His hands were in the pockets of his coat. His hair was longer than it had been two weeks ago. The shadows under his eyes were carved by days spent waiting in hospital light.
He pushed off the wall, and walked toward me. Then stopped a foot in front of me.
I held my ground. "Cross."
"Sabrina."
His hands came out of his pockets. Both of them. He raised them. He cupped my face. His thumbs sat at the high points of my cheekbones.
He kissed me.
The kiss was short. It tasted sweet. There was no urgency in it, and there was no question — his mouth pressed on mine evenly and held there for a passionate few seconds before he pulled back. Over in maybe four seconds.
His hands stayed on my face. His forehead came down against mine.
"Fine."
"Fine what?"
"I'll do it. I agree to your terms." He didn't let go of my face. "No strings attached."
My eyes widened in shock.
11.Beau
The foundation building was on Madison. The hospital was on Sixty-Eighth and York. For days, I'd been telling myself the foundation was the lesser evil, and I'd finally believed it enough to put on a tie.
I'd never been a runner.
That had been Cade. He hadn't seen his own father in two years when the man died, and he had grieved by going further from the family, not closer. I hadn't understood then what Cade had been doing. He'd been triaging, and he'd been right about that, even when no one had given him credit for it.
Now I was at the foundation, in a tie, with nothing on the calendar that strictly required me, because I couldn't bring myself to walk into the room my father was in.
I was pulling a Cade.
I was going to have to apologize to him. Eventually. This was a backbreaking task to set for myself when I hadn't yet figured out how to apologize to my father. How to accept the reality that I was losing him.
The conference room was on the eleventh floor.
The chairs were ergonomic. There were bottles of water and a basket of granola bars on the conference table. Board membersweren't always good at remembering to eat, and a granola bar at the right moment had prevented two negotiations from going sideways.
I sat at the head of the table.
Mark Olin was running the afternoon agenda. Mark was the medical director, conscientious, ahead of his own timeline. He had a clean haircut and wore a navy polo with CROSS FOUNDATION on the chest. He had been at the foundation longer than I had — he had come over from St. Vincent's the year my father had funded the cardiac arm.
He was reading the case-review summary off a bound packet.
"The committee's recommendations on the reschedules came back in writing. Wong and Phelps are going forward in the fall window per the original schedule. Aldarmaki was moved from fall to early winter — that one was at the family's request. Vela, Bonnie. Pediatric. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with syncope. Septal myectomy. Moved from late autumn to the spring window."
I closed my eyes for a moment.
Mark had already moved on.
She didn't tell me.
I'd been at her stoop, at her counter, in an alley with my hand on the back of her neck, and her daughter's name had been right there. She hadn't put it on the table.
Mark was on the next case.
