by Jordan, Skye
Dylan.
A melancholy sweetness invaded her heart. Emma leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb of the master bedroom and exhaled. Tension melted from her muscles. This had been a big job. Not only had Dylan followed through on his promise, but he’d done it while dealing with what she knew had to be chronic pain.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and scrolled to one of Dylan’s text messages. She thought about what she wanted to say, then took a deep breath and dialed. As the phone rang, she wandered to a window and looked out into the dark yard.
His voicemail message was professional, his voice deliciously deep. When the recorder clicked on, Emma said, “Hey, it’s me. Emma, I mean. I just saw the house and…God, I can’t even imagine how much work you put into this place. Thank you. I appreciate you following through.”
She disconnected, and her shoulders slumped. She leaned her forehead against the window and let out a deep breath.
“You’re welcome.”
Emma jumped and spun, a hand against her chest. Dylan stood in the doorway, arms crossed, one shoulder on the jamb. “Jesus.” She closed her eyes and exhaled hard. “You know I hate that.”
“I heard you talking. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Emma looked him up and down. He wore black jeans and a gray Henley, the soft fabric falling over his strong chest, against a flat abdomen. “How do you feel?”
He tipped his head this way and that. “Little stiff. Little sore.”
“Have you been—”
“Stretching. Yes.”
She nodded. Thought about moving into the main part of the house, but he was blocking the door. He’d reach for her if she tried to pass, and she was damn sure she didn’t have what it would take to resist him.
“Just have sex with him and get it over with.” Maizey’s words turned her mind in the wrong direction, and Emma rubbed closed eyes with a moan.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Just a rough shift.”
He tilted his head toward the living room. “Come tell me about it. I brought food.”
“Food?”
“I was going to start demolition tonight.”
Her brows shot up. “Demolition?”
“It’s barbecue from Firefly. Plenty enough for both of us. He held his hand out to her. “Come on.”
Her stomach liked the idea of barbecue. She looked at his hand for a long moment before sliding her palm into his. It was warm and strong and calloused, and as she watched his fingers close around hers, she ached to erase the last eight years from her heart.
He pulled her into him and wrapped his arm around her waist. Slid the backs of his fingers across her cheek before running his hand down her hair. “I’ve missed you this week.”
Then he pulled her close and kissed her forehead.
It was all so sweet, it hurt. “I thought you would have given up by now.”
“I’m never giving up,” he murmured against her forehead. “Never again.”
Oh, how easy it was to say the words.
She followed him into the main living area and found a roll of blueprints on the counter and a bunch of tools filling a duffel just outside the kitchen door.
He released her hand to pull food from a takeout bag. “I’ve got ribs and brisket and cornbread—”
“What’s this about demolition?”
He set all the food on the floor, and Emma noticed that stiffness he’d admitted to. “What are you doing?”
He moved back down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Be right back.”
She dragged off her jacket and laid it across the bar. Then Dylan was back with cushions, a sleeping bag, and a bottle of wine.
“Where’d you get those?” she asked.
“The front porch and a closet.” He tossed the cushions down near a wall in the living room, and Emma recognized the faded floral fabric as part of a sofa Shelley had once had on the deck. “Decided to keep them so I’d have somewhere to sit when I took a break. Found a few other things I kept for you. Photo albums, letters, knickknacks. I’ll show you later.”
He unzipped the sleeping bag and tossed it across the dirty cushions. Then he grabbed the plans from the counter before sitting down.
Emma sat next to him, legs stretched out, her back against the wall.
He pulled out his key ring and used a penknife to open the wine, then passed it to Emma. “She had a whole case of red in the coat closet. No glasses, but I happen to know you do just fine straight from the bottle.”
She hadn’t drunk straight from the bottle since she was nineteen. The drinking age in Germany was just sixteen, so she and Dylan had done their share of experimentation. “Remember our first bottle?”
His eyes went soft. “One of the best nights of my life.”
They’d been seventeen when they’d crept to the top of one of the buildings on base and lay on their backs, gazing at the stars, dreaming of their future as they drained the bottle.
Only this wasn’t what either of them had dreamed of. And most definitely not what she’d signed up for.
She tilted the bottle back and took a long drink. It was a smooth red blend that went down easily.
“What made your day so rough?” Dylan asked while putting food on a plate for her.
Emma’s mind drifted back over the early morning gore of a car versus pedestrian. Then jumped to the infant that had reminded her too much of Cooper. “Two deaths. Two unnecessary, senseless deaths. One just a baby.”
Dylan turned his undivided attention on her. His gaze was dark, his expression grave. “It’s all senseless, isn’t it? I’ve seen so much senseless death, I’m ashamed to say I became at least partially numb to it. It took coming home to realize that.”
Emma swore some of his internal scars floated so close to the surface, she could see them through his skin. “I can only imagine.”
“What happened to the baby? SIDS?”
“No.” She took a deep drink of the wine. “His stepfather was high on meth, got pissed he was crying, and shook him. He was brain dead by the time he reached the ER. The mother was so high, she almost overdosed. She was in ICU at a different hospital. They’re harvesting the baby’s organs tonight.”
Dylan lost some color.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I forget that not everyone can talk about this kind of thing.”
“I can.” He curled his hand around one of hers. “It’s just a shock to hear a child died at the hands of someone who should have been caring for him. I’m more used to the news of babies crushed in the rubble from a bomb.”
Now some of Emma’s color drained, and her face turned cold. “I wish…”
She sucked back the useless words, averted her gaze, and shook her head.
“You wish what?”
She lifted a shoulder and used her toes to push off her running shoes. With her gaze on her crossed ankles, she admitted her deepest hurt. “There’s no good way to experience death, but I wish I could have been there with you. For you. The way it was supposed to be. You can’t continually experience that kind of tragedy and not be affected by it. You need someone to talk to. Someone who understands.”
“Did Liam do that for you?”
She cut a look at him, surprised he’d brought Liam up. When she found him compassionate and sincerely interested, she thought about it a second. “No. He’s more matter-of-fact about death. He accepts it as a part of the equation, the profession. I’ve never been able to do that. I take every loss—no matter how inevitable—personally.”
This was the first time she’d realized the differences in how she and Liam looked at death, and she wondered if their varied outlooks had kept her from bonding with him more completely.
“Which, I have no doubt, makes you an incredible doctor. But it’s also always made me worry about you in the medical field. Especially in emergency medicine. After what I experienced overseas, I worried over how the death of patients would affect you. You’ve always been so compassi
onate. So sensitive. But I guess I should have known you’d find a way to handle it. You’ve always been able to handle anything.”
“Not anything.” Not Dylan leaving her. Not the end of their marriage. “But most. A friend of mine wants me to go on a humanitarian mission in Honduras with her.”
“Really. For how long?”
“At least a month, maybe more. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Isn’t your residency over soon?”
“Three weeks.”
“And you don’t have a job lined up?”
“I’ve had a few offers. I’ll probably go with Vanderbilt.”
“Probably? I’m surprised you’d wait until the last minute to make plans for the future. The Emma I knew had a minimum of ten years planned out ahead of time.”
“I’m not the girl you left behind. And Liam was offered a job at Johns Hopkins, so I wasn’t giving local jobs serious consideration. Until now.”
“Does your friend already live in Honduras, or would you be going with an organization?”
“An organization.”
“And Vanderbilt will give you the time?”
“Maizey said they would. She’s taking a position as a radiologist there, and they gave her the time.”
“Maizey? Maizey Eckert?”
“Yep.”
A slow smile crept across his face. “Your childhood girlfriend is a doctor? And you’re working together?”
“Yep.”
“How cool is that?”
“Very.”
“Haven’t seen her since we were, like, eighteen and you were Facetiming her. How is she?”
“Really good.”
“It’s really great you two stayed in touch.”
“She’s always been there for me.” She exhaled and pulled her hand from his, drew her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them. The intensity of his focus and pointed questions made Emma uncomfortable. “My dreams may have stalled, but they still exist. Honduras is a test run.”
“For what?”
“A more permanent situation.”
“Wait, what?”
“This shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s always been my dream. You did it, why can’t I?”
“You can, of course, I just mean…I’m home now.”
He said that like he expected it to mean something to her. “So what? We both know you won’t stay here.”
“Actually, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I like having Gypsy and Miranda close. Gypsy won’t admit it, but she really needs help with the baby. And you’re here. More and more I feel like this may be is the next chapter of my life. Here, with all the people I love.”
His sidelong reference to loving her hooked into her pain and sparked anger. Part of her ached to embrace this information. But she couldn’t just ignore everything he’d forced her to sacrifice.
“Good for you,” she told him. “But I don’t let your decisions impact my life anymore. I’m going.”
He dropped his head back against the wall, exhaled, and stared at the ceiling.
She didn’t want to care what he was thinking, but she did. “What?”
He righted his head and met her gaze. “There are a lot of places that are safe right now, Honduras being one. But there are also a lot of places that aren’t safe. And even many of the safe places can turn hostile overnight. I’ve seen my share of humanitarian workers kidnapped and killed, including doctors. And women are especially vulnerable.”
She’d heard the same. She kept up on news in developing nations, but she also realized no amount of news coverage could accurately gauge a situation like being there.
“And?” she prodded.
“Look, you may see your share of trauma in the ER, but it doesn’t begin to give you a taste of the scale of suffering and death on a daily basis in the places I’ve been. It’s trauma and heartbreak on a whole different, more senseless scope. For every person who comes into an ER here, there will be a hundred who need emergency care in any of two dozen different countries I can think of. Countries you would most likely end up in because they have the fewest resources and the greatest need. And if you’re in a place with active conflict, you’re going to see dismemberment and death on an entirely different scale than you do here.”
The look on his face told Emma far more than his words. She saw disillusionment and helplessness. Grief and pain.
“Beyond that, even if you could save a life, you’re often only prolonging the suffering that follows with infections, disability, mental instability. There is no medical or social infrastructure to support the injured or sick with the necessary ongoing care.”
“Are you saying you don’t think I could handle it?”
“Of course not. I know you’re strong and smart and driven enough to handle anything. I’m saying it would change you. Harden you. It has to. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be human.”
“How has it changed you?”
“Oh jeez.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So many ways. Some I didn’t even realize until I came home.”
She waited, letting him think about how to explain it.
“Americans aren’t welcomed overseas the way they once were. There’s a lot of hatred out there—over our avoidance of or involvement in foreign affairs and conflicts, jealousy over how privileged we are, the skewed impressions people have developed through a variety of sources. But we sure as shit aren’t anyone’s saviors the way you and I dreamed we’d be one day.
“I’ve become numb to a degree. Overseas, there are so many people who are sick or hurt or killed that life is devalued out of the sheer necessity to keep your mental faculties intact. Here, one person dying is a tragedy. There, death tolls have to mount toward high double digits to grab local attention. Even if an incident with a high body count reaches the US news, it would only warrant a two-minute dialogue on the local news. There is so much suffering, you have to block it, or you wouldn’t be able to function. We’re talking about the senseless, traumatic death of utterly innocent people just trying to survive day to day. And so many of those victims are women and children.”
Emma’s chest hurt. The muscles across her shoulders knotted.
“I’ve lost a lot of people over the years,” he said. “Colleagues, acquaintances, friends. And I’ve witnessed so much brutality and death, and the agony they leave behind. It made me realize how much I have here. How lucky I’ve been and how I’ve taken everything for granted. I guess, my point is that it’s hell. Disheartening misery. And it hurts. Physically, mentally, emotionally, it hurts. Bad. I just…” He met her gaze. “You’ve already been through so much. I guess I just don’t like the idea of you suffering anymore.”
After losing the baby earlier, she couldn’t imagine the pain of the scenario he painted. “Why did you stay so long?”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I guess. No other purpose in my life. My dad was dead. You were gone. I’d distanced myself from my sisters. The longer I stayed, the harder it was to come back. A big part of me didn’t feel like I deserved to come home. I’d been given the gifts of being born American and finding an amazing wife, but I squandered them. I neglected or hurt the people I loved the most.” He shrugged. “I guess I saw staying overseas as a sort of penance.”
She reached over and stroked his jaw. He met her eyes, a soft look in his. “Even I find that harsh, and I have every reason to want you to live that penance.”
He smirked. “Logic and emotion don’t always mesh.”
“Oh, how well I know.” She took a deep breath and lifted her chin toward the roll of plans. “Let’s refocus on something more positive. Show me what you’ve got planned for this place.”
12
Dylan spread the plans out in front of them, trying to calm the turbulence inside.
Sharing those experiences had been more painful than he’d imagined, and now, with his rough memories so fresh, he felt on edge and anxious.
He wasn’t sure why he’d thought she
’d given up on going overseas. With the fiancé, her friends, and her family here, he’d just assumed she would stay in the US. Now he was faced with the reality that his plan to free her from her school loans was also providing the vehicle to send her away. Again.
He couldn’t tell if he’d discouraged her from jumping at the chance to go overseas or not, but he hoped it would at least slow her down. Give them a chance to get closer.
“Miranda has agreed to be our contractor of record,” he told her, “and has put me in touch with subcontractors we may need. She’s also gotten her real estate license. She said she’d be happy to handle the sale at no cost. And I transferred money into an account. We just need to go down together to have you added.”
“You always did work fast when you wanted something.” Her gaze scanned the front page of the plans depicting a perspective drawing of the house, complete with a few roofline changes, large windows, a wide front porch, and double-doored entry. “Where did these come from?”
“Jack,” he told her. “Miranda’s fiancé. He’s an architect. We’ve been working on it all week.”
“So you pretty much ignored me when I said I didn’t want to renovate. Didn’t you learn anything from your mistakes? You don’t get to make decisions for me anymore.”
After learning her plans, he was asking himself the same thing. But it was still the right thing to do. And he was here to do right by her.
“I own half of the house,” he told her, “so my opinion counts. And I remember just how stubborn you can be, and that you sometimes need a nudge to get out of your own way.”
She laughed and pushed his shoulder with hers. “Shut up.”
“How would you rate the importance of paying off your debt, between one and ten, ten being the most important?”
Her face fell into a familiar pout that softened his heart.
“Please look at the plans and the after-repair values Miranda worked up for us before you put your stubborn foot down.”