by Sarah Hegger
Richard took a deep breath. It was in everybody’s best interest to get Brad-Leigh and his mother out of the office.
“Good morning.” He smiled at Brooke and turned his attention to Brad-Leigh. Brad-Leigh didn’t move. He looked at Richard. “What seems to be the problem?”
Richard barely listened as Brooke went through a long list of complaints on Brad-Leigh’s part. He quietly got on with his examination. Given free rein, Brooke would have her oldest child stricken with the bubonic plague and allergic to everything from mites to the greater Chicago area.
Brad-Leigh kept his pale eyes fixed on Richard’s face. Another trail of snot hovered menacingly around Brad-Leigh’s nostrils and Richard hastily grabbed another Kleenex. Brad-Leigh obediently blew his nose.
Richard finished his examination. Brad-Leigh had a cold. The same cold he’d had two days ago when Brooke had brought him in and the same cold he would have two days from now until the virus ran its course.
“Well, Brooke, he doesn’t have a temperature and his lungs sound good. Just keep him quiet. You can use some Tempra or something like that if you think he’s uncomfortable. Make sure he gets lots of rest and fluids.”
“Shouldn’t he have an antibiotic?” Brooke’s face screwed up intently as she looked over his shoulder at her son.
“It’s probably for the best to hold off on those for the moment.” Richard snapped off his latex gloves and reached for his candy jar.
Brad-Leigh’s expression grew animated for the first time since he’d arrived.
“I suppose you’ve seen her?” Here it came. Richard felt that unmistakable slide of his day from bad to hideous. Brooke watched him with the same intensity as she would a car wreck.
“Hmm?” He feigned disinterest as he made some notes on Brad-Leigh’s already bulging chart.
“I can’t believe she had the cheek to come back here.” Brooke leaned toward him, inviting him into her bitterness.
“Who?” He peered over the edge of the file at her with his practiced, vague expression. The you put what, where? expression every family practitioner needs. It worked for exes back in town, too.
“Lucy Flint.” Brooke straightened up, her eyebrows all but disappearing into her fiery hairline. “I ran into her the other day at the store.”
“Oh.” Richard closed Brad-Leigh’s chart. Brooke looked at him expectantly, thick as a tick with the drama. He really, really hated this shit. “Yes, I’ve seen her.” And touched her and kissed her and put my hands on her. And I want to do it again. “She’s staying at her parents’ house, which, as you know, is right next door.”
Brooke visibly deflated and he got a certain childish satisfaction.
Brad-Leigh came to the rescue. Tired of waiting around as adults discussed a subject that wasn’t him, he headed for a tray of gleaming, sharp surgical instruments. It got Brooke’s immediate attention.
Richard moved behind his desk, confident nobody could or would see that beneath his neutral expression his heart thundered. If he had his way, it was going nowhere near his sleeve. He only needed to learn that lesson once and that had happened when Lucy Flint had blown out of town … with Brooke’s boyfriend. Richard felt a brief moment of camaraderie with the other woman. He could still hear the murmurs of pity following him around the neighborhood. It must have been the same for Brooke.
“Keep Brad-Leigh quiet and if he’s not better in a week, bring him back to see me.” He smiled at her kindly. He stopped short of patting Brad-Leigh on the head and palmed another Kleenex instead.
“How did you think she looked?” Brooke’s eyes narrowed in the corners and one started a slight tic. “I thought she looked older. I remember her as being better looking, don’t you?” Nope. He tried his best not to think about how breathtakingly, mind-numbingly gorgeous Lucy still was. Richard kept his eyes on Brooke’s.
The woman’s face was alight with malice and his brief flash of goodwill disappeared. Perhaps Jason hadn’t taken much convincing to disappear with Lucy.
Richard sighed. It was beneath him to have such a thought. It was probably another by-product of his shitty morning.
“Oh, she’s grown her hair, hasn’t she?” Like he hadn’t noticed? He could still feel the silk of her mane between his fingers. “It looks good.”
“Maaaa.” Brad-Leigh strained to reach a set of clamps.
Brooke produced a candy bar from her purse and looked at Richard sharply, as if sensing all was not as it appeared.
Richard looked back at her.
Brad-Leigh went for the candy.
“Ashley knows she is here,” Brooke stated smugly.
“I wonder who told her that?” he murmured and raised a brow at Brooke.
“I did.” She puffed up with self-importance. Subtlety was lost on Brooke. “I told her straightaway. It was my duty as a friend.”
Richard barely stopped himself from snorting. Ashley couldn’t stand the other woman. He’d heard more than one scathing diatribe on Brooke.
“Was there anything else?” he asked.
“Are you all right?” Brooke cooed. She wouldn’t be Brooke if she left the boil unlanced.
“I am fine, Brooke,” he assured her with convincing calm. “Lucy is back in town, I am fine. Are we done here?” He indicated the waiting room outside. “Because, as you are aware, I was late and I have other patients waiting.”
“Oh.” Brooke visibly shrank before him. “Well, that’s good then.” She gathered up her son. “I still think she is looking her age. It must be all the wild living.”
Brooke paused expectantly in the doorway, waiting for him to take up the conversational gambit.
“Take care.” Richard left the room and was well on his way toward the second treatment room before he let out his breath. He hadn’t even realized he was holding it.
“Good morning, Mr. Crawley,” he greeted his elderly patient. “I am sorry you have had to wait so long. How’s the back?”
“So, Doctor, two women, huh?” The old man’s eyebrows shot up expectantly. “Lucky young dog. Which one are you going to take? Normally I wouldn’t ask, but the wife and I have a little side bet going.”
“Richie Rich?”
“Babe?”
“What’s our song?”
“We don’t have one but every time I see you, I have ZZ Top playing in my head.”
“That is not romantic.”
“You mean ‘Legs’ is not considered a classic love ballad?”
Christ. Richard stared at the chart in front of him, willing the squiggles to make sense. He had to find a way to get past this.
Chapter Twenty
“You know what I am going to say, don’t you, girl?”
“I know, Mads.” Lucy was exhausted, but Mads worked nights and Lucy knew she was up and about and it was still two hours earlier in Seattle. Unrequited desire, Lucy discovered, was about as pleasant as unrequited love.
“I had the feeling it was only a matter of time.” Again, there didn’t seem to be much point in denying it, so Lucy sighed and hung on for more. “It really doesn’t make any difference what I say, Lucy, because you know this and it still isn’t helping. So, all I can tell you is, get this out of your system, scratch your itch … whatever and then come home and we will put the pieces back together again.”
“Maybe he won’t be back.” Lucy couldn’t even pretend to be wishful about that.
Mads chuckled. “Honey, not even you believe that. You are as much tangled into his system as he is in yours. I can quote the Big Book to you until the cows come home. I can tell you the way it is and how it should be, but it isn’t going to make one bit of difference. You guys are on a collision course to finish this thing.”
“And then what?”
“I haven’t a clue.” Mads laughed again. “Damn, but I miss you, Lucy Locket.”
“I miss you, too, Maddy Mads.”
“Question? Totally off the record and asking as your girlfriend and not your sponsor.”
“What if the magic thing happens and all of a sudden Richard wants you back and it’s all green for go and love in la-la land again. What happens then, Lucy?”
Lucy didn’t even have to think about that response. “Then I stay here and make it happen.”
“You know I hate to be cold?”
“You’ll survive.”
“I despise snow.”
“It’s pretty.”
“And I have never been to Chicago.”
“Then it’s about time you did.”
“Okay, babe, from your lips to God’s ear.”
Lucy hung up the phone. It rang again almost immediately.
“Lucy?” And her heart kind of sank. His tone radiated disapproval and disappointment. For a dizzy moment, she almost pretended to be her voice mail.
“Hey, Elliot,” she said, keeping her tone deliberately chipper. “How are you?”
“Not so good, in fact,” he responded with a touch of severity. Elliot was in no mood to be deterred or distracted. “I have been waiting for you to call. I was worried about you.”
“I’ve had a lot to do here, Elliot. It’s been a rather difficult time.”
“I understand.” The firm rebuke whipped out the phone. “But you could have found five minutes to let me know you were still breathing. A text message would have been all right, a call even better.”
And he had her there. “I appreciate that, Elliot, but I didn’t promise to call you and there has been rather a lot happening since I left.”
“But you’ve been gone for so long, I’ve had to resort to phoning your sponsor to know you’re alive.”
Lucy took a breath. This was the thing with Elliot and it was entirely her fault. He was so used to rescuing her and it was so comfortable to let him. She had got it this way, because she set it up this way. Thanks for that one, Dr. Phil.
The key was to keep it logical and calm. It didn’t do any good to lose your temper with Elliot. He was at his strongest when she lost it. “We talked about this before I left. I am here to settle things and get some answers.”
“And that means you can’t call?”
“It means”—Lucy sucked in her breath—“that I am concentrating on what I am doing here.”
A loaded silence stretched out over the telephone and Lucy thought for a second they might have been cut off. It didn’t occur to her Elliot had hung up. He would never, ever do anything so crass and childish. Elliot was always and under all circumstances a civilized man. And she should know. She had certainly pushed him over the years.
“I understand.”
Damn. Shit and damn. Now Elliot’s feelings were hurt. Lucy tried to backtrack. “I don’t think you do, Elliot. I can’t move on with the rest of my life until I get this stuff settled.”
“Oh, get off it,” Elliot snapped with uncharacteristic anger. “We both know why you are really there.”
“Don’t do this, Elliot.” Lucy closed her eyes as if she could shut out the world.
“I don’t think I have any choice left to me.” He was seriously pissed now. Elliot’s British accent always got more clipped when he was upset. “I have been waiting on tenterhooks to hear if some girlish peccadillo with a teenage stud is going to stop you from committing to us or not.”
“Don’t patronize me. This has never been about Richard. Well, not only about Richard. I came here for my mother.” Lucy refused to let him get under her skin. Elliot was hurting and she knew it. They’d first met when she was only twenty-five. For the past five years they’d drifted in and out of a relationship that felt more like a mentor/student thing than a romance.
Now she was sober and Elliot wanted to know if they could, finally, move on to a better place. They’d kept the relationship more or less platonic for the past year. And although Elliot had dated other women in that time, Lucy had always known he was waiting.
Always waiting for her to be ready. He’d been good to her. At times he’d been the only thing standing between her and the results of her own stupidity. That’s why she’d been putting off calling him and saying what she knew had to be said. The truth was right there, staring her in the face. Last night and what had almost happened in Richard’s kitchen had put to bed any lingering doubts. She was never going to be ready. Not for Elliot, anyway.
“You’re right,” he responded. Always so reasonable at times it made her want to scream. “That was poorly done of me.”
“Don’t apologize, Elliot,” Lucy whispered softly into the phone. “Just, don’t.”
There was another long silence and Lucy could hear him putting the pieces together. “So, Lucy, are you going to give me an answer?”
She owed him that much and so much more. It was Elliot who had given her her first glimpses of sobriety. Elliot who picked her up after Peter had left her in pieces. The same man she’d left Elliot for and not once had he reproached her. Until that last time, when he had issued an ultimatum, which ended up saving her life.
He really didn’t deserve her. He deserved so much more.
“I …” The words that would end his waiting wouldn’t come. Lucy cleared her throat and tried again. “Elliot, I really don’t know how to say this.”
How did you tell a man after all this, you didn’t love him? How did you tell someone the collection of painful memories between you was part of the past and not your future? Lucy felt like she wanted to be sick. She was such a shit to be doing this.
“I don’t think.” She tried again.
“Jesus, Lucy.” Elliot’s voice was hoarse with emotion over the phone. “Don’t be so bloody stupid.”
There was no way to tell him it wasn’t stupidity. It was instinct. It was the sense she was finally in a place where she recognized what she needed. And part of her was starting to see that, despite her sins, this was what she deserved. And what she deserved was not what he had to offer. How did you tell a man he wasn’t … Richard?
“Five sodding years,” Elliot rasped, and Lucy’s chest constricted. The burden of his patience made it impossible to keep her head up. She had known all this time what he wanted and what he waited for and she’d avoided dealing with it. “Five bloody, sodding years and this is all I get.”
“I am so sorry, Elliot.” It was so absurdly inadequate. “I wish—”
“Oh, please. Don’t you dare,” he snarled at her. “Don’t you treat me like some bloody consolation prize. I think we both know I am worth a whole lot more than that.”
“You are, Elliot, you really are. And I cannot tell you how much you mean to me.”
“Christ, Lucy, is this the best you’ve got? A whole mouthful of limp platitudes and bullshit.”
“I’ve hurt you and I have no idea how to make that better.”
“Really?” His accent could have cut glass. The consonants bounced off the phone like clean strikes off metal. “You could grow up, Lucy, and realize I am the best thing that ever happened to you. You could stop pining for some childhood dream and see real life isn’t like that. Real life is about real people making a commitment to something and making it work. Real life is about what we have, Lucy.”
“I’m sorry,” she muttered miserably. There was no point in arguing with him. She had nothing to tell him, but the inkling that she could one day, somehow, have the dream come true. There was a grand passion out there for her, a huge slice of heaven that was hers for the taking.
It was unlikely it would be Richard. But surely, somewhere, there was someone like him. Somewhere, there was another love. Sometime in the future there would be a chance to prove she could do it right this time. But that opportunity was not with Elliot and it was time to cut them both loose.
“This thing with us, Elliot,” she said, her voice trembling so much she had to clear her throat. “What we have, Elliot, is not what I want.”
Another loaded silence and Lucy took a deep breath and then another. It was done and along with the guilt was a terrible sensation of relief. It was
over.
“Out of curiosity, Lucy,” he spat. “If I hadn’t called you today, were you planning on taking another five years to tell me that, after everything, I still wasn’t good enough for you?”
Lucy said nothing. Elliot was mouthing off in his anger and hurt and he had, at least, earned the right to do as much.
“Let me be clear about this,” he carried on. “I don’t want to be your friend, Lucy. I have enough friends and I don’t need another one.”
“I understand.” She dearly hoped he might change his mind about that one day, but for the moment, and probably for a goodly while, it was better she kept a distance.
“And”—Elliot barely heard her—“this is the last time. We have been down this road three times before. This is it, Lucy. After this, I am not going to play the blasted fool for you anymore. You leave me this time and you stay gone. Are you clear about that?”
“I am clear, Elliot.” A lifetime without Elliot seemed a long, long time, but she wasn’t about to start trying to bargain with a wounded beast. Perhaps there would be time in the future for them to sit down and talk this through.
“No more desperate phone calls.”
“I get that.”
“No more rescues when you get yourself into shit so deep, you can’t breathe anymore.”
“I get it, Elliot.”
There was silence again. Lucy could hear the rasp of his breathing on the other end of the line.
“Elliot?”
“Fuck you, Lucy. Just … fuck you.”
The phone went dead in her ear. Lucy watched with a sort of detachment as she lowered her hands to her lap. They were shaking so badly she barely managed to put the phone safely beside her on the bed. It was done. For better or for worse, she and Elliot were done.
It hit her in a crash of panic that almost had her reaching for redial. She could still beg Elliot to be patient with her. She could ask him to wait for her. He was her safety net. Without Elliot in her life these five years past, Lucy was sure she would have ended up “working the track” with the crack whores.
