Damn Wright (The Wrights 2)

She turned and watched her coworkers collect their things and linger together near their seats. Her gaze darted toward the display, showing boarding to commence in seven minutes.

She was seven minutes and two flights away from Mogadishu.

Mogadishu, Somalia.

Jesus Christ. She was really going to do this.

“Damn,” she murmured to herself. “This just got extremely real.”

Her stomach took several painful summersaults. She did what she did in any urgent situation in the ER: she hyper focused on what she was doing in that moment and what she needed to be doing in the next moment. Nothing more.

That moment-to-moment pattern got her from the terminal to her seat on the plane. Her aisle seat helped with a stifling sense of claustrophobia. She was sitting next to two other women on her team, a fifty-five-year-old nurse and a twenty-two-year-old administrator. Across the aisle, three male doctors settled in—a cardiologist, a pediatrician, and a surgeon.

For a second, Emma tried to imagine Liam coming on a trip like this. Almost immediately, a scoff bubbled out of her throat. If nothing else, Dylan’s reappearance had kept her from making that terrible mistake.

And, damn, then she was thinking about Dylan again. How perfectly he would fit in with everyone and how reassured she would be with his experience and self-confidence.

Then the plane was full. The flight attendants started closing overhead bins. Instructions for takeoff spilled over the intercom.

And, shit, there was Dylan in her mind. Coming to the hospital to apologize. Picking up the responsibility of Aunt Shelly’s house and shouldering it for her. Turning it from a burden into a true gift. The gift of freedom.

A cold sweat broke out across her chest and down her spine. She had that terrifying sensation of something irreplaceable slipping away. The feeling she got when she was losing someone young in her ER. The feeling she got when she watched the families of a loved one grieve.

Heavy, dark, and so painful.

Everyone was seated. No more passengers drifted up the aisle. Emma started calculating the fallout of pushing to her feet, grabbing her carry-on, and running off the plane. She’d be the laughingstock of the trip. Word of her freak-out would travel among other medical personnel. In this small community, the story would have reached Vanderbilt before she could make it back to beg for the job she’d turned down.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

She was trapped again. Only this time, it wasn’t because of her debt or her opportunities or even choices that hadn’t been hers. This time, it was her own stubbornness. Her own inability to forgive. Her own inability to trust.

Dylan might have been the original cause of the damage, but she was the one who had made the decision to hold on to that damage. She was the only person standing in her own way.

Emma’s face burned, and her head was light. She reached up to point the air nozzle toward her head, but only a trickle of air came out.

Why was it taking so long to close the damn cabin door? Was this a sign she should reconsider? Like that moment in the car with Maizey when she’d imparted the observation that Emma had already made? That Dylan was the reason Emma was a doctor. The reason she had the ability to live out this dream.

And she was bailing on him. So totally bailing on a man who’d done nothing but try to make up for his past mistakes since he’d returned.

“He was twenty years old, looking ahead at a stunted life of disability. You’re a twenty-nine-year-old physician with the life of your dreams ahead of you.”

Maizey’s voice repeated over and over in Emma’s head, getting louder and louder until she just couldn’t sit still any longer. The cabin door was still open for a reason. If the universe screamed at Emma any louder, it would boom like thunder.

Fuck her reputation.

Fuck her debt.

Fuck her own stubborn need to stick by every damned thing she’d ever said she’d do.

Emma freed her seat belt and pushed to her feet, flipping the overhead bin open, and shoving things around to reach her carry-on.

“Emma, are you all right?” This came from the older woman in the row’s middle seat.

“I can’t go.” The words were so messy, screwing up the life she’d so carefully built, brick by painful brick. “I made the decision too fast. I have too much to lose. I can’t go.”

But one of the wheels of her carry-on was stuck. Sweat rolled down her spine. Emotions rose to the surface.

“The cabin door is now closed,” came over the speaker, and a flight attendant came toward Emma from the rear of the plane.