Chapter 39 #2
“A thousand?” His head snapped to me. “What if you miss something important— Actually, never mind. What drives me crazy is that you have no patience.” He hit the indicator and pulled over by a quiet coastal bay with white sand.
“We’re stopping?”
“We are.” He shut off the engine, stared out at the water. “I had this whole big thing planned at home, pizza from Auld Lang Slice, dessert from Brown’s, candles, flowers. Callum and Juniper are setting it up right now.”
“Oh.”
“I love you, and I’ve wanted to tell you that I love you every single second for the past six days. Even before then.” He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and tapped it on the steering wheel. “Even wrote out a speech, but now . . . I’m kind of pissed off actually.”
My entire body solidified. “Why?”
He turned to me fully. His eyes smouldered.
“Because you have no patience, Isla. I tried to tell you a week ago that I loved you, and you just cut me off. Like I wasn’t certain enough of my own mind to know that this, us–” he waved a hand between us – “and Teddy, is it for me. You sent me away, asked me to think it through, take you out of the equation. Regardless of whether we won today, I wanted to tell you again, rationally. Lay down my argument.” He waved the piece of paper.
“And then today you just get to barrel in with your spur-of-the-moment ‘I love you’ like the rules don’t apply to you. ”
“But I do love you.”
“I know you do. I knew it last week too, and it’s taken every ounce of my self-control to not break down your fucking door and beg you to admit it.” His hand was shaking as he ran it over his mouth. “Why do you get to toss it out there and mean it, when I’m not allowed the same?”
He was right. I’d never been secure enough to believe that he could want me. Love me. That was as much of a disservice to him as it was to me. “Then tell me now.”
His throat dipped. Then he nodded. Took a deep breath as he straightened his glasses and unfolded the piece of paper. “About what happened in Glasgow—”
“No.” I held my hand up. “You don’t need to tell me. I wasn’t even really mad about that. Obviously, I want you to open up to me, but it wasn’t fair of me to demand it, when we never even put a name to what we were. I wasn’t your girlfriend—”
“You’re more than that,” he interrupted.
My heart was a hummingbird as I said, “Relationships don’t happen all at once. They unfurl slowly, truths passed back and forth.”
“You gave me a lot of truths. More than I deserved.”
“If Cameron hadn’t told me first, would you have told me about your patient? The one who nearly died?”
His shoulders drew up. “I don’t know. Not for lack of trust, but because . . . I’m ashamed. I worried it would change the way you looked at me.”
I held still, knowing we were on a precipice. “Could we – could we maybe walk for this?”
“Of course,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Wait there.” He came around to my side of the SUV before I could get the door all the way open. He took my hand, helping me from the car.
We were a hundred metres down the beach before he spoke again. “The bit about me attacking my co-worker isn’t true.”
“I never thought it was.”
“Peter was a lazy piece of shit who deserved far worse than the slap on the wrist he received.”
“Peter. Your old boss?”
He nodded. We walked a little further before he said, “My surgery in Glasgow was different to Kinleith. Always busy. It was an inner-city GP surgery, it came with the territory. I loved that in the early days; it was exciting, as awful as that sounds. No two days were the same.” His hair tossed over his forehead as he stared out at the sea.
“But over the last few years, things started to change. Our funding kept getting slashed, appointment times became shorter, and the paperwork increased. Some days were so tightly packed, I didn’t even have time to eat and drink, let alone think. ”
“It was that bad?”
He nodded, looking out at the rolling waves.
“We were exhausted – not just the staff, but the patients. Rightfully anxious and frustrated when the service wasn’t benefiting them the way that it should.
And I was . . . stressed,” he spat the word out like an ugly confession.
“Had always been stressed, if I’m being honest. I thought it was normal.
My dad was the same, every day he’d come home from work agitated and dog-tired.
He’d say, if you aren’t exhausted, you aren’t working hard enough.
I think that sank in early, on a psychological level.
The need to always be perfect. To be the hardest-working person in the room. ”
I didn’t even realise I’d reached out to grasp his hand until his fingers threaded through mine and squeezed.
“I didn’t recognise it for what it was at first. The reason I’d avoid opening my email in the morning, because it was so overrun with more sick-note requests and test results than I could feasibly get to.
Why some mornings I’d ride the Subway past my stop, just to avoid going into work a little longer.
My colleagues were quitting around me, and I pitied them, you know, thought they were too weak to hack the job.
Then I got a bad case of stomach flu and had to take a few weeks off, and I swear, I’ve never been that ill in my entire life.
” His grip tightened, like he was about to admit to something shameful.
So, I said it for him. “Burnout?”
He nodded. “I didn’t even think it was a real thing, just something lazy people said.
” His laugh was bitter. “I returned to work like nothing was wrong, all the while obsessing over how weak my dad would think I was if he knew. Until a few weeks later, a regular patient of mine came to see me. She had a history of substance abuse and was trying to get clean for her two kids. She was complaining about fatigue. Night sweats. I think I knew what her diagnosis was even then, but I ordered more tests to confirm – you can’t just assume.
” He dropped my gaze, like he was ashamed.
“Endocarditis. An infection that destroys the heart valves and we barely caught it in time. I found out a few days later she’d seen Peter twice while I was out sick with the same concerns.
He was the most senior doctor in the entire practice.
If anyone should have been able to diagnose her, it was him.
And when I confronted him, want to guess what he said?
” I shook my head, fear tightening my gut.
“He said she was just a junkie, assumed she was lying to get prescription drugs. So yes, I backed a sixty-year-old man up against the wall and yelled in his face. But I barely laid a single finger on him.”
“What happened then?”
“I got a six-month suspension, barely left my bed for the majority of it. I decided to just quit once my suspension was over; I didn’t trust myself to face Peter.
Of course, my dad found out – he hadn’t been diagnosed yet – and I ignored every single one of his offers to help me find a new position.
Can you believe he even offered me Amy’s job?
” he scoffed. “Once I could work again, I was pretty much blacklisted, so I took what I could, bouncing between locum positions around Glasgow. Until last autumn when Callum begged me to come home because Dad’s health was declining rapidly.
I helped take care of him, until he died.
Only then did I discover he’d found his own way to help me get my life on track, whether I wanted it or not. ”
“You know he probably left you the surgery because he’s proud of you, right?”
“Maybe. Probably.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t even matter anymore. You helped me see that.”
“Me? How?”
“For weeks now you’ve dug your heels in every time I tried to help you, and it frustrated the shit out of me. It wasn’t until you yelled at me about the money that I really got it.” He turned to me. “You wanted to deal with Cameron yourself, and I took that from you – just like my dad did to me.”
“I mean, a medical practice and my kid’s school trip aren’t really comparable . . .”
“It doesn’t matter, I do it with everyone.” He shook his head sharply. “I see a problem and I fix it, it’s the only way I know how to love. How can I expect my family to accept it, and not do so myself?”
I dared a step closer. He stared at me. “The surgery is mine. I’m keeping it.”
“You took me out of the equation?”
“You are the equation, Isla.” He gripped my cheeks.
“When we started all this, I was thinking of quitting medicine altogether. You helped me fall back in love with it, because work isn’t my entire life anymore.
You and Teddy are. Yes, I’m going to love being near my family.
I want the surgery, and I like my patients – hell, I even think Amy and I might become friends.
But I lived without any of that for years.
I don’t want to live without you and Teddy for a single minute—”
I cut him off with my mouth, feeling his shock as I threw myself at him. Arms and legs. Teeth and tongue.
His lips were warm, and they tasted like the mints he always chewed and god, I’d missed him so much. It had only been a week and I’d missed him – how could I ever have thought I’d last a lifetime without him?
He’d missed me too. I felt it in the immediate plundering of his lips, the rattle of his breath between kisses, the tremble of his hands as he tried to steady this into something slower. Sweeter. More appropriate for the moment.
I, however, didn’t want appropriate. I clenched his shirt between my fingers, pulling him into me. I needed his hands on me. My breasts dragging over his chest. He could take me right there in the sand for all I cared.
That’s exactly what he gave me as he lifted my body against his, carrying me to an outcropping of rocks.
I don’t know how we got onto the floor, but his hand was on my hip, the other cupping the back of my head, protecting it from the sand.
My legs curled over his hips, dragging him closer.
He moaned, grinding against me, and then he pulled back.
“Wait, wait, wait.” His head hung as he swallowed steadying breaths. “This isn’t done yet.”
“It felt done.” I popped his top button.
“Fuck. I have more to say. I wrote it all down . . . we got off-track.”
I untucked his shirt. “Tell me later.”
He fell forward with a groan, sealing our lips. I momentarily thought I’d won when he fell to the side, groaning. “No, we’ll have sex and then we won’t talk. The next time I’m inside you I need you to know exactly what this is.”
“Okay, but make it quick.” I slipped a leg over his hips and drew circles around his heart with my finger.
“Make it quick? I’m trying to declare my love to you.” My hand froze. He flipped us until he lay on his back, fingers slipping under my hair to cup my cheek. “You deserve slow. Drawn out. Sonnets and fucking duels.”
“Duels?” I laughed.
“Aye, duels.” His forehead met mine. “This was never fake. From the second I saw you, I wanted you. And then I actually got to be close to you and loving you was . . . easier than breathing.” He sighed.
“And Teddy too. She wormed her way into my heart bit by bit until suddenly the two of you owned it entirely. So, we can stay in Kinleith, or go anywhere you like. You want to pack up and live out of that tin can you call a car, I’m right there in the passenger seat. ”
I scrambled up into his lap until I straddled him. Needing him to see me as I said, “That would be a little selfish of me.”
“I want you to be selfish with me. Every day for the rest of your life, because you can be damn sure I’ll be selfish with you.”
“You love me.” I gripped the sides of his face, my heart tattooing itself against his chest.
“Aye, I love you.”
“I love you too.” There was no fear this time.
“You better.” He grinned wickedly, as his hand crept up the back of my dress. “No fucking bra,” he hissed distractedly, finding my bare breast and rolling my nipple. He drew back a second later. “Fuck, what if another car comes? Tourists? We’ll get arrested. We should—”
“Have sex as quickly as possible then go home and do it again.”
His eyes darkened, and he slipped a finger beneath my underwear, groaning at the wetness he found there. “Sex in public does it for you?”
“Everything with you does it for me.” I rolled my hips, teasing his lips with mine. “We might even get another Gazette article.”
As it always was with Alistair, a switch flipped, and he wrenched his shirt over his head, spreading it out across the pebbled sand. “On your knees,” he pointed to the shirt. “Put your hands on the rocks.”
I did so breathlessly. Eagerly. Head dropping with a low thud as he curled over me, yanked my underwear down to my knees, the skirt of my dress bunching between us. I immediately felt the head of his cock at my entrance. “Can I take you bare?”
“Yes.” I nodded, kept nodding.
He was taking me from behind. I let my head sink back against his chest, and he turned my face his way. “Still want those eyes, honey, always.”
Neither of us broke our stare as he sank in slowly, even when a fractured gasp broke my lips. It was so much deeper this way.
“Oh god, Alistair.”
His hand came around, finding my breast and my thundering heart beneath. He started to move, digging my knees into the sand. With the way he was groaning, I was certain he’d finish before me.
“I’m addicted to the way you say my name,” he said, and I moaned it again. “You are so fucking dangerous. And impatient.”
“We need to be quick.”
“And I told you, you deserve slow.”
Why did that feel like a challenge?
“Alistair.” My head fell back on his shoulder. “You should know I dreamed of you, before we were even friends. I’d wake up hot and wet—”
“Jesus, Isla. You’re a fucking menace.”
His chest was slick against my back, length pulsing inside me, and I knew he was close – so I said, “I think we should have sex against your bedroom wall next, just the way I imagined—”
He exploded. I had no time to be smug because a quick flick of his thumb and I came not even a second later.
And like he was punishing me, he didn’t even give me a second to recover before pushing me flat on my back, removing my underwear completely and pushing back inside. The burn was exquisite. “I thought we were going home,” I gasped, already coming again.
“Honey, I’m already home.”