I bobbed my head at least five hundred times. “Yeah, that’s what occurred that night.”
He ran his knuckles along his scruffy jaw and turned in a circle. “And Dr. Mercer is in on this? She was there too?”
“It’s her ball game. She plans the whole thing. She finds the weddings, stalks the websites and social accounts, and?—”
He whirled around to face me. “Did you target me? For sex?”
“Oh my god! No!” I jabbed a finger at him. “Youwere the one who came over to talk tome.”
He dropped his fists to his waist. “Sweetheart, please. You had me eating out of the palm of your hand long before I cornered you at the cupcake table.”
“I didn’t target you,” I said, still bristling about that. “I was supposed to stay far away from you because the bridal party is always off-limits. We have rules, you know. We adhere to a code.”
“Of course you do.” He stared down at the ground. “That’s why you left? That morning? Because you had other weddings to crash?”
“Mason’s was our last wedding. We went to a resort outside of Wine Country and hung out by the pool for a few days before flying home. We always end our trips with just the two of us together.”
A grumble sounded in his throat. “So, you werereallysurprised to see me again.”
“Oh, yeah. My entire life flashed before my eyes that day. I practically hyperventilated in Meri’s office.”
He bent at the waist, dropping his hands to his knees. “Is there anything else I should know? Any other secret lives you haven’t mentioned?”
“That’s the only one.”
Henry pushed to his full height and stared at me long enough that I started to wonder whether I’d miscalculated. Perhaps this bridge, the one I’d crossed for years and years without question, was too far for him. Perhaps I was asking him to rewrite too much history or ignore the gray areas. And perhaps he saw me in a new, unflattering light that turned all the trust and faith we had into ash.
If that was the case, if this really was our breaking point, then I’d have to accept it because I couldn’t change these things and?—
Henry scooped me up and backed me against the tree. My legs went around his waist as his lips found mine. “I can’t decide if I’m more confused or impressed by this revelation but I do know that you’re the best thing to come out of Mason’s wedding.” He dragged my bottom lip between his teeth. “But I need two more promises from you.”
“That seems fair.”
He arched a brow. “Wait until you hear them first.” His hips pressing between my legs like a promise all of its own, he said, “One, we’re not mentioning this to Mason just yet. He’ll find it funny as hell in six months. Maybe a year. This, right now, is not the moment to drop that news. And two, if you’re crashingweddings this summer, I want to be the only one you target for sex.”
We hadn’t stopped to assign labels to this or define where we were going. Who had the time? And why would we bother when there was a possibility we’d get it out of our systems anyway? Not that Henry cared much for that theory but it’d lingered in my mind until—well, until very recently, now that I thought about it.
I couldn’t decide whether it was the empty space where my reaction to Henry’s cohort catching us should’ve been or the realization that, despite everything, I was falling for this man, but now I knew there was no getting this out of my system.
So, it brought me no pain to say, “I promise.”
Twenty-Three
Henry
General Surgery Rotation:
Day 3, Week 1
I refusedto admit this to Whit for another week or two but Alex Emmerling ran her service like it was a battle-ready brigade. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she was descended from Julius Caesar. Or whoever it was from the Roman Empire that did the most conquering.
The woman was nonstop though the thing that set her apart from other attendings was that nothing was sacred in general surgery. Cohorts, for example. First thing on day one, she divided us up and shipped us off to work with groups of more senior residents. Under this regime, I barely saw Tori, Reza, or Cami outside of rounds and I hadn’t yet managed to talk to any of them about what happened last week. I went to work every day with a plan to get a few minutes with them and every day, I succeeded at nothing.
Another thing about Emmerling: she was one tough cookie. Tori would whip me with her stethoscope for referring to ourattending as a cookie but I’d stand behind that assessment. Emmerling invited us to join her for lunch on Thursdays, schedules permitting. She was warm and friendly, and seemed genuinely engaged in helping us learn. And she threw me out of her OR on Monday for not being able to answer a highly specific and arguably unknowable question. She kicked residents off cases for making her wait too long for info during rounds. She provided feedback that was clear and specific but there was so much of it that my pen ran out of ink yesterday while trying to write it all down. And it was a fairly new pen.
Even if I was standing in the back of an OR, Emmerling never stopped tossing out questions or posing scenarios. There were no slow moments, no downtime. Whit said I fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow last night.
She recounted that with anI told you sogleam in her eye this morning. I promised a better showing tonight and I intended to make good on that even though we both knew the odds of me showing up on her door dog-tired and mentally zapped were high.
