1
K.O
Dayton,
Seeing as you’re the furthest thing from a professional, I will no longer refer to you using your prestigious title.
You’re a sick, twisted fuck.
I’m appalled that your resignation was at your own hand and not Dean Raza’s doing. You’re a cowardly bastard if you thought resigning and setting up shop in the next town over would erase me, would erase your problems. You must have lost your hideously diseased mind, “darling.”
And to think, I almost fell for you, believing I knew what you were capable of, only to find out I didn’t know you at all. Not for a second. You made love to me and you were so raw, so real, you managed to convince me that your feelings were genuine.
What a brilliant actor you were.
I’m penning this letter to make something clear: I know everything. I found your disgusting little box.
I shouldn’t have been so surprised by it—the other girls tried to warn me. Even in the early days, I suppose your ineffable charm swayed me. I ignored their warnings. I allowed myself to get closer and closer to you until I was blinded to how dangerous you truly are. Until I lifted that lid, anyway.
As much as those photographs turned my stomach, your dedication to making me stand out among the rest was far more off-putting. So I left. Now you know. Although, you’ve probably figured that out already, you brilliant bastard.
Do you blame me? What was I to do, stick around and be your patron saint of sluts?
And despite all of this rage, all of the hate etched into the lines of this letter, and even though you wrecked my summer and ripped away my chance of participating in my own graduation ceremony, I don’t want revenge.
What I want is quite simple: this job.
If you fail to supply me with the position, I should forewarn you that revenge becomes the unfortunate plan B.
You see, even in my state of shock that fateful morning in your bedroom, I mustered enough calm to capture my own photographic evidence of your perverted trophy box.
The entire summer, an email to the Oregon Medical Board has been sitting in my draft folder. With attachments. Give me your decision before the week is out or I may accidentally hit send.
I’ll be seeing you. Soon, I hope, for your sake.
-K.O.
How appropriate of Kenna to sign her initials on such a letter. K.O., indeed. The poor girl probably thought she had signed his death warrant. She hadn’t. Far from it.
If his career was suddenly wrecked by her little email, nothing was tying him to Oregon. He’d move out of state, change his identity, gain employment in a city that was small and quaint where they wouldn’t ask questions about the reserved doctor from the West Coast.
Except, that was all a lie.
She was tying him here, the woman Dayton had spent the entire summer trying to forget. Kenna had stopped his eight-year-long research project in its tracks and with her he’d fallen accidentally and hopelessly in love.
Gingerly, he set the letter on his desk.
It posed no threat to him, he decided. The only harm here lay in her poisonous words. He could handle her ire as long as it meant she would eventually come around.
Delicacy had to be employed. A muted hopefulness sprang to life in his sternum as he mulled over the possibilities. He would offer her the position, as she had proposed, and she’d believe she had the upper hand. All the while oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t intimidated by her attempt at blackmail. He imagined her scent and notebooks and lipstick-stained coffee cups littering the practice. She would be back in his office, where she belonged.
Where he’d lure Kenna back into his arms.
Dayton pulled out his cell phone, thumb dancing across the display, and soon the dial tone purred in his ear.
2
YOU WIN, KID