Only three men had ever told me they loved me in my life. There was my father, and he’d disappeared.
Then there was the odd—but passionate—one-night stand I had in med school. I ran away from him. And then there was, of course, Dustin LeBlanc.
It was hard, but I had to do it.
That night, I called him on Skype. He picked up after one ring.
“Hey Kit Cat,” he said, and I smiled.
“Hey.”
“I was on the phone all day with Jenny, and my coach, and everyone. Trying to figure out how we can fight this thing.”
I cleared my throat. “We can’t.”
“What do you mean, we can’t?”
“It’s clear as day, Dustin. We need to face the inevitable. Neither of us can handle five years of prison time—and that’s averypossible outcome at this point. We were caught in a big time lie.”
Dustin took a deep breath. “So you’re saying it’s over.”
“I still love you,” I said. “But this is for the best. You know it is. We’re up against forces out of our control.”
The other side of the phone line was silent for a few moments.
“Dustin?”
“I understand.”
We both hung on the line in silence for several moments. Finally, I disconnected. Or maybe he did, first. My heart was pounding so hard, I could barely tell. I blinked a few times, and felt my hurt. But it needed to be done. There was no sense in living a lie and trying to stave off the inevitable. This was check mate.
Was I heartless for running away from Dustin?
No. I wasn’t running. I was being strong. I was being selfless. If I stayed, we could be prosecuted and both of our lives would conceivably be ruined.
Leaving was the right thing.
Like my father had told me,a veces la cosa mas fuerte es separarte.
Sometimes, the strongest thing you can do is separate.
CHAPTER 31
CATARINA
The April windwas warm in Spain, warmer than Chicago and D.C., and it was quite pleasant. I hated that Jackie was right about the climate of Spain. And I hated that I always felt the need to separate from men who loved me.
Over the next week, I made another series of Skype calls and emails to the hospital, going over several patients I was transferring to other doctors. I avoided reading emails from Dustin. It was too painful to look at his words, and I knew they wouldn’t be friendly toward me.
After everything he had done, I repaid him by leaving. He didn’t have to know I had been thinking of him when I left.
Real life and love weren’t like Romeo and Juliet, where we should both kill ourselves to be with each other. As harsh as it maybe was, we needed to be realistic. If we were both in prison, we wouldn’t be together, would we?
Maybe I was cold-hearted, but to me, it seemed like the only solution.
During the next few weeks, I fell back into a routine with my family.
I was lucky that my mother and I understood each other on a deep level. She loved her late husband as much as I loved him as a father. As a result, she understood where my deep drive to be a doctor came from, and supported it whole-heartedly, even during high school when she had to take an extra job so that I wouldn’t have to take one, and could spend extra time studying.
