For almost a decade, she’d let that vial sit, an unexpected second chance left untouched in that sperm bank. A decade spent picking up the pieces of her shattered life, creating the perfect nest for the baby she’d one day have, putting it off and putting it off. A decade spent eschewing fun in favor of responsibility. Because this was what she wanted: her clinic, her house, and now her baby.
Why on earth didn’t it feel like enough anymore? She didn’t trust it—this feeling that suddenly there might be more to life, just out of reach—but she had no idea how to make it go away.
* * *
Clay let his eyes scan downtown Blackwood, taking in the cars parked nearby. The martial arts place next door to the skin clinic was holding a class for women. He squinted, watching the ladies go slowly through a series of defensive moves before practicing them on a couple of guys. He surveyed the rest of the block—it was quiet, so quiet he had a hard time trusting this place. Time and again since he’d gotten here, he’d had to remind himself that it was a small town. Quiet was the norm, not the other way around.
Except it wasn’t like that, was it? There was bad everywhere, people like those junkies who’d attacked the doc. Because under the quiet, in every bumfuck corner of this godforsaken country—probably the world—evil lurked.
Back to the martial arts place, where the women were beating the hell out of the guys. Or pretending to, because Clay knew from experience that big guys like himself, like the giant inside, could take a woman down with one hand tied behind their backs. It wasn’t some half-assed fist block that would make a difference.
Cynical. So fucking cynical.
Farther along, he spotted the sign for the town’s one and only bar. It looked kind of old-fashioned, with lettering that should read Ye Olde Pub. Instead, it read The Nook, which made him think of dim lights and knitting. He watched as a group of people pulled open the door and went inside, laughing.
Minutes passed, and Clay’s pulse slowed to normal. As he watched the self-defense women, they wrapped up their class and started spilling out onto the sidewalk, which felt like his cue to leave—best not to be accused of being some kind of creep. Surefire way to get his ass kicked out of town.
Just as he turned the ignition, the clinic lights went out, the door opened, and Dr. Hadley stepped outside. She locked the door without looking up once—Jesus, even after the other night, the woman had no sense of self-preservation, which drove him completely nuts. Didn’t she know she was a sitting duck for all kinds of predators?
She needed to take that class. Because, although the moves were pretty Mickey Mouse, they’d at least teach her to look before heading out into this fucked-up world. He’d seen the shit people did to women. He knew.
Clay watched as she stepped off the sidewalk, not appearing to even notice the women walking out next door, moved to her car—unlocked, which sent his blood pressure through the roof—and finally drove off.
From somewhere close by, an engine fired up, and Clay almost jumped out of his skin.
Breathing too hard, he waited a few seconds for his anxiety to dissipate and, when it didn’t appear to abate at all, put his truck into drive and followed the doctor at a respectful distance.
Too many women had suffered because he’d given them space or looked the other way. He was done looking the other way. He didn’t care how small a town this was—there was evil everywhere, around every street corner. He’d seen it in guys he’d taken down; he’d seen it in the smiling eyes of psychopaths; he’d seen it in the eyes of men he’d called brother.
God, he knew how fucking weird this was, following the doctor home. He couldn’t stand to see another woman get hurt on his watch. Especially one this soft, this caring.
Creeped out was better than dead.
* * *
George wasn’t generally one to partake in excessive alcohol. Not that she hadn’t back in her wild days, when she’d let herself get coerced into situations by bad boys, done wild things, and gotten pregnant in the process. She regretted those times, the manic fun, the stupid decisions made out of sadness and desperation. Bad boys, tattoos, and all the rest of it, she reminded herself, were nothing compared to adult decisions and everything else that had eventually made partying seem not quite so fun anymore.
Bad boys were a bad idea.
Andrew Blane was a very bad idea.
And so was stopping by the fancy country store on the way home to buy herself a bottle of something. Anything would have satisfied her, but she wound up getting a six-pack of cider, because beer felt too casual and champagne too expensive, but she wanted a drink, something to cap off this strange, strange night.
What she really wanted was to call someone—a friend would be nice—and tell them what was going on. She wanted to spill everything. Her need to have a baby—a family. Someone to call her own. Her fears that she was doing something very wrong here. That this wasn’t how these things were meant to happen. And D-Day just a week away. It was all too much, this last-chance pressure.
Added to that, the entire weird story about the big, broken man who had suddenly encroached on her every waking thought, his rough hands holding her so tightly, leaving her afraid for rather than of him. And she wanted that friend to understand. That was the toughest part, beyond obvious things like ethics and HIPAA violations. More than anything, she wanted to be told that she wasn’t absolutely out of her mind for feeling the way she did about him, which was…unclear.
Pulling into her driveway, she glanced at the house next door—it had been empty for the past six months, but Jessie and her son appeared to have moved in yesterday, which was good. Neighbors were good. Someone she could count on when she ran out of sugar. Or whatever.
She smiled at that. Sugar? No. She wouldn’t run out anytime soon. George didn’t run out of things.
On her way inside, she cast another glance at the cottage and thought about the six-pack of cider she held. She wouldn’t mind sharing…
Down the relative coolness of the long hall, into the kitchen, six-pack in the fridge, then straight through the back door and out into the hot, hot humidity of a Virginia summer evening.
The usual sounds of home greeted her: calm clucking, which meant her patching job on the fence had worked; lazy birdsong, gaining in intensity at this time of day—like children at bedtime, the creatures got worked up before the bats took over as kings of the night sky. Beyond that, she heard the far-off drone of a mower. Always mowing in Virginia. Lord, with the in-laws’ grass to do every weekend, she had enough mowing to last her a lifetime. George preferred livelier plants, their bursts of color and meandering stalks much more her speed than flat, boring plains of green. And here was the sound of crickets. Loud and intense, but somehow always in the background. Although…no. She cocked her head.
Not crickets. These were cicadas.
