They woke Mick, and a few minutes later they were bundled up and trudging across the snowy beach to the edge of the water. The Great Lakes, Nora had learned, didn’t usually freeze—apparently that was a once-in-a-decade occurrence—but there were ice formations at the edge of the water and some floating chunks bobbing in the cove.
It was too dark to see the horizon, but you could tell where the boundary between lake and sky was because of where the stars—they were indeed out in force—started. The Milky Way looked like a band of snow.
There was no moon. That seemed right. It wasn’t a night for wishes.
The air was cold and sharp and cauterizing. Breathing it hurt her lungs, but in a good way. Like maybe it could scour her clean.
She looked at Jake, who was standing next to her but not touching her. Maybe it would work for him, too. Like she’d been a moment ago, he was staring at the sky. “Do you miss Jude more on holidays?”
He cleared his throat and kept staring at the sky as he answered. “Not really. He died before his first Christmas. But really, I miss him—” He turned his head abruptly to look at her.
“You miss him all the time?” she asked gently.
Her eyes had adjusted to the night, and the stars were so bright that she could see his face well enough to see that it was all crunched up. Like he was angry? Or maybe she didn’t have enough light to read his expression, because she wasn’t sure why he’d suddenly be angry.
He looked away suddenly. “Yes,” he said with an odd sort of vehemence in his tone. “I miss him all the time.”
They stood there silently. She wasn’t sure what to say. It felt like something weird had happened there; she just wasn’t sure what. Eventually enough time passed that she felt like it was safe to speak. “I bet it’s after midnight.”
“Yeah.” His voice still sounded odd, but it was hard to say why. “Happy New Year, Nora.”
“Happy New Year, Jake.”
They didn’t kiss. They didn’t do anything. When they went back inside, he said he was tired and asked if she’d mind if he went to sleep. Of course she didn’t mind. But then…he didn’t go to sleep. She lay there in the dark next to him listening to his breathing. It never changed. Eventually she fell asleep, and when she woke up it was to a note that read “Happy New Year. I have a job this morning so I sneaked out. Didn’t want to wake you. Let yourself out—boots are by the front door. —Jake.”
But what had she expected? Breakfast in bed? The kiss they hadn’t had at midnight? The orgasm-and-zombies bubble to last forever?
No, she told herself firmly. No. She had not expected any of that.
But if she was being honest, she had to admit it had been a close call.
Maybe she needed to pull back a bit. Not entirely. But enough that she didn’t start expecting things from Jake that he wasn’t able to deliver.
Chapter Twenty
Nora threw herself into work after New Year’s. Because the clinic had been closed for two weeks, her schedule was jammed her first day back.
“I should have driven to the walk-in clinic,” CJ Dyson said, presenting with chronic nosebleeds. “But I wanted to wait for you.”
“You have a lot of broken vessels in there.” Nora set down her scope. “Once they get this bad, they don’t really heal. This cold weather, or even just jostling your nose, will set it off again. I recommend we cauterize it. I’ll paint some silver nitrate inside your nose, and it will seal the vessels and prompt the formation of scar tissue. It’ll hurt while I’m doing it, but then you’ll be done.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. I had to have that done a couple years ago. And I know it’s not a big deal, but I just thought, if someone is going to stick a probe up my nose and, like, fry the inside of it, I want it to be Dr. Walsh.”
Nora chuckled. “I’m flattered. I think.”
At her lunch “break,” which was only ten minutes because Eiko had overbooked her due to all the demand, she looked at résumés for the reception job and emailed the top three candidates to set up interviews.
She was pleased to find that her first appointment after lunch was Eve.
“Hi! Happy New Year!” Eve said from the visitor’s chair. She wasn’t on the exam table, and she’d apparently told Amber she wanted to speak to Nora without the prescreening Amber usually did.
“Same to you. What’s up?”
“I think I want an IUD.”
“Okay. What are you using for birth control now?”
“Well, when Sawyer and I first got together, we were using condoms. Then I went on the pill…”
The pill.
Oh. Holy. Shit.
Nora’s stomach dropped, and she had to force herself to pay attention to the rest of what Eve was saying.
“I just feel like I need a more long-term solution.” Eve lowered her voice and leaned in. “We don’t want kids anytime soon.”
Focus. Focus. This was not a big deal. It was a little deal, and it could be remedied the moment this appointment was over. For now, her patient deserved her full attention.
“We might not ever want kids. That’s why I didn’t want to talk to Amber. You know what this town is like with its meddling. I mean, I know she would probably keep it confidential, but—”
“She would definitely keep anything you tell her confidential.” Interrupting one’s patients was bad form, but Nora had to set the record straight. “Or I’d fire her ass.” Eve smiled. “But it’s also fine to just talk to me.”
“Clara just started university, and this is the first time Sawyer’s been not on kid duty since he was a kid. And the inn is doing well, but it’s still new. We’re just so busy and we’re kind of thinking if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?”
“You know, you don’t have to have a reason to want to prevent pregnancy. You can just not want a kid, either right now or ever, and that’s okay. You don’t have to justify yourself to me or anyone else.”
“Right.” Eve visibly relaxed. “Okay.” She rolled her eyes self-deprecatingly. “I just have visions of it getting out and the old folks, like, dropping a baby on my doorstep in the middle of the night. But I’m being paranoid.”
“No, I know what you mean. They can be very—”
Eve perked up. “Are they on your case? Why?”
“That would be something to talk about in our capacity as friends.” She hadn’t told anyone about her and Jake, but she suddenly kind of wanted to. Mostly because she hadn’t heard from him since she’d left his place yesterday morning. Which wasn’t all that unusual, she told herself. Anyway, she’d been planning to try to cool it a little with him, anyway.
“Right. Gotcha.”
“So for an IUD, I’ll need to give you a pelvic exam and test you for STIs. Then I’ll give you a prescription for the actual IUD, you bring it back, and I’ll insert it. Sound good?”
She pulled a curtain while Eve undressed, and they talked about the different models and how much pain to expect during and after insertion.
Nora gloved up for the exam. “Here we go.”