Sweet and Sour
A Covenant of Salt and Marrow
The three flights of stairs leading to the third-floor flat on Pike Street were never meant for Italian nappa leather pumps.
Each tread groaned under the sharp, rhythmic assault of three-inch heels, accompanied by the rustle of a heavy silk trench coat and a series of sharp, theatrical clicks of a tongue against the roof of a mouth.
"Unbelievable," a voice drifted up through the stairwell, sharp, nasal, and cutting through the smell of the super’s boiled cabbage like an unsterilized trocar. "Four hundred thousand dollars for Beverly Hills private school, three degrees from Stanford and Berkeley, and she lives above an upholstery repair shop. Saul, did I raise an animal? I raised an animal."
In the galley kitchen of apartment 3B, Alex Karev froze.
He was standing in his grey heather sweatpants and a stained tank top, holding a cast-iron skillet filled with sizzling strips of thick-cut bacon. His spatula hovered in mid-air, grease spattering against his bare, vascular forearm, his amber eyes darting toward the front hall with the wild, feral instinct of a tomcat sensing an incoming terrier.
Across the butcher-block counter, Cristina Yang did not look up from the kitchen table.
She was slouched in a wooden chair, wearing an oversized navy sweater with frayed wrists, a copy of *The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery* pinned to the laminate with the heavy base of an insulated coffee mug. Her hair was pulled into an erratic, gravity-defying knot anchored by two wooden tongue depressors.
The only sign of distress was the microscopic tremor of her right index finger against the edge of the paper.
"Tell me that’s a hallucination," Cristina whispered, her voice dropping into a flat, monotone register. "Tell me I have subclinical cerebral edema from the thirty-six-hour trauma call."
"That’s not an edema, Yang," Alex muttered, his spatula dropping onto the stove with a dull clatter. "That sounds like a tax auditor with an attitude."
From the threshold of the back bedroom, Izzie Stevens appeared.
She was dressed in a soft, cream-colored fisherman’s knit sweater and dark denim, her blonde hair woven into a loose braid that rested over her right collarbone. She had been carrying an earthenware bowl filled with proofing sourdough, but the moment the sound of those heels reached the third-floor landing, the blood drained from Izzie’s face in an instantaneous, horrifying rush.
Her fingers tightened around the ceramic until her knuckles turned translucent.
*Jane Burke.*
The ghost of the Rainier Club, the suffocating scent of white gloves, French lavender, and four generations of Charleston bloodlines telling her she was trash, dirt on the Persian carpet, an accessory to be scrubbed from the lineage—it hit Izzie like a physical blow to her healing sternum. Her breath caught in her throat in a tiny, strangled gasp.
"Izzie?" Alex frowned, his protective instincts immediately flaring as he took in the sudden, papery whiteness of her cheeks. "Stevens, what’s wrong with you?"
"It’s a mother," Izzie whispered, her voice cracking with pure, irrational panic as her eyes darted toward the small pantry beside the refrigerator. "It’s... it’s an attending’s mother. It’s a society mother. I can’t... Alex, I can't do the luncheon again. I don't have the silver polish. I don't know which fork to use for the watercress."
"Izzie, shut up," Cristina hissed, though her own eyes were wide with cold, defensive terror. "It’s not Burke’s mother. Preston Burke is currently rotting in Georgia with his mama’s tea sets. It’s worse."
The brass knob turned with a sharp, metallic screech.
The heavy oak door swung inward, and Helen Rubenstein swept into the apartment.
She looked as though she had been airlifted directly from Rodeo Drive into a lumber town. She wore a tailored camel-hair coat over an immaculate cream silk blouse, draped in two ropes of South Sea pearls that clicked against her collarbones. Her dark, lacquered hair was sculpted into an unyielding bob that defied Pacific Northwest humidity, and her oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses were pushed up into her bangs, revealing sharp, dark, terrifyingly familiar Yang eyes that swept the room like a radar array.
In her gloved left hand, she carried a monogrammed Hermès Birkin bag; in her right, a brass key that Cristina had explicitly told the superintendent to confiscate six months ago.
Helen stopped dead three feet past the threshold, her small nose wrinkling in violent distaste.
"Bacon grease," Helen pronounced, the syllables dropping like lead weights onto the worn pine floorboards. "Bacon grease and damp wool. Cristina, do you know what grease does to an eight-thousand-dollar cashmere coat? It settles in the weave. It stays forever. Like your father’s stubbornness."
She set the Birkin on a cardboard box marked *EKG LEADS / SURGICAL TAPE* with two fingers, as if touching radioactive waste.
"Mother," Cristina said, slowly closing her journal. Her voice was level, dead, and lethal. "What are you doing in Washington?"
"Saul had a dermatology conference in Vancouver," Helen said, peeling off her kidskin gloves with rhythmic, snapping precision. "I took the seaplane down. I thought, *My daughter is a surgical resident at a prestigious hospital; surely she has acquired an apartment with an elevator and an air filter.* And instead, I walk three flights of stairs through a slum to find you sitting in yesterday’s clothes."
Helen’s sharp, dark gaze whipped toward the stove, locking directly onto Alex Karev.
Alex stood his ground. He didn't drop his chin; he didn't slouch. He stood six feet tall, broad-shouldered, his jaw set, his amber eyes glaring at the woman with that unwashed, defensive Iowa hostility he had used to survive foster homes and county lockups.
Helen looked him up and down. She lingered on the faded sweatpants, the stubble along his jawline, the faint shadow of a bruise on his collarbone, and the bare, vascular arms that looked like they belonged to a steelworker.
"And who is this?" Helen asked, her tone entirely devoid of warmth. "The building superintendent? Cristina, why is the handyman making breakfast in your kitchen without a shirt?"
Alex’s teeth clicked together so hard the sound was audible over the sizzle of the pork. His knuckles twitched against the handle of the cast-iron pan.
"He’s not the handyman, Mother," Cristina snapped, rising from the table with the slow, coiled grace of an assassin. "That is Alex Karev. He is a surgical resident. And he lives here."
Helen’s eyebrows arched into two thin, penciled lines of sheer incredulity.
"A resident?" Helen echoed, letting out a short, nasal laugh that sounded like dry paper tearing. "With those hands? He looks like he changes fan belts on the interstate. Cristina, Saul’s nephew is a pediatric ophthalmologist in Encino. He plays the violin. He has a four-bedroom house with a pool and an investment portfolio. And you are living with a wrestler."
"Hey," Alex growled, stepping out from behind the range, his gravelly voice dropping into a low, menacing register. "Watch your mouth, lady."
"Alex, don't," Cristina ordered, not looking at him, though her hand reached behind her, her fingers catching the hem of his tank top to anchor him back.
Helen didn't even flinch at Alex’s size. She waved a dismissive, manicured hand in his direction, as if brushing away a persistent gnat, and turned her full, terrifying maternal beam back onto Cristina.
"I didn't fly three hours on a turboprop to discuss your charity cases, Cristina," Helen said, stepping further into the kitchen. "I came because your biological clock is ticking loud enough to be heard in Brentwood. You are thirty-one years old. You spend one hundred hours a week with your hands inside dead people’s chests, smelling of formaldehyde and disinfectant. When are you going to stop playing with knives and give me a grandchild?"
Cristina went rigid.
Her breath stopped. Her face, usually an unreadable mask of clinical brilliance, tightened until the skin over her cheekbones looked paper-thin. Her dark eyes darkened into two bottomless, terrifying voids.
"I am not playing with knives, Mother," Cristina whispered, every word carved from glacial ice. "I am a surgeon. I save human lives. And I am not having children."
"Nonsense," Helen scoffed, walking over to the small table and pushing Cristina’s thoracic journal aside with the tip of her designer umbrella. "Every woman says that until she turns thirty-two. Then your ovaries panic, and suddenly you’re paying fifty thousand dollars for in vitro in Santa Monica. A surgical career is fine for your twenties, Cristina, but a family is an obligation. Saul wants a boy to take to temple. I want a girl to buy smocked dresses for at Saks. You have an inheritance. You have duty."
From the doorway of the pantry, Izzie watched the confrontation unfold, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She had tried to melt into the shadows behind the stacked cans of San Marzano tomatoes, her body trembling with that deep, cellular memory of Jane Burke’s cold, aristocratic dismissal. Mothers like Helen Rubenstein didn't just criticize; they dissected. They took a woman’s worth, laid it on an antique scale, and weighed it against pedigree, manners, and biological utility.
Izzie backed up half a step, her heel bumping against a wooden crate of potatoes.
The sound was tiny, but in the tense silence of the kitchen, it was a gunshot.
Helen’s head whipped around.
Her eyes narrowed as she spotted the tall, golden-haired figure huddled in the dim space between the shelves.
"And what is that?" Helen demanded, pointing a French-manicured fingernail at the pantry. "Cristina, do you have squatters? Why is there a model hiding behind your legumes?"
Izzie froze.
The color rushed back into her face in a hot, suffocating wave of pure shame. She stood paralyzed, the earthenware bowl clutched against her chest like an absurd, ceramic shield, waiting for the catalog comments. Waiting for the sneer about trailer parks and Chehalis.
"Mother, get out," Cristina snarled, stepping directly between Helen and the pantry. "Take your Birkin, get back on your seaplane, and get the hell out of my apartment."
"I will not get out!" Helen’s voice rose into a shrill, imperious shriek that rattled the spice jars on the shelf. "I am your mother! I paid your tuition! I have a right to know why my daughter is living in a commune with a mechanic and an oversized blonde while her brother—"
The front door clicked open again.
Not with a kick. Not with a timid rattle.
It swung wide on its hinges with that smooth, authoritative, terrifying momentum that belonged to only one man on the continent.
Christopher Yang stood on the threshold.
He wore a bespoke charcoal three-piece suit cut from heavy English wool, his white spread-collar shirt unbuttoned by two inches, his dark cashmere overcoat draped over his left forearm. He carried a leather briefcase in one hand and a flat, paper-wrapped box from a high-end bakery in Lower Queen Anne in the other.
His dark, hooded eyes took in the scene in less than a second: his sister standing like a feral wolf in front of the pantry; Alex Karev holding a greasy spatula with murder in his eyes; Izzie trembling behind a sack of russet potatoes; and Helen Rubenstein standing in the center of the linoleum like an invading general.
A slow, devastating, unreadable smirk touched Christopher Yang’s sculpted lips.
"Helen," Chris said.
His velvety baritone filled the kitchen like heavy, aged port, instantly cutting through the hysterical frequency of the room.
Helen spun around.
The cold, imperious scowl on her face vanished in an instant, replaced by a radiant, doting, theatrical beam of pure maternal adoration.
"Christopher!" Helen cried, extending both hands toward him. "Thank God you’re here! Tell your sister she’s lost her mind! She’s living like a bohemian in a tenement, she’s dating a boy who smells of pork fat, and she refuses to discuss grandchildren!"
Chris didn't take her hands.
He walked into the kitchen, set his leather briefcase on the counter, and placed the bakery box neatly beside the stove. He didn't look at his mother; his dark gaze flicked past her, locking straight onto the shadow of the pantry where Izzie stood.
His eyes lingered on the tension in her shoulders, the faint tremble of her hands against the earthenware bowl, and the pale, haunted memory of Jane Burke flickering in her wide blue gaze.
A dark, dangerous flicker of pure steel ignited in the depths of Christopher Yang’s pupils.
He turned slowly to face Helen, his hands slipping casually into the pockets of his tailored trousers.
"Leave Cristina alone, Mother," Chris said smoothly. "Her reproductive choices are not a line item on your social calendar."
Helen scoffed, pressing a hand to her pearl-draped chest. "Christopher, be reasonable! Someone in this family has to carry on the name! Someone has to produce an heir! You’re thirty-one, you have a firm in Manhattan that manages three billion dollars in assets, and you spend all your time flying across the country to this godforsaken rain forest! When are you going to settle down? Saul has a partner whose daughter went to Wharton. She’s Korean, she’s modern Orthodox, she speaks three languages, and she has a family trust in Scarsdale—"
"I’m getting married, Helen," Chris said.
The kitchen went dead silent.
Alex stopped mid-stride. Cristina’s mouth opened slightly, her dark eyes snapping toward her twin brother with absolute, clinical shock.
Helen froze, her manicured hands suspended in the air, her face lighting up with wild, triumphant maternal ecstasy.
"You’re... you’re getting married?" Helen gasped, her voice trembling with joy. "Christopher! To who? Is it the girl from Scarsdale? Is it someone from the exchange? Why didn't you tell me?! Saul and I will hire the Plaza! We’ll get the cantor from Central Synagogue! We’ll—"
"I have to wait, though," Chris interrupted, his baritone level, dry, and razor-sharp.
Helen blinked, her smile hitching. "Wait? Wait for what?"
"I’m still convincing her to be my girlfriend," Chris replied calmly.
Alex choked on a laugh—a loud, barking snort that he quickly covered with a cough into his bare shoulder. Cristina rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, letting out a low, disgusted hiss.
Helen’s face contorted into utter, baffled fury. "What does that mean?! You’re Christopher Yang! You don't convince women to be your girlfriend! You have seven hundred million dollars and a Gulfstream! Who is this person?!"
Chris didn't answer her.
He turned on his heel, walked past his sister, and stopped directly in front of the pantry door.
He didn't pull Izzie out. He didn't parade her like Preston Burke had paraded her in the attending lounge with an heirloom diamond.
Chris reached into the shadow, his large, warm hand gently taking the heavy earthenware bowl from Izzie’s frozen fingers and setting it carefully on the nearest shelf. Then, his long fingers wrapped firmly, tenderly around her small, flour-dusted wrist.
"Come out, Isobel," Chris murmured, his voice dropping into that private, smoky register that vibrated straight through her ribs. "You don't hide in pantries. Not for anyone."
Izzie swallowed hard, looking up into his dark, intelligent eyes.
She saw no judgment there. She saw no shame in her apron, no disdain for her past, and no requirement that she perform the role of a Southern lady. She saw only Christopher Yang—the man who had kept a picture of her on his wall during the collapse of his world, and who was currently holding her hand as if she were the only asset that mattered on earth.
Izzie took a slow, deep breath, her chin lifting with that unconquerable Chehalis steel.
She stepped out of the pantry into the bright morning light of the kitchen.
Helen Rubenstein stared at her.
Helen adjusted her tortoiseshell sunglasses onto her nose, her dark eyes scanning Izzie Stevens with the cold, ruthless precision of an appraiser evaluating an estate sale.
She took in the five-foot-nine frame, the thick, sun-streaked golden braid resting over her shoulder, the wide, luminous blue eyes, the faint spray of freckles across her small nose, and the flour smudge dusting the side of her dark denim jeans.
Helen’s lip curled into a thin, tight line of profound, aristocratic disappointment.
"This?" Helen asked, turning to Chris with an expression of sheer incredulity. "Christopher, this is the woman you’re chasing across the continent?"
Izzie’s spine straightened, her hands balling into fists at her sides, but she remained silent, letting the woman’s venom wash over her like rain on stone.
"She’s very... tall," Helen said, her voice dripping with condescension. "And very blonde. Christopher, is she Korean?"
"No, Helen," Chris said, his baritone dangerously low, his hand sliding down to interlace his fingers firmly with Izzie’s. "She is not."
"Is she Jewish?" Helen pressed, her chin tilting upward in disgust. "Did she go to temple? Does she know how to keep a kosher kitchen for the High Holy Days?"
"I grew up in Chehalis, Mrs. Rubenstein," Izzie said, her voice clear, rich, and utterly steady. "My mother was a Lutheran, and my father wasn't around. But I know how to braise beef brisket with prunes and red wine, and my braided challah has won ribbons at the county fair."
Helen let out a sharp, dismissive snort that cut through the room like a slap.
"County fairs," Helen sneered, waving her hand as if swatting away a fly. "Saul and I didn't fund your Bar Mitzvah at the Hillcrest Country Club for you to marry a shiksa from a farm, Christopher. She has no lineage. She has no connections. Look at her! She looks like a poster for a Midwestern dairy cooperative! She probably has six brothers who fix tractors!"
"She is a surgical fellow in maternal-fetal medicine," Chris said, his voice dropping to a register so cold, so lethal, that even Helen paused for a fraction of a second. "She holds an MD from the University of Washington. She has sixteen publications in peer-reviewed obstetrical journals. And she has more integrity in her smallest finger than the entire board of your country club."
"I don't care about her publications!" Helen shrieked, her face turning an unseemly shade of mottled red beneath her designer powder. "I care about family! I care about heritage! Cristina is living in filth with a thug, and now my only son is throwing away his life on an American girl who will give me blonde, freckled grandchildren who don't know the difference between Yom Kippur and the Fourth of July!"
"That’s it," a voice snarled.
It wasn't Chris. It wasn't Izzie.
It was Cristina.
Cristina Yang crossed the kitchen in three violent, terrifying strides.
She did not look like a daughter. She did not look like an intern. She looked like the chief of a thoracic surgery unit about to excise a malignant tumor without anesthesia.
She grabbed Helen’s eight-thousand-dollar camel-hair coat by the lapels, her knuckles digging into the wool, and physically hauled her mother two feet toward the front door.
"Cristina!" Helen gasped, her sunglasses slipping down her nose in shock. "Take your hands off me!"
"Get out," Cristina said, her dark eyes burning with an incandescent, terrifying fury that made the room drop ten degrees. "Take your pearls, take your Birkin, and get your miserable, narcissistic ass out of my house."
"You cannot speak to me like this!" Helen yelled, struggling against Cristina’s iron, surgical grip. "I am your mother! I brought you into this world! I sacrificed for you! I demand grandchildren, Cristina! I demand to know when you are going to fulfill your duty to this family!"
Cristina stopped.
They were standing in the narrow hallway, directly beneath the flickering yellow bulb of the entrance sconce.
Behind them, Alex had moved to the kitchen threshold, his massive frame blocking the hall, his eyes locked onto Cristina with fierce, protective devotion. Chris stood beside Izzie, his arm wrapped completely around Izzie’s waist, anchoring her against his side.
Cristina looked at her mother.
The anger did not explode. It did not turn into screaming.
It collapsed inward, turning into a cold, dense, terrifying diamond of pure, unadulterated truth.
Cristina released Helen’s lapels with a single, sharp snap of her wrists. She stood tall, her scrubs hanging loose around her small frame, her hands resting flat against the front of her thighs.
"You want to talk about duty, Mother?" Cristina whispered.
The hallway went so silent you could hear the rain tapping against the glass on the landing below.
"Two months ago," Cristina said, her voice steady, clinical, and completely stripped of emotion, "I collapsed in Operating Room One during a coronary artery bypass graft."
Helen blinked, her scowl wavering, a flicker of maternal confusion crossing her features. "You... you were overworked. You always push yourself too hard—"
"I had an ectopic pregnancy, Helen," Cristina stated.
The word dropped between them like an iron slab onto concrete.
Helen’s breath caught in her throat. Her dark eyes widened. "A... a pregnancy? You were pregnant? With whose—"
"It ruptured," Cristina continued, her words rhythmic, measured, and unsparing. "The blastocyst had implanted in the cornual segment of my right fallopian tube. By the time they opened my peritoneum, I had two liters of blood pooling in my abdominal cavity. My systolic pressure was fifty. My heart stopped twice on the table."
Helen’s face began to drain of color, the haughty, Beverly Hills arrogance peeling away to reveal the raw, terrified pale skin beneath. "Cristina..."
"Dr. Addison Montgomery performed the surgery," Cristina said, her dark eyes pinning her mother’s with absolute, ruthless finality. "To save my life, she was forced to perform a total abdominal hysterectomy."
Helen gasped—a sharp, ragged sound of horror that echoed off the peeling wallpaper. Her manicured hand flew to her mouth, her rings clinking against her teeth. "A... a hysterectomy? But... but your ovaries..."
"Gone, Mother," Cristina lied, her voice an unyielding wall of stone that gave no ground. "The uterus was shredded. The pelvic tissue was completely necrotic from the hemorrhage. I spent three days in the ICU with three chest tubes and eight units of packed red blood cells."
Cristina stepped forward, closing the distance until her face was inches from Helen’s.
"I have no womb, Helen," Cristina whispered, each word carrying the weight of a funeral bell. "I have a thirty-centimeter surgical scar running from my xiphoid process to my pubic bone. I cannot carry a child. I cannot produce an egg. I will never, as long as I live on this earth, give you a grandchild."
Helen stood paralyzed.
Her knees seemed to buckle beneath her tailored coat, her pearls trembling against her silk blouse. The imperious matriarch who had spent twenty years dictating lineage and country club memberships looked suddenly small, fragile, and utterly shattered by the biological reality of the daughter she had never truly known.
"Cristina..." Helen choked out, tears of genuine, horrified grief finally welling in her dark eyes. "My baby... why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you call Saul? We would have flown the best specialists from Cedars-Sinai—"
"Because you don't care about my life, Mother," Cristina said, her voice dead and flat. "You care about my uterus. You care about what I can produce for your social circle in Brentwood. And now... I am medically useless to you."
Cristina turned slightly, pointing her index finger back toward the kitchen.
Toward Isobel Stevens.
Izzie stood beside Christopher, her blue eyes wide, shimmering with tears of fierce, profound empathy, her hand clutching Chris’s sleeve.
"So you listen to me, Helen," Cristina commanded, her voice dropping into a low, terrifying growl that rattled the doorframe. "You see that girl standing in my kitchen? The one you just called a shiksa? The one you mocked for baking bread and winning ribbons at a county fair?"
Helen looked past Cristina, her trembling gaze landing on Izzie’s pale, luminous face.
"That girl took eighty needles to her pelvic bone while fully conscious to save an eleven-year-old stranger," Cristina said, her words ringing with pure, unadulterated steel. "She is tougher than you. She is tougher than me. And she is in love with your son."
Cristina took one final step, grabbing Helen’s Birkin bag from the box and shoving it hard against her mother’s chest.
"You want a grandchild, Helen?" Cristina snarled. "You want someone to buy smocked dresses for at Saks? You want a legacy? Then you better get on your knees and pray to whatever God you worship that Isobel Stevens forgives you for being an insufferable snob. Because she is the only woman on the face of this earth who is ever going to carry your grandchildren."
Cristina reached past her, grabbed the brass knob of the apartment door, and yanked it wide open.
"Now get out of my house," Cristina said. "Before I have Alex throw you down the stairs."
Helen Rubenstein stood in the threshold, clutching her designer bag to her chest like a shield.
Her lips trembled. She looked at Cristina—this fierce, brilliant, broken warrior who had almost died on a cold operating table while Helen was shopping in Beverly Hills. Then she looked back at Christopher, whose dark eyes were completely dead to her, and finally at Izzie Stevens, whose clear blue gaze held neither malice nor triumph, only the quiet, unshakable dignity of a woman who knew what it cost to survive.
Helen did not say another word.
She turned on her three-inch heels, her head bowed, and hurried down the dark, creaking stairs of Pike Street, the sound of her pumps fading into the quiet drizzle of the Seattle morning.
Cristina slammed the heavy oak door shut.
*BANG.*
The reverberation shook the hallway sconce, sending a shower of fine, ancient plaster dust drifting down onto the pine boards.
Cristina stood with her back pressed against the wood, her eyes closed, her chest heaving in short, jagged gasps.
For ten seconds, the apartment was completely silent, save for the rhythmic hiss of the radiator and the faint, dying sizzle of the bacon in the skillet.
Then, Alex Karev moved.
He didn't speak. He didn't offer a clinical observation.
He crossed the hallway in two long, unhurried strides, reached out with his large, scarred arms, and pulled Cristina Yang into his chest.
He wrapped himself around her with the heavy, unshakeable strength of an iron pillar, burying his stubbled jaw into the wild tangle of her dark curls.
Cristina didn't push him away. She didn't make a sarcastic comment about systemic efficiency.
Her small, calloused hands came up, grabbing the fabric of his tank top, twisting the cotton into tight, white-knuckled knots as she buried her face into the curve of his neck, letting out a long, ragged, shuddering breath that sounded like an old wound finally being allowed to close.
"I’ve got you, Yang," Alex murmured into her hair, his gravelly voice thick and steady. "I’ve got you."
Across the hallway, Christopher Yang turned to Izzie.
He didn't say a word about his mother. He didn't apologize for the family bloodline.
He reached out with both hands, his long, warm fingers cupping her face, his thumbs gently smoothing over her high cheekbones, tilting her face up until her clear, tear-filled blue eyes were locked entirely onto his.
"You okay, Stevens?" Chris asked softly, his baritone a warm, protective rumble that made her pulse flutter against her ribs.
Izzie let out a small, breathless laugh—a sound that was half-sob, half-triumph, blooming through her lips like a bright bell.
The ghost of Jane Burke, the memory of the Olympic Hotel, the terror of never being good enough for an attending’s pedigree—it was gone. It had been dismantled on the linoleum of a walk-up flat by a sister who wielded truth like a scalpel and a man who looked at her as if she were the only kingdom he ever wanted to rule.
"I’m okay, Chris," Izzie whispered, her small, warm hands coming up to rest against the heavy lapels of his bespoke wool suit. "I’m really okay."
Chris smirked—that slow, devastating, incandescent curve of his lips that made her stomach do a slow, delicious flip.
He leaned down, his mouth brushing hers with deep, unhurried, proprietary warmth, tasting the salt of her tears and the sweet, lingering scent of fresh flour on her skin.
"Good," Chris murmured against her lips, his thumb tracing the dimple in her cheek. "Because you still haven't agreed to be my girlfriend, Dr. Stevens. And my sister just informed the entire West Coast that you’re carrying my children."
Izzie’s cheeks flushed a brilliant, radiant crimson, her dimples flashing deep and unconquered as she looked up into his dark, hooded eyes.
"Six of them, Yang," Izzie teased softly, her chin lifting with that wild Chehalis fire. "Cristina said we’re having six. And you’re carrying the diaper bag on the Gulfstream."
"Deal," Christopher Yang whispered, pulling her into his arms as the morning sun finally broke through the Seattle clouds, washing the third-floor kitchen in brilliant, golden light.