Chapter 15
KENDALL
Two days later, Grant walks me to my car again. I try not to read too much into the implications.
“Do you want to do something?” Grant pushes through the door to the parking garage, and our steps echo in the cavernous space.
“What do you mean?” My heart rate picks up. I stumble on the downhill incline to our cars, and he steadies me with a hand. The warm, dry sensation of his palm on my bare arm shoots a little rush of pleasure along my skin.
“I don’t know, it’s a gorgeous day. One of my favorite parks is nearby and sometimes I like to go clear my head there. They’ve got a nice walking path. I was hoping you could join me.” When he sees my skeptical look, he rushes on. “It can be a platonic walk, if you can tolerate my presence.”
Warmth suffuses my body. Unfortunately, part of the problem is my uncertainty about wanting things to remain completely chaste, but a walk before I go home for the night does sound nice.
He’s right about it being beautiful out—one of those real chamber-of-commerce days with warm sun, a nice breeze, blue skies, and an absence of the mugginess that plagues summer like a thick soup hanging in the air.
“You know what? Why not.”
Surprise registers on his face, but he covers it with an easy smile.
“You can follow me there.”
I’m jittery on the drive. Am I becoming real friends with Grant? Is that what’s happening here? The very notion is absurd, but I can’t ignore the evidence. Or I can, I suppose, but not if I’m being honest.
He meets me at the entrance, where tall lampposts mark each edge of the sidewalk.
Trees and foliage line the low stone walls framing the park, and it’s gorgeous, though I don’t know enough about vegetation to name any of them.
The scent of charred onions from the taco truck just down the street follows us.
My mouth waters, both from the food cooking and the vision of Grant in his fitted scrubs.
“I’m surprised you didn’t change your mind,” he says. He’s smiling, but there’s real concern on his face, too, a tightness at the corners of his eyes.
“I’m a woman of my word.” We start down the path together, our steps in sync. I watch his long stride, his easy athleticism, with some fascination. “How come you wanted me here with you?”
“Would it be wrong to say I’d like for you to hate me a little less?”
I turn my head toward him. The dappled sunlight catches the blond in his hair and patches of his smooth skin. He’s trouble wrapped in a beautiful package, but there’s a hint of vulnerability there too. My chest squeezes without my permission.
“No, that’s not wrong.” I don’t say anything else.
We pass under a stone bridge. A little stream gurgles nearby. No one speaks for a couple of minutes. It’s pleasant, but I still don’t trust this shaky peace we’ve adopted.
“This is a new tactic, then?” We take a turn on the path, and I yelp as a bicycle nearly sideswipes me. Grant’s strong arms pull me into him.
“Sorry!” the cyclist calls back once he’s past us. Grant shoots him a dirty look, and I giggle.
“That’s twice you’ve saved me from falling this afternoon,” I tell him. I bat my eyelashes. “My hero.”
He scoffs and lets his arms drop from where they’ve wrapped around me. I don’t tell him how close I was to actually swooning. “Right. I’ve been a real gentleman to you.” He glances at me. “What did you mean, my new tactic?”
“I just wondered if you’d moved on from buying me things.”
We pass another park-goer, this one with a big dog who nudges my hand with its cold nose, and I smile. A bead of sweat rolls down my stomach, so I adjust my bra as we walk. Grant watches all this with the kind of interest one might reserve for a particularly good movie. Ha! Platonic, my ass.
“I do like buying you things,” he says. The look he gives me could keep me hot all winter with its intensity. I shiver. “But yeah, I’d like the chance to show you who I am now. In some small way, even though I don’t deserve it.”
We round another curve. We’re over halfway through the loop now.
“Okay, then,” I say. “Tell me what you like to do for fun. That’s a good start.”
“You think I have fun? I thought you said I was a passionless automaton?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever used those words in that combination.”
He chuckles. “I do like what I do,” he says. “Being a physician. I love sports, obviously, really of any kind. Books and movies, like I said. And travel. That’s one of the things I want to do with my life. I want to see as much of the world as I can, or as much as my job allows for.”
A little wave of sadness crests over me. I’ve always wanted to travel, too, and I could never have dreamed about it back when I was just surviving. It’s uncomfortable how human he sounds—he’s not as hollow as I thought. There’s depth there.
“That’s why you wanted to get out of our little holler,” I say.
“That’s one reason.” He gently kicks an acorn out of the way. “Mostly I just want to experience as much as I can. Once I’m done with residency, that is. I think my goals aren’t as virtuous as yours.”
“You don’t have to complicate it, though. A life well-lived can just be carving out time for things you enjoy. And being kind. You don’t have to aim for the stars.”
We walk in silence for a few more steps. The dislike is still simmering beneath the surface—or it is for me—but it’s almost companionable, this togetherness. It scares me.
“What about you? I know a little about what you like. Do you get the chance to sing very often?”
“Not as much as I’d like,” I admit. “Unless you count the shower.”
His eyes close for a brief moment, and I get the sense he’s holding back from commenting on that. Is he thinking about me in the shower? I’ve certainly imagined him in that position. My skin burns.
I get another whiff of tacos as we near the exit, and my stomach rumbles.
“You hungry? We could get something to eat.” Grant stops on the sidewalk outside the fence.
“No, I’m good,” I say quickly. It’s a blatant lie, given the noise my stomach just made.
His shoulders drop. Was that mean of me? And why do I even care?
Something has to give here. This limbo is killing me.
“See you tomorrow,” I tell him. I scurry toward my car. When I turn around, he’s still standing on the sidewalk, head hanging low.
The stillness in the conference room suffocates me. Almost no one is in this part of the building, so Grant and I sit in absolute silence together as I glance over the changes he’s made to the educational packet we’re working on.
It’s 4:45 a.m. this time, since we have a busy day ahead of us.
I woke up in the middle of the night to get here, and I would give anything to crawl back into bed.
Grant, for his part, looks pristine, not a hair out of place.
He’s eating a muffin, and the scent of blueberries reaches me.
I’m a little surprised, honestly. He seems like the type to stir protein powder into plain yogurt for breakfast.
He doesn’t meet my eyes when he talks about the things he added. “It’s got a little more info about pain control,” he says. “Staying ahead of it, I mean.”
I nod. When I touch his arm, his head jerks up.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That I’ve been so fickle. We have to work with each other, and I need to stop whatever it is I’m doing.”
“It’s not like I don’t deserve it.” He eyes me. “Not like I don’t enjoy it.”
“Yeah. Well.” I shrug, because I don’t have much else to say to that.
We’re facing each other now in our cushy office chairs. He looks down again.
“I wish we could start over,” he says. “I honestly think we’d have some interesting things to talk about.”
“Without our clothes on, you mean?”
His unrepentant grin sends this little jolt of lightning through my abdomen.
He leans back, and I let my gaze roam over his smooth skin, his long eyelashes, his prominent biceps.
I’m sure a lot of women would be into a cute orthopedic surgeon, but he is exactly my type: a buff blond with a penchant for stony-faced expressions, like a hotter, broodier Ken doll.
“I actually do like you,” he says. “You’re fun. I would want to know more about you, if you didn’t hate me so much.”
“Yeah? What do you want to know?”
He studies me. “Tell me about a patient you’ll remember forever. I know you have one. We all do.”
“I have a few. You go first, though.”
“A kid I treated last year,” he says without hesitation. “He almost lost his leg in an accident. Almost lost his life, for that matter, and we saved him. I thought I would have done absolutely anything to keep him alive. I would have given my own life, I swear.”
I gulp. I think he means it, and it’s so hard to square this version of Grant with the tormentor of my youth. What happened, to change him so much?
“When I was working labor and delivery, I was assigned to this woman who had just given birth to her fifth kid,” I tell him.
“She was a refugee. Didn’t speak fluent English, so we had an interpreter there.
She admitted to us that her husband was abusing her at home.
” I can picture her face even now, sweaty with exertion and fatigue, detailing the unspeakable tragedies she’d endured with what looked like shame.
“I think about how we give women advice on what we can do to get ahead, to succeed. The things I had to do. But what the hell is she supposed to do? That advice does fuck-all to help her. Our stupid platitudes are meaningless if we can’t do something for her. She was trapped.”
Grant watches me, his face intent. “What happened to her?”
“We got social work involved. If I’m not mistaken, though, I think she ended up going back home with him. I haven’t seen her since, so I’m not sure where she is now.”
“Damn.”
“I think about her all the time. It made me feel useless.”
“I know what that’s like. You just can’t solve everything, though.” He scoots a little closer to me. “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit for how far you’ve come in your own life.”
I shrug.