for many of those. Especially now that we’d reached our deal with the hospital.
We also had a fridge in there, a coffeemaker, and a small round table where we could grab lunch. It had been important for us to get all that set up so we could move our base of operations here while splitting our time. Like getting our treatment plans and reports drawn up, our admin would be done from here with immediate effect.
The hospital would start slowly redoing the therapy rooms there while we were moving out, which suited us perfectly. Even if it meant we’d be losing our office there as early as next week.
All in all, it was working out really well. Hunter grabbed us each a beer, and we sank down on the couches in the office. Both of us could see the lower level from here, and for a minute, we just drank our first sips and stared at our space.
“Can you believe we really did it?” he asked quietly, his gaze never leaving the floor below.
I shook my head. “If you hadn’t found and bought this building, I’m not convinced we would’ve ever done it. This is all thanks to you.”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “You’re the one who came up with it in the first place. I just pushed to make it happen.”
“Why?” I frowned, glancing at him over the top of my bottle. “I never really understood why you started pushing when you did.”
“Neither of us could spend much more time in the ER without getting sucked down there permanently, but neither of us want to be there for good.”
“What makes you think that?”
He sighed and dragged a hand through his shaggy hair. “I overheard some people talking one day about how they could outsource physical therapy to gain our space and keep our skills.”
I nearly choked on my beer. “You didn’t think to tell me about this?”
“You’ve been preoccupied recently. I didn’t want to stress you out even more.”
Lowering my chin, I gave him a sharp look. “It doesn’t matter whether I’ve been preoccupied in my personal life. You still should’ve told me.”
“Nah.” He gave me a slight grin. “I’ve been waiting for a long time for you to meet a woman who captured your attention the way April did. The timing wasn’t great, but it wasn’t like I couldn’t handle finding us the space.”
“Clearly, you could handle it, but you shouldn’t have felt like you had to do it by yourself.”
“If I’d told you, I knew you would insist on buying the building yourself. We’ve talked about why I wanted to be the one to buy it. My reasons for keeping quiet weren’t purely selfless.”
I held my bottle up to his. “Even so, thanks for acting when you did. I’d have hated getting sucked into the ER.”
“We’ve been spending more than enough time down there as it is.” He clinked his bottle against mine, sipped, and then started scratching at the label. “Speaking about spending time down there, are you okay after what happened yesterday?”
My brow furrowed. “Sort of. Why? You don’t usually ask.”
“You don’t usually have to decide between saving your girlfriend’s ex who is also the scum of the earth or allowing him to leave said earth.”
“Yeah, well, making that decision wasn’t as easy as it should have been,” I admitted, sinking back against the couch. “I’m still struggling with it. A part of me thinks I should’ve just let him go while the other knows it was the wrong thing to do. None of us would’ve been able to live with something as dark and heavy as that.”
“I didn’t tell you this yesterday,” he said after a long pause, “but I’m proud of you for doing what you did.”
“Why? I didn’t do anything other than my job.”
“Maybe not, but you still saved a life. The life probably didn’t deserve it, but most people wouldn’t have had the courage to do what you did. Even working on him would’ve been a stretch for most, but you went above and beyond for him.”
“I did what I needed to do.” I wasn’t trying to be modest or humble, simply honest. “Trying to get him back for longer than others might’ve was only because I was the one who’d hesitated in the first place.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “You hesitated for maybe a couple of seconds. It might’ve felt like longer to you, but it wasn’t.”
“Sometimes, a couple of seconds is what makes that vital difference between life and