by Emily Childs
“The guy who—” Zac glances at me. “Who’s this guy?” I mouth Emmitt and Zac’s face hardens.
“Emmitt Baron.” Emmitt says pompously.
“Ah,” Zac says. I curl my hand around his wrist, sure that Emmitt can see, but I don’t need a brawl or something ridiculously cavemanish right now. “And what brings you down here?”
Emmitt narrows his gaze at me. “Seems you two got on all right.”
My face heats. “We’re fine, Emmitt. Maybe you ought to go now.”
“Wait,” Zac interrupts, and I tighten my hold on his wrist as a warning. “What’s going on? You seem upset, Jo.”
“I’m fine.”
Emmitt scowls and maneuvers in a way that he ends up nearly between me and Zac. I don’t like it, and Zac hates it even more. “This is yours Jo,” Emmitt says. “If and when you’re ready. I know you don’t trust me. I know you’re mad. But I hope you’ll give this a chance.”
Zac’s face is twisted in pure fury.
“There is a new clinic,” I hurry and catch him up. “They want me to help be one of the founders, an investor or something. Emmitt came here to tell me about the opportunity.”
Emmitt folds his arms over his chest and sneers at Zac. “Always been her dream, owning a family practice.”
Zac faces me. “Is that true?”
I nod mildly, tears starting to burn behind my eyes. “I wanted to talk with you.”
“You don’t need to discuss this with some guy—” Emmitt starts, but I take Zac’s elbow and pull him away, cutting off Emmitt’s condescension.
“Zac, ignore him,” I mutter.
“Jo, what’s happening? Is there an opportunity for you in New York?”
I roll my bottom lip over my teeth. “I don’t know. It sounds like it. I guess the overseeing physician really wants me in the deal. Kind of a make-it-or-break-it thing.”
“Do you have money to invest in a clinic like this? I don’t know a lot about this sort of thing, but I know the Gardener’s dumped a ton into this place.”
“I don’t,” I say. “But I guess . . . Emmitt has a joint account . . . I don’t know, I just learned about it too.”
“It’s true.” I roll my eyes when Emmitt interrupts, looking smug. He holds out a plane ticket. “This is yours, Jo. As I said, a few signatures and you’re on the letterhead. Before I go, I do have a few questions, though, about the real reason you ended things between—”
“Ugh, go, Emmitt.” I don’t like what he’s insinuating, like I fooled around behind his back.
He grins in a way that tells me he’s won something. “Fine. We’ll talk later and hash out our differences.” Emmitt tilts his head to Zac. “We have such a long history and all.”
Zac clenches his fists, but I squeeze his arm, hoping he knows I’m standing here with him. No one else.
Emmitt begs me to call him, to consider this offer once more before he slips into the car and drives away. I’m too stunned to move, but then, Zac doesn’t either. His jaw pulses and I can only guess what all is going on inside his head.
I slip my fingers into his and he startles. “Zac, let’s go. We should talk.”
He nods and opens the door for me, no teasing about chivalry, not a word as he hops behind the wheel. My heart squeezes painfully in my chest. How do I do this? Make a choice between a lifelong dream and the man I’ve barely had a chance to fall in love with?
After a silent drive, Zac parks in front of the motel and I wish we were at his house, laughing at his kitchen table, holding each other on the couch. Something. But it’s like he’s preparing for me to kick him to the curb, so he doesn’t want to be anywhere but right here where I sleep at night. My stomach feels sick because of it all.
“So, tell me what he said,” Zac finally says after a stretched silence.
With a deep breath, I tell him everything. All about how I used to talk about owning my own clinic as a doctor, then how I would dream of teaming up with Emmitt someday. How I’ve loved every second working at the Gardener’s clinic and know that setting is where I need to be. I tell him everything. I start to cry because I can see the shadow pass over his face. I can tell how Zac wants me to be everything, but how he fears the same as I do. Is this where we end? Where do we go from here?
When it feels as though the truck might fold in on itself from our somber quiet, Zac shifts in his seat and takes my hand. “So what are you going to do, Jo?”
I try to smile, but there isn’t any umph behind it. It takes me three tries before I can finally get the words to come out. “I don’t know.”
Zac leans forward, his hands on the steering wheel. “Just tell me,” he says slowly. “Are you planning on going back with him?”
“Zac, I care about you—”
“Care about me?” He says, and I wish I could snatch the words back. “Because last I thought, you said you loved me.”
“I do,” I insist. My voice breaks like weak glass. The tears fall, and I don’t try to stop them. “I do, Zac. It’s just this is an opportunity I’ve wanted my entire life.”
“To run a heart clinic?”
“I told you 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, and I’m required to have a supervising physician, and—”
“I understand,” Zac says. “I wasn’t meaning the clinic exactly. I was asking you if you were going to get back with him.”
“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 and over how sorry he was.”
I clamp my teeth to the breaking point, a little annoyed. “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 scoffed bitterly. “Oh, I don’t know, Josephine. I sort of thought there was a little more than a clinic keeping you down here.”
My stomach turns. Everything feels like it is slipping through my fingers. The opportunity of a lifetime, but worse, the man I want to spend that lifetime with. “Would you come with me?”
Zac tilts 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 New York?”
Zac rakes his fingers through his hair, then steeples them in front of his mouth. “I’ve got my entire family here, my business.”
I bite back my tears, understanding how it hurts him too. The idea that other things might be more important than each other. Now we both got a taste of that bitter pill. “But my life is easily uprooted because my father is dead and my mother doesn’t even know anything about me, right?”
He shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean. I just assumed you’d found something that made you happier down here—the clinic work—I mean.”
I close my eyes and brush my fingertips across his jawline. He leans into my touch. “Why can’t you say I found you? Not the clinic, Zac. You.” He closes his eyes and presses my fingertips to his lips. I shudder beneath his touch. “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 meets my eyes, and I nearly break when his calloused palm cups one side of my face. “But you’re going to, aren’t you? Just say it, Jo. Call this what it is.”
“Zac.” I don’t know how to get the words out. “This is so new between us, and we both have lives we can’t give up right now. We can always call and visit each other.”
He smiles, and the sadness is written on his face. “Yeah, we can. But for how long? I think instead of dragging out the inevitable it’s better to end things now.”
The words sting. I feel like I can’t get enough air, the same tight, suffocating sensation I had when my dad died. “I don’t want t
hat.”
“Not right now, but later the back and forth will be too much, Jo.” He releases me and starts the truck. Like an invitation for me to get out. I wish the ground would swallow me whole.
“Why were you okay with me leaving before, but now you aren’t?” I ask. “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? 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 says, voice raised. Not a shout, really, Zac is too gentle to shout, but his voice is haggard. Raw. “Because he comes and convinces you again that he knows best and you go running along like nothing happened.”
“Zac, this is so different than being with Emmitt romantically.”
“Not to me. I feel like we’re talking about it, but you’ve already made your choice. And he’ll be there every day telling you how he’s sorry, how you belong together. How you fit better than with a guy like me. I can’t . . . I can’t always be competing with him, Jo. And I can’t be with someone who settles.”
My fists ball over my knees, and I cry now because I’m so angry I could scream. “Give me some credit, Zachariah. I have a backbone.”
“I know,” he says softly. “But if you don’t go, you’ll always wonder, right? If you don’t go, then you might settle for me. I don’t want to find out in ten years, a couple of kids later, that you wished you had a different life. The same as I don’t want you going back to him unless it makes you deliriously happy. That’s all I want. And I can’t help but feeling like I don’t fit in that plan.”
“I can think on my own. I don’t need Emmitt or anyone else telling me what’s good for me. But do you know what hurts the most, Zac? How easy you’re giving this up. What? Is this your way out? The sentence is over, so back to the old life now?”
He faced the window, pensive and entirely turned away from me. He is closing me out, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. “Holding you back isn’t something I’m willing to do, and I think you’ve already made your choice on what will make you happy. Have a safe flight, Jo.”
“Zac, don’t do this.”
He slaps the steering wheel, causing me to jump. “I love you, Jo. When I said those words, I meant them. Sometimes, though, it’s not enough.”
He may as well have slapped me. I open the door to the truck, and glance over my shoulder, tears dripping over my lips. “You love me,” I say in a shaky voice. “But not enough to fight for us. I never thought you’d be one to give up at the first bump in the road.”
I run then. As fast as I can I bolt for the motel room. A hopeful piece of me believes Zac might chase after me. Might kiss me and promise we’ll make this work, that we’ll figure it out together. But my hope shatters when his headlights ignite my room in harsh white light, and the fiery beams of his taillights are the last things I see before I bury my face in the pillows and cry until I fall asleep.
23
Zac
I know Rafe is watching me. He’d been doing it all morning, and I’ve avoided him until now. He’s stands maybe a foot away, expectant, like I might pour my whole soul out right here in the shop. I twist my wrench with too much umph instead. I’m not one to get riled up, but for the last week I’ve been on edge, like a bomb about to burst. I kick a steel table leg on accident, then mutter a slew of curses under my breath, trying to keep it tame since there is a woman with her little kid in the front lobby.
The radio silences and most of the work stops. It’s eerie when the shop goes quiet. Too big and too echoey. Rafe is at my side again, arms folded, but he says nothing.
I roll my eyes with a grunt. “What Rafe? Is it quitting time, or something?”
Rafe shakes his head, silent, surly, unchanged.
The back of my neck prickles like sandpaper. With a huff, I wash my hands and dry them before I go on. “You need something then?”
Rafe shrugged. “Just wondering how long you’re going to go on pouting so we can all stop walking on eggshells around here.”
“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 adds from behind the car.
“No, like a drill sergeant who hates his job,” Rafe says toward his brother with a chuckle. I glare at them both.
“Oh, I’ve got one,” Andy pipes up from the back of the shop. “He’s like a—”
“Too far, Andy,” Rafe says.
“You didn’t even let me finish.”
“Doesn’t matter,” August says. “It’ll be too far.”
Normally, I’d laugh, but I toss my hands up in frustration. “You don’t like working here, y’all know where the door is.”
“That’s it,” Rafe snaps. “Look man, sorry she left. Really, I am. But none of us saw you trying to convince her to stay.”
Air escapes my lungs like I’ve been sucker punched. Of course, August and Rafe know everything that went down with Jo. Not from me, but from their wives. I thought I’d be glad to know Jo still talks to the ladies, but I don’t. She’s not talking to me. Then again, I’m not really talking to her. Maybe I’m afraid to. Maybe I’m too angry. Maybe I know it’ll hurt too bad because I let her go.
Still, I don’t want to talk about it. I clear my throat and turn away. “That’s not it.”
“Yeah, we all believe that.”
I glare at Rafe. We’ve been friends a long time, and we talk straight with each other, but today I wish he wouldn’t. “We’re not talking about this.”
“Maybe you should,” August says. “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.”
I scoff. “I’m not chasing someone who doesn’t want to be chased. She wants to do her thing in New York, 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.”
“She didn’t want to leave broken up, Zac,” Rafe says. “You keep saying it wasn’t permanent, but maybe it could have been. But not with how you left it. Trust me, it’s all Olive’s been talking about.”
“Let it go, guys.” I stomp back to the half-finished tire and crouch.
“Then you let it go.”
Everyone stops. I’m a little stunned, honestly.
Mouse stands and wipes his hands on his jumpsuit, eyes on me. The man who never speaks wears a pinched face, and storms around to my side of the car. “You move on and we’ll all move on. But you’re not letting it all go, so I reckon that means there’s something not sitting right. Fix it, or let it go, and live with your choices. Or I swear by all that’s holy, if I’m asked to watch you mope around for another day, I’m gonna get that mama of yours in here to set you straight—that or cash in all my vacation days. Now, can we stop the lady-talk and get back to work?”
August laughs and claps Mouse on the shoulder before the grump disappears beneath his stand, back at it like nothing happened.
I shake my head. It might seem simple to these guys, but not one of them had been there that night. What sort of guy asks a woman to give up her life’s pursuit? Dot confirmed the clinic would be closing at the end of the month, so that would leave Jo doing another job she didn’t love in a new city, new people, and a relationship that had barely got off the ground.
Even with Mouse’s rant, Rafe hasn’t budged. I stare at him, and let out a long, annoyed sigh. “I can’t just fly up there and beg her to come back.”
“You can, but you won’t.”
“Flip the tables, would you ask Olive to give it all up?”
“I did,” Rafe mutters, eyes flashing
with a bit of his temper. “You know that. Olive was at risk of losing her inheritance, family, friends, all because she wanted to marry me. How did it work out for us?”
I close my eyes. “Fine, bad example, but Ollie’s from here. Jo, isn’t.”
“You’re going to let a few states keep you from at least telling her how you feel? Look, Zac, I’ve known you for a long time, and that woman changed you. In a good way. I don’t know if it’ll work out, but I’d think less of you if you didn’t at least try. Seems you gave her up pretty easy.”
“I’m not going to let her settle for something she doesn’t want.”
“Yeah, you sound a lot like I did. Take some advice from someone who almost lost the girl too, don’t pretend to make decisions for them. Maybe put it all out there and let Jo decide what’s best for her without you thinking you know it all. Hey, if you decide to go for it, put me in charge of the shop—August turns into a dictator when you’re gone.”
Rafe offers a half-grin, then finally returns to work. I try to mull everything over in my head while I work, but it’s as though my functioning brain is shut off. Jo’s smile, those bright, amethyst eyes keep spinning until my world tilts and is so backward I want to throw something.
I slap the hood of the car and slam my toolbox shut. “I’m taking a day or two off.”
August shoots a fist in the air but doesn’t look up. “Good. About time. Go visit the Statue of Liberty for me. Brin is obsessed with princesses and she’ll love the crown.”
Rafe watches me with a knowing look. I roll my eyes and snatch my keys. “Rafe’s going to be in charge.”
“What?” August shouts, then moans. “No way.”
Rafe folds his arms with a smug smile. A laugh breaks from my throat. It’s been a long time since I laughed, at least it feels like an eternity.
“Deal with it, Aug,” I say. “I’ll be back.”
24
Jo