Which is exactly why I knew he should go.
“Why do you have to be so smart?” This conversation needs to stop here for my own sanity.
Rich grins. “I’m old. With age comes wisdom, which is why you should listen to your dad when he says something.”
My father would love Rich for saying that.
Someone down the bar calls Rich’s name for a drink, and he winks at me and heads to help his other patrons.
Dad was right when he said this was a bad idea, but I thought I had it under control. I was so wrong.
“Ren.”
I jump. “You have got to be kidding me,” I groan as Bryce sits down next to me. Speak of the Devil and he shall appear. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk,” he says.
“No, I don’t want to talk. I need to forget you. I need to eat food, get some sleep, and kick cancer’s ass tomorrow. What I don’t need is to be followed by my patient’s husband.”
Today isn’t the day for us to talk. I’m too broken down and I have no fight left.
“You have to help me,” he starts.
“Why is that, Bryce? Why do I have to help you?”
“Please, I know you don’t want to hear this, but don’t you see we can both get what we want?”
I’m suddenly not very hungry. Instead, I feel like I could be sick. I push the plate away and release a sad sigh. I want to be angry, I should be furious, but I’m just sad. I feel as though someone has beaten me down and I don’t like it.
“I’m not getting anything I want. In fact, I feel like this is some cosmic joke.”
“I know,” Bryce sighs and he sits on the stool in defeat. “Believe me, of all the doctors in the world, you were the last person I anticipated would walk through that door. I never thought we’d be standing here today. It sure feels like the laugh is on us, huh?” His hand rests on the bar, close to mine, but not quite touching.
Seeing a little fleck of sadness in him softens me just a bit. “I guess it is.”
Bryce releases a half laugh. “You know, I wondered about you for so long.” He stops talking, looking at me with shame in his eyes. “I dreamed for years about seeing you again and how I’d be so angry and that I wouldn’t care how you’d been. My visions of how it would go were nothing like this. But I gave you up when I started to fall in love with Ali.”
“Please don’t do this,” I plead.
I’m trying to not care about him. I want to move forward, put Bryce behind me and look toward the future, but he’s making it unbearable.
His hand touches mine, and my stomach drops.
Bryce continues on. “I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t want to think about you. I don’t want to remember what it felt like when it was you I woke up next to.” My heart races as he continues to talk, and I pull my hand away. “When I saw you again, it was like I was thrown back in time.”
This is wrong, but here he is, saying all the things I wanted to hear years ago. “You need to stop,” I say while clutching my chest. The ache is so great I worry I’ll crumble. “Bryce,” I sigh. “I can’t help you. I can’t do this anymore. You need to go back to North Carolina and find a new doctor. This is too hard for me.” A tear falls down my cheek as I admit my defeat for the first time aloud. “I have someone I’m trying really hard to move on with, and you being back . . . it’s destroying that chance.”
He has to go. I’ll lose the trial or find another way to help the other patients. But if he stays, I don’t know who I’ll be at the end of everything.
Bryce’s eyes blaze as he pushes himself back. “Do you think this is easy for me? My head is messed up. I have a wife, Chick. A wife who’s sick and needs my full attention and support.”
“So go,” I point to the door. “Go back to her. Go back where you belong, Bryce. Live the life you had and let me move on. Just go,” my voice cracks.
He leans forward on the stool. “I want to, but I can’t. I just want to get this thing between us resolved so we can put it behind us.”
“Well consider it hereby resolved. You’re married and your wife needs you. There’s nothing more I can offer you.” I place a twenty on the bar and walk out.
“I should be used to your back walking away by now,” he yells as I take a step down to the busy street. I stop, my heart racing and tears filling my vision. “I watched you do it all those years ago. I thought you’d come back to me, but you never did.”
The world just stopped and I can’t think. “That’s not how it happened,” I breathe, my voice shaking on every word.
“I loved you, Serenity. I’ve loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you and I never thought I’d recover from losing you.”
I turn, feeling breathless and unsteady. His eyes are filled with years of regret and disappointment. “I called you . . .”
He shakes his head. “You called after months! Months of me trying to find ways for us to work it out.”
“You stopped calling me as well. You were angry because I had school and my family to attend to.”
Bryce takes a step closer. “I had commitments too, but you were my number one.”
All this time, the two of us held onto this. Despite the fact he’s married and I’ve been with Westin, there’s been this . . . thing . . . festering inside of us.
“That day . . .” I start, but choke on the words.
“You broke my fucking heart.”
“So you broke mine to get back at me? You ended things on the worst possible day.” He ended them on the day my mother died.
“You left!” The anger in his voice breaks me out of the sadness that was threatening to overwhelm me. “What does it matter what day it was? Every day was the worst day. Every time I called or begged you to come, you were too busy.”
Yes, I left, but it was fourteen years ago and I had to.
“I never wanted to leave, Bryce. I didn’t have a choice! I did what was right for my family, and fuck you for not understanding that. You wanted my world to revolve around you, but I wanted more. When we met, I told you I was going to be a doctor and that meant sacrifice.”
His chest heaves as he glares at me. “And I guess I’m the one who has to sacrifice now . . . again, for you.”
“How the hell are you sacrificing now? I’m the one who’s in the impossible position of treating your wife. Do you think this isn’t hard on me? Do you not understand that I’ve spent the better part of fifteen years wondering about you, replaying things with us? I loved you more than you could even fathom. When I lost you,” I choke on the sob that rises up. “I lost a part of me.”
His head jerks back and the heat from his breath causes steam to flow around us. “My love for you has dictated everything in my life. I love Allison, more than I ever thought I could, but it is nothing like what we had. Imagine what seeing you now is like. Imagine knowing, as you hold your spouse’s hand, that there’s still a part of you that’s looking at the girl you once swore would be in her place.”
I feel weightless and my head is spinning. “Please don’t say these things.”