“Crap.” I stood and grabbed my bag. I was going to be late for class. Again.
“Avery!” I elbowed her and Lucas on my way out. “I lost track of time. Gotta go, my social media class starts in ten.”
“Call me?”
“Yup!” I ran toward my waiting Mercedes. As I drove, I cranked the music.
At least I had something to distract me from heartache.
A professor who hated my guts.
I hit the accelerator harder—I couldn’t be late. Not again.
Come on, come on!
I prayed for time to slow and for my car to gain speed as I finally made it to campus.
Only to see the old parking lot under construction.
“Shit!”
Yeah. I was going to be late.
So late.
Chapter Six
THATCH
“Alright, I know this seems strange, and I’m sorry my hands are cold.” I winked, cupping her left breast in my right hand before cupping the other with my left. “But I need to mark you up a bit.”
I loved my job. Loved my patients—for the most part.
But there were always those consults that you knew were going to go badly before you even stepped into the room.
This was one of them.
Or should I say she?
Most of the eighteen-year-olds I worked on were spoiled brats who either flirted way too much with the man who was about to touch their breasts, or argued with whatever professional opinion I might have about them.
It had already been a long day.
And judging by the bubble gum that had just popped in my face a few minutes before when I introduced myself—it was about to get a hell of a lot longer.
The teen jutted her chest out like she was God’s gift.
She wasn’t.
After all, wasn’t that why she came to me? She wanted more?
There were three types of patients when it came to breast augmentations. First, you had the ones who had always had flat chests and wanted to feel feminine—they were my favorite. I loved the confidence a simple alteration could give them. Oftentimes they cried at the first consultation, and I did my damnedest to make sure they were happy with their body when I was done—just like I did my damnedest to make sure they realized they were already perfect before I even started.
Second, there were the patients who sought out perfection, even though nothing on their body was ever good enough and nothing would ever be good enough. But those weren’t even as bad as the third category.
The ones who thought that a simple alteration would change their lives, the ones who thought beauty really was all about what was on the outside, not the inside.
Another pop of bubble gum in my face. Exhibit A.
These types always wanted their breasts bigger, bouncier, fluffier—yes, a girl had asked for “fluffy tits” once, and since I wanted to stay one of the best plastic surgeons in Seattle, I showed her the door.
The hell? Fluffy?
I was still groggy from all the Benadryl, but I needed to do this last consult before I met up with Lucas. Even I knew that drinking heavily with antihistamines was a bad call—but I hoped that if I ate enough food, the alcohol and the drugs would even out.
Besides.
Austin.
That was reason enough to risk it, right?
Shaking my head, I barked out measurements to my nurse and drew a line across the bottom of the breast. “Right is off by half a centimeter.”
The patient looked down. “I think it looks fine.”
“Do you now,” I said in a bored voice. God save me from eighteen-year-old girls who ask for breast augmentations instead of cars and the parents who are rich enough to gift the surgery. What the hell had society come to?
“Can you make them bounce more?”
If I had a penny . . .
“Sure,” I huffed out, irritated that I was irritated. Normally I loved my job, but normally I wasn’t nursing a Benadryl hangover, or the sad obsession with licking my lips in hopes her taste would still be there.
Damn it.
It was all her fault.
Everything.
The drinking.
The late nights staring at the pillow she used to sleep on.
While drinking.
The drunken and then deleted texts I didn’t have the balls to send.
Technically, it wasn’t her fault; logic told me this, just like logic also pointed across the hall of my apartment building. Logic also said I got myself into this situation—even though it wasn’t a fault of my own making.
Hell, someone really needed to take away my phone or at least invent an app that kept drunk, stupid ex-boyfriends from making complete jackasses out of themselves every single time they drank whiskey.
“Almost done.” I cleared my throat and called out a few more measurements, then pulled the white paper garment back across the girl’s pert breasts. “You’re a perfect candidate for breast augmentation.” Hell, I could say it in my sleep. In fact, I’d been notorious for grabbing Austin’s breasts in my sleep and shouting out numbers like she was my nurse.
Yeah, I was screwed in the head.
Austin.
Damn it.
It always came back to her.
Then again, that’s how life worked. Choices always came back to bite you in the ass. My first poor choice was taking her home that night.
My second?
Cheating on her.
On purpose.
“Doctor?” my nurse prompted.
“Sorry.” I forced a smile. “As I was saying, you’re a perfect candidate. Now, why don’t you change back into your clothes, and I’ll have Dawn talk to you about surgery and financing.”
I was bored.
I was angry.
I was hurt.
And I only had myself to blame.
Because it’s bullshit when people say they cheat by accident. You don’t accidently fall on someone else’s face. You don’t accidently drop your clothes to the floor.
I knew exactly what I was doing.
I could still taste the air of the bedroom.
Smell the girl’s shampoo before I touched her lips.
And I still felt the searing pain once the kiss finished—because I had totally ruined the best thing that ever happened to me.
Not all cheaters are created equal.
I did exactly what I swore I would never do—after seeing my parents suffer—but I did it for the right reasons.
So yeah, some cheaters suck.
But some . . . Sometimes, it’s okay to cheat.
I would do it again.
If it meant saving her.
I would do it every damn day.
“Dr. Holloway?” Mia knocked on the door.
I stood and excused myself.
Typically, the appointments lasted a lot longer, but whenever I had teen patients, they didn’t want to discuss sizes or use medical terminology.
They wanted bigger.
They always wanted a high-profile implant.
And they wanted to know if they would still feel sensations in their nipples. Beyond that, they didn’t ask questions, because most of them didn’t think of it as surgery.
So I walked out the door.
A headache blaring between my temples, I quickly grabbed my shit so I could meet Lucas.