Reunited with His Long-Lost Nurse

‘Three years ago, we didn’t trust each other enough to be honest. But I’m changing that because I’m not that naïve girl any more, and because I can. This time I’m here, choosing you. Choosing to be with you. I need you to know that, out of everything that I love in the world—my family, my home on St Victoria, my job at The Island Clinic—there is one thing that I love above all else. And that’s you, Liam.’

‘So, that means what?’ he demanded gruffly, because he couldn’t help himself.

‘That means I’ve already spoken to the chief about coming back to my old job at Duke’s.’

‘You’re leaving St Victoria?’

‘If you want me here.’

‘You can’t do that,’ he managed gruffly. ‘You love it back there.’

‘I do love it,’ she agreed. ‘But without you, there’s no point. So here I am. Yours. This time I’m choosing you. This is what love is, Liam. Your father may never have shown you love but I know your grandmother, Glory, did. And I want to pick up where she left off. You just have to let me.’

‘No. You can’t do that.’ He had no idea how he spoke with the lump l that seemed to be blocking his throat. ‘You can’t give up everything you love.’

A thousand emotions poured through him. They seemed to sweep from his head right down to his toes. A terrifying deluge. Too hard, and too heavy for him to process.

‘I’m not giving up everything I love. I’m simply choosing the one I love most, you, over the other things.’ She smiled. Shaky, but irrepressible.

Her hands shook slightly beneath his and Liam blinked in shock. When had he raised his hands to cover hers? Had he meant to hold them or wrench them away?

He didn’t know.

‘I won’t accept it,’ he began, louder now. Horrified.

Or was it actually something else entirely?

Yet, rather than cowing, his beloved Talia stared at him all the more steadfastly. Her smile chipping away his armour. Making him start to believe.

‘Love is—’ he began again anyway.

‘Real, Liam,’ she finished for him. ‘It’s not just some brain tipsy on a neurochemical triple shot. And I get how that scares you, and that you don’t know how to deal with it, but I’m here to teach you how. And we’ll take as long as you need.’

‘You’re asking too much, Talia.’ His voice cracked but he pretended not to notice.

‘I can only hope that isn’t true,’ she answered, an echoing hitch in her voice as she scribbled on his pad of paper. ‘You told me that words weren’t enough. That it was easy to claim to love someone but much harder to actually prove it. So here I am, following you to North Carolina to prove it in the only way I know how to.’

‘Talia—’

‘This is the hotel where I’m staying if you want to contact me. But I’m not holding you to ransom, Liam. If you decide this isn’t what you want—that I’m not what you want—I will understand. I’ll go back to St Victoria.’

‘Talia...’ he began as her voice trembled, but she pressed on.

‘I’ve said what I came to say. It’s on you now, Liam,’ she managed.

And then, before his brain could even begin to process all that she’d said, she left. Walking out of his office with her back straight and her head high.

Making him respect her show of naked vulnerability all the more.

Work was impossible after that. He sat at his desk and glowered at the open files on his screen, but he didn’t read a single one of them. The words simply swam in front of his eyes.

Eventually, when he could stand it no longer, he launched himself out of the chair, out of his office, and out of the hospital.

Liam had no idea for how long he pounded the streets. This city where he’d been born, and that he knew like the back of his hand but had never, not once, thought of as home.

He walked for hours—not that he would have known had it not been for the way the moon moved in the sky above him. Or the changing light levels as the sun finally began to make its way to the horizon. But all of a sudden he found himself in the cemetery.

The place where he never came because it held no memories for him. It gave him no connection to his mother. She was simply a woman he’d never known.