He looked at her for a long time. “Believe what you want. You always do.”
She left without him.
At four a.m., on her break, she opened the photo to finally delete it. Her thumb slipped and the picture zoomed in.
His right hand. Bare fingers on the woman’s back.
Sloane went cold.
She knew that hand. She’d met him on June 14 at eleven at night, when he walked into her ER with two broken knuckles and a grin. She had set the hand in a fiberglass cast herself.
She pulled the old chart. “Rourke, Gabriel. Right hand. Short arm cast, six weeks.” Her own initials were on it.
On July 2, his right hand was still in that cast. The photo was older. Brent had lied.
And if Brent lied then…
“Sloane.”
Gabe stood at the nurses’ station. A detective stood beside him. Behind them, in cuffs, was Brent.
The whole night shift went silent.
“I’ve never called a cop in my life,” Gabe said. “Tonight I did. Half my men won’t look at me tomorrow.”
He set a paper on the counter. It was the loan with her forged signature, and under it Kessler’s cash receipt, signed by Brent.
“Brent took the eighty last month. I paid it back so they’d stay out of your kitchen. That wire is the only clean money I’ve ever sent that man.”
“Sloaney, he’s lying,” Brent said. “Tell them about the motel.”
Sloane turned her phone around.
“July 2. He was wearing a cast I put on him. You made this up.”
Brent’s face went gray.
“Seven years ago I caught him stealing from your mom’s house sale,” Gabe said. “He needed you gone before I told you.”
“Forgery and fraud,” the detective said, and steered Brent toward the doors. Brent didn’t look back. He couldn’t.
Sloane looked at Gabe. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because you’d rather hate me than owe me.” He pulled the ring from his pocket. “So now you don’t owe me anything. Now you just choose.”
Her eyes burned. “Ask me.”
“Marry me, Sloane. And this time, you don’t leave without me.”
“Those are the rules?”
“Those are the rules.”
“Yes.”
Denise started clapping. The whole night shift joined in.
For seven years she had run from one picture. Now she walked out of her ER holding the hand she had once healed, and she didn’t let go.
The end · Your turn
Should Sloane have trusted Gabe seven years ago, or was leaving over that photo the right call?
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