The Reluctant Romantics Box Set (The Fall, The Mind, The Heart)

“Stop it. You can’t do this. You can’t go there. Whatever you did years ago pales in comparison to the last few years.”

“You’re right. I know your right.”

“Don’t start piling on the guilt. I’m sure he had his own to contend with. In the end, you love each other. In the end, he knows and feels that love from you, though it was always there.”

“I love you, do you know that?”

I nodded as the blow hit me—the good kind of blow—with a force so strong that it knocked the breath out of you and made you want to live in that moment forever. He leaned in to kiss me and I melted into it. When he pulled away, he gave a chuckle.

“Where to, Doctor?”

“You pick. I don’t care where we go.”

“And why not?”

“Because I’ll be with you.” He stopped his fidgeting with the knobs and looked at me with reverence. “I’ll take that compliment, baby.”

“Good, I hoped you would.”

“God, this is so much better with you here.” I gave him a grin as the cabin got darker, the night sky coming out to play.

“Grant, I think I want to add pilot to my list of career goals,” I said, looking around, slightly excited. “I can so do this.”

He turned to grin at me as I grabbed the wheel and started screwing with knobs, having absolutely no idea what their functions were.

“Well, first of all, you just dumped half of your fuel,” he said with a chuckle.

“Shit.”

“And you’ll need at least sixty to seventy spare hours.”

“Double shit,” I said with a sigh.

“We will get you there. Fuck, I’ll have to work overtime to keep you satisfied. A surgeon and a pilot...What’s next...president?”

“Maybe,” I countered with a snicker. “You think they’ll mind if I use a rap song for my campaign?”

“You’d definitely be original.”

I looked around, still screwing with the gadgets, and excited about the thought of tooling around in a plane with Grant.

And for a few moments, we dreamed of the day we would build a small airstrip on his land.

“We could fly to Mexico for the weekend,” Grant murmured, toying with switches that would never work.

“Mmmm...margaritas and ocean waves.” We sat with the wind howling at our backs for over an hour, both of us getting excited about the future, stealing glances at each other’s happiness. It was absolutely perfect.

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The first night we agreed to take shifts at his father’s bedside since the hospice nurse only stayed a certain amount of hours per day. Grant refused to wake me up, and when I woke myself, I knew it was late. I scolded him as I led him back to bed. “You aren’t doing him a damn bit of good looking like shit.”

“Uh oh,” he said sleepily, “bitchy in the morning, are we?” I smacked him hard on his perfect ass as he gave me a sleepy grin before face-planting on his bed.

Rose

The next day I cooked a huge breakfast at lunchtime, knowing Grant would wake any minute. When he joined me in the kitchen, he gave pause in the doorway. “So you are going to be a rich surgeon/pilot, you have the legs and ass of a supermodel, and you cook? No wonder I’m your bitch.”

I burst out laughing as he piled pancakes on his plate. “Good morning to you, too.”