Page 51

There was no heat in her words. Just being playful. But they sting, all the same.

After, she lies across my chest in the dark and traces the old field-medicine scar on my shoulder. “In the daylight I’ll still be appalled.”

“I know.” I move a strand of her hair between two fingers. “You contain a great deal, Veda. It’s the first thing I liked about you.”

She falls asleep on my chest. I stay awake a long time in the dark, listening to her breathe.

I’m in love with her. The woman asleep on my chest who felt safer when I turned cold and hated herself for it and chose me anyway, eyes open, on purpose.

Life would be so much simpler if I weren’t.

This is temporary. She has a life, a career that a war and a lie already stole one rung of, a brother landing tomorrow to carry her home if she’ll let him. When this is finished, she goes back to being Dr. Raines of Boston, and I won’t stop her.

Stopping her would be a poison that would kill us both.

It is bad enough that I stole her from her old life. But to steal her future too? Even I’m not that much of an asshole.

But I want to be selfish.

I want to see her pregnant with my dark-eyed baby, a second child for Sarah to teach which somersaults deserve fake applause. Fifty years of stopwatches and Sunday sauce and this weight on my chest.

There are few things I have wanted more, and she wants none of it.

She wants her old life back, and I don’t begrudge her that. We want different things out of this life, and the wanting burns worse than anything.

Desire, as they say, is a piece of shit.

It never goes away. Not really. Not even after you have the thing you wanted. Because there’s always something more to want.

I want Veda. If I had her, I’d want to see her full with my child. After that, I’d want another. A whole baseball team’s worth of kids.

And she’d never have the time to be a doctor. She’d never reach the heights of her career. Never perform the research she wants to do, never save all those strangers’ kids, never be who she truly is.

Veda is a hero. She’s not like me.

So I hold her while she sleeps, and I say none of it.

17

VEDA

Mark texts wheels down and rents a car instead of taking the one Lupo offered, which is Mark telling me he wants some control in this.

Which means he thinks I have none. Or maybe I’m just overthinking it, because I’m worried about every second of this visit.

Before he arrives, I spend time rehearsing as a woman I don’t need to pretend to be. That’s the whole point—I am genuinely happy here, and I will use that truth as a shield for my brother if necessary. The estate has been arranged into the most sincere lie I’ve ever created.

Diana is preparing as if the Pope is about to arrive. Sarah has picked her own dress and a headband. Lupo wears a comfortable sweater instead of a suit, and it might as well be the official costume of a man with nothing to hide. It’s a good disguise.

Now, I just hope it fools Mark.

“He’s here,” Nick says from the window, and I go to the door before Mark reaches the doorbell. Nick catches my eye on the way past, and for once his face has no comedy in it, only a small nod that means he knows exactly what tonight is and he’s sorry for it.

Mark looks like Mark. Khakis, easy smile, tech-casual blue polo. Hawaii formal, he likes to call it. He’s my height, short for a man. But that’s due to his half-Japanese heritage, I think.

His father, a former Tokyo tech executive, was married to our mother before he passed away in a boating accident near the Big Island. That’s why we’ve always had to tell people we were related. The only thing he got from our mom was her hazel-green eyes. I’ve been jealous of them since I can remember. I got my dad’s totally normal brown eyes. It’s not fair.

But neither is life.