Nightfall by Evelyn Glass

that she could be who he wanted. He deserved a woman who loved him just as much as he seemed to love her. And he’d get that. Eventually. With someone else.
     
    After the hook-up, Roxanne had tried to stop her weekly breakfasts with Matt, but it turned out not to be that easy. He was persistent, and they had been good friends for so many years that just walking away wasn’t an option.
     
    If there was a way to have the romantic stuff with him, without the sex, that would be perfect. Before the hookup, she’d been able to cuddle with him while they watched movies, vent with him about boys she was dating, listen to him rant about the women he knew. They’d been the best of friends.
     
    The hookup hadn’t just made that too awkward to stand now, it had cast a weird and upsetting light on everything that had happened beforehand. She found herself wondering if he’d been thinking about kissing her during all of those late night cuddles. If he’d been thinking how much better he’d treat her than all the guys he’d complained about. Granted, when he’d vented about his girlfriends, she’d told him he deserved better than the way he was being treated. She’d just never meant that she should be the one to treat him better.
     
    “How’re you doing?” Matt asked. “You look distracted.”
     
    “Just work,” she lied through her teeth. “We had a patient come in all torn to hell yesterday. I’m hoping he’s okay.”
     
    “I’m sure he will be, with your tender care.” He flashed a smile that was supposed to make it a joke, but there was something else there, something that made her want to roll her eyes.
     
    “The least fun part of the ER is that there’s no guarantee he’ll be there when I get there,” she said. “He may have been moved up to one of the regular floors, and then there’s no medical reason for me to check in on him.”
     
    His tone was way too casual, and she cursed herself for entering territory that she should have known better than to enter. “Do you have a non-medical reason to want to check up on him?”
     
    This time the sigh was not internal. She’d tried being subtle with Matt, over and over, and had gotten nowhere. “He’s a good-looking man,” she said. “And he’s not from around here. I’m interested in how he got here, and what happened.”
     
    “But that’s all?” he pressed.
     
    “Matt, it would be completely unethical for me to hook up with a patient. I’d lose my job.”
     
    “But what if he wasn’t your patient? Would you be interested in him then?”
     
    She set her jaw and took the deepest breath she could manage. “I would be interested in Chris Hemsworth if he showed up at my apartment and begged me to do naughty things with him, but it’s not going to happen, so what’s the point of talking about it?”
     
    There was something in his eyes, something fiery and determined. “Roxie, I want to talk about what happened at the party.”
     
    The urge to tell him that nothing happened was huge, but maybe if he could just get this out, he would shut up about it already. “Okay,” she said.
     
    His eyes flickered with surprise. This probably was the first time she hadn’t just deflected the conversation, or shut it down. His surprise was warranted, and she decided carefully not to hate him for it. He took a long moment collecting himself. “I really care about you, Roxie.” He waited for her to interrupt. She kept her grip on her coffee cup, so tight that she thought it might shatter in her hands. Her knuckles were as white as the china. “I feel like things kind of went… wrong that night. I’m worried that I took advantage of you.”
     
    That was unexpected. She glanced up and saw only sincerity and concern in his eyes. “Are you asking if you raped me?”
     
    He gave an awkward shrug. “I realized after the fact that you’d been drinking. Maybe you said yes, and wished you hadn’t. I should have… done that