The Doctor's Secret Son

“What?” she asked at Agnes’s unexpected question.

“I’m just trying to imagine what reason there could be for you to walk away from Trace.”

What about the facts that he’d be leaving to go overseas, that he didn’t want a committed relationship, that he didn’t want children? What about Chrissie’s baggage that dogged her with the fear of him grabbing Joss and running, even when she logically knew Trace would never do such a thing?

What about the fact that Trace could so easily break her heart?

“I know you don’t understand, Agnes, and for that I’m sorry, but I had no expectations and neither did Trace.”

The older woman shook her head. “Young people these days.”

Yeah, she supposed to Agnes it did seem that she probably did sleep around without another thought, but, even with as much as she liked Agnes, she didn’t know the woman well enough to explain to her that wasn’t the case.

Even if she did, that would raise too many other questions. Like why had she slept with Trace so quickly four years ago? Why had she set aside common sense and had sex with him repeatedly this weekend?

Because Trace was different.

He always had been.

What that difference was she couldn’t allow herself to label, especially not while Agnes studied her with an expression that wavered from disappointed to sympathetic.

Yeah, if she allowed herself to really care about Trace she’d need sympathy, because she’d be facing even bigger heartache than she had the last time they’d said goodbye.

Good thing she’d gone into this knowing all they had was the weekend because falling for Trace would have been easy.

Which was why she hugged Agnes and said goodbye.

Goodbye to Agnes, to Atlanta, and to Trace.

* * *

“What do you mean she left?” Trace frowned at the woman he’d loved and admired his whole life.

Agnes had marched into the empty shell of the medical tent where he’d been talking to one of the volunteers and insisted upon speaking to him. He was grateful she’d waited until they’d left the medical tent to announce her news in private.

“You heard me,” Agnes countered, her hands going onto her hips as she gave him a motherly stare-down. “Apparently, you didn’t say or do the right things, because she told me bye and apparently already had her car packed, because she left.”

Yeah, he’d helped her carry her things to her car that morning after they’d broken her tent down.

“I said and did the right things,” Trace argued. He’d been upfront with her that time spent with him was only for the weekend.

It didn’t matter that she’d just left without saying goodbye.

Not really.

She’d probably done them both a big favor, because he’d have tried to convince her to spend the night with him again.

She’d already said no so trying to persuade her further would have been pathetic on his part.

He wasn’t a pathetic or desperate kind of guy.

At least, he never had been in the past.

These last four years hadn’t presented him with much opportunity to date or have relationships with women. Sure, there had been a few female volunteers, but for the most part he’d been celibate and hadn’t had any interest in dating.

Or in sex.

He’d blamed his lack of interest on the situations he’d been in. On the stress and the extreme conditions of the areas where he’d been working.