Prologue #2
He chuckled, the jerk, his eyes roving over my face as if he knew me and had the right to laugh about my misfortune. But then he said, “Same.”
I rolled my eyes. There was no way he could top my shitty day.
My shitty month. Who was I kidding? This had been the shittiest year of my life.
Everyone expected me to excel in med school.
And I had, until I realized all I was doing was going through the motions.
When my mama died, the little girl inside me, the one who needed her father’s love but rarely got it, that little girl had done everything she could think of to make her father happy. Until today.
In the middle of my cardiology clinical this year, my last year at UCLA, it came to me.
I didn’t love medicine. I never had. I’d never gotten excited about it.
Never dreamed about being a doctor. I dreamed about making my father love me.
Of having his acceptance and pride. And, hey, if I could figure out the fix-all for heart disease, well that’d just be the cherry on the top of my sundae.
That the feat was impossible had never occurred to that little girl. If I’d let her, she’d die trying.
I’d won all kinds of awards, was top of my class, earned invitations into world-renowned internships, but my father barely acknowledged any of it.
I wasn’t my mama. I never could be. I didn’t want to be. And if he couldn’t have her back, then he’d never be happy with me, no matter how much I twisted myself into a pretzel trying to impress him.
So, I was done. Plain and simple. It was a relief, really.
The whole charade was coming to an end, but the unknown of what would happen next made my ulcer flare. I knew it was there. I could feel it.
“My brother’s dead,” the stranger said.
Well, that definitely topped my bad day.
“I’m so sorry,” I rushed to say, uncrossing my legs. I kicked his shin again, except this time, I felt bad about it.
He relaxed into his seat a little and then slouched forward, cradling his empty glass between his hands.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to say, but I knew, if my brother had died, I’d want to talk about him any chance I got.
He sucked in a breath and held it, his deep-set eyes found mine as I looked into them again, and eventually, he nodded with one quick dip of his head.
He peeked at Manny down the bar, though, so I got the feeling he didn’t want anyone to hear what he had to say.
I had no clue what that was about, but I could understand his need for privacy.
Funnily enough, I was kind of in the same boat.
“Come on.” I spun my stool, searching for an empty table, which was silly.
Most of them were empty, and we were the only two people seated at the bar, but a table would be more comfortable.
When I found one a good distance away from the few other patrons drowning their holiday sorrows, I motioned toward it with a wave of my arm. “Let’s sit.”
“Okay,” he said softly, and he smiled, a small, weary curve of his lips. I took it as a good sign and clasped my hand around his. It looked like a child’s hand within the gargantuan confines of his, but it felt nice there.
I wasn’t usually one to touch strangers. I’d never before taken the hand of someone I’d just met, but the pain on this man’s face made me feel like he needed the connection.
Maybe I needed it too.
When I touched him, it was like I knew him, like I’d held his hand before, but he pulled a chair out for me at the table, and I released him. He waited for me to sit before lowering himself into the chair across from mine.
He drew in a big breath, then let it out in a loud sigh. “Everybody around here probably already knows, but I haven’t said that out loud to anyone. You’re the first.”
God. What could I say? “Do you want to tell me about him?”
Manny delivered two fresh glasses and placed them in front of us, then disappeared into a little room behind the bar.
The mysterious man leaned forward, resting both elbows on the table, and it seemed like his whole body slumped and melted around the whiskey glass between his hands.
We’d both left our winter coats hanging on the backs of our stools, so he should’ve been cold, dressed only in jeans and a T-shirt and his hat, but he didn’t seem cold.
In fact, I swore I could still feel the heat from his body, even this far apart across the table from each other.
I heard my best friend, Amy, in the back of my head, chastising me for talking to someone I didn’t know.
I mean, that wasn’t a bad thing in itself, but secluding myself with him in a dim corner, imagining kissing him, and holding his hand?
Amy would’ve yanked me to my car so fast. Good thing she was back in LA.
I’d already decided I wasn’t going to tell her about tonight.
“You gonna tell me your name?” Mystery Man asked.
“It’s Eli—”
Ah, crap. If he lived in Wisper, he’d know my name. He would’ve heard of me, and if not me specifically, he’d definitely know my grandpa.
Everyone in this town knew my last name because my grandpa was the town doctor and had been for fifty years.
But they also knew my father, Dr. Whitley’s jerk son.
The one who moved away. The one who considered himself above small-town medicine.
The one who expected his daughter to follow in his footsteps and be the head of a practice or a hospital in San Francisco, like him.
My brother dutifully followed the course our father had set out for us both at birth, and I had been on the path to follow.
Until today.
“My name is Eli.” It wasn’t a lie exactly, just a shorter version of Elizabeth.
“Eli?” He smiled fully, and I had the feeling from the crook of his grin that he knew something I didn’t. “Ain’t that a man’s name?”
“It’s my name, so I guess that makes it a woman’s name too.”
“Sorry.” He lifted his hands in front of his chest. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just, I’ve never heard of a woman called Eli before. But your full name’s not Eli.”
It wasn’t a question, like he already knew the truth I tried to hide.
I winced. “Let’s not do full names. Can you just call me Eli?”
“Sure,” he said and shrugged.
“What’s your name?”
“It’s, uh…” He stopped to consider me. His eyebrow hitched the tiniest amount. “You know what? You’re right. Names aren’t important. You can just call me Van.”
“Van? Ain’t that a car’s name?” I smiled, and he laughed right out loud.
“Touché.”
“So do you live here?” I asked.
I’d spent so much time in Wisper with my grandparents growing up, but I’d never met Van before.
I’d definitely remember if I had. Something was tugging at the edges of my memory, though, but I couldn’t put a finger on it.
Memories of tall pine trees and cool summer nights swirled around my head, but I had no clue where they had come from or why they were invading my brain right then.
To be fair, though, memories of Wisper and its residents could be hazy for me.
This was where my mama had died, so all the good memories of this tiny western town had become muddied up by the bad ones.
I was twelve when her car crashed grill first into a semi, and it happened not ten miles from Manny’s Bar.
The heart attack that had caused her accident was yet another reason I dove into medicine after high school.
Like I thought I could cure heart disease all by myself.
It was just another realization I’d come to recently, that my need to excel as a doctor was more about staying close to Mama, and not really because I felt called to the profession.
I shook all that pain from my thoughts. It wouldn’t do me any good to dwell on them now. Mama was gone. She wasn’t coming back, no matter how much I wished there was some kind of magic still existing in the world that could do the job.
This mysterious man, Van, knew the same kind of pain I did. Something about him told me he tried to hide it; he wouldn’t want anyone to know he was suffering, but he was.
That fact registered as I looked him over, and I tried not to let him see the sorrow I felt for him. I didn’t think he’d like that, but losing his brother? God, I couldn’t even imagine.
It hadn’t escaped my notice that the man was fine. His thin, white T-shirt did nothing to hide his bulging deltoid and trapezius muscles. And his biceps?
Yeesh. What did he do for a living? Chop down trees?
I became lost in a fantasy, perched on a tree stump, watching as the man currently sitting across a random table from me in a bar on the worst Christmas of my life swung a heavy ax.
Shirtless. At least in my fantasy, he was shirtless, and his worn jeans hung easily off his hipbones.
There was a little trail of hair from his navel that traveled below his—
He cleared his throat and said my name—well, my fake name—and I blushed from head to toe.
“Sorry,” I breathed.
Leaning back in his chair, a smirk took over his mouth, and he crossed his solid biceps over his similarly defined chest. “You objectifyin’ me?”
“What? No!”
“Mm-hm. Sure you’re not.”
I winced again, and a little sliver of light danced in his eyes for the first time since we’d met.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said quietly. “S’pose I don’t mind you lookin’.”
Well then.
“Yeah, but that’s not why we’re here. I apologize. It’s just that I don’t often see men like you. I was just wondering what you do for a living to be so physically fit.”
Tilting his head, he scratched his neck. “You know, I think we had the right idea with names. Maybe we oughta leave out jobs too. I don’t really feel like talkin’ about mine.”
I didn’t either. “Deal. So then, tell me about your brother. I mean, if you still want to.”