Attached At Heart (Wildflower #3)

Ten Years Ago

ten years ago

BLAKE

“What is your why?”

Delaney clicked her pen as she said each word, her lips forming the pronunciations deliberately.

I really shouldn’t have been staring at her mouth—again—but here we were.

“I hate this icebreaker shit,” I grumbled. A lie. I didn’t mind them. Actually, I kind of liked them. It meant I got to talk to her at the beginning of every class.

But I hated this specific question.

Because I didn’t want to answer it.

I’d just say something cliché, something surface-level, something about how I got a scholarship to be here and couldn’t turn down a funded education in this day and age, and leave it at that. I mean, it was the truth. Part of it.

Baring my soul in the front row of a lecture hall was not something I planned on doing today. And to Delaney Delacroix? I didn’t need her to know this about me.

“The future Dr. London doesn’t want to get to know me, huh?”

I sighed. “I already know you. We’ve been sitting next to each other the entire semester. You’d think she’d stop with the daily cohort questions already.”

“But do you know my why?”

Delaney’s lips spread in a smile because she knew I didn’t.

Gritting my teeth together, I admitted defeat. “What’s your why, Delaney? Why did you decide to go to med school?”

Her grin faded before she answered softly, “My brother. He has AVSD, atrioventricular septal defect, which means he was born with a hole in his heart. So I decided a long time ago that I want to learn everything there is to know about the heart. For him and for other people who have Down syndrome.”

Her words were a punch to the gut and a reminder that I was being an ass.

“I’m sure you will,” I said with sincerity. I could tell that Delaney would blow the medical world out of the water one day.

“Thank you,” she murmured before looking at me expectantly. Waiting for my answer—the one I’d been planning to lie about. But I couldn’t do that now, not after what she said. After she’d been honest about something that clearly meant a lot to her. The whole world to her.

“I failed to save someone once.” I choked the words out. “And I’m trying to make sure that never happens again.”

Delaney stared at me, unfazed by the intensity of my answer. She was never fazed. Not by me. “I’m so sorry, Blake,” she said, and I could tell she meant it.

“Me too.”

“Do you have a specialty area in mind?” she questioned, and I was just grateful she didn’t push me to explain more about what had happened years ago.

“I’ve actually been thinking about cardiology, too.”

“You can save a lot of lives by fixing hearts, can’t you?” she murmured, her voice like a soft, reassuring hug. Like she wanted to tell me that I would save lives.

I studied the sincerity of her expression. And the hue of her eyes as she watched me back.

“Yeah.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I think I’d definitely like to know more about hearts.”