Sadness and grace rippled through her.
“You’re scared of getting involved with someone.” She didn’t even ask it as a question. It was just a statement. An awareness. No judgment. Just her quiet compassion.
That didn’t mean I didn’t see the tiny flame of hurt in her eyes. Her want for something more for me, from me, was clear. Only, I didn’t have a fucking clue if I could be man enough to offer it in return.
Thing was, I was wanting to. Fuck. I wanted it more than I’d wanted anything in a long, long time.
“I . . .” For a moment I wavered before I surrendered, giving her a little of what I could. “When I was in med school, I fell in love for the first and only time in my life.”
My mouth tweaked up with the old memories. Before they were horror and regret and shame.
Hope’s almost matched. That green glinting.
This girl.
I could feel her cracking me wide open.
A small puff of air jolted from her lungs, but she looked at me, filling me with silent encouragement.
“I met her at a fundraiser on campus. It was before I even started my clinicals . . . basically spending my time in books and labs.”
My head slowly shook as I was assailed with the memories, my lips pulling with the old affection. “She had the biggest spirit. She lit up any room she stepped into. She kept . . . complaining that she didn’t feel well. That she was tired. I should have known. I’d learned enough by that time that I should have known.” The words scraped from my throat.
Emergency room lights glared from overhead. Panic. Fear. Compression after compression after compression. That fucking flat line.
“She was sick, Hope. She was fucking sick, and I didn’t even see it. I thought she was just tired. Exhausted from classes and studying and always wanting to be a part of everything. I missed it.”
I was unable to admit to her why Evan petrified me. Why the situation was so fucked up. Why it was different and still felt so goddamned much the same. That I was there. That I tried to save her.
I tried.
I tried.
“You lost her.” Grief rang from Hope’s tongue. Spinning through the room. Wrapping me in her warmth.
Those dead places flickered, and I dropped my head to her chest, nodding against the steady thrum of her heart as I struggled with the crushing wave that slammed into me.
The regret and remorse and the old feelings I’d done fine at keeping locked down, all being unleashed at once.
“Oh, Kale, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, fingers gentling through my hair.
I buried my face in her neck.
Ashamed.
Stricken.
She hugged me to her for the longest time, her scent all around me, strawberries and cream and calm.
It felt like an eternity before she edged back. She framed my face in her delicate hands. Sympathy and that stunning understanding ridged every line of her expression. “You still love her?”
Oh fuck. This girl was going to destroy me.
18
Hope
My hands trembled where they rested on his striking face.
But it had shaken me.
Being able to finally see all the way past the gorgeous exterior. Down, deep inside this miraculous man with his huge, beautiful, bleeding heart.
To the man who had lost, who remained terrified and hurt. The one who had somehow taken on some of that responsibility when it clearly didn’t belong to him.
The one who was so clearly scared of repeating it again.
And my son.
He was sick.
I understood it in a way I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I wanted to ask him so many things.
How?
What happened?
I wanted to tell him it would be okay.
That it was all right to hurt.
That I understood.
Instead, I just sat there, waiting for him, needing this answer, knowing if I had it, I might be able to understand him on a level I hadn’t before. That maybe we could make sense of what was going on between us.
He peeled himself away and looked at me. Grief swam in that turbulent sea of blue. “Part of me will always love her, Hope. But what torments me is she didn’t get the chance to experience life. That I missed her symptoms and took that chance away.”
Sorrow clenched down on my chest, sorrow that he could possibly think he was responsible for his first love’s death.
His Adam’s apple bobbed heavily as he swallowed. “Then the other part of me wonders . . . wonders what my life would have looked like had I been able to save her. Would we be married? Would we have kids? Would she be an anesthesiologist like she’d wanted to be? Or would her dreams have changed, too?”
His voice cracked as he continued, “She deserved to experience everything life had in store for her, and I stole that from her. Failed her when she needed me most.”