This is a series of one shots based on Pixelberry's Open Heart, featuring Dr. Ethan Ramsey and Dr. Cassie Valentine. The stories follow canon to a certain extent but diverge after book 1. In this AU, there is no trip to the Amazon and no need for a...
Summary: What if Ethan Ramsey and MC decided to pursue a relationship at the end of book 1, be together without jeopardizing her professional development? Ethan tries to stay away from Cassie Valentine and focus on the patients, but he realizes that it's a losing battle. She's not giving up on them and he can't keep fighting his feelings either.
Rating: Teen. Some sexual references but nothing explicit. Some angst.
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It had been a week since the ethics hearing and six nights without Ethan in her bed. Cassie was miserable without him. She tried to tell herself she would get over him; she just had to try harder. But every time she saw him in the halls of Edenbrook, she felt her heart rate accelerate and her body flush as memories washed over her.
"We'll get through this. It's the patients that matter, right?" She remembered his words and the pained expression on his face after Naveen had announced Ethan would be her direct supervisor.
In a couple of months, she'd be living her dream as a member of Edenbrook's famed Diagnostics team, working directly with her medical hero to solve medicine's most perplexing mysteries. Knowing that Ethan would help her become the doctor that she'd always wanted to be should have been enough. It was after all why she'd come to Edenbrook – to learn from the Ethan Ramsey.
But that was before she'd come to know the real Ethan Jonah Ramsey. Before she'd spent almost a year on slow burn, and then two amazing nights losing herself in him as their bodies connected in the most intimate way possible. They had stared into each other's eyes as the pleasure built; his blue eyes dark as he reached the edge and she'd felt every pulse, twitch inside her as they both fell from the peak. At that moment, she'd never felt closer to another human being.
She had been avoiding Donahue's all week and knew she couldn't keep making excuses to her friends. The nights were the worst though. When she lay in her bed, she remembered their last night together, looking into each other's eyes as they drifted to sleep. And waking up in his arms at dawn, enjoying the quiet but sad in the knowledge it was the last time. In a few hours, he would go back to being an attending and she an intern. His morals wouldn't allow anything more. She'd known that but had wanted one last night with him.
She remembered telling him in the lab after Miami that they were inevitable. Something had started between them from that first thoracotomy, at least on her end. Now she couldn't imagine a life without him in it.
She was in love with Ethan Ramsey and would always be in love with him.
It was late and Cassie couldn't sleep. Today's shift had been particularly hard. After avoiding her for days, Ethan had led rounds this morning and she'd felt her old self surfacing as they parried back and forth on the patient's treatment. He challenged her in ways no one else could. She knew that wouldn't change if they were together. Why couldn't he?
Cassie stared at his profile picture on her phone, that familiar smirk staring back at her. She clicked on the message icon before she could stop herself.
