Page 61 of So Close to You
“The board believes that a temporary leave of absence would help protect both the clinic and yourself during this media storm. It’s the most prudent course of action.”
“Protect…” Nerissa repeats sarcastically, clenching her fingers around the armrest of the chair. “I’ve spent sleepless nights and years of sacrifice becoming one of the best surgeons in the sports medicine field. And now you want to reduce me to a sensationalist headline? The finance director’s scandal-ridden mistress?”
The humiliation shoots through her entire body like an electric current.
“I understand,” she adds after a moment, resigned. “I understand all too well what you’re doing.”
When she leaves the office, her legs feel strangely light, as if she were walking outside her own body. The hallway is still filled with doctors, nurses, and administrative staff. The clinic carries on as usual while her life quietly falls apart.
She finds Seraphina in the underground parking garage. The executive is standing next to her car, placing folders in the back seat with quick, clumsy movements. She’s wearing her glasses despite the dim lighting of the garage, and her hair is a mess. She’s the perfect picture of a woman who has spent the night surviving an emotional collapse.
Nerissa stops a few feet away. Seraphina notices her presence immediately and freezes. Then she closes the car door without looking at her.
“Go home, Nerissa,” she says, almost pleading. “You shouldn’t be here. You’re making things worse for both of us.”
Nerissa feels like bursting out laughing.
“Making things worse?” she retorts sharply. “Is that what you’re worried about now? That I’ll damage your public image?”
Seraphina clenches the keys tightly between her fingers and closes her eyes for a moment.
“Please…” she murmurs. “Don’t make this any harder.”
“No,” Nerissa cuts her off, taking a step forward. “Don’t talk to me as if you can still control this situation. I’ve just been suspended, Seraphina. Half the clinic pretended not to hearthe rumors while they humiliated me in a seventeen-minute meeting. So don’t ask me to quietly disappear to make your life easier.”
Seraphina swallows hard. Nerissa notices the slight tremor running through her hands.
“You don’t understand the magnitude of what’s happening,” Seraphina replies. “Adrian leaked everything. Elliot… the kids… the merger is dead.”
“Then explain it to me,” Nerissa demands, stepping closer.
The silence that follows is heavy and painful. Seraphina’s eyes finally rise to meet hers, and Nerissa wishes she’d never seen that fear reflected in them.
“Just let it go,” Seraphina whispers, her voice breaking. “There’s nothing left to save here.”
The words fall between them like a gunshot. Nerissa feels something finally snap inside her chest. All the pain of the last few days comes rushing back. Rage clouds her vision. Before she can think about what she’s doing, she crosses the distance separating them. Seraphina barely has time to react. Nerissa shoves her against the car. The keys fall to the concrete floor, and the metallic clang echoes between the columns. Seraphina opens her eyes with a mixture of fear and surprise.
“Nerissa…” she tries to say.
But Nerissa is already holding her firmly by the nape of the neck. And she kisses her. With a fierce need to break through the mask that Seraphina insists on keeping between them. Seraphina’s lips are cold at first. For a second, she remains stiff, resisting. Then she breaks completely.
Nerissa senses the exact moment she stops fighting. The tremor running through her body. The way her fingers clutch at Nerissa’s scrub top in pure desperation. The kiss tastes of restrained tears, sleepless nights, and fear. Deep fear. Nerissa kisses her desperately because she needs to punish her for the abandonment, but also because she needs to remember that the woman from Chester still exists beneath all the destruction surrounding them.
Seraphina lets out a muffled sound against her mouth. And when they finally pull apart, they’re both breathing heavily. Seraphina remains leaning against the car, her lips reddened and her eyes glistening with tears.
“We’re both in this mess together,” Nerissa whispers, her lips barely brushing hers. “So you don’t have to keep running away from me anymore.”
Seraphina closes her eyes tightly.
“Go away, please,” Seraphina replies. “Before they hurt us any more.”
Chapter 22
Seraphina Chapman has been sitting at the end of the long glass table in the main boardroom for exactly twelve minutes when she realizes that the meeting has nothing to do with a simple contingency assessment. It is a full-blown execution.
She senses it in the evasive glances of the board members, who barely hold her gaze for more than two seconds. She notices it in the tense silence of the general counsel, whose face remains impassive, and above all in the gray folder placed in front of Adrian Beckett, as if it were a scalpel ready to cut open her chest without giving her the option of anesthesia.
At first, no one mentions the scandal that continues to fill newspapers and dominate the news cycle. They prefer to talk about financial stability and the stock market fluctuations expected in the wake of the media leak. The corporate language falls across the table with a cold, monstrous detachment, as if the published photographs did not belong to real lives but to a faulty graph that must be corrected before the markets open.
