"𝐈'𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐮𝐜𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 until you're screaming for forgiveness," I whispered, "until your apologies are like melodies in my ears and 'you won' are the only words your lips know how to form."
His smile brought the temperature in the room down a coup...
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I wasn't going to lie. I absolutely despised my name.
Ever since my father had repeatedly used it when he beat me, I obviously hadn't grown too fond of it. It brought back bad memories.
That's why I had always preferred to go by Mila. It was simpler, easier, cuter, and didn't remind me of my father.
But there was something about the way he said it – something about the way it rolled off his tongue – that made something flip in my stomach.
And by the way he looked at me the second after he said it... he knew it, too.
Emilia. Emilia. Emilia.
I would never get over the way he said it.
However, instead of continuing to obsess over him like an idiot, I walked up on the other side of the young girl and waved. "Hi," I said, smiling and trying to ignore the feeling of Augustus' eyes on me.
"Hello," the little girl said, a smile on her face.
"The vitals we need to run are simple," Dr. Wang said from behind us. "It's just heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, and respiration rate. Augustus, you do heart rate and blood pressure, and Emilia, you can do temperature and respiration rate."
"Sounds good," Augustus said, and I nodded, avoiding eye contact.
I watched as my mortal nemesis unwrap the stethoscope from around his neck and placed the two ends in his ears and smiled at the young girl. "You already know how this works, yeah?"
She nodded, beaming at him.
He gave her a grin and placed the diaphragm of the stethoscope near her heart and counted. I tried not to stare, but... fuck.
"80 beats per minute," he told Dr. Wang after he was finished.
"Perfect," the doctor replied, smiling. "Onto blood pressure."
Next, Augustus wrapped the sphygmomanometer around the girl's arm and placed the stethoscope diaphragm inside of it. He pumped the sphygmomanometer and counted until he said, "120 over 79."
"Again, perfect. Emilia, you ready?" Dr. Wang answered.
I smiled and grabbed the thermometer. "Can you lift your arm for me?" I asked the girl. She obliged, and I placed it underneath her arm. "We're going to wait five minutes and then I'll take it out. Does that sound good?"
She nodded.
Since we were waiting, I took a seat on the far side of the room while Dr. Wang talked to the patient. Augustus came up next to me and I tried not to stiffen at his presence.
"Casen," I said by way of greeting.
"Laurent," he responded, but I still couldn't get over the way he'd said my first name.
