“Are you clairvoyant?” I scoffed. “I mean, you’ve got a great beard, but wizard’s beards are usually much longer and grayer, and then there’s the question of the staff.” I looked between his legs. “But you’ve got?—”
“Don’t finish that fucking ridiculous sentence that somehow got me hard.” His smoldering gaze made my stomach jump in delight. “Answer my fucking question.”
“Is there something wrong with wanting to be a nurse?” I asked tartly, going on the defensive.
Beau, for once, was not riled, displaying an almost amused expression. “Not a fucking thing. In fact, I think they’re some of the most excellent humans on the planet.” He nipped the shell of my ear. “You’d be an amazing nurse. But that’s not what you truly want.”
“How do you know that?”
Beau shrugged in response.
Infuriating. How well he knew me. “When I was really little, I wanted to be a doctor,” I said in a small, embarrassed voice, my eyes darting away. “An oncologist, specifically,” I added, feeling immensely uncomfortable with this situation. “But that is so outside of the scope of reality.” I waved my hands, refusing to go into the specifics of why, still looking away.
“Hannah.” Beau’s voice was strong. Urgent. No longer amused. “Look at me.”
I took a breath, preparing, then looked at him. I waited to see the edge in his expression, the placating he might do because underneath it all, he was a good person who wouldn’t cackle like my mother had when I’d told her my dream. Nor would he tell me I was “too stupid and too poor” to be a doctor like Waylon had.
There wasn’t a hint of anything but a kind of anger that didn’t entirely make sense.
“Why in the fuck would you becoming an oncologist be outside of reality?”
I bugged my eyes out at him, realizing that he was serious. He was Beau. He was breathing. Clara wasn’t in the vicinity. So, yes, he was serious.
“Um, I hate to be an asshole, but remember the oncologists you met with Clara?” I asked, hoping the reminder wouldn’t upset him.
His entire form stiffened. “I remember every fucking meeting with them in great detail,” he gritted out.
I nodded, hating that I was bringing him back to such a dark place to make my point. “And remember the kind of people they were. Now look at me.”
“I’m looking right at you, Hannah,” he said seriously. And he was. He was staring at me so hard, I might’ve disappeared or grown roots and sealed to that spot forever. “I’m looking at an intelligent, driven, compassionate, and fucking remarkable person. Parents would be lucky to have you sitting across from them, fighting for their child. I know I would’ve been.”
My stomach pitched as I felt all the breath leave my body. The conviction that Beau was speaking with was airtight. He believed that with his entire core.
It went against what I was told my entire life. Outside words that had sneaked their way inside and turned into things I’d told myself.
Not worthy. Not smart enough. Not cultured enough. Certainly not wealthy enough. Not special enough to get a scholarship.
“You don’t mean that,” I murmured, ducking my head. “You’re just saying it to be nice.”
Beau’s hand grasped my chin, forcing my gaze upward to meet his steely stare. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean. And I don’t say things just to be nice.”
I smiled sadly. “You say nice things to me all the time.” A slight exaggeration, but if you graded on the curve of Beau not saying nice things to anyone, it was relatively a lot.
“I mean every fucking thing I say to you, Hannah. They just happen to be nice.”
I bit back a smile.
“Why aren’t you studying to be an oncologist?” He squinted at me.
“Well, first of all, I didn’t even have enough funds to finish nursing school,” I sighed. “Although now I have just enough. But just. Being an oncologist is years of more study, hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Okay.” He nodded.
I released a long breath. Finally, Beau was seeing sense. He understood that for most of us, some dreams deserved to stay there.
“You’ll finish nursing school.” He ran his index finger along my jaw. “We’ll look into scholarships, student loans. I’ll look at getting a mortgage on the house?—”
“Are you fuckingcrazy?” My hands went to his lips, the only way I could stop him from talking. “You are not mortgaging your and Clara’s home for some dream of mine.”
