“I thought they’d be up here to move everything,” I admit after a minute.
“They’re a deck lower, closer to the water,” Cole says, his voice blending in with the quiet afternoon. “There’s the bumpers they need to stash while we cruise and recoiling the mooring line.”
For a moment, I realize this must be how I sound when talking about events in the ER—completely nonsensical. It makes me smile just a bit.
“You know a lot about sailing?”
He shrugs without opening his eyes. “Some. Not much about a yacht like this, though.”
My gaze catches on the others as Marcus fills a plate with the snacks and then settles into one of the lounge chairs across the back of the boat. Charlotte joins him, eating a piece of melon as she sets the glass of lemonade on a small table nestled between them. Before she sits down, she slides the black sweater on. It looks just as good with her purple skirt as the plain white crop top she just covered.
Charlotte is like that, though, always blending in and looking fashionable.
The yacht moves faster than I’d expected, the dock disappearing from view over the course of the next ten minutes. There’s a smattering of other boats in the water, but they’re far enough away to have it feel like we’re truly alone. I twist, looking over my shoulder as the last bit of Seattle blurs into the distance, too. My arm brushes his at my movement.
“How was your class?” Cole asks.
His body is still the epitome of relaxed, but there’s a breathlessness to his voice that has my thighs clenching.
“Fine,” I manage to say. “It was an open exam, so it wasn’t the most stressful. And now I have it out of the way for when my license needs to be renewed in another few months.”
He nods. “How often do you have to renew your nursing license?”
Confusion sours my stomach for a moment before I realize it must have been part of the information the Council gave him.
“Every three years. I try to space out the required continued learning. The first time I didn’t realize just how much work it would take and had to run myself ragged for about three months to get it all completed on time.”
“What kind of nursing?”
“Emergency medicine. I’m currently in a level-one trauma center in the heart of Manhattan.”
“Do you enjoy it?” he asks. And then he scrunches his nose. “Sorry, I’m sure you’re asked that all the time.”
I can’t help but smile. “Most of the time I do,” I tell him, closing the distance between us just a bit more. I grab the railing, too, letting our arms barely brush. “Like any job there are good days and bad. But mostly I love knowing I’m helping people.”
“Did you always know you wanted to be a nurse?”
I shake my head before remembering he still had his eyes closed. “Definitely not. I was dead set on becoming a veterinarian all the way through high school and into my first year of college.”
He drops his head, his hazel eyes practically burning in the golden glow of the sun. “A veterinarian?”
My smile is more shy this time. “I know, cliché. The blonde girl from the suburbs who grew up with a rescued golden retriever wanting to become a vet.”
His laugh is rich and warm and draws me in like a moth to a flame. I press closer to him, and he relaxes, his shoulder bumping mine.
“So what changed?”
The snide comment rises like a reflex, guarding me from the memory, but I swallow it before it can hurt Cole. Instead, I offer sadly, “My parents.”
He frowns. “Your parents? Did they not approve of you pursuing animal medicine?”
I shake my head and breathe through the burning ache that’s still so potent even after eleven years. They’d have loved Cole, I just know it. He’s the calm, sweet partner they’d always pictured me ending up with.
“No, they loved that I was trying for vet med. I’d been one of those girls that played obsessively with a stethoscope, putting bandaids on my stuffed animals and insisting on making paper mache casts for them, too.” I blow out a breath and just say the words. “It was their deaths that made me change my major. They were killed by a drunk driver on the Fourth of July between my freshman and sophomore years. They were heading home from a friend’s barbecue, something they’d done for years.”
Cole stills, not even breathing. After a minute, he whispers, “I’m sorry.”
“Mom was already gone by the time I got to the hospital. Dad was critical, unstable. They were trying to get him up to the OR to try and repair some of the bleeding caused by the wreck, but he never made it.” My voice is flat now. “One of the nurses sat with me most of the night. Her and the social worker made sure I wasn’t alone at all while they went through the process of… everything.”
