I stared at the coffee.
“You bought me coffee?”
“I observed a pattern.”
“What pattern?”
“You forget to drink the coffee you buy.”
I smiled.
“Have you been watching me?”
His expression changed slightly.
“Only enough to notice.”
There was something about the way he said it.
Not possessive.
Not intrusive.
Just honest.
I wrapped my hands around the warm cup.
“Thank you.”
He sat across from me.
For a few moments, we simply existed in comfortable silence.
Then he asked:
“Do you always work this much?”
I shrugged.
“Most nurses do.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I smiled.
“You sound like my mother.”
“I’ve never been compared to Eleanor Bellamy before.”
“It’s not necessarily a compliment.”
He laughed quietly.
It was the first time I had heard him laugh without holding anything back.
And strangely, that made him seem younger.
More human.
“Why nursing?” he asked.
The question caught me off guard.
