When We Met

by C J Marie

  Jo shifted her weight as she crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you talking about?”

  Emmitt took another step closer. “The main cardiologist at the hospital, Doctor Reswell, wants a new cardiac extension clinic added to the hospital. All ages—a family cardiac clinic basically—and he wants you and me to head it up.”

  The back of her throat was dry and gritty as she listened. Reswell was only the most renowned cardiologist in Boston. She could hardly believe he even knew her name. “He asked for me, specifically?”

  “I swear,” Emmitt said with a nod. “He glanced through your reports, patient feedback, and application. He wants a specialized team of nurses, PAs, doctors, even nursing assistants are handpicked by Reswell to get started. It will be the best of the best, Jo. But if you’re not on board, the clinic doesn’t happen.”

  “No pressure.”

  Emmitt grinned, and took another step. This time, Jo took a tiny step backward. She didn’t want to stand close to the man. “I’m an investor in the clinic Jo, so I can give you a little bit of time to think about it, but Reswell really wants you.”

  “How did you invest in a medical clinic?” she asked, thinking of all the budget talks as he applied both their salaries to his student loans.

  “I’ve been smart with money, Jo, you know that. It seemed like it was just the right time. Listen, I’ve thought a lot about what you’ve said while being here. I think you were right.” Odd. This conversation was about to get interesting, and Jo stood quiet as she waited. “I haven’t been fair by asking you to have a passion about something you just aren’t passionate about. After realizing how stupid I was, I can respect what you want to practice, and when this opportunity came up, I wanted to invest to show you how much I support you. This might not be exactly like your dad’s clinic, but I thought it was the best of both worlds. Family care, cardiology, close-knit clinics where you can have a personal touch with patients. Like you want.”

  Her chin quivered. Emmitt needed to stop talking about her dad. “I don’t know if I can work with you anymore.”

  He hung his head, and dug into his pocket and held out a plane ticket. “This is yours, Jo, if you’re ready. I know you don’t trust me, and that’s all on me. I’ll never be able to apologize enough.” Jo’s feet were frozen in the gravel when Emmitt stepped so close his chest brushed across her body. His voice was low and soft as he spoke, and for a moment Jo caught a glimpse of the man who’d once swept her off her feet. “But, I hope you might be open to giving me a chance to prove how sorry I am.”

  Inches were all that stood between them, but after a few pounding heartbeats in her skull, Jo backed away. “I need to think…about this.” Emmitt reached for her hand, but she pulled back. “Alone, Emmitt. I need to go…talk to someone.”

  Jo slipped behind the wheel of her car as Emmitt blocked the door. “Talk to who?”

  She swallowed, and met his eye with a sense of pride. “Zac.”

  She slammed the door, and pulled away from the clinic as burning tears filled her eyes. If this was true, Jo knew she would be forced to decide to give up a dream or the man she loved.

  ***

  Rafe and August had left an hour ago, and Mouse’s motorcycle was fading down the road and into the night as Zac finished signing payroll sheets and inventory orders. Headlights flashed in the front lot, and he started at a frantic pounding at the front door. Flipping the lobby lights on, Zac stalked toward the front.

  “Hey there, Abby,” he said when the stout woman, still donned in medical scrubs, shoved her way into the lobby. “Uh, I’m afraid we’re closed. You having an emergency? I can pull the car into the shop and give you a ride home, then start work first thing in the morning.”

  Normally, Zac might work on simple jobs after hours, but tonight he had plans with Jo, and he wasn’t missing a moment since it was still up in the air if she was leaving on Monday. The clinic had needed help today, and so had the shop, reluctantly they’d both gone to work for a few hours on a Saturday, but Zac intended to give the woman his full attention tonight, tomorrow, and hopefully much longer after that.

  “No car emergency, Zac,” Abby said through a gasp. “And I’m afraid this is plainly me butting my nose in someone else’s business, but I’m not exactly sure if she’s going to be alright.”

  His pulse ticked up a notch. “Who?”

  “Well, Josephine, of course.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We were leaving the clinic, just gabbing like normal. The day was long and all, we were tired, she was telling me a few concerns, some thoughts about—”

  “Abby, what’s wrong with Jo?”

  Abby shook her head. “Sorry, I was rambling. That cheating, no-good SOB doctor showed up.”

  “Emmitt?” Now, Zac’s fists curled.

  “That’s the one. Now, Zachariah don’t go over there, let her stand her ground, but just be prepared for her to be coming here after having seen him.”

  “I’m going there.” The idea of Emmitt, again a man he’d never met, with his hands even close to Jo sent nauseous waves spinning in his gut.

  “Zac, just calm down. I didn’t tell you to start a fist fight, I told you out of concern for Jo. Just wait, she was planning on coming over. He wasn’t there to cause her trouble, just talk it seemed. I wouldn’t have left if I was worried for her safety. Tonight, I’m just worried about her heart.”

  Zac scowled as Abby backed toward the door.

  “Tell me you aren’t going, Zac or I’ll wait here all night.”

  “I won’t go,” he grumbled.

  “Good, because you look fit to draw blood, and that won’t suit anyone.”

  Abby backed out of the lobby with a cautious warning glance over her shoulder before she hopped back into her running car.

  “Yeah, I’m going,” he muttered to himself before rushing back to the office and shutting down the computer and lights. He locked the doors briskly, and headed toward his house where his truck was snugly parked and waiting to tear down the road toward the clinic. Halfway through the field that divided his place from the shop he caught sight of more headlights pulling up to his driveway. Jo’s rental car. Zac released a long breath, and took the rest of the way at a jog.

  Jo hopped out of the car, her smile wasn’t there, but her eyes weren’t puffy or anything. Good, the douche hadn’t made her cry. Zac wrapped his arms tight around her before she’d hardly stood straight. “Are you okay?”

  Jo chuckled, and nuzzled her face against his neck. “I’m fine. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Abby might have stopped by.”

  Jo pulled back and frowned. “That woman, she just couldn’t keep her mouth closed.”

  “Jo, are you good?”

  She clasped her hands on the sides of his face, and offered a gentle, quick kiss. “I’m fine,” she said. “But I do need to…talk to you about a few things.”

  Zac nodded and grinned as he ushered her toward the porch, but his chest remained tight and edgy chills prickled across his skin. Something felt off, and he didn’t like the way Jo’s eyes weren’t as bright, or the way she kept glancing at him like she was about to deliver crushing news.

  Chapter 18

  Jo sat across from Zac at his kitchen table. An opened bottle of water was in front of her while Zac held onto a beer, but she’d yet to see him take a drink. He’d listened without making a sound as she’d relayed the Emmitt encounter. The only time his face had flushed in frustration came when her phone brightened with a text message from Emmitt urging her to consider the offer. Still though, he’d kept quiet and listened.

  Silence had a way of suffocating air from the lungs when it went on too long.

  After Jo felt as if the walls might crush her in her seat, Zac shifted in his chair and met her eye. “So, what are you going to do, Jo?”

  She tried to smile, but there wasn’t any strength behind it. The words dissolved on her tongue countless times before she offered a water
y smile. “I don’t know.”

  Clearly it wasn’t the answer Zac had wanted by the way he leaned forward on his elbows and his jaw pulsed. “Just tell me,” he said slowly. “Are you planning on going back with him?”

  “Zac, I care about you—”

  “Care about me?” He said, and Jo wished she could wash her tongue off with soap. “Because last I thought, you said you loved me.”

  “I do,” she said. Her voice broke into a hundred pieces, and she couldn’t stop the tears splashing on her cheeks if she wanted to. “I do, Zac. It’s just this…is an opportunity I’ve wanted my entire life.”

  “To run a heart clinic?”

  “It’s like a family clinic, just with an emphasis on cardiac care. You don’t understand how difficult it would be for me to open one on my own. You know my dad left me with nothing, I’m required to have a supervising physician, and—”

  “I understand,” Zac said. “I wasn’t meaning the clinic exactly; I was asking you if you were going to get back with him.”

  She closed her eyes. “I don’t want to be with Emmitt.”

  “Not really a straight no. Seems he’s been able to convince you to do a lot of things you don’t want to do. I bet he assured you over an over how sorry he was.”

  With a slap to the table, Jo stood and paced the kitchen. “Zac the clinic here is likely closing, you know that. I’ll end up being stuck in a hospital again, so why would I pass up an opportunity to do work I want to do?”

  He shook his head, and Jo bit her bottom lip feeling the hurt from his heart spew across the table. “I don’t know, Josephine. I sort of thought there was a little more than a clinic keeping you down here.”

  Her forehead ached. Jo pinched the bridge of her nose, and felt the collision of a stable, lucrative career versus the unlikely man who’d stolen her heart. “Would you come with me?”

  Zac tilted his head. “What?”

  “I’m asking you the same thing you’re asking me. Would you give it all up and come with me to Boston?”

  Zac cleared his throat and threaded his fingers together. Like an old, unwanted acquaintance that suffocating silence built like cinderblocks in the center of the kitchen. His dirty fingertips threaded through his hair, and Jo felt the room tilt to a spin when Zac glanced at the table. “It’s a lot to ask, Jo. I’ve got my entire family here, my business.”

  Jo bit back the tears, knowing days earlier Zac had said he’d leave it all—perhaps words in the passion of a moment carried no weight. “But my life is easily uprooted because my father is dead and my mother doesn’t even know anything about me, right?”

  He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I just… I assumed you’d found something that made you happier down here—the clinic work—I mean.”

  Jo knelt at the side of his chair and clasped the edge of his forearm. “Why aren’t you including you in this?” Zac closed his eyes, and for a moment the tough, bearded mechanic seemed to be hiding a touch of emotion in his own eyes. “You make me happy too, Zachariah. A man I never thought I’d even like—can’ t you see how much it kills me to think of leaving you?”

  He met her eye, and Jo nearly crumbled when his calloused palm caressed one side of her face. “But you’re going to, aren’t you? Just say it, Jo. Call this what it is.”

  “Zac…” He shook his head, and Jo hung hers. “This is so new between us, and we both have lives we can’t simply give up right now. We can always call, and visit each other.”

  He smiled, and the sadness written on his face crushed her heart as if a demolition crew had taken refuge in her ribcage. “Yeah, we can. But for how long? I think instead of dragging out the inevitable it’s better to end things now.”

  The words stung and pummeled her face harder than she thought. Pain harsher than when Emmitt cheated. Jo felt as if she couldn’t gather air, the same as when she’d learned her father had died. “I don’t want that.”

  Zac pressed a kiss to her hand, and rose from his seat. Losing his touch left an icy chill around her body. “Not right now, but later on the back and forth will be too much, Jo.”

  “Why were you okay with me leaving before, but now you aren’t? Or were you planning on breaking up with me if I chose to go back?”

  “I’ve never been okay with you leaving.”

  “You knew I hadn’t decided if I was staying.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So why?” Jo swiped her eyes as a sob hiccupped in the back of her throat. She wanted to force his arms around her, she wanted Zac’s embrace since it seemed as of late it was the only thing that calmed any storm inside. But he leaned against his counter with his arms folded, completely shutting her out. “Why are you ending it now that I’m leaving? I’m trying to find a way to make this work.”

  “Because of him,” Zac said. He hadn’t exactly shouted, Zac was too gentle to shout, but his voice was haggard and raw. “Because he comes and convinces you again that he knows best and you go running along with it like nothing happened. I can’t…I can’t always be competing with him, Jo. And I can’t… be with someone who settles. Who knows, maybe I’d find out ten years, and couple of kids down the road that you settled for me. I’d never make you do that. So I’m freeing you from any guilt or whatever. Go, live the life you want. The only thing I wish is that I knew you were doing it for yourself, and not some guy who’s convinced you that without him you can’t make it.”

  Zac stomped past her, heading toward the side door.

  “I can think on my own. I don’t need Emmitt.”

  He turned and grabbed his truck keys. His eyes filled with more than despair when he glanced across the kitchen. She could practically see the ice sheeting over his face. Zac Dawson was closing her out for good, and it felt like a thousand knives piercing her heart all at once. “Good. Then that answers my question if you’d be settling by staying here too, seems you would if you feel like leaving is what will make you happy. Holding you back isn’t something I’m willing to do. Have a safe flight.”

  “Zac, don’t do this.”

  He sighed and slapped the door frame. “I love you, Jo. When I said those words, I meant them. Sometimes, though, it’s not enough.”

  Zac slipped into the carport, and Jo shuddered when the truck roared to life. Her body trembled, starting in her fingertips and traveling like a buzz of electricity up her arms and across her scalp. She bit back the tears, and ripped her purse off the table. “You love me, but not enough to fight for us!” she shouted at the empty kitchen, but was certain he hadn’t heard.

  Bolting out the front door toward her rental car, the sticky air locked on her wet cheeks like she’d dipped her head in the tide. Fiery taillights of Zac’s truck disappeared down the road, and Jo had the desperate need to chase after him, make him understand she didn’t want this to be the end, but there was a stronger voice inside that told her it was likely too late.

  In the car she gasped sharp puffs of air until her stomach hurt. Punching in the numbers on her phone she called the airline. She was leaving Honeyville, but there was no way she’d be sitting next to Emmitt Baron on any flight.

  She’d leave alone. Without Zac at her side ever again. Her insides finally broke as she drove away through the blur of salty tears.

  ***

  He knew Rafe was watching him, Zac could see it out the corner of his eye. He wrenched a nut, but his hand slipped and he sliced the back of his hand across the tire rim. Cursing, Zac shook his hand and stomped away from the car.

  Zac hadn’t ever been one to get riled up, it just wasn’t him, but for the last ten days he’d been on edge like a bomb about to burst. He kicked a steel table leg, and muttered more curses under his breath, but tried to keep it tame since Mrs. Bowen and her four-year-old were in the front lobby.

  The radio silenced, and he heard most of the work stop when tools clattered to the ground. Rafe came to his side and leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and said nothing. Zac grunted and ran his h
and under cold water at the sink. “What? Is it quitting time already?”

  Rafe shook his head, his expression unchanged.

  The uncomfortable silence itched across Zac’s neck like sandpaper when Rafe stood quiet and stared ahead. With a huff, Zac dried his hand, and inspected the gash across his hand. “You need something, Rafe?”

  “Just wondering how long you’re going to go on pouting so we can all stop walking on eggshells around here.”

  Zac’s mouth tightened, and his teeth clenched tight so the muscles ached in his jaw. “No one asked you to walk on eggshells. We’re here to work, so let’s do that.”

  “You’re like a warden with a whip, not eggshells,” August added from behind the car.

  “No, like a drill sergeant who hates his job,” Rafe said toward his brother with a chuckle. Zac just glared.

  “Oh, I’ve got one,” Andy piped up from the back of the shop. “He’s like celibate in a strip—”

  “Too far, Andy,” Rafe said. “Too far.”

  Zac held up his hands. “You don’t like working here, y’all know where the door is.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Rafe said as he scrubbed his face. “Look man, sorry she left, really. But none of us saw you trying to convince her to stay.”

  Air escaped Zac’s lungs like he’d been sucker punched in the gut. Rafe and August knew about Jo—not from him—from their wives. Hearing Rafe mention Jo came out of left field, and it brought back the night in his kitchen like a pot of boiling acid pouring along his shoulders. “That’s not it.”

  “Yeah, we all believe that.”

  Zac glared at Rafe. They’d been friends for a long time, and always said it straight with each other, but today Zac wished he wouldn’t. “We’re not talking about this.”

  “Maybe you should,” August said as he polished grime off his hands. “You’re miserable man, and we’re the ones who have to deal with you. Now, either go after the girl, or let it go.”

  Zac scoffed. “Not as easy as all that. I’m not chasing someone who doesn’t want to be chased. She wants to do her thing in Boston, great. Do any of you see me in the future leaving the shop and moving up north? And if running that clinic is her dream, do you think there would ever be a good time where she’d give it up to what—come work here as the assistant again? We knew this wasn’t a permanent thing.”