“I’ll be whatever you need me to be, Haley. Your friend. Your lover. Your own cheerleader. Your safe place to turn in a storm. Whatever you want—I’m here for the duration. If you’ll have me.”
Blinking rapidly, she forbade herself to cry. “I love you, too, Ron. I have for so long. But I thought you weren’t into long-term commitments.”
“I’ve been committed to you since the day I met you,” he answered in a tone that was a little hoarse now. “I just needed you to help me find the courage to admit it.”
“I seemed to have lacked that courage, myself,” she conceded, clinging to his hand. “I’ve never been so afraid to take a risk before. Maybe because the stakes had just never been this high for me. I pegged you as a heartbreaker from the beginning, Ron Gibson.”
He kissed her hand. “My heart is all yours, Haley Wright. I love you with everything I have to give. And I will never walk away from you.”
“I’m going to make sure you never want to,” she promised him, drawing him toward her for a long kiss of celebration.
Someone tapped on the door, breaking up the embrace. Anne and Liam walked into the room, Anne bearing more flowers, Liam a box of chocolates.
“Are we interrupting anything?” Anne asked, studying their faces with a knowing smile.
Ron grinned, glancing at Haley’s radiant, obviously well-kissed face with a surge of masculine pride. “We’ve just been getting a few things straight between us.”
Anne and Liam exchanged a laughing look.
“Hospital rooms seem to be a good place for that,” Liam said with a wry smile. “It wasn’t that long ago that I was the one lying in a hospital bed while Anne and I got a few things straight.”
“As much of our lives are going to be spent in hospitals from now on, I guess it’s not so surprising that we’d hold some of our most important conversations there,” Anne said with a chuckle. “Um, anything you want to share?”
“Ron and I are going to be staying together,” Haley informed them happily. “We’re going to graduate together, and look for residencies in the same place.”
“And then spend the rest of our lives being happily married doctors,” Ron added. “Haley in psychiatry, me in pediatric hem-onc, if all works out well. Which it will,” he added hastily, remembering his newfound positivity.
“You’re engaged?” Anne asked with a squeal of delight.
Realizing they hadn’t actually gotten to that part, Ron gave Haley a quick, questioning look.
“Yes,” she said, addressing the reply to both Anne and him. “We are.”
“I’m so happy for you both.” Anne hugged her friend while Liam warmly shook Ron’s hand in congratulations.
“We still have to tell our families, of course,” Haley said, “but I know they’re going to approve. My parents already like Ron very much and his family’s going to love me, eventually. If I do a triple board and specialize in pediatric psychiatry, Ron and I might actually be able to work together in some ways.”
She was off now, he thought, listening to her spinning plans with renewed enthusiasm. She’d be very busy during the few enforced weeks of her recuperation, planning a wedding and a full life afterward. Maybe he should be daunted by the lifelong commitment he’d just made, but for some reason he wasn’t. The only thing that mattered to him was that he would always have Haley in his life. On his side. Just as he would always be there for her.
He had no doubt they could make it work. Her love had given him a new confidence in himself. He would be a better doctor, and a better man, because of it. Becoming convinced for the first time in his life that he had a great deal to offer in return, he looked ahead with a newfound optimism. He had finally discovered everything he’d ever wanted in his life—and this time, he wouldn’t be walking away.