The Family You Make

by Jill Shalvis

  “What happened, Lottie?”

  “Oh, you know how it goes at work,” she managed.

  “I do.” Her mom had been a nurse before she’d retired a few years ago. A small-town private nurse, but she’d seen her share of horror. “Remember what I told you to do when it gets to be too much?”

  Charlotte found a laugh. “Drink?”

  “Find a partner. And jump their bones.”

  “Mom.”

  “Look, I don’t pretend to understand why you don’t want someone in your life. I mean, okay, after what you went through, I actually do understand, but it’s been years and lots of therapists, and—”

  “I’m fine, I promise.”

  “But—”

  “Not now, okay?” She rubbed at the tension headache forming between her eyebrows, the one that would’ve been erased by a thick, gooey homemade brownie. “Not here.”

  “Okay, baby. I hear you. How long of a break do you have?”

  “Maybe twenty minutes.”

  “You’re going to eat, yes? You need to eat. Preferably protein, not just a quick grilled cheese.”

  “I cooked,” Charlotte said. “I went all out and made turkey and stuffing.” She opened her glass food container and had to admit, she’d done a damn good job. “I brought my leftovers.”

  “You use my recipes?”

  “Of course.” She left off the failed attempts at baking brownies. “I miss you, Mom.”

  “Oh, honey. We miss you too. I sure wish you could’ve made it home for the holidays.”

  “Me too.” Charlotte looked out at the sea of exhausted hospital employees around her. “But there are just so many staff members with young kids this year who wanted to be home with their families.”

  “So you volunteered.” Her mom’s voice was thick with emotion. “Now we only see you when we can come to you. Which is fine, I understand, I just . . .” She sniffed. “We miss you so much.”

  Charlotte was staring at the floor, trying not to lose it, when two sneakers came into view, topped by long legs covered in green scrubs. She knew those beat-up sneaks. She knew those long legs. “Mom,” she said softly, closing her eyes, ignoring the man in front of her, “please don’t cry.”

  “I’m not. I’ve just got something in my eye.”

  Yeah. Her too. “I’ve gotta go, okay? I love you. Tell Daddy I love him, too.” She disconnected and pretended she didn’t feel the weight of Mateo’s gaze as he studied her. When she thought she had herself together, she lifted her face to his.

  There was no doubt that he took in the ravages the night had brought because his eyes softened. “My mom doesn’t understand why I can’t always get the holidays off either,” he said.

  She looked at him for a long beat, quite positive that her reason for not going home was a whole lot different from his.

  He looked at her right back. No smile, exhaustion in every line of his scrub-covered body. She knew his night had been just as rough as hers. With a sigh, she gestured to the empty chair across the table from her.

  He sat, but in the chair right next to her, then eyed her food. “I’ll swap you half my dinner for half of yours.”

  She eyed the huge piece of cherry pie he set in front of him. “That looks more like dessert than dinner.”

  “It’s a dessert sort of night.”

  True that. “Homemade or store-bought?” she asked.

  “Homemade, straight from my mom’s oven from a big family dinner last night. Which you were invited to, only you didn’t call me back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He chuckled, whether because he didn’t believe her or because he appreciated the lie. “It’s okay, family can be a lot.”

  “I like them,” she said.

  He lifted his head and held her gaze. “But?”

  “But . . .” She squirmed. “I need to work up to that.”

  He nodded. Easy acceptance. That’s what she got from him, always.

  He divided the piece of pie in half and then put his half on the lid of the container and slid the rest to her. He’d given her the bigger half, and right then and there she knew. He was the One.

  If she’d been ready for the One, that is.

  Taking the deal, she pushed her food toward him.

  With a fork, he scooped up a bite of turkey, dragged it through the dollop of gravy, then scooped some cranberry sauce on top.

  She stared at him in horror.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You mixed everything up!”

  “And . . . we don’t do that?”

  “Absolutely not,” she said. “The foods shall never touch.”

  He slid her a look. “You do know what happens when we eat them, right?”

  Okay, so he was definitely not the One. Huge relief.

  He ate the bite and closed his eyes in bliss as he chewed. When she started to speak, he held up a finger, indicating he needed silence, so she shut her mouth, watching as his entire body relaxed and tension drained with each passing second.

  “Oh. My. God,” he finally said, opening his eyes. “First you kick ass in the OR, and then take the championship in the infamous Moreno snowball challenge, and now this? I’m going to need you to marry me.”

  She laughed. “You’re an idiot.”

  “Yeah, no doubt. But damn, woman. You’re an angel in the kitchen. This is amazing. You’re amazing.”

  She tried and failed to keep the words from warming her from the inside out. “Do you have a lot of family dinners?”

  “Yes. There are a lot of birthdays. I get out of most of them thanks to work, which they pretend to understand. But they don’t, not really.”

  Oh, how she got that, and she relaxed a bit too. Aided by the cherry pie, which really was fantastic.

  “So.” He fixed himself another bite, very carefully not mixing any of the foods together this time. “You never go home?”

  And . . . so much for relaxing. She shook her head.

  “You’re not close to your family?”

  She took another bite of pie and gave him a vague shrug, but he simply waited her out with that endless patience of his.

  “We’re close,” she finally admitted and met his warm, curious eyes. “But it’s not that easy to get to Atlanta.”

  “No? They don’t make planes that fly there several times a day?”

  She snorted. “You know what I mean.”

  He nodded and didn’t say anything, and damn if she didn’t fill the silence for him like a rookie. “I don’t like to go back there,” she admitted.

  “Why?” Simple question, no judgment.

  “Bad memories,” she admitted. “And I guess sometimes it’s hard to remember the good memories over those bad and very loud memories, you know?”

  Looking at her with those warm, dark eyes, he gave her a slow nod. He knew.

  Unbearably touched for reasons she couldn’t begin to fathom, she got very busy separating out the piece of cranberry that had gotten lodged in the gravy, like it was her job.

  “Charlotte.”

  Oh, look, there was some gravy touching her stuffing, so that took another minute—

  He put his hand over hers and she stilled, lifting her gaze to his.

  “You don’t have to talk about something you don’t want to.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded.

  “But in my experience,” he went on quietly, “when the memories get loud, it’s because they need to be heard.”

  Her heart skipped a beat, and then another. She played with her fork with suddenly clammy palms as her stomach turned. Same symptoms that assaulted her every time she thought about that night. “Something happened to me. A long time ago. And sometimes . . . sometimes I let it affect me now.”

  “Time’s a bitch, isn’t it?” He got up, went to the front counter, bought two water bottles, and brought them back, sitting right next to her again. “Sometimes, long-ago memories can feel like just yesterday.” He opened one of the water bottle
s and handed it to her. “Or right now.”

  She took a long drink. Stalling. Not sure whether she wanted to run out of the cafeteria or keep going. But when she made herself look into Mateo’s eyes, she saw compassion and understanding. “I know you’re supposed to talk about this stuff,” she said slowly. “That I should let it out and trust that people will understand. But they don’t. Not really.”

  “Try me.”

  She took another drink, then set the water down and began to play with the condensation on the bottle. “It’s a long, clichéd story about a small-town girl going off to college in the big city, and as a freshman who went out to celebrate her birthday, let herself get taken advantage of.” She shook her head. “She was young and naive and stupid. So stupid.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with young and naive, and I have a hard time believing you were ever stupid.”

  Her laugh held no humor. “I let myself get charmed by a southern accent similar to mine. He played me like a fiddle, bought me a drink, told me how out of his league I was, and took me dancing.”

  She scraped at the water bottle label with her nail, shredding it. Horrified at the tell, she clasped her hands together, wondering why her mouth kept flapping. “I got drunk.”

  “Not a crime.”

  “No, but it made me foolish, and foolish should be a crime,” she said. “Because instead of calling my parents when I started feeling weird, I stayed.”

  “Weird?”

  She looked away. “Yeah. Not drunk weird. Drugged weird.”

  “Someone put something in your drink,” he said grimly.

  “Yes.” For so long she’d kept this to herself, but in doing so, she’d given that night all the power. She knew it was time, past time, to let it all go, because if she didn’t, it’d continue to keep her from living the life she secretly dreamed about.

  Which meant Mateo was right. She needed to say it all out loud and take away its power to hurt her. “I woke up the next morning alone in a strange bed, in a strange place, no clothes, not knowing where I was or what had happened.” The not remembering was probably a blessing, but sometimes in the dark of the night her brain liked to fill in the missing time, and she had to admit her imagination might be a whole lot worse than the truth.

  Mateo sat quietly next to her, calm and steady, but there was a storm in his eyes. “How badly were you hurt?”

  She shook her head. “Not badly.”

  “There are levels of hurt,” he said carefully.

  As she knew all too well. Charges hadn’t been pressed because she’d never been able to ID anyone. “I’m fine. No long-lasting damages.” She made the mistake of looking at him again, seeing a genuine concern for her and a carefully banked fury for what she’d gone through. And also . . . understanding. “Well, no lasting physical damages anyway,” she admitted with an attempt at a smile.

  He’d stopped eating and set his fork down. “And the not-physical damages?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve had counseling. I don’t hate men. I just . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t like to talk about it. People get weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  She bit her lower lip. “Okay, they don’t. Because I never talk about this, not with anyone.”

  “Not even Jane?”

  “She knows, but only because she saw my reaction when a man . . .” She shuddered. “There was a situation in Colombia, at a medical clinic. It got held up, and I reacted badly.” She drew a deep breath. “But other than Jane and a bunch of therapists, no one else knows.”

  “What about in your past relationships?”

  She froze for a beat. “I get claustrophobic in relationships,” she finally said. “So I don’t do them.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  She blinked. “What does that mean?”

  “Look, there are all kinds of relationships, right? Like us,” he said quietly. “Technically, what we have could be called a relationship. We’re two neighbors who fight over who plows the snow.” He smiled. “It also might be the best relationship I’ve ever been in.”

  She was . . . well, she didn’t know exactly. Flustered? “But we’ve never—”

  “There are all kinds of relationships,” he repeated softly.

  She stared at him some more. He just flashed another small smile and went back to eating.

  Around her, the sounds of the busy cafeteria kicked in and she realized she’d been holding her breath, so she breathed. He’d heard her deepest, darkest secret and he wasn’t scared off. Even more than that, he hadn’t asked invasive questions or pulled back in horror. He wasn’t treating her like a fragile piece of glass that could shatter at any moment.

  Normal.

  He was acting completely normal.

  “Normal’s good, right?” she accidentally said out loud.

  He shrugged. “Personally, I think it’s overrated.” Very briefly, so it might have been a mistake, he let his thigh and biceps touch hers. It felt like the very best hug. “Thanks for trusting me,” he said very softly.

  She turned her head and met his gaze.

  He fed her a bite of her own delicious stuffing. “Charlotte?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What do you need from me right now?”

  “Um . . .” She eyed her half of his pie.

  “Think bigger,” he said.

  The truth was, she knew exactly what she needed. What she didn’t know was how to ask for it. She looked at his mouth, imagined it on hers, on all of her, erasing all her nightmares . . .

  “Anything, Charlotte. All you have to do is say it.”

  “Sometimes . . .” She had to lick her dry lips. “I think maybe I need a momentary diversion from my life.”

  “Such as?”

  She bit her lower lip. How did you tell the man you’d spent months and months secretly aching for—while turning him down—that you wanted to do just as her mom had suggested: jump his bones? “Maybe a hug,” she finally said.

  He immediately stood up, and even though they were literally in the middle of the crowded cafeteria, he pulled her up as well, and right into his arms. And as they closed around her, not carefully, not gently, and definitely not like she was a piece of glass, she sighed out her tension and melted into him. Her past didn’t fade away—she was the only one with the power to make that happen—but the memories became . . . muted. For now, at least.

  Mateo ducked a little to look into her eyes, a question in his own. Okay? he was asking.

  “Yes.” More than. “I want . . .” She wanted them to be off duty. In his big, warm house. In his bed . . .

  “Anything,” he said.

  She stared at his mouth.

  A low groan rumbled up from his chest. “Especially that.”

  She nodded, then closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a tease here, but . . . I really also like things the way they are.”

  “You mean with you yelling at me every time I do something nice for you?”

  Her eyes flew open and found him smiling at her.

  He tugged on a strand of hair that had gotten loose from her ponytail. “Never apologize to me for telling me what you want. And as for what else you might want, we could tackle those things one at a time. On your schedule.”

  “But what we have right now works for us.”

  He nodded. “Agreed. But more would work too.”

  She sucked in a breath. “Or ruin it.”

  “Oh ye of little faith.”

  “Not in you,” she said. “In me. Let’s face it, I’ve ruined every relationship I’ve attempted.”

  “Sounds like you haven’t attempted very many. But in any case, it takes only one. The right one.”

  She opened her mouth with absolutely no idea what she planned on saying, but just then they were both texted at the exact same time.

  They looked at their phones.

  “I have to go,” they said in sync and then laughed a little.

  Charlotte gath
ered up her things, and he did the same. She gave him a smile and turned to walk off, but he caught her hand, waiting until she looked at him.

  “Thanks for the best dinner in recent memory,” he said.

  “You hardly got to eat.”

  “It wasn’t the food—which was off the charts, by the way.” And with another playful tug on her hair, he went back to work. And so did she. But this time, she was smiling.

  TWO HOURS LATER, Charlotte was relieved by another on-call doctor, and she drove home on autopilot. It was just after midnight and both driveways were cleared. That was no mystery, as Mateo’s car was in his driveway.

  He’d done it again. Tried to make her life easier. Better.

  What he didn’t know was that just his presence did that.

  It takes only the right one . . .

  It couldn’t possibly be that simple, but the fact was she felt restless, lonely, on edge, and needing . . .

  Gah.

  She was pretty sure what she needed was in that house next to hers. And in the next moment, she was out of her car and knocking on his door before she could stop herself.

  He answered in just sweat bottoms, slung low on his hips. No shirt. Bare feet. Bed-head hair. Sleepy eyes. “You okay?” he asked.

  She felt dizzy just looking at him, but she managed a nod.

  He shoved his fingers through his hair as if trying to wake himself up. “Let me guess. You’ve got a problem with the driveway.”

  She shook her head and found her voice. “Thanks.”

  He rubbed a hand over his jaw, the sound of the scruff there making her stomach twirl. “You’re not going to ask me to put the snow back?”

  She grimaced. “No.”

  He gave a slow smile. “Are you . . . hungry?”

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “But not for food.”

  He stilled.

  She did not. She stepped across the threshold, kicked his door closed, turned, and pushed him up against it. “Mateo?” she whispered, setting her hands on his bare chest, only belatedly realizing those hands were probably frozen.

  He sucked in a breath but didn’t utter a complaint. “Yeah?”

  “You said anything, anytime. Did you mean it?”

  “Yes.” One of his hands came up to touch her jaw as he lowered his head and brushed a kiss to her temple. Her eyes drifted closed as his mouth made its way to her ear. “Name it, Charlotte.”