Page 85 of One Last Rodeo

“You’ll never understand it. You’ll never get the bias, the discrimination that I’ve experienced. When surgeries are scheduled with me, patients are excited to see my credentials on paper until they meet me for pre-ops. I could be the most awarded surgeon at the entire hospital in San Jose but find out I’m a female and they’re out. Find out my skin is brown, and they’re cancelling or rescheduling for a lesser skilled surgeon. It never ends, Jensen. Do you get what I’m saying now?”

“Kitty, I’m—"

I shake my head. “You want advice from the doctor that Dawson brought in? Fine. Take it. Just don’t ask me about your shoulder again. Or anything, for that matter. I’ll be the series doctor for your emergencies only. Nothing more.”

“Cat, Doctor Alba, wait. Let's just talk.”

I shake my head again and turn away. Because fuck all of this. I’ve worked too hard to be dragged back into this version of myself. I thought Jensen was my friend. I thought he was someone I could trust—someone who respected me. Hell, I thought he actually liked me. I thought he saw me. Saw the work, the years, the nights spent grinding myself into exhaustion to earn every inch of where I stand. I thought he understood what it took for me to get here. The insecurities I swallowed. The fears I buried. The constant pressure to be perfect because being good at what I do was never enough.

And yeah, I'm guessing he doesn’t know who Davis is to me. Maybe he doesn’t understand how personal this all is, how deeply it cuts since he was consulting with my ex-fiancé. But it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.

It could have been any other doctor he’d consulted instead of me,his doctor, and it still would’ve hurt. Because the message is the same: I’m not enough.

Now I realize something even worse: I’m still her. That younger version of myself, standing in rooms full of men, trying to prove I belong and be seen. I'm the little girl who wanted to make her parents so proud by showing she was smarter than everyone else. Who craved the attention of the only people that she loved.

I'm highly trained. Overqualified. Capable. And still somehow, I’m reduced to my face, my body, my gender, while a less skilled man is chosen over me without a second thought.

I thought I’d outgrown this.

Turns out, it just found a new way to break me.

Chapter 26 - Jensen

If I thought only being allowed to touch Catalina in private while knowing she was mine behind closed doors was torture, this is much worse. Not being able to touch her at all is my own, personal hell.

Knowing I won’t get time with her later when we're back at the hotel is slowly killing me. Watching her hand me the same stiff, professional distance she gives the rest of the world—like I've been demoted back to a blank face and a body she once cut into—is the thing that's going to make me lose it.

It's a slow death. A bleed out. And though it’s only been an hour since she told me she’s nothing but my doctor now, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to survive it much longer.

Micah leans in, close to my side. “You okay, big guy? You seem kind of off for a cowboy who just had a hell of a first ride back on the bull.”

I clamp my jaw shut, feel my molars grind together until there’s that familiar ache that tells me I’m still breathing even if it’s painful. I’m still here. I’m still hearing static in my thick skull. Still standing five feet away from the five-foot-something woman who owns my heart yet for some reason won’t even look at me anymore.

I don’t answer Micah. Because the truth is sitting right there across the table, cold and unreachable all because I fucked up. She's acting like a shell of the woman that I know she actually is, and I know in my heart I’ve already lost her.

It’s little freaking Louisa in elementary school all over again—except this time Catalina thinks she’s not good enough formeand that I went behind her back because I didn't trust her. When the reality is, she’s always been too damn good for me, and I've just been hoping she wouldn't find out.

Well, she found out alright. Because now she’s looking at me like I’m below the dirt on the bottom of her shoes.

After she stormed off at the arena, leaving nothing behind but a jagged rip in my chest and a pain that had me struggling for breath the same way I did the day I collapsed at my grandma’s, I went back into that training room ready to tear something apart.

Doctor Davis was already gone, but Dawson was still there. And maybe he didn’t deserve it, but I gave it to him anyway. I yelled. I cursed. I told him to fuck off. Told him I didn’t want his coaching anymore, which we both know is bullshit. He let me rage until I burned myself out, then told me to cool the fuck down and figure out my own shit after I told him he was fired.

Turns out he was just as blindsided by my reaction as I was by Catalina’s. I just needed to blame someone other than myself for how this all ended. I told her the truth. That I didn’t ask for that extra consult. That I didn’t want it.That I trusted her.What the hell more could I have done?

And dammit, yeah—it eats at me knowing that after my heart surgery I’d woken up and asked her where thedoctorwas instead of realizing she was standing right there in front of me like an angel.

Maybe I’ll never fully get why she’s mad. I’ll certainly never understand what it’s like to claw your way through this world with immigrant parents and a woman’s body in a field that's been claimed by the patriarchy as men’s territory. But I do know this—I trust her with my fucking life, and I never doubted her judgment on my shoulder.

But when she shut me down, when she told me I wasn’t her problem anymore… yeah. That pissed me off too. Because I didn’t stop believing in her just because Dawson dragged some nobody doctor in to examine a shoulder she already said was fine. She stopped believing inme. Inus.

It felt a lot like she was just looking for an excuse to push me away.Like she was in too deep and didn’t know how to get out, so she was searching for a reason to end this. That’d make a lot more sense to me than whatever the hell happened back there.

“Jensen,” Mr. Alba says, clapping a warm hand on my shoulder as he comes up behind me at the outdoor table. He's a handsome man, looks like he's in his mid-fifties, with dark brown hair like Kitty's and a little grey at his temples.

He’s got that kind face that feels welcoming with eyes that make you feel like you belong. Just like Mrs. Alba. And any other night, I’d be thriving in this sort of social setting. Meeting thepeople who made Catalina was something I was looking forward to. The people she respects the most, the ones responsible for her pursuing her doctor career. But tonight, I can barely breathe.

“You had a great ride tonight. How’d it feel to be back?” he asks me kindly.