Page 4 of Obeying

I used to lie awake, furious that this man was always half a step ahead of me.

Now he's a dozen steps ahead, with a title and a service and my name somewhere on his roster, and I'm the one keeping my eyes down so he won't look too close.

Because how am I supposed to survive residency when Logan Maxwell is the one evaluating my every move?

The man who spent four years pushing me to my limits. The man I never wanted to lose to.

My rival. And somehow, now my attending.

2

KRISTEN

Third year of med school.

The anatomy study room is quiet. It's that particular kind of late where the building settles into itself, and the janitor's cart is a distant rattle somewhere two floors below. Most students have gone home. But I'm not most students, and after tonight, I am going to destroy Logan Maxwell.

We're both prepping for the surgical clerkship honors evaluation, which only one of us can win, and I've been here since six, straight from class, no break, while he strolled in at eight looking like he'd had time to go home, shower, maybe grab dinner with friends, and would still get a full night's sleep before tomorrow. Not a single crease on him, not a hint of stress. Just annoyingly handsome and completely unbothered.

I catch the thought and correct myself. Not handsome. That implies I've thought about it, which I haven't. He's just objectively good-looking the same way tall people are tall. It's a fact.

Anyway, that's the thing about Logan. Everything comes to him like it's easy, and he never lets you see the work, which makes me want to beat him even more.

He's across the table from me now, half-buried in a textbook, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. He pushes them back up without looking, this absent little gesture he does a hundred times a day, and I probably shouldn't notice it, but I do, and that annoys me too.

"You sure you want to challenge me, Maxwell?" I flip my flashcards without looking up. "You know how competitive I get. If there's one thing I hate, it's peas and losing."

"That's two things."

"They're tied for first spot."

He smiles. I hate that smile. It's small and barely there, and it makes girls in our year lose their train of thought mid-sentence. Pathetic. It doesn't work on me. Absolutely not. I flip another card.

I will destroy this human who rations his expressions like they cost money. A nod here, a raised brow there. Meanwhile, I'm over here with every thought written across my face, which he loves pointing out because it gets a reaction, and getting a reaction out of me is apparently his favorite pastime. More than studying and more than the six cups of black coffee he drinks every day 'for fun' and not because he needs the caffeine.

We quiz each other for the next hour, and it's brutal. He fires questions at me, I fire them back, and every time one of us gets something wrong, the other pounces on it like the answer is blood in the water. He's good—annoyingly so—but so am I, and he knows it, because halfway through he stops leaning back in his chair and actually sits forward, elbows on the table, glasses pushed up properly, fully locked in. That's how I know I'm pushing him. Logan Maxwell doesn't sit up for just anyone.

"Branches of the external carotid," he says.

I roll my eyes, then rattle off all eight without blinking. "Too easy. Give me something harder."

"You got the last two in the wrong order."

"No, I didn't."

"You did."

"Maxwell, I swear to God⁠—"

"Check the textbook." He slides it across the table, and his fingers brush mine, and neither of us pulls away for a second too long. I grab the book, flip to the page, and I'm right, obviously, so I shove it back at him with a look that says everything my mouth doesn't.

He reads it, adjusts his glasses, then nods once. "Fine. You got lucky."

"Lucky?" I lean forward across the mess of notes between us. "I'm better than you, and it physically pains you to admit it."

"Keep telling yourself that, Portland. I'll let you have the small wins."

I throw a flashcard at his head and he catches it without looking. He smiles that same stupid, annoying smile again, and I hate him a little less.