TRACY
The famous and pompous Dr. Valerie Vance, a second-year resident, was the woman who entered Shelby's apartment last night. Although she and Shelby have been seen together for some time now, nobody is certain of their relationship.
She walked in.
She stood beside him, checking the monitor settings with a practiced, effortless flick of her wrist. Up close and in hospital scrubs, she was powerful. Her name tag read Dr. Valerie Vance. She was beautiful in a sharp, aged way—the kind of woman who didn't just hold a room; she owned the foundation it was built on.
She caught my eye through the glass and leveled a gaze at me so cold it could have shattered diamonds. She knew. Of course she knew. To her, I wasn't a fellow doctor or a talented colleague; I was just the latest distraction her man had picked up while she was away.
The surgical suite was a high-pressure vacuum. For eight exhausting hours, I stood as a silent witness to a performance I never wanted to see. Dr. Shelby was the conductor, and Dr. Valerie Vance was his primary instrument. They moved with a seamless ease that made my stomach churn—a second-year resident and a chief of staff, performing a complex craniotomy as if they hadn't just spent the last two weeks in a whirlwind of secrets.
I stood back, grasping my tablet, my pen flying across the screen as I took careful notes on every incision, every cauterization, and every drop in the patient's vitals. I didn't look at Shelby. I didn't look at the way his broad shoulders tensed under the surgical gown. Instead, I focused on the monitor, my "Ice Queen" mask so heavy it felt like it was made of actual lead.
When the final stitch was placed and the anesthesia began to wane, the tension in the room didn't disappear; instead, it sharpened. As we stepped into the scrub area to strip off our blood-flecked gowns, Valerie Vance turned toward me. She was still wearing that sharp, territorial smirk.
"Dr. Williams, right?" she asked, her voice light, almost casual. "You know, it's funny. I didn't get a chance to properly introduce myself last night. I was so caught up in the surprise of coming home early. You were the one in the Chief's apartment, weren't you? In his kitchen?"
The other nurses in the scrub room went dead silent. I could feel their eyes boring into the back of my head. Valerie was trying to play the 'girl-to-girl' card, trying to smoke me out as a little stranger in her territory.
I didn't even look up from the sink as I scrubbed the soap from my hands. "I'm here to discuss neuropathology, Dr. Vance, not your domestic schedule," I replied, my voice as cold and flat as a morgue slab. "If you want to have a 'girl-to-girl' chat, I suggest you find someone who cares about your personal life. I have rounds to finish."
I walked away before she could even inhale for a comeback. In that moment, I knew I had made a permanent, dangerous enemy of a second-year resident who clearly had the chief's ear. But I didn't care. The ice wasn't just my shield anymore; it was my weapon.
Shelby's page came through twenty minutes after the surgery ended: My office. Now.
I took my sweet time. I spent over thirty minutes in the locker room, carefully cleaning up, re-pinning my hair, and staring at my reflection until I didn't recognize the girl who had run through the streets barefoot just hours before. I wanted him to wait. I wanted him to feel every second of the silence I was giving him.
When I finally arrived, I didn't knock. I pushed open the heavy oak door, and the moment I was inside, I heard the click of the lock turning behind me. Shelby wasn't standing behind his desk like a chief; he was right there in my space, his eyes blown wide with a desperate, pressing energy.
"Tracy, look at me," he whispered, his voice cracking with an urge I'd never heard. He didn't just ask for my attention; he begged for it. He dropped his guard entirely, reaching out to catch my hands. Valerie is nothing. She is a shadow, a persistent mistake from a life I was living before I saw you. She's forcing a reality that doesn't exist by showing up like that. I have nothing to do with her—she's just forcing herself on me, trying to claim a space that isn't hers. I love you. I just want you. Please, don't let her noise ruin what we've built in the past week."
I wanted to scream that a week wasn't long enough to build anything but a house of cards. I wanted to remind him of the cold pavement against my bare feet. But as he looked at me with that raw, starving honesty, my ironclad conviction didn't just crack—it shattered. I didn't answer him with words. Instead, I let out a sharp sigh as he pulled me toward him.
I didn't move. I stood there with my arms crossed, my lab coat a white wall of defiance, but Shelby was already in my space. He pulled me toward him.
The reconciliation wasn't soft. It was a collision. He backed me against his massive mahogany desk, the very surface where he signed surgical consents and hospital budgets, and fucked me with a fierceness that felt like an exorcism of Valerie's presence. The "Ice Queen" was gone, replaced by a woman who needed to feel his ownership to drown out her own doubt. I gripped the edge of the desk, the cool wood a sharp opposite to the heat of his skin, as he whispered over and over that I was the only one.
We didn't stop there. The hunger was too deep, the betrayal too fresh to be settled in an office. That night, we returned to his bachelor's pad, and the lovemaking continued with a desperate, ceremonial intensity. In the dark of his room, surrounded by the scent of sandalwood and expensive silk, he worshiped my body as if trying to erase the memory of the woman who had stormed in the night before.
We lay there afterward, tangled in the sheets, laughing—actually laughing—at the complete absurdity of Valerie Vance.
"She really thinks she has a claim," I said, my voice smoky and satisfied. "She stood there in the OR like she was the one who held your heart."
"She's delusional," Shelby whispered, pressing a kiss to my shoulder. "Imagine forcing yourself on a man who clearly doesn't want you. It's pathetic, Tracy. You're the only one who matters here."
I leaned back into him, a twisted sense of victory blooming in my chest. I had won. I was the one in his bed, the one he loved, while Valerie was just a second-year resident clinging to a ghost. I chose to believe the lie because the alternative—being alone in my scratchy sheets—was a cold I wasn't ready to return to.
This peace lasted for just a couple of days; I had the time of my life. We went back and forth between his apartment and office. We took over each other's bodies. He made me believe in heaven on Earth before my world came crashing down. And this time, it completely caught me off guard.