The Darkest Corner of the Heart (The Brightest Light Book 2)

Fuck.

How did I get myself into this mess?

All throughout my Monday appointments, I can’t get it out of my head. It’s engraved in the deepest cavities of my brain, lurking, waiting for the most inconvenient time to make its presence known again.

There’s only one person to blame for this fiasco, and that would be me.

I had to mess something else up.

I believed her when she told me she hadn’t done anything on the app. Something in her voice, usually so firm and confident yet so meek then, told me it was true. But her explanation and the apology she didn’t owe me haven’t made this uncomfortable feeling go away.

They don’t erase the fact that my nerves came close to combusting when I received the notification on my phone a few nights ago.

And that, in itself, is a damn big problem.

To think that this situation could’ve been avoided in the first place, if I hadn’t been so careless, is what grinds my gears. Graham, my closest friend, forced me to sign up for the dating site a month ago under the premise that I was, and I quote, “a lonely and grouchy motherfucker,” and I needed to “fix that shit with a good fuck.” He might have been right, but that’s not the point.

I admit I have used the app once before, shortly after he set up my profile. I’d been getting notifications of swipe ups here and there, and I’d always let them get lost among the dozens of notifications I get every day, but that one day my judgment slipped through the cracks.

I didn’t like how looking at all those requests made me feel—like a piece of meat on display. I should’ve deleted the app, I know, but then one of my patients came in for their appointment, and I forgot about it.

Until that day.

“Cat’s got your tongue or what?”

I take another sip of my drink, not even bothering to answer. Graham has been around long enough to recognize my moods and not give a crap about them. But I’ve also been around long enough to know my friend never lets things go.

He mimics me, taking another sip of his beer, and nudges my arm. “What’s eating at you now?”

I down the remains of my bourbon and ask for a glass of water. This is only the second time I’ve been to Monica’s Pub, but apparently, it’s the perfect place to grab a low-key drink without being disturbed by the corporate America assholes in the city. And Graham swears by it. It’s dark, moderately quiet, and nobody looks at you when you walk in, so it works for me.

“I’m fine.” The words taste like a sour lie, and they remind me of her excuses. She didn’t zone out. She had a panic attack, and I don’t take that shit lightly. I know sadness when I see it, and the sight of that raw pain in her eyes still haunts me.

It shouldn’t.

“Nah, you’re not.” My best friend watches me closely, trying to decipher everything I’m not saying out loud and never will. “You talked to your brother yet?”

I take a sip the second the waitress places the water in front of me. “No, and I’m not going to.”

“James—”

“I don’t wanna hear it.”

“I’m just saying—”

I set the glass on the table with a little more force than usual. “Fuck, Graham. Drop it.”

He knows better, so he does. I let out a frustrated breath, running my hand through the beard I know I need to trim soon. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you, man.”

“No, I’m sorry I brought it up,” Graham mutters before bringing his beer to his lips.

I shake my head. “It’s okay.” It’s not the first time he’s had to put up with my asshole ways, and it won’t be the last. To be fair, I’ve also been putting up with his shit since college, so we’re pretty much even.

“Want to order some nachos, or are you good to go?” he asks, back to his nonchalant self. Graham is a computer engineer at a top-notch firm downtown and, just like me, not the biggest extrovert. But his wife, Sarah, is working the night shift at the hospital tonight, and he didn’t want to be alone. As for me, I needed to unwind. Badly.

“Darling! Oh, look at you! How are you feeling?” the waitress that was just in front of us exclaims out of nowhere, her big eyes glued to someone behind us. “We miss you.”

A prickle of awareness jolts through me and settles in the pit of my stomach, and I know. I just do.

Now it makes sense why I found her at the back alley of the bar the last time I was there. Why she went to what I’d assumed was an employees-only area. “We miss you” must mean she’s part of the staff. Or used to be.

“I’m not doing too bad.” Her voice drifts over to me, and my ears start ringing.

“Oh, honey, you didn’t have to come. You should be resting at home,” the waitress adds, and I couldn’t agree more. What the hell is she doing here?

It takes all my willpower and then some to stay right where I’m at and not turn my head.

“I was craving one of Matt’s burgers,” she says, her voice sounding much lighter and full of life than I’ve ever heard it. Sure, we’ve only had a handful of sessions together, but this is a contrast to the girl I see at the clinic—a girl with a permanent cloud above her head who now sounds like the sun is shining just for her. “And I needed to get out of the house.”

“Maddie, your ankle…”

Yeah, exactly.

“Don’t worry about it, Monica. I took an Uber here, and it doesn’t hurt much.”

That much hits me right in the gut. Because what does that even mean? I’ve treated injured dancers before, and I know they’re used to pain, but is that hurt at a one or at an eight?

I hear a heavy sigh behind me. “Fine. Come on in, then. I’ll get your order in a minute.” My muscles tighten with tension as I hear the unmistakable sound of her crutches drawing closer.

“James?” Graham nudges my arm. “You in there?”

I blink. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“I asked if you wanted to call it a night.”

Five minutes ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I’ve had a bad day, a bad week really, and I almost didn’t accept his invitation to come here in the first place. Now, however, I don’t think it would hurt if Shadow and Mist were alone for another hour.

“I don’t want to go home yet,” I tell him, a weird feeling settling in the pit of my stomach. “Let’s grab something quick to eat.”

“Fuck, yeah,” he beams. He flags down the waitress—Monica, apparently—and asks her for a basket of nachos and another beer.

While he’s distracted, I steal a quick look at Maddie. She’s sitting by herself in one of the booths on the other side of the bar, her back turned to me. That gives me a chance to scold myself for even paying her any attention in the first place.

It would serve me well to remember that, outside of the clinic, what she does or doesn’t do is none of my business.

But as Graham goes on to tell me something that happened at work this week, something he’s texted me about already, my mind drifts off to a few days ago.

I’d just gotten out of the shower to clean off the sweat from my workout when my phone lit up with a single notification. Only one, which was strange because I have this annoying habit of not deleting any app I download, ever.

“Maddie has just swiped up on you!”

Maddie is a common enough name to not have her face pop into my head as I read the notification. And yet.

I remember how I stood there with nothing but a white towel wrapped around my waist, staring at the dark screen on my bedside table, and hearing nothing but that one organ hammering inside my rib cage.

It had to be a joke.

After leaving a small puddle of water under my feet on my hardwood floor, I mustered the courage to unlock my phone and look the unfunniest joke in the history of the universe in the eye.

I didn’t look at her profile beyond the first picture. I didn’t scroll left, right, or in any other direction. I didn’t read her profile description. I only allowed myself to look at that twenty-one for a second.

Her age is no secret to me, but the reminder did me good.

“All right, man, what is going on?” Graham’s question pulls me back into the present moment. When I look at him, he’s frowning.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re scowling.”

“Your point? I always scowl.”

“Not like this, you don’t.” My friend scans my eyes as if he were looking for something. Something he’s not going to find, if I have any say in it. “You’re distracted, so what is it?”

“I’m not distracted,” I lie.

“Like fuck you’re not. I know you like a brother, James, so tell me what’s up.”

Graham is a persistent motherfucker if I’ve ever met one, and after years of friendship, I know there are certain things I can’t get away with. One of them is lying to him when he can read me like an open book.

“Forget it,” I try one more time.

“Ah, so something is bothering you,” he says with a smirk. “I knew it. Just tell me, man. I’m gonna find out anyway.”

“Doubt it,” I mutter.

I love Graham, and this isn’t about him or anybody else but me and my fucked-up head.

“Whatever. Just trying to help.” He shrugs as he eats the last couple of nachos in the basket. “Ready to go?”

I can tell he’s pissed, but what am I supposed to do? Tell him my twenty-one-year-old patient is here when she’s supposed to be resting at home, and all I want to do is go up to her and ask her to stop being so careless? That I can’t stop staring at her for some goddamn reason? Yeah, fat chance of that.

Her burger comes, and the waitress, Monica, takes the seat in front of her to keep her company. Then our nachos are gone, our drinks are gone, and Graham’s already taking care of the tab. He wants to go home, and I should too. I fucking should.

As I make my way to my car, I remind myself she isn’t my problem outside of the clinic.

I remind myself I probably crossed some kind of boundary when I went outside to check on her the other day, for reasons I don’t even want to think about.

I tell myself that time and again, but I end up waiting in my car for an hour until she exits the bar anyway.

I only drive away after her Uber does.