“I want to do this with you, Lennon. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since Georgia called me. Plus, there is a part of me that loves the idea that this will force Georgia out of that rat-infested, smog-congested city she lives in.”
“Says the guy working in a Bond villain-esque lab in the middle of a field full of sheep,” Georgia said, nodding her head in the direction of the window.
Robson laughed. “Ah, but this is God’s country, the motherland.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll take Broadway and an Empire State of mind any day of the week. Once a New Yorker and all that,” Georgia said with a grin. “You belong here, Robson.”
Robson looked toward Lennon. “Alas, as intelligent she is, she is welded to that damn city.”
Georgia laughed. “As Ayn Rand once said, ‘I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline.’ Honestly, every night when I close my curtains, I thank God I was born there.”
“Well, to paraphrase Old Blue Eyes, ‘If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere,’” Robson said. “It was fun to study there, but I’d miss this too much,” he said, pointing out of the window where, despite the rain shower, glorious sunshine beamed down onto rolling hills. “Lennon, I wish you luck in convincing her to ever leave the state.”
A thought had been percolating—one in which Georgia came to live with him in Toronto. She was so freaking successful that she’d land a job at Sick Kids in a heartbeat. But Robson’s words rattled around his head. Had he really expected Georgia to leave New York to come with him? It was something they could discuss, after dinner tonight maybe. Perhaps they could split their time between the two places. On his immediate list of priorities was getting home to Toronto to be with his brothers and work on himself and his relationship with them. He also wanted to get back to the UK for his follow-up as quickly as he could. The sooner he started this process, the quicker he could figure out if it was going to work. New York didn’t even rate in his plans. But Georgia . . . she did. She featured something fierce.
But he was getting ahead of himself. Lennon knew the answer to the question before he even asked it, but he asked it anyway. “There’s no guarantee this is going to work, right?”
Robson shook his head. “There never is, Lennon. But isn’t it worth a shot?”
* * *
“Have I told you how good your ass looks in that dress?” Lennon whispered against Georgia’s neck as he held the door open to the three Michelin star–restaurant Dylan had selected for dinner.
His breath tickled, his words making her achy inside. She turned to him and grinned. “Twice. Once when we were leaving the hotel, and again when I got into the cab.”
Lennon let go of the door and gave their names to the host. He stepped back toward Georgia and placed his hand against her lower back, allowing it to slide until it rested on the curve of her butt. “Yeah, well. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, but every time I see you from the back I get a hard-on, and every time I see you from the front I want to—”
“Monsieur McCartney and Docteur Starr,” the petite woman dressed head to toe in black said with a delightful French lilt. “Welcome. My name is Aurélie. Can I take you through to your table?”
Georgia laughed in relief. She couldn’t help it. Lennon had been in a thoughtful mood since their appointment. On the ninety-minute drive from Oxford back to London, she’d asked if he’d wanted to talk, but he’d told her he just needed some time to process everything he’d seen and heard. When they made it back to their hotel, she’d suggested a walk around the Tower of London, but he’d asked if she’d simply lie with him on the bed where a combination of jet lag and excitement proceeded to knock them both on their asses. In fact, Dylan and Olivia were lucky they had made it to the restaurant at all. If housekeeping hadn’t knocked on the door to ask if they wanted turndown service, they’d both still be fast asleep under the soft-as-silk Egyptian cotton sheets.
“Wait until we get home, and I am so doing the thing to your front I was going to tell you about, Docteur,” he whispered as they followed behind the host.
She caught Lennon wince as he took in the restaurant. A silver-service, three-Michelin-star sea of beige. Beige table linens, beige chairs. Sedate couples muttered in low tones as soft jazz did little to cover the clanging of cutlery.
“Tell me again why we couldn’t just throw on jeans and go grab some fantastic Chinese on Gerrard Street,” he muttered as their host pulled her chair out of their corner table.
“Thank you,” she said to the host, as Aurélie slid the chair beneath her as she sat. Lennon pulled out his own and sat down. The host handed them the menus and left without another word. “We are here because Dylan picked it.”
Lennon put the menu down and reached for hand. “He isn’t some old boyfriend as well, is he? Because I’d hate to have to kick his ass before I get to know him.”
His eyes told her he wasn’t serious. “He isn’t. And don’t go kicking anybody’s ass if you want to do whatever dirty thing you were thinking about when we get back to the hotel.”
He grinned at her and reached into his bag, removing his non-slip mat and knork. “Now I’m totally hard,” he mouthed.
She was just about to rebuke him when hands suddenly appeared on her shoulders. “And how is my favorite Yank?” Dylan said, his distinguished accent giving him away.
Georgia stood and hugged her friend as he kissed first her left and then her right cheek. “How have you been, Dylan?” she asked.
“Better for seeing you.”
Once introductions were over and food and drink ordered, Dylan clasped his hands under his chin and challenged her. “So, can I try one last time to get you to consider moving to London?”
Georgia smiled and shook her head. “I knew calling you before I left wasn’t going to be the end of it.”
“I thought the two of you agreed to not discuss this,” Olivia said playfully. She looked at Georgia. “And I knew Dylan wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“What?” Dylan asked, throwing his hands up in the air. “I want you to come join us, and it’s a bloody good offer. I guess I just needed to look you in the eye and ask one last time.”
She looked over to Lennon, and it dawned on her that she’d never told him about the offer. Not because she was hiding anything, but because she seriously hadn’t considered it beyond being initially flattered and briefly distracted by the salary and the perks. “Dylan is desperate for me to join him in England. But I refused.”
“It’s going to take a crow bar or a coffin to get you out of that rat-infested city,” Dylan said. She smiled politely but noticed that Lennon didn’t laugh at the joke.
“I don’t blame you,” said Olivia. “New York is a fabulous city. Do you live in Manhattan, Lennon?”
Lennon didn’t answer. The infernal internal monologue was going on in that head of his. She could tell. Although she had no idea precisely what he was thinking.
As if suddenly realizing everyone at the table was looking at him, he broke eye contact with her and shook his head. “Temporarily, yes,” he said. “But home is Toronto.”
“We love Toronto, don’t we?” Dylan said excitedly. “We’re thinking about doing a month-long cross-Canada trip for our honeymoon. Starting on Vancouver Island and making our way east. Do you have any ideas?”
Over dinner, Georgia sat back in her chair and listened to Lennon share details of places from the west coast to the east. From hiking the rugged trails in Tombstone Park in the Yukon and walking the four - hundred - and - sixty - foot - long Capilano Suspension Bridge in British Columbia to grabbing fresh lobster rolls at Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia to viewing icebergs along Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula.
She could hear the wistful tone in Lennon’s voice. It told her he needed to be home. And the idea that he would leave New York cut her in half.
As they enjoyed their meal, Dylan and Olivia made notes and peppered him with questions, and she allowed
herself to wonder, just for a moment, what it would be like to simply give up her job for a little while and travel with Lennon. Let him show her all the wonderful places he was talking about. They could rent an RV, and as much as she despised the winter, the idea of ice-skating along the Rideau Canal right through the middle of Ottawa sounded romantic.
But she couldn’t. . . . Could she? What would happen to her career trajectory? What would happen to her tenure? She was well along on the path to promotion.
But even if she could find a way around those things, her patients needed her. They relied on her. In some cases, she was just starting the journey with them on their multi-surgery path to recovery. She was only halfway through treating some of them, young children she’d worked hard to gain trust with. How on earth was she meant to bail? What words could she use to a parent who trusted her with the life of their child that she was leaving them in someone else’s care because she’d fallen in love? It was selfish of her to even consider it.
Her heart tumbled in her chest, missing beats as it fell. She couldn’t walk away from what she’d built. She couldn’t walk away from her family legacy, as much as she hated her father right now. A piece of her wanted to stay. How could she leave behind the legacy of being one of the Starrs of New York or give up the condo her grandfather left her? The connection she had to the only family member who had ever really loved her was baked into the four walls. Her grandfather had known it would alienate her father when he’d left it to her but he’d done it anyway, to give her the incredible opportunity to live there. But more than that, he’d done it to show he was there for her, even when her only family wasn’t, and that his love for her would continue long after he was gone. Would he be disappointed if she sold it to her father after all?
The reality of what stood between them hit her.
She did her best to put on her game face. To smile and interject when she needed to. To carry the conversation. When the restaurant began to empty, Dylan stood to help Olivia with her jacket. She had a vague recollection of standing to kiss them good-bye, of Lennon putting his things away in his bag, of him leading her by the hand into a taxi—but only half of her was there.
She felt raw inside. The weight of everything she’d built on one side of her internal scale vied with the weight of everything she’d been building with Lennon on the other.
They were both quiet in the cab to the hotel, and it was only when the door to the hotel room clicked shut that Lennon spoke. “You aren’t going to come with me when I go to the UK, are you?” he asked quietly as he slipped out of his jacket.
Tears burned the back of her throat, and she swallowed hard. Carefully, she pulled off the thick bangle she’d worn and placed in on the dressing table. They could do the distance thing, at least for a while. “I can’t just leave my job, but I’ll take my vacation around times when you need me there. And you could fly back to New York in between if you can.”
“And then what?” Lennon asked, unbuttoning his shirt, getting frustrated when he couldn’t unbutton the cuff she’d fastened for him earlier.
She reached forward and took his hand. Gently, she unfastened it. “What do you mean, and then what?”
“My band is in Toronto. If this works, I need to be with them. To write, to record. My home is there.”
“My home is in New York.”
Lennon sat down on the bed and put his head in his hand. “I’ve spent the last two months assuming I wouldn’t get my career back, and today I found the tiniest reason to hope that I’ll still be able to play, perhaps just as good as I had. I can’t give up hope of that again.”
Her heart splintered into pieces. “My career,” she said hoarsely. “Everything I’ve worked for is in New York.”
When he looked up, his eyes were red-ringed, a look of hopelessness in them. “We have a fucking amazing children’s hospital in Toronto. You could go to work there. You’d be incredible. It’s a teaching hospital too. Imagine how much impact you could have there.”
Sick Kids was a great hospital with a phenomenal reputation, but she had her team, and her papers, and her patients in New York.
“But you aren’t going to consider it, are you?” Lennon said as he shook his head. Defeat etched his features, echoed in the slump of his shoulders. “I can’t do what I do with my band in another country, even if I make it through all this, even if the prosthetic is a success, even if all the rehabilitation works.”
“Lennon, do we need to do this now? Can we sleep on it?”
He stood and reached for her. “Will any of it look different in the morning if we do?” Lennon asked, slowly lowering the zipper of her dress.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. How could it?
Lennon nudged her dress down her body, but there was nothing sexual about the move. It was tender. Reverent even. He stripped her, held her hand, and guided her to the bed. Once she was under the covers, she fought the tears that were threatening to fall. She wanted to fight. To rage at him to stay with her. To not leave her. He’d once said she was a burst of sun through his rain cloud, but he hadn’t understood how much color he’d brought to her life. But she knew he was just beginning to fix himself, and it was wrong to demand he stay with her for her own sake instead of letting him go where he needed to.
Yet she couldn’t imagine leaving her home or her country.
He kicked off his shoes and slipped off his pants and underwear. After turning off the lights, he crawled in beside her.
When he pulled her tightly to his chest, she let the first sob go.
“Never in a million years did I think I would ever get to say I love you to someone, Georgia. Thank you for letting it be you, even if it wasn’t enough.”
At his words, the damn burst as her tears, and his, fell.
Not once that night did he let her go.
* * *
As the private jet approached New York, Georgia frantically searched for the feeling she usually had when she arrived home. The happiness she felt at her first sight of the sun reflecting off the Hudson, the excitement she still felt after all those years if the plane’s route took them within view of the Statue of Liberty, the pride she felt at the sight of the Freedom Tower standing strong in the skyline, the satisfaction she got from returning to the hospital. But none of them came.
There was only a pit in her stomach, and nothing could fill it.
Lennon had retreated back inside himself. Currently, he sat on the opposite side of the jet, scribbling in his notebook. Occasionally he’d scratch a line through something furiously and then slam the book closed before looking out of the window. But he wouldn’t talk to her. And she knew why.
Because she was angry, too. And heartbroken. It was a cycle she had gone through twenty-seven times over on the seven-hour flight from London. A part of her was furious that he just expected her to give up her life and move to Toronto. After all, she was the one who had her shit together. She had her own large apartment, a successful career, an income. She didn’t need anything from him, and it wasn’t his place to tell her to give up what she did have for him. But then she’d think of what her life would be without him in it. And less selfishly, she’d think of him. Of what he needed. It was clear that he needed to go home to that incredible group of men who thought of him as their brother. To those two wonderful women who thought of him as a son.
To the people who loved him. Loved him unconditionally with their whole hearts. And there were so many more of them than there was of her.
It wasn’t like she didn’t know how hard it was to exist without anybody who truly cared for you. If she lost her arm in an accident, her father would only care about what it meant to the family legacy. She didn’t want that for Lennon, even if it meant she’d lose the only person she did have . . . him. He deserved to be surrounded by love in every facet of his life.
In Toronto, he could learn to thrive.
Without her.
Tears stung the back of her eyes as she tried not to cry
again. There was no middle ground, there was no halfway point, there was no place to compromise. One of them would have to sacrifice what they loved.
The pilot announced that they’d be landing shortly and that they needed to secure their seat belts for landing. Georgia looked out of the window, willing it to feel like home, but as the wheels hit the tarmac, nothing had ever felt so foreign.
In a daze, Georgia disembarked and followed Lennon through the terminal. Everything felt uncoordinated, sluggish. It wasn’t until he got off on his floor an hour later that she snapped out of it and followed him into the hallway.
“Is this it?” she asked, allowing the anger to flow. “Is this how it ends? In a fucking hallway?”
Lennon turned and looked at her stone-faced. His eyes were cold and narrowed the way they’d been the first day she’d seen him at the hospital when he’d told her to fuck off. He shook his head. “What do you want me to say, Gia?” He shrugged his shoulders in a gesture that told her everything she needed to know. “In a hallway, on a plane, in my apartment, it all ends the same way, doesn’t it? We’re at an impasse.”
“It doesn’t mean that this has to be over, does it?” she asked, clinging to hope, but knowing the answer before Lennon spoke.
When he turned his gaze to hers, she saw a sadness she was certain was reflected in her own eyes. “I get why it’s hard for you leave, Gia. I really do. Your work is your life. Your grandfather was your everything. It’s the reason why I want to go back home. Because I realized that my work and my brothers are everything to me.”
“But it will be a while before you can play again. Why can’t you stay here with me and . . .”
“And what? Try to recover in a city I don’t belong in? I’m homesick here. That skyline you love so much is not mine. I get that Toronto might not be yours, but couldn’t you at least try it like I have New York? And I know I am asking you to move too, but all it would take is to change the location of the thing you love doing. If I stay here, I have to give up my career because my band is physically in another country. I wish you could see the way we write music together to understand that I need to be in the same room as them. And I need treatment on the other side of the world, and I can’t do all of that alone. In fact, for the first time in my life, I realize I don’t have to do all of that alone. So, it fucking hurts me that you won’t even consider moving. And it is killing me inside that I thought you would be the one to stand by me and help me through.”
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