Well, fuck him. I was going to walk by with my head held high and not even spare him a glance.
I knew this wasn’t sustainable. I wouldn’t be able to weather this for the next who knew how long. Because eventually, he would find someone to buy the practice, and I’d have to sit back and watch someone else living my dream all over again.
Maybe it was time to look for something else.
Maybe it was time to leave Starlight Cove.
Just the thought of that had my stomach twisting, an ache settling in the back of my throat. Growing up here, I hadn’t loved it. I’d struggled to fit in. To find my place. Always feeling like an outcast, even with my peers. But now that I’d been back, I was beginning to wonder if that hadn’t had more to do with my parents and what they told me—what I believed—than it did with the town. Than with me.
Because in the few short months I’d been back, it had begun to feel like home.
An image of Ford popped up in my mind, and I amended my thought. It wasn’t Starlight Cove that felt like home. It was him. He was the one place I felt free to be unapologetically myself. He was my safe place to land.
And I was going to have to find a way to tell him we no longer had to be together without letting him in on the fact that I’d somehow, beyond all reason, fallen in love with him along the way.
Even though I swore I’d walk by Dr. Dicknose’s office with my head held high and not spare him a glance, curiosity got the better of me, and I looked inside his office.
It took me long moments to register what I was seeing.
The man who’d been a constant thorn in my side since moving back…
On the floor.
His feet peeking out from behind his desk.
Body still and unmoving.
It was one of those split seconds that felt like an eternity. The moment at the beginning of an emergency when you had to decide the best course of action.
I didn’t think. I didn’t pause.
I dropped my bag, rushed over to him as I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and dialed 9-1-1. And then I dropped to the floor next to his still body and started compressions.
* * *
Ford
Hearingthe clinic’s address as the scene we were being dispatched to was one of the scariest moments of my life. I knew, logically, that Quinn wasn’t the one who was having an emergency. It was a doctor’s office, for fuck’s sake, so needing emergency services there wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.
But logic didn’t have a place when I was in love.
And I would never admit it out loud, but when I’d stormed into the building, eyes scanning for her, and found her over Dinsmore doing chest compressions, I’d never been more relieved in my life. She’d been sweating, out of breath, and had looked up at me with a flurry of emotions in her eyes.
I’d taken over to give her a rest. But in the end, it hadn’t mattered. He was gone.
I’d called his death—grateful I’d been able to do that for her—statements were filed, the body was removed, and then I took Quinn home.
My shift wasn’t technically over for another twelve hours, but the chief had told me to take my wife home and take care of her. That she’d need me by her side as she decompressed from this.
The entire drive, I’d kept shooting her glances out of the corner of my eye. Her forehead had been pressed to the passenger side window, her gaze unfocused as she stared at the passing scenery.
There was a lot to be said about living in a small town. Sometimes it was a pain in the ass, but tonight, I was grateful for it. Word had already gotten around about Don, which meant we had come home to a spread of food, courtesy of Beck.
Quinn hadn’t been interested in eating much—okay, at all—but I forced her to have at least a little, knowing she’d need it.
And though I’d tried to engage her in conversation, she’d responded with one-word answers only. I hated seeing her like this. Hated seeing that fire in her eyes dimmed to only smoldering embers.
I wanted to help her come back to herself, but I didn’t know how. She’d said no to a bath, a walk on the beach, and even an axe throwing competition. The one thing she’d agreed on was a cuddle party with season four ofSchitt’s Creekplaying in the background.
