Alaska

by Cate Ashwood

  I didn’t know what I wanted. I was so fucking torn that I felt like I was being ripped apart. Maybe that was being a bit overly dramatic, but I’d never cared this much about someone else before. I’d never needed to both hold on and let go so desperately, and I couldn’t wrap my head around what the right thing to do was.

  We sat in silence for a long time, until the first pint was empty. He grabbed my glass and refilled it. Without hesitation, I drank it down, Barrett watching me the whole time with one eyebrow raised.

  “I’m not sure if I should take that to mean the IPA gets your stamp of approval, or if you’re just needing the alcohol content that bad.”

  I felt like an idiot. “A little of both, I guess.”

  “This about that other doctor?”

  “Holden. Yeah.” One of the things about living in a small town was that folks knew your business without you having to tell them, and sometimes they knew shit before you did.

  “He’s leaving.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I told him to.”

  “Why?”

  I sighed. “Because there’s this job and if he doesn’t take it, he will end up regretting it. I don’t want him to stay here for me. I don’t want him giving up opportunities in order to stay here.”

  “You two are…”

  He looked mildly uncomfortable, but I hadn’t pretended to be straight since I was in my twenties and I wasn’t going to avoid talking about it to make someone else more comfortable now, no matter how hospitable he was.

  “Together? Yes.”

  “And you love him?”

  “Yeah.”

  Barrett shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Does he know?”

  “What?”

  “Did you tell him that you love him?”

  “No—maybe.” I huffed a breath. “I haven’t said it out loud, but what’s the point in telling him now? He’s leaving in less than two weeks.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his hip against the bar. “No regrets, right? Don’t you think that might be something you end up regretting later?”

  He might have been right, but I still felt shitty about springing that on Holden right as he was packing up to leave. What was the point? What did I hope he was going to do with that information? All it would do would be make it harder for him to leave. And I didn’t want to do that to him. But what the hell was I supposed to do when the right thing and the thing I wanted most were opposites?

  “I mean, I get it, man. Our situations aren’t all that different. My wife moved to LA, and I let her go.”

  “What? You were married?” Barrett didn’t look much older than Holden, and I hadn’t been in Sawyer’s Ferry all that long, but it was something I’d thought I would have heard about before now.

  “In another lifetime, yeah. She wanted to be a songwriter, and that industry’s not exactly booming around here.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “A handful of years. High school sweethearts, ended up getting married right after graduation because what else are you gonna do? But she loved music and I loved her, so I saved up and bought her a plane ticket and that was that.”

  “Why didn’t you go with her?”

  “I don’t belong in LA. Alaska’s in my blood. I was born here, my parents were born here, grandparents. This is my home.” He shrugged. “I think deep down, I thought she’d come back. But one year passed, then five, and now it’s been… God, too many years.”

  “Did she make it as a songwriter?”

  “Nope, but she always hated the snow. She’s a teacher now. Second grade. Three kids of her own and living near the beach.”

  I couldn’t imagine hearing about Holden marrying someone else, making a life with someone else. The thought of that made me feel sick. I took another breath and let it out slowly. “So… does it get easier? Letting them go?”

  “Not at first. At first, it hurt like hell, but after a year or two, that faded. I miss her sometimes, randomly, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  Everything Barrett had said was a lot to process. I’m not sure if he sensed I needed time to think, or if he just needed a minute, but he excused himself, saying he needed to take care of something, and wandered off. I finished up my drink and found him checking a gauge on one of the tanks as I walked toward the door.

  I thanked him for the beer and headed home.

  By the time I arrived, I’d formulated a plan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The day had dragged on longer than any other ever had. It had taken way too long to get home as Sawyer’s Ferry seemed to be experiencing its first rush hour ever.

  I’d been distracted and forgetful all day, and it took every ounce of concentration to keep my focus where it should have been. The only thing I wanted to do was talk to Gage. I’d spent hours and hours going over every possible scenario in my head. I approached it as I would a treatment plan for a patient. I looked at each option, weighed the pros and cons, and tried to calculate the probability of a favorable outcome.

  Somewhere along the way, we’d gone from two guys sharing a house to two guys in a relationship, and I needed his input. I also needed to know that I wasn’t wildly out of line with my assessment of where we stood. There were certain unknowns in my calculations, and all I could do was make guesses.

  But even with the educated guesses I’d had to make, the best course of action had been clear.

  I pulled into the driveway, parking next to Gage’s truck, and went inside. I found him in the bedroom, putting away clean laundry.

  “Hi,” I said, pulling my jacket off and hanging it in the closet.

  “Hey. Good day?”

  “Decent. Mrs. Duncan pulled through her hernia surgery fine, and Martin Carnes was discharged.”

  “That’s good.”

  There was so much false pleasantness in the room I could barely stand it. I wanted to throw Gage against the wall, or shake him, or punch him. Something to break this plastic exchange.

  Instead, I said, “I want to talk to you about something.”

  “I want to talk to you about something too,” he said.

  “Okay, but I need to get this out. Hear me out before you say anything.”

  Gage nodded, his hands shoved into his back pockets as he stood waiting for me to speak.

  “First, I want you to know I heard everything you said the other night. I took some time and let it sink in, and I’ve thought about this a lot…” I hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to get this out in one cohesive thought. “I’m staying.”

  “What?”

  “I said I’m staying.” It was the third time I’d made the announcement, but I’d never felt as certain as I did now. “I don’t know what that means in terms of you and me. This was never supposed to be a permanent thing, but I love you. I’m not leaving Sawyer’s Ferry. You were talking about regrets, and yeah, giving up Sutton is tough, but I truly believe I would regret giving you up more.”

  I had more to say, but the rest of my declaration was forgotten completely when he took his hands out of his pockets and reached for me, pulling me against him and kissing me hard. When he pulled back, it took me a second to figure out which way was up.

  “You can’t turn that job down,” he said with such conviction I felt the weight of it in the pit of my stomach.

  I shook my head. “Gage. I know you think I’m going to wake up one day and hate you—”

  “You cannot turn that job down. But I’m not willing to give you up either. I’m coming back to New York with you.”

  I stood there, frozen, not sure how to react.

  “Holden?”

  I looked up at him.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then say something.”

  “You want to come back to New York with me.” I could hear the disbelief in my own voice. What the hell was he thinking?

  “Yes. It’s the only thing that makes any sens
e. I’ve weighed all the options, and while I never thought I’d go back, I’d go for you. Giving up the position at Sutton… it’s not an option. You can’t do that.”

  “And you’d move to New York to be with me.” None of this made sense. I’d heard him, but the message wasn’t sinking in.

  Gage laughed, and I closed my eyes against the low rumble, my head resting against him. “Didn’t you just tell me you would move to Alaska to be with me?”

  “But you told me you’d never go back to New York.”

  “That was before. A lot has changed in three months, and I can admit when I was wrong.”

  “You can not.”

  Gage sighed. “I can admit this. You’re not your father. You’re nothing like him, and moving back for you is very different than moving back for him. I love you. I don’t care where we live, I just don’t want to live without you.”

  I pulled back and looked up at him, catching his gaze with mine. “Say that again.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it. Individually.”

  He cupped my face in both hands. “You’re not your father. I love you. I don’t want to live without you.”

  I took a deep breath, allowing his words sink in for a moment. That was the first time he’d told me he loved me. I’d sensed it for a while—the way he looked at me, the way he touched me—somewhere along the way I knew his feelings for me had changed and deepened, but hearing him say it… I wasn’t prepared for the depth at which I’d feel it.

  I wanted to record it and play it over and over until the words lost meaning. Instead, I stood there with his arms wrapped around me, letting the feeling of being loved settle over me.

  “I love you too.”

  He beamed at me, and it was like the whole sky had opened up and there was nothing but sunshine forever.

  “But you’re only one of the reasons I don’t want the job.”

  With both hands on my shoulders, he pushed me back to look at me. “What? That’s your dream job.”

  “I thought it was. I liked running the trials team, but I wasn’t doing that for me. I was doing that for my father. It took me flying across the continent to figure it out, but everything I’ve done has been for him. I want to do this for me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m saying I’m not going back to New York. I want to stay here. I want to work at SFRH. I want to do the outreach trips and live here with you, in this house, you and me.”

  “Are you sure? Are you sure you’re not going to wake up tomorrow, or a week from now, or five years and regret not even going to the interview?”

  “I’m positive. I loved the trials, but the thing was, I couldn’t always see the direct impact I was making on patients. Everything existed in this arbitrary space. And then I came here, and I can see the implications of my job on the community. I can see how happy Conrad is to see his wife. I can see how the kidney transplant improved Barbara Muncey’s quality of life. My first day at SFRH, I left feeling a thousand times more fulfilled than I had in ages. Research is important, but it’s not what will make me happy.” I slid my arms around his neck. “New York won’t make me happy. An unlimited research budget won’t make me happy. You make me happy.”

  “Well, that’s good because Sawyer’s Ferry has me, and you definitely won’t be getting an unlimited budget around here.”

  “Oh, I’m aware.” I laughed.

  I could feel Gage exhale, his body seeming to relax as he let out the breath, like he’d been waiting for me to tell him it had all been a joke and I was moving back to New York after all.

  “This is the start of something good, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I think it is.”

  I grinned. “I’ll have to go back to New York for a couple of days. I need to tie up all the loose ends. The break from my old life needs to be a clean one.”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I know. But I want to.”

  I called Frankie the next day and relayed everything that had happened. I thought he’d cheered loudly for the finale of Drag Race, but it didn’t hold a candle to the decibel level his voice reached after I’d told him what Gage had said.

  We’d immediately began making plans for once I was back in NYC.

  “He has a huge meeting with the board of directors on Friday. You need to make your entrance into your that meeting with some flair,” Frankie insisted. “It should be theatrical enough that you get a nod from the Oscars.”

  “I’m not sure I’m capable of that caliber of drama.” Although waltzing in and striking him speechless—and in front of board members at that—did have a certain fantasy-level appeal. I’d funneled away almost every last cent I’d earned in Sawyer’s Ferry, and I had enough to pay him the remaining balance I owed. It would all but clear out my bank account, but it would be worth it to be free of any hold he had over me.

  For the last three months, I’d daydreamed about the expression on his face when I slapped that check down on his desk.

  “Luckily, I’m still willing to be your friend even though you up and abandoned me like a total asshole.”

  “You’re always welcome to come for a visit.”

  “No. Not happening. My balls retreated inside my body thinking about you living up there. Not a chance in hell I’m ever setting foot in Alaska.”

  I snorted. There was a time I’d felt the same way. “Never say never…”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure about it,” he said. “Do you know when you’re going to be here? And how long are you staying?”

  “Gage booked our flights out for Wednesday morning. We’re planning to be there until Monday.”

  “But first thing on the list is meeting up with me, yes? We could grab a drink at Revery?”

  “There’s a strong possibility I’m going to need more than one drink after dealing with all the bullshit.”

  “Count me in. You know I like my social interactions to be well lubricated, and if you need to pickle your liver a little after facing your father, I’ll be your wingman.”

  “I still gotta find out what happened to all my stuff.”

  “Manhattan Mini Storage. Lennox Hill. Your dad had your stuff sent there when he sublet your apartment to an investment banker.”

  “I guess I should be grateful he didn’t have it chucked in the dumpster out back.”

  “Yeah, what an angel.” Frankie’s voice was heavy with disdain. He’d never loved my father, but I knew he loved working at Westbridge. Now I wondered if it was enough to keep him there. In the years he’d worked there, I hadn’t heard him sound as jaded as he did now. “I’ll see if I can arrange for you to get in there, maybe Thursday afternoon?”

  “If you could, you’d be my best friend forever.”

  “I’m already your best friend forever, and I’ll cut a bitch if anyone tries to hone in.”

  “I think you’re safe in that department,” I assured him.

  “Better be. Now go have sex with that gorgeous, gorgeous man so you’ve got some extra scintillating details for me on Wednesday.”

  I laughed as I said goodbye and hung up. I couldn’t wait to see Frankie. He was the one person I’d missed from my old life, and I knew I’d miss him even more once the move was permanent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It had been two years since I’d set foot in New York, two years since I’d smelled the roasted nuts from the food carts near Central Park, two years since I’d attempted to hail a cab in the rain. There were parts of the city that were embedded in me, and being back was a little like coming home, but more than that, it solidified my certainty that I’d made the right decision in leaving.

  I looked over at Holden, who was staring out the window as we passed a patisserie on Madison Avenue. He had a wistful expression on his face, and I wondered how he felt about being back. The day before, he’d been more than a little apprehensive. I’d caught him fidge
ting with his hands more than once and knew how stressed out he was about facing his father.

  I felt a little of the same apprehension. I hadn’t seen Philip since I’d quit. There was bad blood between us, but it was made even worse with the entrance of Holden into my life. The way Philip treated me didn’t hold a candle to what he’d put Holden through. I was proud of him for standing up to his father, even though I wasn’t sure how it was all going to go down.

  No matter what happened, though, Holden had me. I had his back no matter what.

  The cab driver dropped us off in front of the hotel, and the bellman was at the ready to help us upstairs with our bags. Check-in was seamless, and within minutes we were standing in our room, admiring the view over the park.

  I pulled Holden to me, hooking my arm across his chest and kissing the side of his neck.

  “How does it feel to be back?” I asked, enjoying the way he relaxed against me, his chest rising and falling as he breathed.

  He was silent for a beat, and I felt him tense slightly. “Weird. Different than I thought I would. I guess I won’t be able to really tell you until after I see my father, but even being back in the city—everything that was so familiar, all the stuff that was part of my everyday routine now seems kind of foreign, like it was someone else’s life.”

  “It kind of was. So much has changed for you in the last three months.”

  “That’s the understatement of the decade.”

  “Any regrets?” As soon as the question left my mouth, there was a sense of disquiet over what Holden’s answer would be. I knew he was happy. I knew he loved me. It was obvious in the way his posture seemed to become more relaxed when I had my hands on him. Still, there was a small space in the back of my mind that held on to the possibility that Holden’s feelings for me weren’t as deep as mine for him. It was that small space that waited with trepidation.

  “None. Going to Alaska in the first place wasn’t my idea, but things work out in a weird way sometimes. And to think, the number of times I cursed my father’s name for sending me.”

  “Are you nervous about seeing him again?”