you'd spent years building, and reminded yourself of the role you had to play.
A patient didn't need a grieving mother.
She needed a doctor.
You returned to the bedside and slipped back into the familiar rhythm of medicine. Lily launched immediately into another story, this one involving recess, and soccer. You nodded at the appropriate moments while reassessing her neurological status, checking her pupils once more and asking follow-up questions. From the outside, nothing had changed. You were still the same attending physician you'd been fifteen minutes ago. Calm. Attentive. Focused.
Inside, it felt as though you were trying to hold back a flood with your bare hands.
Every word out of Lily's mouth seemed to catch on something raw. Not because she was doing anything wrong, but because she was doing everything right. She was exactly what six years old was supposed to look like. Curious. Talkative. Dramatic. Entirely convinced that whatever happened at recess constituted breaking news. She had stories and opinions and little frustrations that would be forgotten by next week but felt enormous today.
She had a life.
You focused on the medicine because medicine made sense. Medicine had steps. Logic. Structure. The laceration was straightforward. No loss of consciousness. No vomiting. No concerning neurological findings. A simple forehead wound that would need irrigation and a few sutures before she went home. You explained the procedure to her mother, reviewed the risks, answered questions, and prepared the supplies while Lily watched with the suspicious concentration of a child trying very hard to pretend she wasn't nervous.
"Will I have a scar?"
You glanced up from the suture tray.
"Maybe a small one."
Instead of looking upset, she seemed delighted.
"My friend Tyler has one."
"Oh yeah?"
"He says it makes him look dangerous."
Despite everything, a smile tugged at your mouth.
The girl grinned back.
For one terrible moment, your mind filled in the blanks it had spent six years trying not to imagine. A little girl with Jack's eyes. Dark curls that refused to behave. A gap-toothed grin. Tiny sneakers kicked off in the hallway. Construction-paper artwork hanging crookedly on the refrigerator because neither of you could bear to throw it away.
The image felt so real it hurt.
Your hand faltered slightly while positioning the needle driver.
Only a fraction of a second.
Years of practice corrected the movement immediately, and nobody noticed. Lily certainly didn't. She was too busy informing her mother about her friend Sally.
But your chest ached.
With every stitch you placed, the grief seemed to sink a little deeper. Not because it was growing, but because it was being disturbed. Like sediment at the bottom of a river, untouched for years until something came along and stirred it up again, clouding everything around it.
By the time you tied the final knot and applied the dressing, you felt hollowed out.
"All done."
Lily blinked. "That's it?"
You smiled despite yourself. "That's it."
Her eyes widened. "I didn't even cry."
"No sweetie," you said softly. "You didn't."
You removed your gloves and turned toward Lily's mother. The rest came automatically. Wound care instructions. Concussion precautions. Watch for worsening headaches, vomiting, confusion, unusual sleepiness, or anything that seemed different from her normal behavior. Her mother listened carefully, nodding along as relief slowly replaced the fear she'd walked into the department carrying.
"So she should be okay?"
You glanced toward Lily, who was already proudly inspecting her bandage. "She should be just fine."
The woman let out a breath that sounded like she'd been holding it for hours. "Oh, thank God."
"Told you," Lily said immediately.
A small laugh escaped her mother before she shook her head and gathered their things. When she looked back at you, her eyes were shining with gratitude.
"Thank you, Dr. Abbot. Really."
"Of course."
The woman thanked you once more before guiding Lily toward the door. Just before leaving, the little girl turned around and waved enthusiastically.
"Bye, Dr. Abbot."
Your throat tightened unexpectedly.
You forced yourself to smile.
"Bye, Lily."
The door clicked shut behind them.
For a long moment, you simply stood there staring at it.
The room wasn't silent. Hospitals were never silent.
Life continued exactly as it always did. And yet, the absence left behind by one little girl felt deafening.
You weren't sure how long you stood there staring at the closed door before Dana appeared in the room.
"Hey, hun."
The sound of her voice startled you enough that you turned too quickly. It felt almost guilty, as though she'd caught you doing something you weren't supposed to be doing, even though all you'd done was stand there long after your patient had left. Dana's eyes immediately moved over your face. Not in an obvious way. Not the way most people looked when they were trying to figure out what was wrong. It was quicker than that. More practiced. Years of running an emergency department had taught her how to assess people almost as efficiently as she assessed patients.
She held up the chart in her hand.
"Need you in Trauma Two."
The words were completely ordinary. A normal request on a normal shift. You'd heard her say it dozens of times a day. You nodded immediately, grateful for the excuse to move.
"Okay. Sure. Yeah."
You stepped toward the door and reached for the chart.
Dana didn't hand it over.
That was what made you stop.
When you finally looked up, she was still watching you.
Dana had worked beside you for years. Long enough to know the difference between tired and exhausted, between stressed and overwhelmed. She knew what you looked like after a bad trauma, after a difficult death notification, after one of those shifts that seemed determined to break everyone involved. Whatever she was seeing now clearly didn't fit into any of those categories.
"Everything okay, hun?"
The answer arrived automatically.
"Fine."
You barely thought about it. The word had become instinctive over the years. Fine was easier than explaining. Easier than trying to describe how a six-year-old girl with a playground injury had somehow managed to drag you backward through six years of grief. Easier than admitting that for the last hour it had felt like somebody had reached into your chest and reopened a wound you'd spent years learning how to live around.
Dana didn't look convinced.
Her gaze drifted past you toward the computer still glowing beside the bed. You watched her eyes move across the chart, toward the patient's information at the top of the screen, and saw the exact moment understanding settled over her face.
"Oh."
The single syllable landed harder than it should have.
You hated that word because it meant she understood. It meant someone else could see the connection. It meant this wasn't something you could dismiss as a bad moment or an overreaction. It was real.
For a few seconds neither of you spoke. When Dana looked back at you, there was so much sympathy in her expression that you immediately had to look away. "I didn't even notice that, sweetie," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."
And somehow that was worse than seeing Lily's name on the chart.
It wasn't the memories that threatened to undo you.
It was the kindness.
The quiet understanding in Dana's voice. The fact that she wasn't asking questions or demanding explanations. She simply knew. And kindness had always been dangerous when you were barely holding yourself together, because it made it harder to hide. Harder to keep all the broken pieces contained behind professionalism and routine.
"You need five minutes?"
You shook your head before she even finished speaking.
"No."
The answer came too quickly, too sharp.
Because five minutes meant stopping, and stopping meant thinking. It meant sitting still long enough for everything you'd been holding back all afternoon to finally catch up with you. You knew exactly what would happen if you gave yourself permission to breathe. The carefully constructed walls you'd spent years building would crack, and there were still patients waiting to be seen.
Dana studied you for another moment. You could practically see the argument forming behind her eyes, the concern, the temptation to push a little harder. But Dana understood emergency medicine. She understood the stubbornness of people who spent their lives taking care of everyone except themselves.
Eventually she nodded.
"Okay. Whatever you want."
The words weren't dismissive. They were an offer. A reminder that if you changed your mind, she'd still be there.
Then she handed you the chart and let you go.
So you went to Trauma Two.
And then another room.
And then another.
For the next three hours, you became exactly what the job required you to be. You reviewed labs, returned pages, started IVs, called consultants, explained treatment plans, and helped Robby intubate a patient. You taught a medical student how to work through a differential diagnosis. You reassured nervous family members. You cracked the occasional joke when someone looked frightened enough to need one.
Twice your phone buzzed in your pocket.
You already knew who it was before checking.
Jack.
Both times you silenced it without opening the messages.
Not because you didn't want to talk to him. The truth was exactly the opposite. You wanted to hear his voice so badly it hurt. You wanted him to tell you it was okay. Wanted him to wrap his arms around you and somehow make sense of a day that refused to make sense.
But you knew yourself too well.
The second you heard his voice, everything you were holding together would finally fall apart.
From the outside, you were functioning perfectly.
Inside, every spare second was spent fighting against memories that kept trying to surface. The delivery room. The silence afterward. The impossibly small blanket. Jack's hand wrapped around yours so tightly it hurt. The unbearable weight of walking out of a hospital carrying flowers and paperwork instead of your daughter.
Nobody would have guessed that every quiet moment felt dangerous. Santos certainly wouldn't have spent the afternoon making inappropriate jokes if she'd known what was happening inside your head, and Javadi probably would've stopped peppering you with questions every time she spotted you in the hallway. To everyone else, you looked exactly the same. Competent. Calm. Busy. Just another attending making it through another shift.
The problem was that every time the department gave you even a second to breathe, your mind drifted right back to Central Fourteen.
Back to Lily.
Back to the missing front tooth and the dried blood in her hair. Back to the way she'd smiled after the stitches were done, proud of herself for not crying. Back to her mother's hand automatically reaching out to smooth her hair away from her face.
And beneath those memories waited older ones.
Every time one of those memories surfaced, you shoved it away and focused on the next task in front of you. Review the labs. Call the consultant. Reassess the patient in South Seven. Answer the page. Sign the orders. Do something. Anything. As long as you kept moving, you could stay ahead of it.
For a while, the strategy worked.
Emergency medicine had always rewarded motion. There was always another patient waiting, another problem demanding your attention. Grief struggled to compete with a department that never stopped moving.
But eventually the shift slowed. The waiting room was still full. Patients were still arriving. Nurses were still moving through the hallways with armfuls of supplies and half-finished conversations. The emergency department was still alive.
There was just a little more space between crises.
A little more room to think.
And that was the problem.
Because the moment there was space to think, there was space to feel.
You found yourself walking before you consciously decided where you were going. One minute you were standing at a workstation reviewing a chart, and the next you were moving through the department on instinct. Past the nurses' station.
You didn't stop to question it.
Some part of you had already made the decision.
By the time you pushed open the rooftop door, your chest physically ached from holding everything in. The cool evening air hit your face immediately, carrying the distant sounds of traffic from the streets below.
Normally the roof helped.
Normally it gave you enough distance from the chaos downstairs to breathe again. A few minutes alone, a little fresh air, and then you could go back down and finish the shift.
Not tonight.
Tonight there was nothing left to distract you.
No patients waiting for answers.
No charts demanding signatures.
No monitors alarming.
No pages interrupting your thoughts.
Just silence.
And grief.
For six years, you'd learned how to live around it. You'd learned how to carry it to work, how to laugh despite it, how to build an entire life around an absence that never really left. Most days you were successful. Most days the grief stayed where you'd put it.
But grief was patient.
It didn't disappear just because you got better at avoiding it.
It waited.
And the moment you finally stopped running, it caught up.
By the time Jack walked through the ambulance bay entrance for his night shift, he already felt exhausted.
Not the kind of exhaustion that came from long hours or too many patients. He could handle that. This was older than that. Deeper. Sleep had been a problem for years now, long before the Pitt.
Afghanistan had taken care of whatever normal relationship he might have had with sleep.
The nightmares had changed over the years, but they had never disappeared completely. Some nights, he woke up convinced he could still hear explosions. Other nights, he reached for a leg that wasn't there anymore. Therapy had helped. Time had helped. Experience had helped. But some things never fully leave you.
Losing Lily had added an entirely different category of nightmare.
For a long time, he thought he'd experienced every kind of pain a man could endure. He'd survived a war. Lost friends. Lost his wife. Lost part of himself. Watched relationships fall apart. Spent months rebuilding a life he hadn't been sure he wanted anymore.
None of it came close.
There was something uniquely cruel about losing a child because there was nowhere for the grief to go. It settled inside you and stayed there. It changed the shape of everything around it.
The hardest part hadn't even been his own grief.
It had been watching yours.
Jack still remembered those first months with painful clarity. He remembered waking up in the middle of the night to find your side of the bed empty. Sometimes he'd discover you standing in the nursery doorway, staring into the darkness. Sometimes you were sitting on the floor beside the crib, crying so quietly he almost couldn't hear it.
Other nights were worse.
There were nights when you'd wake up screaming. Nights when he had to shake you awake because you were trapped somewhere inside a dream. Nights when you'd cling to him afterward so tightly it felt like you were afraid he'd disappear too.
Even now, years later, those memories stayed with him.
In fact, they had become their own kind of nightmare.
Because every time he thought about Lily, he thought about you.
About the way your smile had disappeared for months.
About how laughter had become something you had to relearn.
About how every pregnancy announcement from a friend became a battle neither of you discussed afterward.
Therapy had helped eventually. More than either of you wanted to admit at the time.
When your therapist first suggested switching to day shifts so the two of you weren't constantly orbiting the same grief twenty-four hours a day, Jack had thought it was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard.
"You want us to spend less time together?" he'd asked.
"No," she'd replied patiently. "I want you to learn how to exist outside of this loss."
At the time, he'd hated her for saying it.
Looking back, she had probably saved both of you.
The automatic doors slid shut behind him as he entered the department. The familiar sounds of the ER immediately surrounded him.
"Hey."
Dana looked up from the nurses' station.
"Hey."
Jack dropped his bag beside a workstation and glanced around.
"Is Robby gone already?"
"No. He's talking with a patient's family."
Jack nodded absently, but his eyes kept moving through the department.
It wasn't even conscious anymore. After all these years, one of the first things he always did when he came in was look for you. Sometimes he'd catch a glimpse of you halfway down a hallway. Sometimes you'd already be buried in a patient room. Occasionally, you'd be sitting at a computer pretending to chart while actually scrolling through your phone.
Tonight, though, you weren't anywhere.
Dana noticed immediately.
Of course she did.
"Your wife's upstairs."
Jack's gaze snapped back to her.
Something in her voice made his stomach tighten.
It was subtle. Most people probably wouldn't have noticed it. But he'd worked with Dana for too long. He knew her rhythms. Knew the difference between casual information and information she was carefully choosing how to deliver.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Jack had worked with Dana long enough to know when she was choosing her words carefully, and the hesitation alone was enough to make something tighten in his chest. Dana wasn't someone who danced around bad news. She didn't soften things unless she thought the person standing in front of her genuinely needed it.
"Everything okay?" he asked quietly.
Dana looked down at the chart in her hands before answering. "There was a kid today. Playground fall. Nothing serious."
Jack waited.
Something in her expression told him that wasn't the important part.
"The kid's name was Lily."
The air seemed to leave his lungs.
Dana didn't need to explain why that mattered. She didn't need to remind him of a little girl neither of them had ever gotten to watch grow up. She didn't need to explain why his wife had disappeared to the roof instead of heading home after her shift. Still, after a moment, she added softly, "She was six, Jack."
His jaw tightened immediately.
Six.
His daughter would have been six years old.
The thought arrived with the same brutal certainty it always did, the same way it showed up every birthday, every Christmas, every first day of school season when parents filled social media with photographs of backpacks and oversized smiles. Six years old. Old enough to lose baby teeth. Old enough to read simple books. Old enough to come home from school excited about friends and teachers and playground drama. Old enough to be a person. Not just a memory. Not just a name. A child. A little girl who should have existed.
Jack looked away and rubbed a hand across his jaw, trying to push down the familiar ache rising in his chest. He wasn't thinking about the patient. He wasn't picturing some random six-year-old who had fallen off playground equipment. He was picturing you standing in that room, looking down at that chart, seeing the name, seeing the age, and feeling six years of carefully buried grief suddenly crack open beneath your feet. Because he knew exactly how your mind worked. He knew you would've smiled at the patient, reassured the mother, repaired the laceration, and done everything right. You would've been calm and professional because that's what you always were. And all the while, you would've been imagining the life your daughter never got to have.
"How bad?" he finally asked.
Dana's expression softened immediately. Not because of the patient. Because she knew exactly who he was asking about.
"She made it through the shift, which is honestly a miracle. Poor thing was like a walking ghost."
The answer hurt more than Jack expected because he understood exactly what it meant. It meant you'd spent hours pretending to be okay. You'd smiled at patients, answered pages, reviewed charts, taught students, and handled emergencies while carrying around a grief that had probably been tearing you apart from the inside. You'd done what doctors always did. You'd put everyone else first. You'd survived the shift.
But surviving and being okay had never been the same thing.
Without another word, he turned and headed straight upstairs.
The rooftop door creaked shut behind him.
Jack didn't move immediately. He stood near the entrance for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the fading evening light as he searched the rooftop. It didn't take long to find you.
You were standing at the far end, facing the city.
The skyline stretched endlessly before you, washed in gold and blue from the setting sun. Traffic crawled through the streets below, headlights beginning to flicker on as evening settled over Pittsburgh. The city was alive, moving forward the way it always did.
You weren't.
Your arms were wrapped tightly around yourself, shoulders hunched slightly against the wind. From where he stood, you looked small. Not physically. There was just something about grief that shrank people, made them curl inward around pain that nobody else could see. Jack felt his chest tighten because he knew that posture. He'd seen it before.
For a second, he wasn't standing on a hospital roof. He was standing in the doorway of the nursery six years ago, watching you stare into a crib neither of you could bear to dismantle. You hadn't been crying then either. That was the thing most people never understood. The moments that scared him most weren't the ones when you cried. They were the quiet ones. The moments when you became so still, it was like all the life had drained out of you.
Before Lily, you'd never been quiet.
You'd been loud laughter in grocery store aisles. Terrible singing in the car. Endless conversations that jumped from one subject to another so quickly he could barely keep up. You'd always been moving, always talking, always filling every room you entered with energy. Then one day, that woman disappeared, and Jack spent months wondering if she'd ever come back.
She had, eventually.
Mostly.
But there were still days like this.
You must have heard the rooftop door because your head tilted slightly, acknowledging his presence without actually turning around. You already knew it was him.
Jack shoved his hands into the pockets of his scrub pants and started walking toward you. He didn't rush. After everything you'd survived together, he'd learned that grief couldn't be rushed. Sometimes the best thing he could do was simply show up and wait for you to let him in.
When he was close enough, he looked out at the city beside you and said, "You know, there are easier ways to avoid answering my texts."
The joke was weak, but intentional.
For a few seconds, you didn't respond. Then he heard you let out a small breath.
"I wasn't answering anyone's texts."
The roughness in your voice immediately told him what he needed to know. You'd been crying for a while.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Dana filled me in."
That was all he said. That was all he needed to say.
Jack stopped beside the railing, leaving just enough space between you that it didn't feel suffocating. One of the things grief had taught both of you was that comfort wasn't always touch. Sometimes comfort was simply presence. Knowing somebody was willing to stand beside you in the dark without demanding you come out of it immediately.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
The silence wasn't awkward. It had never been between the two of you. Jack had always loved that about your relationship. He never needed to perform around you. Never needed to fill every quiet moment with conversation. The two of you could stand together without speaking and still understand exactly what the other was feeling.
Eventually, he glanced sideways.
Your eyes were fixed on the horizon, red and swollen from crying. It wasn't the tears that hurt to see. He'd seen you cry before. What hurt was the exhaustion. The defeated look on your face. The expression of someone who had spent hours fighting a battle they couldn't win.
"You should've called me."
The words came out before he could stop them.
You laughed softly, but there wasn't any humor in it.
"Why?"
Jack frowned.
"Because."
You looked at him for the first time.
"Because what?"
"Because I would've come."
The answer was immediate. No hesitation. No uncertainty. As if there had never been any other possible outcome.
Something in your expression cracked at that.
When you finally broke the silence, your voice was so quiet he almost missed it.
"She smiled."
Jack looked over at you.
You laughed softly, shaking your head.
"That's the stupid part. The name hurt. Seeing her age hurt. But I could handle that. I thought I could handle that." Your fingers tightened around your arms. "Then she smiled and I just kept thinking..." You stopped, swallowing hard. "God, our daughter could've smiled like that."
Jack looked away toward the city.
The pain in your voice was familiar. Not because he'd heard those exact words before, but because he'd lived with that same thought for years. There were moments when the grief was manageable, when it sat quietly in the background and let you both function. Then there were moments when something completely ordinary would rip it open again.
A little girl in a grocery store.
A first day of school picture.
A family at a restaurant.
You wiped at your face, frustrated by the tears that refused to stop.
"I just kept looking at her. Every time she talked, every time she rolled her eyes at her mom, every time she laughed, I kept wondering what Lily would've been like."
Your voice cracked around your daughter's name.
"I know she wasn't our daughter. I know that. But I couldn't stop comparing them."
"You don't have to explain that to me."
The answer came immediately.
You looked over at him.
Jack was still staring out at the city, jaw tight, hands shoved into his pockets.
"I've done the same thing."
You blinked.
"What?"
He let out a humorless laugh.
"You think you're the only one?"
For a moment he shook his head, almost embarrassed by the admission.
"There are times I'll see a kid somewhere and immediately start doing the math. Every birthday. Every Christmas. Every school year." He rubbed a hand across his face. "Hell, sometimes I don't even realize I'm doing it."
You stared at him.
Because Jack didn't talk about this.
Not often.
Not unless you dragged it out of him.
The silence stretched between you before he continued.
"I still wonder what she'd look like."
The confession sounded strange coming from him. Vulnerable in a way that felt almost rare.
"I still wonder if she'd have your smile." A small smile appeared briefly at the corner of his mouth. "Or your attitude."
You snorted despite yourself.
"My attitude?"
"Absolutely your attitude."
The smile disappeared as quickly as it came.
"I wonder if she'd like soccer. Or music. Or if she'd hate school." His eyes remained fixed on the horizon. "I wonder if she'd be smart enough to get into trouble and talk her way out of it."
A lump formed in your throat.
Because those weren't hypothetical thoughts.
They were thoughts he'd clearly had before.
Many times.
Thoughts he'd carried by himself.
"I thought I was doing better," you admitted quietly.
Jack finally turned toward you.
"You are."
"It doesn't feel like it."
"No." His voice softened. "It feels like today hurt."
You looked down.
"I spent six years trying not to think about what we missed."
Jack nodded slowly.
"I know."
"And then she walked into that room and suddenly all I could think about was everything our daughter never got."
The words spilled out before you could stop them.
"First grade. Birthday parties. Soccer games. School pictures. Stupid arguments about bedtime. All those little things everyone complains about." Your voice trembled. "We would've loved those things."
Jack's eyes burned.
Because you were right.
You would've.
You would've complained and laughed and argued over homework and worried about report cards. You would've picked her up from school, taken hundreds of pictures, and embarrassed her in front of her friends.
You would've had a daughter.
Instead, all either of you had were imagined versions of a little girl who never got the chance to grow up.
For a long moment, neither of you spoke.
The wind tugged gently at your hair as you stared out at the city below. You closed your eyes for a moment and let the cool air wash over your face. Your chest still hurt. It felt like it had been hurting all day. Maybe longer than that.
Eventually, Jack stepped closer.
Not because he thought he could fix any of it. The two of you had learned that lesson years ago. There were some wounds love couldn't heal and some losses that never became smaller no matter how much time passed. After everything you'd survived together, Jack understood that sometimes the only thing you could offer another person was your presence. A reminder that they weren't carrying the weight alone.
His hand found yours automatically.
The gesture was so familiar neither of you seemed to think about it anymore. Your fingers slipped between his without hesitation, settling into a place they'd been finding for years. There was something painfully comforting about it. Six years later and your body still reached for him whenever things got bad. Six years later and his hand still closed around yours as though it belonged there.
"I miss her too," he said quietly.
The words nearly undid you.
Not because they were profound. They weren't.
There was no attempt to make things better. No reassurance. No careful speech about healing or moving forward. Just the truth. Simple and devastating in a way only truth could be.
I miss her too.
For a moment, neither of you looked at each other. You simply stood there holding hands while tears burned behind your eyes. Jack squeezed your fingers once, and somehow that hurt almost as much as the words.
You stared out at the city for so long that he was beginning to think the conversation was over when a quiet laugh escaped you.
It wasn't really a laugh.
More like a breath that got lost on its way out.
Jack immediately glanced over.
"What?"
You shook your head.
"Nothing."
His eyebrow lifted.
"That's never reassuring."
Despite yourself, the corner of your mouth twitched.
"Why?"
"Because every time somebody says 'nothing,' it's followed by something that's definitely not nothing."
For a second, you almost smiled.
Then the feeling disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.
Your gaze dropped to your joined hands. Jack's thumb was moving absentmindedly across your knuckles, tracing the same small pattern he'd been tracing for years without ever seeming to realize it. The familiarity of it made your chest ache.
Because this was the part nobody saw.
The years afterward.
The thousands of tiny ways the two of you had kept each other alive.
You swallowed hard.
"I never told you something."
The change in your voice was immediate.
Jack straightened slightly.
"What is it?"
The question was gentle, but you could already see concern settling into his expression.
You looked away.
Suddenly the words felt impossible.
They had lived inside you for six years. Six years of therapy, sleepless nights, anniversaries, birthdays, and somehow you'd never said them out loud. Maybe because saying them would make them real. Maybe because part of you still felt ashamed of them.
But after today, after Lily and the missing front tooth and the smile you couldn't stop thinking about, you weren't sure you could keep carrying it by yourself anymore.
"After we lost Lily..." Your voice caught. "Those first few months were bad."
The moment the words left your mouth, Jack's expression changed.
Not because he disagreed.
Because he remembered.
God, he remembered.
There were entire stretches of those months that had blurred together over time, but some memories never faded. The nursery. The sleepless nights. The endless silence that seemed to fill every room of the apartment. The way both of you kept pretending you were okay because the other person looked worse. The way grief had transformed your home into a place neither of you wanted to be but couldn't bear to leave.
You laughed weakly and wiped at your eyes.
"I was sitting in her room one night."
The memory felt painfully clear.
You could still see the moonlight coming through the window. Still remember sitting in the rocking chair staring at a crib that would never be used.
"And I remember thinking..." Your throat tightened. "God, I remember thinking it wasn't fair that she was gone and I was still here."
A tear slipped down your cheek.
You didn't wipe it away.
For a second neither of you moved.
Jack was looking at you now.
Really looking at you.
The way he did when he knew something important was coming and was almost afraid to hear it.
Your voice dropped to a whisper.
"I thought about joining her."
For a moment, Jack didn't react at all.
The silence stretched between you.
You could actually see the impact of the confession settling over him, could see the exact second it landed. It was like watching the air leave his lungs. His face didn't change immediately. He didn't interrupt. Didn't argue. Didn't rush to reassure you.
He just looked at you.
Heartbroken.
As though six years later he'd discovered there was still a piece of your pain he'd never known existed.
"I never had a plan," you said quickly. "I wasn't going to do anything. It wasn't like that. Or maybe it was, I don't know."
Your voice cracked and you looked away, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.
"I was just so tired, Jack."
The words felt inadequate. Ridiculous, even. How were you supposed to explain that kind of exhaustion to someone who had lived through it beside you? Every morning began the same way. For a few brief seconds after waking up, there would be peace. Then reality would return. Lily was gone. She was still gone. She was going to stay gone. And you would have to survive another day knowing it.
"I'd wake up and have to remember all over again," you said quietly. "Every single day. There were mornings when I genuinely didn't know how to keep doing it."
Jack didn't respond. He closed his eyes instead, and you knew exactly where he'd gone. Back to that apartment. Back to those months neither of you ever talked about anymore. Months that felt blurred together now except for the parts that didn't. The nursery. The sleepless nights. The sound of the shower running because it was the only place you could cry without feeling watched. The way grief settled over everything until even breathing felt like work.
Neither of you had survived those months gracefully. There was nothing noble about it. The two of you had stumbled through them half-broken, taking turns falling apart and pretending you weren't. Looking back, it felt less like surviving and more like refusing to die.
When Jack finally opened his eyes again, there was so much pain in them that it made your throat tighten.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
The question wasn't angry. If he'd been angry, you would've known what to do with it. Anger could be defended against. Anger had somewhere to go. This sounded heartbroken, and somehow that hurt more.
A shaky laugh escaped you.
"Look at you."
Jack frowned immediately.
"What does that mean?"
"It means you were barely holding yourself together too."
Your eyes dropped to your joined hands.
"I remember those months, Jack. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and checking if you'd slept at all. I remember finding you sitting in the garage for hours because you thought I didn't notice."
His mouth twitched.
"I was being subtle."
"You were absolutely not being subtle."
For a second, something almost resembling a smile passed between you before disappearing again. The memories were already there, crowding the space. The apartment that had become too quiet. The nursery neither of you could bear to touch. The endless cycle of pretending you were okay because the other person looked worse. You trying to protect him from your grief while he tried to protect you from his. Both of you failing. Both of you loving each other enough to keep trying anyway.
"You stopped eating," you continued softly. "You'd sit at the table and push food around your plate for twenty minutes and call it dinner. I'd wake up at three in the morning and find you staring at the ceiling or sitting on the couch in the dark."
Jack looked away.
"You looked at me like I was going to disappear."
The confession slipped out before you could stop it.
His jaw tightened immediately because he knew it was true. There had been mornings when he'd wake up and panic before he even opened his eyes. Mornings when he'd reach across the bed just to make sure you were still there. Times when he'd come home and find you sitting in the nursery and feel overwhelming relief that you were still breathing.
"You were all I had left."
His voice was so quiet it almost disappeared into the wind.
The words stole the air from your lungs.
Jack kept his gaze fixed on the city.
"I lost Lily," he said, his voice cracking around her name. He swallowed hard before continuing. "I lost Lily, and then I watched you disappear too."
The tears came back immediately.
"There were days I didn't recognize you," he admitted. "And I hated myself for thinking that."
You closed your eyes.
Because you remembered her too. The woman who couldn't walk through the baby aisle without crying. The woman who heard a newborn crying in public and immediately had to leave. Sometimes that version of yourself still scared you.
"I didn't know how to help you," Jack said quietly. "Which was a problem, because helping people is kind of the only thing I know how to do."
That finally pulled the smallest smile from you.
"That's your whole personality?"
"Pretty much."
"You couldn't even fix Robby’s dishwasher."
A faint laugh escaped him.
"I still maintain that wasn't my fault."
For a second the heaviness eased, just enough to breathe.
Then Jack looked back at you, and the humor disappeared.
"If you had told me..."
His voice softened.
"If you had told me you were thinking about something like that, I would've stayed."
The tears slipped down your cheeks.
"I know."
"No."
He shook his head immediately.
"I don't think you do."
There was no anger in his voice. Only grief. Regret. Love. The kind of love that had spent six years carrying the same loss and still hadn't learned how to put it down.
"I would've sat on that nursery floor with you every night if I had to. I would've stayed awake. I would've listened. I would've done anything."
And that was what hurt.
Because you believed him.
You always had.
The problem wasn't that you didn't trust him.
It had never been about trust. If anything, that was the problem. You trusted him completely. You trusted him enough to know exactly what losing Lily had done to him, even when he tried to hide it. You remembered the weight he lost, the sleepless nights, the way he stopped laughing for a while. You remembered the way he looked at you during those first months, as though he was constantly checking to make sure you were still there.
"I couldn't do that to you."
Jack frowned.
"What?"
"I couldn't give you one more thing to carry." Your voice broke. "You were already drowning."
The words seemed to surprise him. For a moment he just stared at you, and then a quiet laugh escaped him. There wasn't any humor in it. If anything, it sounded exhausted. Like the truth hurt too much to do anything else.
"That's exactly what I thought about you."
The words settled heavily between you.
For a second neither of you spoke, because suddenly so many memories looked different. All those nights spent lying awake beside each other pretending to be asleep. All the conversations that stopped just short of what you were really feeling. All the moments one of you had walked into a room and found the other crying, only for both of you to immediately insist you were fine. You had spent years believing you were protecting him. He had spent years believing he was protecting you. Somehow, despite loving each other more than anyone else in the world, you'd both ended up carrying parts of your grief alone.
Jack looked away first, out toward the city lights glittering beneath the darkening sky. His jaw tightened and for a moment you thought he wasn't going to say anything else.
Instead he swallowed hard and asked quietly, "You know what kept me here?"
You blinked.
"What?"
A humorless laugh escaped him as he rubbed a hand across his jaw.
"You."
The answer hit so hard you almost thought you'd misheard him.
Jack kept staring at the city.
"I wasn't staying alive for me back then."
His voice sounded different now. Raw. Stripped of all the things he usually hid behind. You had known Jack through some of the worst moments of his life. You had seen him after Afghanistan. Seen him after surgeries and physical therapy and nightmares that woke him in the middle of the night. You had watched him survive things that would've broken most people.
You couldn't remember the last time he sounded this vulnerable.
"There were days I didn't want to get out of bed," he admitted quietly. "Days when I couldn't think past the next hour. I wasn't doing any of it because I wanted to. I wasn't doing it because I thought things would get better."
He paused, staring out at the skyline.
"I was doing it because of you."
Your throat tightened painfully.
Jack shook his head, almost like he was embarrassed by the admission.
"I knew what losing her was doing to you. I saw it every day. I saw you stop sleeping. I saw you walk around our apartment looking like a ghost." His voice cracked. "And every time I thought about giving up, every time things got bad enough that I just wanted everything to stop, all I could think was that if I left too..."
He stopped.
For a second he couldn't finish.
"...you'd be alone."
The words nearly shattered you.
Jack looked down, blinking hard.
"And that scared me more than anything."
The confession settled between you with a weight that seemed to press against your chest. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't some grand declaration. If anything, it was devastating because of how simple it was. After everything that had happened, after all the pain and anger and grief, the thing that had kept him here was the same thing that had kept you here.
Each other.
You stared at him as memories rearranged themselves inside your head. Every meal he'd forced himself to eat. Every morning he'd gotten out of bed when neither of you wanted to. Every phone call. Every silent drive. Every night he'd sat beside you without saying a word because there weren't any words that could make it better. You had always thought he was being strong for you. It had never occurred to you that he was hanging on just as desperately.
Jack finally turned toward you.
His eyes were red.
There were tears sitting there now, and for once he wasn't trying to hide them.
"Lily is gone."
The words hurt.
They would always hurt.
Nothing was ever going to change that. Not time. Not therapy. Not surviving. There would always be a part of both of you that ached when her name came up. There would always be birthdays and anniversaries and random moments in grocery stores that knocked the air out of your lungs.
But Jack looked at you anyway.
"But you aren't."
A tear slid down his cheek.
He didn't wipe it away.
"And I'm really damn grateful for that."
That was what finally broke you.
Not because you suddenly missed Lily more than you had five minutes ago. Not because the grief was any worse. But because after six years, you finally understood something neither of you had ever said out loud. You had spent all this time believing you survived for him. Believing every impossible day had been endured because you couldn't leave him behind.
And all along, he'd been doing exactly the same thing.
The sob escaped before you could stop it.
Jack didn't try to say anything else. There wasn't anything left to say. Instead, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around you, and you went immediately. His arms tightened around you the second you buried your face against his shoulder, holding you so tightly it almost hurt. For a long time neither of you moved.
Up here on the roof, there was only the two of you.
Two people who had spent six years carrying the same loss.
Two people who had spent six years keeping each other alive.
And the daughter you would spend the rest of your lives missing.
ᯓ★ i knew it, i knew you
( @bathtimejaffacakes ask and u shall receive 🙂↕️ )
my man my man my man




