Chapter 1The Surgeon and My Secret Baby

Fifteen days after giving birth, my milk ducts clogged into hot, concrete knots. Desperate and feverish, I booked an emergency appointment at the nearest comprehensive breast clinic—only to find that the specialist sitting behind the computer, impeccably composed in a pristine white coat, was the first love I had callously dumped five years ago.

Logan Hayes.

He looked up from the screen, his dark, heavy-lidded eyes pinning me to the linoleum floor. The chill in his gaze made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

"Cece Mercer," he said, rolling the syllables over his tongue like gravel. "Clogged ducts?"

I froze, clutching my diaper bag like a shield.

He leaned back slightly, his expression cold and razor-sharp. "What’s the matter? The second you left me, your body stopped functioning?"

The clinical air in the examination room was freezing against my flushed skin.

"Shirt up. Unhook your bra," Logan commanded, snapping on a pair of blue nitrile gloves with a sharp, practiced snap.

Five years ago, we spent three years tangled up in each other’s sheets. Today, he was standing over an examination table in surgical scrubs, preparing to palpate my swollen, agonized breasts.

I swallowed hard, my throat dry as chalk. "Doctor... could you please be gentle?"

He glanced down at me, his eyes devoid of warmth. "I don't recall ever being rough with you."

A choked, awkward laugh caught in my throat. I didn’t dare take the bait.

I wasn't being dramatic; engorgement was sheer agony. Ever since I delivered my son, Toby, my milk ducts had felt like a minefield. Toby would latch and pull until he was red-faced and starving, unable to draw anything down, leaving me sobbing into the pillows from the blistering pain. The baby suffered, and so did I. That was the only reason I had swallowed my pride and dragged myself here.

"Delivery date?" he asked, his clinical tone flat and detached.

"Fifteen days ago."

"How long have you been blocked?"

"It was mild for the past two days," I mumbled, staring at the acoustic ceiling tiles. "It turned unbearable last night."

His gloved fingers pressed into the inflamed tissue. Even through the thin nitrile layer, I could feel the searing heat radiating from his palms. A familiar, suffocating rush of heat swept up my neck to my ears. I threw an arm over my eyes. Running into your ex while half-naked on an exam table was a level of humiliation Dante forgot to map out.

Logan stepped back, stripped the gloves into the biohazard bin, and sat at his desk, typing rapidly on the keyboard. A moment later, a printer chattered to life, and he tore off a clinical order.

"You have significant focal mastitis. Early abscess formation can't be ruled out without an ultrasound. You need to be admitted for IV antibiotics and therapeutic drainage."

He shoved the paperwork across the desk. "Take this down to billing, pay the deposit, then take the west elevator to the ninth floor of the surgical tower."

I stared at the slip, my chest tightening with genuine panic. "Um... is there any way I can treat this as an outpatient? Oral antibiotics?"

Logan looked up from his monitor, fixing me with an icy, incredulous stare. "What do you think?"

God. He was just as brutal as he used to be.

"Fine," I muttered under my breath. "I'll admit myself. You don't have to bite my head off."