Chapter Text
Samira turned onto her street and immediately knew the neighbors were throwing another party.
She didn’t even need to see the lights first. The bass was enough for that, low and vibrating through the asphalt beneath her tires while headlights swept across bodies crowding both sides of the street. She reached for the radio, turning the volume down like maybe reducing one source of noise would somehow make the rest of the block easier to tolerate, but it barely helped.
People spilled across the street in clusters, drinks sloshing from red cups, music bleeding from the open backyard somewhere ahead. Some people were dancing, some were yelling over each other and others just wandered in that slow, sloppy way drunk people always did after too many drinks.
The entire block was swallowed by headlights and moving shadows. Cars lined both sides of the street without any logic, half on the curbs, half blocking driveways.
And then Samira saw it: a black Toyota sedan parked directly in front of her gate. Her grip tightened on the steering wheel.
For a moment, she just stared at it through the windshield before exhaling slowly through her nose.
Enough.
She’d moved to Oceanside three months ago, and the parties next door had already become a weekly ritual. At first, she tried to ignore them. People partied. Fine. But after the third weekend in a row of bass shaking her walls until sunrise, she’d finally mentioned it to another neighbor, the woman across the street.
Samira didn't register her name, but she was sweet, silver-haired, and smelling like rosemary and tomato sauce. She had shown up at Samira’s door during her first week in town, carrying a tray of homemade lasagna and welcoming her to the neighborhood.
But the second Samira mentioned the noise, something in the older woman’s expression shifted enough for Samira to notice.
“Oh,” she had said. “Those are the Codys’ parties.”
Then, after a pause, “If I were you, honey, I wouldn’t complain. Don't mess with them. You’ll get used to it.”
It was hard to “get used to it” after fourteen-hour shifts at the hospital. Hard to ignore screaming and music vibrating through her walls while she tried to shower off the smell of antiseptic and exhaustion before collapsing into bed. Worse after night shifts, when she’d get home at seven in the morning and find strangers passed out on the sidewalk in front of her house like it was part of the afterparty.
Tonight, something inside her finally snapped.
Samira parked her black Jeep in the middle of the street without bothering to search for another spot. She grabbed her purse and phone, slammed the door harder than necessary, and marched toward the Cody compound with purpose burning hot beneath her skin.
Getting to the gate required weaving around at least three drunk idiots who nearly stumbled into her path, while one guy tried to smile at her with unfocused eyes and nearly dropped his beer.
The Cody gate rose high in front of her: black metal, solid and severe against the noise behind it. Cameras sat tucked into the upper corners of the property, subtle enough that most people probably missed them entirely.
Beyond the gate, the driveway widened into a sprawling courtyard cluttered with expensive trucks, motorcycles, surfboards, coolers, toolboxes. Too much chaos packed into one property. The garage sat off to the side, massive and overcrowded, less like a garage and more like a storage unit.
Samira realized, suddenly, that she had no idea what the Codys actually looked like. She’d only ever seen glimpses of tinted windows sliding past in luxury cars, figures moving through the property too quickly to identify.
Still, she kept walking.
The music grew louder the farther in she went, mixed with shouting and bursts of drunken laughter until she finally reached the backyard.
And…
Jesus.
The pool stretched across the center of the property so large it looked absurd for a private house, deep blue water reflecting firelight against bodies moving everywhere around it. Flames burst from built-in fire features directly out of the water, flickering gold against dozens of moving bodies. And apparently, that still wasn’t enough entertainment, because people were literally jumping off the roof into the pool while everyone around them screamed in encouragement.
Half the party looked drunk out of their minds. People wandered around barefoot and shirtless, some barely dressed at all. Couples were tangled together across lounge chairs, making out openly without caring who watched. Someone had climbed onto an outdoor table to dance. Another guy was asleep facedown near the edge of the pool while nobody seemed remotely concerned about whether he was alive.
No one here was sober enough to reason with, and judging by the energy of the place, this party wasn’t ending anytime soon.
Samira should’ve known better than to come in here alone. Maybe the smarter move was to leave and go home. Park somewhere else for the night and call the police from behind a locked door. The expensive noise-canceling headphones she’d bought after week two in this neighborhood would just have to save her again.
She turned slightly toward the exit, already preparing to leave before someone noticed her standing there.
Until she saw someone watching her through the crowd.
He moved through the crowd in complete control while everyone else around the pool stumbled and swayed, and people shifted out of his path before he reached them, parting for him without seeming to know they were doing it. Even from across the deck, Samira could feel the difference in him: he moved with slow, deliberate control, weaving through the chaos.
The closer he got, the more unsettling he became. Dark curls, messy and uncontained, fell carelessly across his forehead. He was wearing a black tight shirt and black skinny jeans. His expression gave her nothing, but his deep-set eyes locked onto her and stayed there as he approached, studying her in a way that made her feel seen.
And despite the loud music, the screaming, the fire erupting from the pool behind him, his presence swallowed all of it whole.
Samira understood why Mrs. Nice-Neighbor had looked nervous when she mentioned the Codys.
“Can I help you?” His voice was low and rough.
He stopped close enough now that Samira could smell chlorine and cigarette smoke beneath the ocean air. She straightened instinctively, tightening her grip around her phone.
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms tightly over her chest, forcing confidence into her posture even if she felt underdressed and outnumbered, “I live right next to you people, and it’s becoming impossible to have a second of peace with these parties. Like, every fucking week?”
He didn’t answer. The man just stood there staring at her with those deep-set, unreadable eyes, quietly studying her and making her skin feel too tight.
“I’m this close to calling the cops,” she snapped, holding two fingers barely apart to emphasize the point. “I just got off a long shift, and drunk people and cars are blocking my gate. I can’t even get into my own house.”
A small nod. That was all the reaction he gave.
Samira let out a sharp breath through her nose.
“Can you do something about it?” she asked finally, exhaustion beginning to leak through the anger despite herself.
Again, silence.
He looked at her for another long second, deciding whether the conversation deserved to continue at all.
“I didn’t know someone was living in the house to our left.” His voice stayed calm. “Place’s been empty for years.”
“Yeah, well, I moved in three months ago,” she said, brows pulling together. “But that’s not the point.”
She gestured vaguely toward the entire nightmare behind him, “Can you do something about this?”
This time, he nodded once.
“Go home, miss,” he said. “Give me five minutes and I’ll end this shit.”
Samira blinked at him.
Five minutes? Yeah. Right.
There were at least a hundred people back there, half of them blackout drunk and currently throwing themselves into a flaming pool like contestants in a death wish competition.
Still, she was exhausted. And cold now, too. The ocean air had turned sharp sometime during the night, slipping easily beneath her black scrubs and the thin cotton shirt underneath. Her shoulders ached. And standing here alone in the middle of the Cody compound felt significantly less brave than it had five minutes ago.
So she just gave him one last look before stepping backward.
“Next time,” she warned, “I’m calling the cops.”
His expression didn’t change, but Samira could feel his eyes on her the entire walk back to her Jeep.
She slid into the driver’s seat, locked the doors out of habit, then started the engine. Since there was no room to turn around near her driveway, she drove slowly toward the end of the street to make a careful U-turn between the mess of parked cars.
It took maybe two minutes.
Maybe less.
And when she drove back toward her house, she hit the brakes in surprise.
The party was emptying out.
People were sprinting out of the Cody property like someone had announced an active fire. Half-dressed girls clutched heels in one hand and drinks in the other while stumbling toward cars. Guys who’d been screaming by the pool minutes ago were suddenly shoving friends into passenger seats with panicked urgency.
One woman was literally still wearing a bikini bottom and nothing else.
Someone else ran barefoot down the sidewalk carrying an entire bottle of tequila.
And somehow, within the chaos, they were weirdly organized. Cars started pulling away one after another. The drunk idiots sprawled across the sidewalk in front of her house were being dragged upright by friends. Engines turned over. Doors slammed.
The entire street began clearing out with insane efficiency.
Samira stared through the windshield in disbelief.
Less than five minutes later, the last group disappeared through the street and the black heavy metal gate from the Cody's started to shut.
Quiet settled over the block almost instantly. Samira let out a stunned laugh under her breath.
Holy shit. He actually did it.
Five fucking minutes.
She pulled up to her driveway and pressed the control panel built into her Jeep. Her own gates opened slowly, smooth and heavy, and she drove into the garage still half-distracted by what she’d just witnessed.
By the time she fully parked, the gates had already closed behind her again.
Finally, it was time to sleep.
-
Samira woke at 5:45 a.m. to the violent sound of her alarm blaring on her bedside table.
A groan escaped her as she dragged both wrists over her eyes, trying to scrub the sleep out of them without actually opening them yet. Her entire body felt heavy.
She’d gotten home the night before, fought with her neighbor, barely managed to eat a sad protein bar after the shower, and now she had another twelve-hour shift waiting for her.
She forced herself to breathe and searched desperately for something positive to hold onto: two days off after this. Forty-eight uninterrupted hours entirely to herself.
Maybe she could finally explore Oceanside properly instead of just driving between the hospital and her house. Go to the beach without checking the time every ten minutes. Finish furnishing the ridiculously oversized house she’d inherited.
Hell, maybe she could even go down to the pier and rent a boat just because she could.
With another tired groan, Samira finally sat up in bed, dark curls falling messily around her face as the early morning light leaked weakly through the curtains.
Three and a half months ago, her life had looked completely different.
Three and a half months ago, she’d been a senior resident in the Emergency Department at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
Now she lived alone in Oceanside in a house too big for one person, next door to a family apparently capable of shutting down a hundred-person party in under five minutes.
Her senior resident year had almost broken her. It happened slowly, over months, through accumulated exhaustion and impossible expectations and the creeping feeling that maybe she simply wasn’t good enough anymore.
Robby was the Chief of Emergency Medicine at the PTMC and he was hard on Samira.
Well, “hard” was an understatement.
Nothing she did ever seemed fully right to him. She moved too slowly. Too fast. Too emotionally involved. Too detached. Too confident in one case and not confident enough in the next. Every shift felt like standing under a microscope while he waited for her to fail.
During her residency, people started to call her “Slo-Mo.” Some people used it affectionately, but others absolutely didn’t. In an ER where speed was treated like religion, Samira had a habit of stopping long enough to actually see her patients. She listened to them in a way that made Robby lose his mind.
While other residents rushed through charts and differential diagnoses, Samira sat beside stretchers asking patients about their lives, their jobs, their families, the things they were scared to say out loud. She remembered details and followed up on stories. Hugged crying family members without embarrassment. Her patient satisfaction scores were ridiculously high because people could feel the difference: she cared.
The nickname came from how long she took with each case, but the truth was that Samira moved slowly because she was terrified of missing something important, a symptom, a detail, a person quietly falling apart in front of her.
And the worst part was that Robby was brilliant. Which meant that when he looked disappointed in her, some part of Samira believed he had every reason to be.
By the middle of the year she'd started dreading her shifts. Emergency medicine had always felt instinctive to her, the trauma, the chaos, the strange intimacy of meeting people at the worst moments of their lives, and she used to love all of it. And then, she was second-guessing every instinct she had, lying awake wondering whether she'd been wrong about herself this whole time. Maybe she wasn't built for the ER after all. Maybe she'd mistaken endurance for talent.
So she did what everyone expected her to do: she applied for fellowships all over the country. New Jersey. Chicago. Boston. Seattle. Denver. Atlanta.
She polished her CV until it barely looked human anymore. Research publications. Leadership roles. Trauma certifications. Recommendations from other attendings were glowing enough to make her sound almost superhuman on paper.
And she got interviews, too.
The problem was that she hated every single one.
Every hospital felt cold in the exact same way. Different cities, same fluorescent lighting. Same rehearsed speeches about excellence and opportunity and innovation. Same department tours that made her feel absolutely nothing.
She kept waiting to feel excited.
She never did.
Then her entire life detonated all at once.
Samira’s father had died when she was thirteen. Sudden heart attack.
One day he’d been driving her to school and arguing with her about her grades. Two weeks later he was buried in the ground while Samira stood beside her mother feeling too young to understand why everyone suddenly looked at them with pity.
She was an only child and her father had only one sibling: an older brother named Kareem Mohan.
Samira barely knew him.
He and her father had apparently fought years before she was born over something nobody ever explained properly. After her father died, the distance only got worse. Kareem sent a few awkward condolence cards over the years. Once, when Samira graduated high school, a fat check arrived in the mail without a note attached.
That was mostly it.
She only knew two things about him: He lived somewhere in California and he was rich.
Meanwhile, Samira and her mother struggled alone in New Jersey for years. Her mom worked impossible hours and Samira buried herself in school because becoming a doctor felt like the only stable future she could build with her own hands. The only way she could prevent other 13-year-old girls from losing their fathers.
Then, during her final month at PTMC, she got a phone call.
Her uncle had died and had left almost everything to her.
A house in Oceanside, money and a nice car.
The inheritance was so absurd that Samira genuinely thought the lawyer had contacted the wrong person at first. The house alone looked like something pulled out of an architecture magazine. A giant property in Oceanside. Massive. Modern. Completely detached from the reality she’d grown up in.
It didn’t make sense. None of it did.
But suddenly, in the middle of residency applications and burnout and identity crises, Samira had to fly across the country to deal with estate lawyers and paperwork and taxes and a giant unfamiliar house that now legally belonged to her.
She remembered walking through it in complete disbelief. It felt less like inheriting a home and more like accidentally breaking into someone else’s life.
Then panic finally caught up to her at the airport. Ten minutes before boarding her flight back to Pittsburgh, Samira sat at the terminal staring at her laptop while something reckless bloomed inside her chest: If she went back now, nothing would change.
She’d finish residency miserable, accept some prestigious fellowship she secretly hated and keep questioning herself until medicine became something she survived instead of loved.
Before she could overthink it, she opened her email and sent messages to two emergency departments in Oceanside.
Brief. Professional. Slightly desperate beneath the polished wording.
She introduced herself and listed her accomplishments. Attached her CV and evaluations and research. Then, at the very end, she asked if they had any attending positions available — current or upcoming.
She almost regretted it immediately after hitting send, but one hospital answered.
Three days later, Samira flew back to California for an interview at Oceanside Memorial Medical Center.
And for the first time in over a year, something felt right.
The ER was smaller than PTMC. The staff actually smiled at each other and nurses spoke during rounds without looking terrified. The residents looked exhausted, sure, but not hollowed out.
She met Dr. Elena Navarro, the chief of Emergency Medicine. Warm and sharp, but direct without being cruel. Dr. Navarro had looked at Samira’s resume for maybe thirty seconds before saying, “You know, every attending from Pittsburgh writes like you’re one of the best residents they’ve had in years.”
Samira had laughed awkwardly at that, sitting across from her. Then Dr. Navarro leaned back in her chair and added gently: “So why do you look like someone trying to convince herself not to quit medicine?”
The interview stopped feeling like an interview after that and started to feel like someone finally seeing her clearly after months of feeling invisible beneath criticism and exhaustion.
By the end of that week, Dr. Navarro offered her the position.
And for the first time in forever, Samira remembered why she belonged in emergency medicine in the first place.
She went back to Pittsburgh afterward and finished her residency without fanfare. No dramatic speeches or emotional breakdowns. She cleared out her locker after her final shift, stuffing old trauma shears and energy bar wrappers into a cardboard box while the department carried on around her like always.
Then she said goodbye to the people who mattered.
Afterward, she went for drinks with Mel, Santos, Javadi, and Whitaker, the only people at PTMC she truly considered her friends.
They sat in a loud bar near the hospital until almost two in the morning, drinking cheap beer and exchanging increasingly catastrophic gossip about the department.
Those four were still the only people from Pittsburgh she spoke to regularly. They kept her updated on everything, which attending had screamed at a resident this week, which resident had cried in the supply closet, and which nurse was threatening to quit.
PTMC survived exactly the same way it always had: Barely.
Samira showered fast, more out of necessity than comfort, letting the hot water wake her up just enough to function. By the time she stepped out, the bathroom mirror was fogged over and her exhaustion still sat stubbornly beneath her skin.
She pulled on a clean pair of black scrubs and worked leave-in conditioner through her wet curls with practiced impatience, fingers dragging through the tangles while she stared blankly at her reflection. The curls were still unruly, dark and damp around her shoulders, but at least the product made them look slightly more intentional. Once she got to the hospital, she’d twist everything up into a claw clip and hope for the best.
The kitchen still smelled faintly like coffee grounds and ocean air when she walked downstairs. A few seconds later, her new espresso machine hissed to life.
The thing was unnecessarily expensive — another bizarre consequence of inheriting a ridiculous amount of money from a man she barely knew — but she had to admit it made incredible coffee. Nothing like the disgusting coffee from the hospital.
Samira leaned against the counter while the espresso poured, half-asleep.
Then she opened the fridge and immediately winced.
The refrigerator was practically empty.
A single old orange sat directly in the middle shelf, looking abandoned and vaguely judgmental. Beside it rested half a burrito wrapped loosely in aluminum foil, forgotten after a night shift sometime last week when she’d been too tired to finish eating before passing out face-first into bed.
Two ketchup bottles occupied the fridge door.
Samira stared at the disaster for a long second before slowly closing the fridge again. Groceries officially became tomorrow’s problem.
She was almost positive she’d run out of dish detergent. Her soap had been empty for two days now, forcing her to use hotel shampoo she’d found stuffed beneath the guest bathroom sink. And judging by the alarming state of her laundry basket upstairs, she was also dangerously close to running out of clean scrubs.
Honestly, it was getting harder and harder to tell whether she was a functioning adult or just three minor inconveniences away from total collapse.
Samira grabbed her phone, car keys, and backpack before heading toward the garage, mentally adding get gas to the already growing list of things she needed to survive the week.
The kitchen door opened directly into the spacious garage. She tossed her bag onto the passenger seat of the Jeep, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine while the gate slowly opened. Morning sunlight flooded in immediately.
As she backed carefully into the street, she noticed movement on the sidewalk.
The man from last night.
One of the Codys.
He was dragging three massive black garbage bags toward the curb like they weighed nothing. Apparently the aftermath of the party had finally caught up with someone. He still wore the same clothes from yesterday, dark t-shirt, skinny jeans, and heavy boots. He looked exhausted in the harsh morning light.
Samira watched him lift the trash bags into the large bins sitting near the sidewalk. As he pushed the lid shut, he looked over at her car.
The sunlight was brutal, forcing him to squint slightly, and for the first time, Samira could properly see his face without darkness or firelight getting in the way.
Strong jawline shadowed by uneven stubble. Sharp cheekbones cutting through a face that looked permanently tired, hollowed out by the clear lack of sleep. His skin was weathered and sun-worn, like someone who spent most of his life outdoors without thinking much about it. She couldn't tell if his eyes were blue or green.
In daylight, the intimidation softened into something more human. He still looked rough around the edges, still carried that same unsettling stillness around him.
He was interesting.
Before she could overthink it, Samira parked at the curb and opened the car door; her curiosity won.
The second her sneakers hit the pavement, he started walking toward her too.
They met beside her Jeep.
“Morning,” Samira said.
“Morning.” His voice sounded deeper this early.
Now that she stood closer, she could tell that he really had spent the entire night dealing with cleanup after the party.
“Thank you for ending the party last night,” she said softly.
He nodded once.
But Samira’s curiosity kept digging at her.
“How did you do it?”
A shrug.
“I threatened them with a gun.”
He said it like it was a casual thing. Samira laughed automatically.
He didn’t.
“Oh my God,” she muttered, taking a small step backward before she could stop herself.
He noticed.
Something in his posture shifted almost invisibly as his eyes locked onto hers again, all that quiet intensity from last night returning at once.
Samira became very aware that she was standing alone outside with a man who had apparently dispersed an entire party at gunpoint six hours earlier.
“Well,” she said eventually, “I should go. My shift’s about to start.”
She stepped backward toward the Jeep, reaching for the open driver’s door behind her. The morning air still carried traces of ocean salt and stale beer from the night before, mixing strangely with the smell of coffee drifting from somewhere inside the Cody compound.
He moved aside automatically to give her space.
Up close, Samira noticed his hands properly for the first time. Rough knuckles and small cuts across two fingers.
“Do you work at a hospital?” The question caught her off guard enough that she blinked three times before answering.
“Uh, yeah. I’m a doctor.”
“A doctor,” he repeated slowly, like he was testing the word in his mouth.
Samira waited for him to elaborate.
He didn’t.
“Have a good day, doc.” He said eventually.
Then he turned around and started walking back toward the Cody house.
Samira stood there for another second, strangely thrown off by the interaction.
“You too,” she called after him.
He lifted one hand slightly without looking back.
-
Pope finished washing the last dish in silence. He scrubbed the plate harder than necessary, thumb pressing against the sponge until his knuckles hurt. Grease came off clean beneath hot water. He checked the surface twice anyway before placing it carefully on the drying rack beside the sink.
The kitchen still smelled like stale alcohol and chlorine from the party.
Behind him, the house was finally quiet.
He peeled the rubber gloves off slowly and tossed them into the trash. Then he wrung the sponge out with methodical precision, squeezing every drop of water from it before placing it exactly where it belonged beside the sink.
The garbage disposal rumbled loudly when he switched it on again, just to make sure.
Footsteps approached behind him a few seconds later.
Craig stumbled into the kitchen looking half-dead, hair sticking up in random directions, yesterday’s clothes wrinkled and smelling like cigarettes and liquor even from several feet away. His eyes were bloodshot and hands shaky.
Pope watched him struggle with the coffee machine in silence for a moment. The coffee machine was winning.
“Who started that shit last night?” Pope asked finally.
Craig pressed random buttons without looking up. “Dunno, man. Probably J. He had some chicks over.”
Pope nodded once.
“We can’t do that anymore.”
Craig frowned at the machine.
“What?”
“There’s a doctor living next door now.” Pope leaned back slightly against the counter, arms folded. “She needs to sleep.”
That got Craig’s attention. He looked over slowly, confusion written all over his face.
“Whatever, man.”
“I mean it.”
Pope held his stare long enough for the message to settle properly.
“And the house was filthy.”
Craig rolled his eyes but didn’t argue further. Smart enough not to.
Pope looked around the kitchen one last time automatically: Counters clean, bottles gone, floor mopped and the trash outside.
Without another word, he walked down the hallway toward his room.
The house creaked softly around him in the morning heat. Somewhere in another room, someone was still asleep with the television running. The sound irritated him immediately.
Inside his bathroom, Pope stripped quietly. Every piece of clothing got folded before going into the laundry basket. Jeans first. Shirt after. Socks last. Ordered and controlled.
Then he stepped beneath the shower and let the hot water hit the back of his neck. Muscles loosened slowly beneath the heat; not enough to release all the tension, but enough to breathe a little easier.
Steam thickened around him while water ran down his shoulders. Pope stayed there motionless for almost two minutes, head lowered, eyes closed.
Then something strange surfaced through the exhaustion.
He didn’t know the doctor’s name.
Pope opened his eyes.
Water dripped slowly from his curls while he stared blankly at the shower wall for a second longer than necessary.
For some reason, that sat wrong inside his chest.