The Doctor Who Has No Chance - Victoria Quinn Page 0,29
want to.
She stood up. “Dex, please. If you just give me some time—”
“I gave you a year.” I turned back to her and stared her down. “An entire year to pull your head out of your ass and make this right. You didn’t. That’s on you.”
“I know. I get it. But I think we’re worth fighting for. What we had…it was something out of a storybook, you know?”
“Oh, trust me, I know.” I thought about it every goddamn day and wondered if it’d been a figment of my imagination, because why would anyone leave something so good.
“Then, please. You’re the only man I want for the rest of my life. Please…please.”
I turned away because I couldn’t watch her beg. “No.”
“Dex.” She came to me and grabbed both of my arms. “I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you. I will spend the rest of my life earning your trust. I will…do anything in the world to be with you.” She moved her forehead into my chest and rested it there, crying quietly against me. “I want to be buried beside you for eternity…”
I used to think I was the luckiest bastard alive, that I found the love of my life young, that I married her, and I would get to spend decades with her. I never doubted we would make it to the end, because I was faithful and she was too. We would be surrounded by our grandchildren, and maybe if we were lucky enough, our great-grandchildren. “If you’d come to me a little sooner, we could have tried. But…not now.”
She pulled away and looked into my eyes, her eyes wet and reflective. “What does a few months matter? How can you love me then not love me one night?”
I didn’t want to hurt Catherine, not even after she’d hurt me. I knew her feelings were genuine, that it was just the aftershock of trauma that had made her do those incredibly stupid things, that there was still something here if we wanted to cultivate it and make it grow. “Because there’s somebody else…”
The check remained where she’d left it, and I hadn’t touched it.
But I did stare at it.
I recognized her feminine handwriting, looking identical to the notes she used to leave for me on my nightstand. When I woke up, I got to read her little love notes, which were far more romantic than a modern-day text message with a picture of her tits.
I should take the money, but I didn’t want it.
It was tainted.
I dragged my hands down my face and tried to think of when everything went wrong, when my life turned into a goddamn shitshow. The woman I’d always wanted offered herself to me, but I turned her down for the girl who wanted nothing to do with me, the girl I had fucked over for some idiotic reason.
Why was I such an imbecile?
I went into my closet and found the box in the corner, hidden by some shoes. I carried it into the dining room and opened the lid, seeing a couple things that I couldn’t throw away. I still had the box that had held her ring when I proposed. I’d kept a couple notes she had written to me, notes that I’d read a hundred times after she left me, wondering if she meant a single word that she wrote. And then the picture frame, on our wedding day…when I thought I was the luckiest motherfucker ever.
I stared at it for a moment, and instead of being taken back to that magic day, I felt nothing.
Nothing at all.
I opened the trash can, tipped the box over, and dropped everything inside. “Goodbye, Catherine.”
Eleven
Sicily
I didn’t hear from Zach again.
It was like it never happened.
I spent most of my time working, keeping up with Dex and his hectic lifestyle. If I weren’t doing his charts while he visited with patients, I would have time to do other things, but doing his charting was one of the biggest assets to him. It was something I couldn’t abandon, not even once. I wasn’t sure what he would do if I called in sick and wasn’t there.
The last patient left for the day, and I sat in my comfy chair at the check-in desk and went over all the paperwork that needed to be filed. When I checked in patients, I took down all their info, but I didn’t get a chance to bill the insurance companies until later in the day.