Alaska

by Cate Ashwood

  “Unlikely, my friend.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Now that you’ve got Holden pinned down, you’ve officially cornered the market on gay in this town. You think some random homo’s gonna come outta the woodwork and drop to one knee? Nope. I am a confirmed bachelor. For life.”

  “That’s what I thought too, and now look at me. I’m a fucking mess.”

  “Go home. Confess your everlasting love to your man. Have lots of hot, sweaty sex, and then tell me all about it, because this confirmed bachelor hasn’t gotten laid in a very long time.”

  “You’re stuck with me for a little bit longer. I gotta let this buzz wear off, and there’s no rush to get home. Holden’s at the hospital, remember?”

  “No. I’m too delirious from lack of sleep to remember anything.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Go home. I’ll hang out here by myself.”

  “You’re a good man, Gage Emerson.” Logan stood and kissed my forehead before turning and sauntering out of the bar.

  I wasn’t in a rush to get home, but I didn’t much feel like hanging around J’s. I grabbed a coffee to go and headed over to the hospital.

  Night shifts for us were generally pretty dull—there was nothing to do unless an emergency flew through the doors, and so most of the shift was spent hanging around or sleeping in the on-call room. I found Holden in the ER, sitting in one of the nurse’s chairs, his feet propped up on the desk. He was laughing, head thrown back, hands folded with his fingers interlaced across his chest, and even in the shitty fluorescent lights of the emergency room, I was momentarily stunned at how beautiful he was.

  But what was more amazing was how his expression changed when he saw me. His eyes lit up, and his whole body seemed more relaxed somehow. Maybe I was hallucinating it, but I could swear his demeanor changed, just by my presence.

  This was the first time I’d seen him since I’d admitted out loud how I felt about him, and while I hadn’t planned to tell him at the hospital—pretty much the least romantic setting ever—I didn’t know if I was going to be able to wait.

  “Gage!” Holden jumped up and ran over to me. “I’m so glad you’re here. I gotta talk to you.”

  Normally those words “we have to talk” meant the beginning of the end, but the way Holden was beaming at me, the way he was practically vibrating with excitement, I felt nothing but overwhelming anticipation.

  There was a catcall from Nadia in the supply room, but Holden ignored her as he pulled me past and into the staff room.

  “I wanted to talk to you too. I was going to wait until home… doesn’t matter. You go first. What did you need to tell me?”

  He dashed across the room and picked up a piece of paper from his locker, then handed it to me. It was a printout of an email. I stood there, skimming the email, then reread it twice to be certain I hadn’t misread it.

  “They’ve headhunted you? Sutton Memorial?”

  “It’s one of the most well-funded and highly regarded labs in the whole country. One of my research assistants was poached by them a few years back, and I guess she recommended me for the position. They’re offering me a chance at an insane budget to continue the research I started at Westbridge.”

  “That’s an amazing opportunity.” I tried to keep the disappointment from creeping into my voice. Holden was happier than I’d ever seen him, and I couldn’t tarnish that, but the sinking feeling got worse. “Did you already apply?”

  “No. I’m still considering it. There’s a lot to think about.” He paused, seeming to have lost some of his exuberance. When he spoke again, his voice was slightly flatter. “What did you want to tell me?”

  I waved the question off. “It was nothing.”

  “Aw, come on. Tell me.”

  “Nothing nearly as exciting as that. Barrett debuted a new beer at J’s. Something with blood orange. I thought you’d like it.”

  “That does sound good. We’ll have to try it out next time we’re both off together.”

  “Definitely.”

  I kissed him. “Congratulations again on Sutton. I’m gonna head home, though. It’s been a long day. I’ll see you in the morning?”

  “Yep. I’ll try not to wake you when I come in.”

  I kissed him again and headed out.

  The whole drive home, it took everything I had to keep focused on the road. My mind was running in a thousand different directions. What it would mean if Holden applied for the job, and then accepted, because honestly, they’d be idiots not to choose him. I didn’t care who the other candidates were, Holden was a shoo-in.

  The house was quieter than I ever remembered it being, and I couldn’t seem to settle my thoughts down enough to fall asleep. I lay there for hours, staring into the darkness and trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

  Holden hadn’t made a decision yet, but the decision was clear, wasn’t it? There was no choice—he had to go. That offer was the job of a lifetime. Asking him to hang around Sawyer’s Ferry for my sake was selfish and stupid.

  But if I didn’t, he would leave, taking my heart with him in the process.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Do we have to go back?” I asked. Gage was sitting next to me, one hand resting casually on the bottom of the steering wheel. We were waiting for the ferry to pull in after spending two days in Belcourt, a small community a couple of hours north of Sawyer’s Ferry.

  “You’d rather stay in Belcourt?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. I like it here.”

  “It’s half the size of Sawyer’s Ferry. And I thought that was too small for you.”

  “Small is starting to grow on me...”

  Gage didn’t look all that persuaded. “I don’t think Logan would much appreciate being left on his own to run the hospital.”

  “Maybe not.”

  The trips to smaller communities had always been Gage and Logan’s thing. Since I’d been in town, they’d gone on the last couple together, leaving me to run the surgical department by myself.

  This time, though, Logan had bowed out. I figured a couple of days away, even if they were mostly spent working, would be a nice change of pace, but I hadn’t expected Belcourt to be so beautiful. A camp more than a town, there was a single hotel, with even fewer rooms than the Sawyer’s Ferry Inn, and a general store that supplied the entire community with things they needed. Just like Sawyer’s Ferry, it was accessible only by boat and by air, with a tiny airstrip right in the middle of the city. Unlike Sawyer’s Ferry, Belcourt had fewer than a thousand residents and zero hospital facilities.

  A small clinic serviced the town and the surrounding communities. And once a month, someone from SFRH made the trip up to perform whatever simple procedures could be done with the limited resources they had. More complicated surgeries required the residents leave town, but SFRH tried to make medical care as convenient as possible.

  So we’d spent the last two days there, with back-to-back procedures, trying to fit in as many patients as possible before returning home. It was rewarding, but now I was ready for a day off.

  We boarded the ferry and parked on the small lower deck between a horse trailer and another pickup truck.

  “You wanna sit in here or head up to the deck?”

  I shivered thinking about how cold it was outside. “It’s freezing.”

  “I’ll keep you warm,” Gage promised.

  The thought of standing out in the early-morning air, with the wind coming off the water gave me chills, but the trip was only half an hour and thirty minutes of cold wouldn’t kill me. “Yeah, let’s go.”

  The stairwell to the top floor was at the front of the ship. I was halfway up when the ferry pulled away from the dock, throwing me off balance. Gage reached up to steady me, even though I was holding on to the railing. My skin tingled where he touched me, and I didn’t want him to let go.

  Things between us the last week had been strained, and it didn’t take a fucking genius to figure out why. There wasn’t much time left on my co
ntract before I needed to make a decision about where I was going to end up.

  The decision should have been easy—a no-brainer, really. New York was the obvious choice. It was a slam dunk career-wise. If I was offered the job at Sutton, the budget alone for research was worth taking the position. There were a hundred reasons to go and only one reason to stay, and yet I was conflicted.

  I’d put off thinking about it, and clearly, Gage was on the same page. We hadn’t discussed it since the day I’d gotten the letter. It was hanging over both our heads, pushing down on us, drowning us in tension, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to broach the topic.

  Talking about it made it real, and while I knew I only had a couple of days left before I’d have to start making arrangements, one way or the other, I was pushing it back as long as I could.

  I made it to the top deck without falling and breaking my neck. It was deserted. Apparently, everyone else was sane enough to remain in their warm vehicles downstairs. The wind whipped across the flat surface, carrying the smell of the sea with it. I walked to the side and rested my hand on the metal railing.

  Gage came up behind me, close enough that I could feel his body pressed against mine. He blocked some of the wind, and having him there with me made me feel instantly warmer.

  “It’s kind of beautiful,” I said. “When it’s not covered in snow.”

  “I’m glad you came with me,” Gage said, his voice low against my ear.

  “Logan isn’t as good at ferry-deck cuddling?”

  Gage chuckled and I turned in his arms, leaning back against the railing. I slid my hand along his cheek and pulled him down to kiss me. The air outside was piercingly cold, but Gage’s mouth was warm on mine. He crowded even closer, and I melted into him, savoring the feeling of his weight against me. For a minute I lost myself in him. Nothing else mattered, and time slowed down. I wanted to stay like that forever, blissfully ignorant to the real-life shit we’d have to deal with later.

  I didn’t know how many more kisses we’d have, and that made it so goddamn bittersweet. I tightened my grip on him, just for a second, delaying the inevitable end. It was a lot to think about, a lot to process, and I’d been avoiding doing just that. For now, it was easier to cling to him and pretend this was the first of many trips together.

  Gage didn’t seem any more eager to let me go.

  “Do you want chicken or steak for dinner?” Gage held up two ziplocks of frozen meat, one barely discernible from the other, which wasn’t a great sign.

  My gaze darted between them, but I wasn’t hungry and neither option sounded all that appealing. As we neared closer to the end of my contract, putting off the conversation was becoming more and more impossible.

  Gage felt it too. There was no way he didn’t. The groove we’d settled into after getting back from Belcourt was weird. We were fucking more than a gang of rabbits dosed with Viagra. Standing in the kitchen fully clothed and not on top of each other was a rare occurrence, but those few times when we weren’t naked and sweaty, or completely brain-dead from loss of bodily fluids, things were so goddamn uncomfortable.

  It was as though we’d forgotten how to interact with our clothes on. At first, I’d dismissed it as an off day, but when it continued into the next and then the next, it became increasingly apparent that something was up.

  And now I was getting tired of it. I only had a few days left, and I didn’t want to spend them Band-Aiding whatever was going on with sex.

  I sighed, letting the resignation flow through me. “We should talk about it.”

  “Talk about what?” Gage asked, doing his best to look confused. He wasn’t fooling anyone. This conversation had been hanging over our heads for three months, the weight of it growing by the day.

  “You know what. We keep avoiding talking about what’s going to happen. I haven’t wanted to bring it up because I thought it would make things weird, but things are weird anyway, and the reality of it is that my contract is up and I need to make a decision about Sutton.”

  “I know that.”

  “I know you know that,” I said, growing frustrated. “What I don’t know is how you feel about it.”

  “My feelings don’t matter as much as yours.”

  “I’m not certain that’s true, and I’m asking you anyway.” I held my breath waiting for his answer. This was the moment that I’d been dreading—opening the lid to find out what was inside Pandora’s box. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted his answer to be, but my heart was pounding with anticipation.

  “Of course you’re welcome to stay. You’re the best surgeon Sawyer’s Ferry has ever seen, and your positive outcome ratios are better than most surgeons in the country, but turning down Sutton to stay in a town with one operating room and limited resources doesn’t make sense.”

  “So you want me to go.”

  “What I want is irrelevant. You’re at the start of your career, and Jesus, Holden, you’re amazing. You would be stifled here, and ultimately I don’t think you would be happy. We’re cut off from the rest of the world. This isn’t New York. This isn’t even Anchorage.”

  “I know but—”

  “Turning down Sutton would be a mistake.”

  “And what if there was no offer?” I asked, feeling the panic start to rise in my chest. I felt like I was desperately trying to hold on to something that was never mine to begin with. I had almost no control over it, and I hated that feeling.

  Gage could tell I was getting upset. He crossed the room and pulled me against him, wrapping his arms tightly around me. “We could stand here forever talking about ‘what if,’ but it doesn’t change the fact that if there is an offer, the offer is too good for you to turn it down.”

  I leaned into him, trying to sap the strength from his body and pull it into mine. I was barely upright, all my energy slipping away with each word out of his mouth.

  “What if I don’t want it?”

  “You do, though.” He squeezed me hard. “How could you not?”

  He was right. I wanted it, but the thought of what I’d have to give up to get it made it feel so much less like a victory and more like a loss.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The trip to Belcourt had been bittersweet. I’d made that journey with Logan countless times, but I’d never been sad for the two days to end. Somehow being away from home, away from the routine we’d built over three months living and working together, made everything feel different, like a pixelated image that became clear.

  The conversation we’d had the night before haunted me as I paced around the house, feeling like I was going to jump out of my skin. We’d gone to bed, and for the first time since Holden had moved in, it had felt like there was a stranger in my bed.

  I fucking hated it, and when he got up the following morning and left for work, it had been a relief. There was a small part of me that hoped him leaving Sawyer’s Ferry would be the same but on a much larger scale, but by the time I’d gotten out of bed and gone downstairs to grab coffee, I’d realized that relief was anything but.

  The house—my house—had become ours, and sometime over the last three months, memories of Holden had woven themselves into every surface. I couldn’t look at the sofa in the living room without remembering our first night together or the barstools in the kitchen without remembering all the mornings we’d spent together talking while one of us cooked for the other.

  He was everywhere.

  A few hours later I wasn’t feeling any less restless, so I threw my coat on and headed into town, needing to get out of the house and out of my own head.

  I parked at the end of the waterfront and got out, unsure of where I was headed. The town didn’t hold any fewer pieces of my relationship with Holden. As embedded as he was into my house, he was just as prevalent here. I leaned against my truck and looked out at the ocean.

  Time healed everything. One day, the thought of Holden leaving wouldn’t hurt as much.

  “Hey.” A voice behind me pulled me out o
f my teenage-angst moment. I turned to see Barrett unloading some supplies from the back of his truck.

  “Oh, hey.”

  He squinted at me, and I could feel him trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. “You okay?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I’m fine.”

  He regarded me a moment before tilting his head toward the building. “You wanna come in? I’m pulling a new batch of IPA today. You can be my guinea pig.”

  I followed him inside.

  From the outside Copper Creek Brewing looked like any other warehouse or industrial building in Sawyer’s Ferry. It was gray and unremarkable, but inside was much more interesting. The place was technically two levels, with a mezzanine cutting halfway through the second level and walkways around the entire perimeter. The lower floor looked to be where the storage and production happened, with machinery at one end.

  “You’re the only one here today?”

  Barrett nodded. “I try to give everyone the weekend off when I can.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “Maybe. Nice to have the place to myself sometimes too.”

  We walked past a long line of shiny metal storage tanks to the end of the row where there was a small bar with six leather stools.

  “You know, if you wanna compete with J’s, you’re going to need a bigger bar.”

  “I don’t,” Barrett replied, a hint of a smile playing at his lips. “This isn’t open to the public. It’s just for me and my guys. I figure if we’re going to sample the beers, we should have a proper bar to do it at.” He motioned toward the stools. “Have a seat. I’ll grab you a pint.”

  He poured one for each of us, the beer dark amber as it rushed from the spigot into the glass, then slid mine across the wooden surface.

  “This the part where you ask me what’s troubling me and I unload all my bullshit personal history onto you?”

  Barrett stared forward at his glass and shrugged one shoulder. “It is if you want it to be, I guess.”