The chime of my phone echoed from the apartment. My reaction was habit. I lifted my gaze.
And because I lost focus, Talia found her opening. She ducked under my arm and slipped out the door.
“Hell.” I let her leave. I let her get a head start while I took Vivienne’s call and put the pizza away. Then I drove into Quincy.
This round wasn’t over yet.
CHAPTER SIX
TALIA
The snow on the Jeep was melting. It dripped onto the garage floor in plops.
I’d been sitting in the driver’s seat, listening to the plop, plop, plop for so long that the cab’s lights had shut off. The heat from my drive home was nearly gone. My fingers were cold, but I couldn’t seem to unwrap them from the steering wheel to go inside.
There was too much space in the house. Too much light. Too many distractions.
But here, in the darkness with the plops, maybe I’d be able to sort through my feelings.
The Jeep, parked in the garage, had become a sanctuary of sorts. A cocoon where I could block out everything except the emotional hurricane raging inside my chest.
The last time I’d sat here like this had been six months ago.
There’d been a bad car accident on the highway outside of town. Both drivers had been rushed to the emergency room, and I’d been there with Dr. Herrera. He’d taken the most severely injured patient, a pregnant woman, and left me with the other.
It was a man who had lost a leg in the crash. I did exactly as Herrera instructed—stopped the bleeding, cleaned the limb and got it bandaged.
The man cried the entire time, so hard it shook the bed and made it difficult to work. But his tears weren’t for his missing leg. His tears were for the woman in the other car.
He sobbed, saying how he’d never forgive himself for speeding. For texting. He prayed through the tears, asking God to take both his legs and his arms—his life if necessary—to save hers.
He cried until the medicine finally kicked in and he fell asleep. I woke him up the next morning to tell him that the woman and her baby would be fine. Dr. Herrera had saved them both.
I’d never forget that man’s face in that moment. The relief. The gratitude. The tears, silent this time, that streaked down his face. Three hours later, he’d had a massive heart attack and died.
Dr. Herrera had assured me there was nothing I could have done. Yet I’d felt like a failure.
I hadn’t lost many patients in my short time as a doctor. In a town the size of Quincy, we didn’t have a lot of trauma, not like hospitals in big cities. That man had been the third patient of mine to die.
There were three tally marks at the bottom of my locker door, not written in dry erase, but with a Sharpie.
That day, after driving home, I’d sat in the garage, in this Jeep, and it had been my turn to cry.
There were no tears tonight. Maybe they’d come after the shock had passed.
Foster had almost kissed me.
I’d almost let him kiss me.
It had taken years for me to pick up the pieces of my broken heart. But I’d gathered them all, painstakingly stitching them together again. My instructors had always commended me on my suture technique.
Yes, there were times when I’d feel the pinch of those old wounds. But time had healed. So had distraction. Medical school had been my savior, followed by my residency.
Except here I was, dumbstruck, because an almost kiss had left me unraveled.
Shouldn’t this attraction have faded? If anything, it felt more powerful. More urgent. More desperate. The magnetism between us was as potent as ever.
He’d almost kissed me.
And I’d almost let him.
What was wrong with me? What had happened with Vivienne? Why hadn’t he forgotten me?
The curiosity was gnawing at me. It was getting harder and harder not to type his name into my phone to see the search results. But I’d held off for seven years. I wouldn’t cave. Yet.
Foster had come to the hospital today and promised answers. God, I wanted those answers. Not knowing was eating me alive. And yet when I’d had the chance tonight, I’d bolted. One look at Vivienne’s face, and pain had sent me scurrying out of that gym.
My phone rang and I jumped, knocking my leg into the steering wheel. I plucked it from the console’s cup holder, Lyla’s name on the screen. “Hey,” I answered.
“Hi. What are you doing?”
“Oh, nothing.”
I hadn’t told her about Foster yet. Maybe I should have found the time over Christmas, but she’d been swamped at the coffee shop and I’d been avoiding the conversation. With everyone.
Lyla knew I’d dated a man named Foster. She knew we’d broken up my senior year of undergrad, but I’d led her to believe it was because of my move to Seattle.
She’d be pissed when she learned the whole story. She’d be mad that I hadn’t leaned on her after he’d broken my heart.
But I wasn’t like Lyla.
I wept alone in dark garages. She wasn’t afraid to shed a hundred tears in her coffee shop, even if there were employees or customers around to witness her cry. Lyla shared her life daily on Instagram. The last selfie I’d taken had been months ago.
If she had a crush on a guy, most of Quincy knew about it before they’d even had their first date. The last time I’d gone on a date had been during my last year of medical school when another guy in the program had asked me out. I’d faked a stomach bug in the middle of dinner when he’d hinted at going back to his place after dessert.
I’d tell Lyla about Foster. Eventually. Just not tonight.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Just got home from the shop.” Lyla yawned. “I wanted to say hi.”
“Hi.” I smiled at my sister’s voice. “Want to do something this weekend? I’m not working or on call for a change.”
“Sure. As long as I can be in bed by nine.”
“I’ll come to the shop on Saturday afternoon. We can hang out until you close, then go to Knuckles for dinner. I’ll buy the wine.”
“Perfect. See you then.”
“Bye.” Saturday, I’d tell her about Foster. Probably.
I closed my eyes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Garage time over.
On a long sigh, I climbed out of the Jeep and trudged inside. I flipped on the lights as I moved through the house, shedding my coat and shoes before heading to my bedroom.
But I didn’t strip off my scrubs and dump them in the laundry to take a shower. Instead I walked into my closet, fished the stepstool from the corner and hefted down the tote I hadn’t touched since I’d moved in three years ago.
I set it on the floor in my bedroom, sitting next to it as I popped off the lid. The scent of plastic and paper and stale air filled my nose as I lifted out my high school yearbooks. Beneath them was a disorganized mess of photos and mementos.
At the top of the pile was a Wicked program from when I’d taken Mom to the show one weekend in Seattle. She’d flown out to visit me while the musical had been traveling through the city. Beneath the program was a seashell necklace from my senior trip to Cabo. There was a silver dollar my great-uncle had given me before he’d died.
I lifted out the unorganized clutter of photos. Most of the pictures were old, taken by Mom or Dad when I was a kid.