“Live in this clinic?”
She rolls her eyes. “No, Gavin. Not in this clinic. In that log cabin you bought six months ago the last time I volunteered here. We’d live in Hollow Creek, West Virginia. I’d run this free clinic. You’d volunteer on the business side. We’d live in this town for the next forty years, until I retired. We’d be too busy for vacations or travel. Instead, we’d stay here. Every single day of the year. On this mountain. We’d settle down, have kids. Live, work, and die. Here. Here for forever.”
She points at the brown and gray tile floor, stained with decades of grime. The walls of the room crush me, the weight of forever stuck in one place making it hard to breathe. Decades of never, never leaving one place? I wouldn’t be living on a mountain, I’d be buried under a mountain. I can already feel it crushing my chest, heavy and constricting.
Lacey scoffs and shakes her head. “That’s what I thought.”
“You really want to live here?”
I can’t imagine it. Lacey Duporte comes from a family as wealthy as mine. She grew up in New York City, has traveled the globe, volunteers in countries around the world. She eats at the best restaurants in every city she visits, shops on Madison Avenue, has a penthouse in Manhattan—I can’t imagine her in this crummy little ramshackle town in the middle of nowhere, where a basket of fried shrimp is considered fine dining, a drive-in theater is cultural entertainment, and the only place to shop for clothing is the five and dime. There are more churches than stoplights, and the accents are thicker than the beards on the old men, which is saying something.
I like people, that’s not the problem. I get along with everyone. The problem is, according to the hand-painted welcome sign at the edge of town, there are only two hundred and twelve people in Hollow Creek. I doubt a single one of them has ever left this mountain top.
If I lived here for the rest of my life, if Lacey asked me to stay here, I’d… I shake my head.
Lacey walks to the small sink and turns on the faucet. It spits out rust-colored water then turns clear. She rinses her hands, scrubs with a hot-pink soap, and then yanks down the paper towels. When she’s through, I know she’s finished with our conversation.
“I’ll live here, if that’s what you want. I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I’m willing to work hard for it. Make any sacrifice.” A drop of sweat trails down my forehead in protest.
Lacey brushes past me, the abrasive scent of sanitizer clinging to her. Her heels click coldly on the tile. She pauses at the door. Without turning she says, “That’s the thing, Gavin. Love isn’t supposed to be hard work. It isn’t supposed to be a sacrifice. Love should be easy.”
That’s possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. “Since when?”
What she’s describing isn’t anything like the love I’ve known.
I follow Lacey down the dank hall of the free clinic. Old yellow smoke stains coat the popcorn ceiling and walls, from decades past when smoking was not only acceptable but encouraged by physicians. The hallway is narrow, and the flooring sinks to the left. The clinic is in a 1970s double wide after all. It’s only open two weekends a month and Lacey volunteers here a few times a year, which is why I bought the cabin. I thought it’d be a nice vacation spot for a couple days a year. There’s hiking, rafting, climbing. It’s okay.
For a few days.
Not for decades.
Not…
I shake my head and ignore the musty scent and the creaking floors. The reception area is empty. It’s early yet, and patients haven’t started to arrive.
I’ll do whatever it takes to prove to Lacey that I really do love her.
I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her from saying my name with so much disappointment.
She unlocks the front door and holds it open for me. I take in the morning light glinting like the Saharan sands on her golden hair. “I flew around the country looking for you. It took a whole week to figure out where you were.”
“Congratulations. Now that you’ve found me, you can go.” She nods to the parking lot and my rental car. A cherry red Jag, her favorite, which is why I got it. I picked it up at the airport in Charleston when I got in early this morning. I left my plane there and drove hours into the sticks.
“I’ll stay here with you, if that’s what you need to prove I love you.”
She shakes her head, and the look that I once thought was intelligence and poise now I think might just be disinterest. “I don’t want to live here. I was making a point. You are completely incapable of loving anyone more than you love indulging yourself.”
“I love you—”
“No.”
“I love my brother Will.”
“You kissed the woman he loves because you felt like it. How is that not indulging yourself?”
The sore spot in my chest expands and I step outside of the walls of the clinic onto the dirt-packed parking lot. I breathe in the mountain woods air and let the wide, blue bowl of the expansive sky settle me.
“I don’t have an excuse for that—”