Chapter 33
Isabelle
The scent of garlic and saffron filled my lungs as I walked into Austin’s entryway.
Austin closed the door behind us. Joseen, with dark black hair pulled up in a ponytail and large dark eyes, stared up at me
with a toothy smile.
“I was going to call,” Austin explained, trailing a few steps behind us. “But I figured you were in a surgery or working.”
“Oh,” I answered him, trying to keep up with whatever Joseen was saying at a mile a minute.
“Her mom got a really big opportunity this weekend, so she’s out of town,” he went on. “With the catering thing.”
I turned to him once we got to the kitchen and his weight shifted between his legs.
“I get it.”
“We were just making dinner.” Austin put his hands on my waist as he moved between me and Joseen to grab a few bags out of
the way. “Right, Jo?”
“Mm-hmm.” She nodded exuberantly. “We’re making pa . . .”
She looked up at him for help.
“Paella,” he finished for her, looking at me with a boyish smile.
My heart took such a giant leap that it left my lungs empty.
Spending time with his goddaughter, having dinner with her, making a dinner that he knew I wanted to eventually get to. I swallowed against a tightness in my throat. This was so sweet, and
I wanted to keep my guard up, but it was impossible when he was so good at pulling it down.
“Creative,” I teased. Walking along the line of the kitchen island, I looked out the large windows to the view of the Lower
Manhattan skyline. Strewn along the countertop were neatly placed bowls, then one with rice that had a bunch spilled over
it. “How’d you think of it?”
“I had most of the ingredients and—”
“We went to the store!” Joseen interrupted and grabbed my hand. “I’ll show you.”
I looked over my shoulder, and Austin rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, that, too.”
Joseen stopped at a barstool and handed me a bouquet of flowers. I looked up to Austin, who was becoming the cutest shade
of red. “These, too?”
“Mm-hmm,” Joseen confirmed in a high-pitched affirmation.
I busied myself with getting a vase and water to put the roses in. He’d bought me flowers and it wasn’t a far cry to think
he would, considering he’d made me soup last week. And now I was starting to get used to that. Him being the kind of guy who
was easy to lean on.
There was this fleeting moment when my nerves kicked up, but his smile laid them neatly back down.
“You’re the doctor,” Joseen stated plainly like she was putting me in her head under a specific category.
“She’s a surgeon, actually,” Austin answered.
Joseen’s eyes went wide. “Wow.”
I laughed to myself at the fact that I was standing next to a professional athlete, and she was taken with me—deservedly so—but
still, most regular jobs didn’t hold up in a child’s imagination like a famous athlete.
I loved that. A little girl’s eyes lighting up knowing that she could be one, too. I was one of a few female surgeons because not enough
little girls got to see women in that position living happy and fulfilling lives.
There was a lot that got lost in a life so heavily tied to a career like surgery, but none of it ever cracked my resolve to
keep going. Blake may have gotten close, but I stayed undeterred, because I couldn’t break or falter, not when seeing Joseen’s
eyes light up was more rewarding than all the institutional validation I had hanging on the walls in my apartment.
“Wanna learn how to stitch up a wound?” I glanced around the counter and took one of the tomatoes and a peach from the fruit
bowl.
I loved that Austin’s place always had groceries and a fridge filled with food that hadn’t expired. It was a level of having
your “non-work-related shit” together that I hoped I’d have one day. Once my life slowed down enough to pay attention to other
things.
A million-watt smile stretched across Joseen’s face. Her eyebrows shot up and she nodded vivaciously. “Yes!”
I rounded the counter to my purse, then pulled out the emergency suture kit I carried around and never actually used. All
the sterile supplies had probably expired by now, so why not use it as a demonstration kit?
Joseen climbed down the kitchen tower that allowed her to stand at countertop height and sat next to me on a barstool at the
kitchen island.
“So, nobody is helping me?” Austin looked at us with his hands out expectantly.
We both looked up at him and answered, “No.”
Everything about the last three hours felt comfortable even though I was exhausted from a full day of work and then hanging
around a five-year-old—it was . . . fun.
Domestic.
A type of domestic I never really let myself think about, mostly because I didn’t know how it could possibly fit with my life,
so I kicked the idea down the road.
Future Isa could deal with that. Present-day Isa had enough on her plate.
After dinner, Joseen was pretty entertained with practicing stitches until we ran out of tomatoes and peaches. Then she jumped
around here like an acrobat until about an hour ago, when she fell asleep.
“I got that interview, the Winthrop one,” I told Austin as I collapsed onto the couch next to him.
His body tightened for a second. Silence stretched over us before he said, “I’m not surprised.” His hand was stretched along
the back of the couch. I leaned into his chest and took a deep sigh. “Congratulations, Isa.”
He didn’t make a display like Selena would have. Jumping up and down, squealing, the whole thing. But the deep and soft way
his words bounced around between my ribs gave me the same feeling.
I craned my head to look back at him. “Thank you.”
Austin nodded, reached forward to the coffee table, and handed me a glass of wine he’d poured after Joseen went to sleep.
The flirtatious banter, the kind that kept me mentally and emotionally on my toes, was fun. It was what drew me to him. But
it was the quiet moments we had together that I liked the most. I could sit with him and just be.
Another silence dropped over us. When I looked up at him, he seemed a little lost in thought. I let it be. “So . . . paella?”
“Someone gave me the idea in Paris. Figured I had the time,” he answered casually.
“Oh, is that all?”
His arm moved from the back of the couch to snake around my waist. He leaned his mouth to my ear and whispered, “You know
it’s not.”
My thigh involuntarily clenched at the heat of his breath as it sent electricity down my body.
My mind pushed past the ways I was planning to end tonight since there was a child in the vicinity. I shifted a bit against his chest again, enjoying how big his body was. It could wrap around me on command.
“You have this full life outside of what everyone knows you for,” I stated, mostly to myself, a couple minutes later.
“Yeah, I do.” He looked down at me curiously.
I was a little envious. If anyone were to come by my apartment on any given day, the only sign it was currently being occupied
might be an occasional dish in the sink.
I was more than my work. I knew that, but it was hard to see sometimes. It became glaringly evident I didn’t have much of
a life outside of work when I saw other people’s.
“It wasn’t built overnight, you know,” he told me, his head bobbing down to meet my eyes. His tone softened from speculative
to encouraging. “Dreams don’t just come true. Sacrifices are always going to be made; it’s the way of things.”
I hated that he was probably right. Sacrifices had to be made, but I was trying my best to avoid that. And with dating him,
I hadn’t thought about it since things were so new.
His eyes on mine felt heavy, too heavy. I looked away.
“Was it worth it?”
“I remember being where you are. Giving up a lot for the thing I wanted most, wondering if it was worth it. But I try not
to think that way anymore.” He ran his fingers up and down my shoulder. “I got to play a game I love. Make something of myself.
And now . . .” He looked out the windows at the city below, then back to me. “Something new, I guess.”
“What changed your mind?” I asked, shifting a bit so my legs were curled beneath me and I was facing him. “About the foundation? In Paris it seemed like you were just trying to get it stable enough to continue on its own.”
He gave me a look like I knew the answer. When I didn’t say anything, he took my glass of wine and placed it on the coffee
table with his.
Instead of answering my question, he leaned forward, spread both hands along either side of my waist, and his lips met mine
in a sweet, unhurried kiss. Instead of overthinking what that meant, I rocked into him and enjoyed how good it all felt. He
had a way of doing that, keeping me in the present instead of running down my mental list of implications.
His fingers laced around the base of my neck and into my hair as I opened my mouth and he deepened the kiss.
Moving slowly, he leaned in, and I began to fall back against the couch, only breaking the kiss for a short second. Before
I knew it, he was on top of me.
His lips recaptured mine, this time hungrier. A groan rumbled up his throat as he slowly pushed my legs apart and kept his
body flush against mine between them.
“Offsides,” I whispered, spreading my hand wide on his shirt. I pointed in the direction of the guest bedroom. Lines arched
on his forehead questioningly. “There is a small child in the next room.”
Down one hallway was the primary suite, which was the only part of his place I knew. The hallway on the other side of the
living room had been a mystery to me. And now I knew why. It seemed like Joseen had rein over all of that.
“After how she ran around here for the last three hours, she’s definitely asleep.” He leaned back in, but I pushed him a little firmer this time.
“I’m not taking that risk.”
He groaned playfully. “Do you think every set of parents stops kissing in their own house because kids are around?”
Something about that statement sucked all the heat out from the room.
“I don’t know, and I don’t plan to find out,” I blurted, pushing him back until he was far enough away that I could sit up
on the couch.
With Blake, maybe I would have been happy, but I would have probably had to make some concessions in my career—like my mom.
I’d managed to avoid that.
“Oh.” His brow wrinkled. “Okay.”
“I mean. I’m not sure. I still have the fellowship and . . .” I added, realizing how sharp that sounded. My mind raced with
more anxiety-inducing questions. He probably wanted kids. He was practically oozing dad energy with Joseen earlier. I was
only nearing thirty, but he was thirty-seven and he probably wanted a family of his own soon. That fact, the one I sort of
avoided these last couple weeks, glared right through me. “It’s going to take up all my time. There are conferences, medical
missions, international surgical collaborative workshops.”
I didn’t know if I wanted kids; it always felt like something I’d decide later. I tried to remain apathetic to it. And now
I was beginning to realize that apathy was protection—for the day I didn’t get something I admitted I wanted.
So, I couldn’t want all of those things, because I may not get them. And that felt worse.
“Isa—”
“And even in the downtime, I’ll be working and operating a ton. If I plan to pioneer techniques, I have to master them first.”
“Isa.” He put his hands on my shoulders, cutting off the spiraling thoughts. “I really didn’t mean anything by it.”
Maybe not, but the truth still hung over me. A family was a perfectly normal thing to want.
I nodded, but like a big wave at the beach, the realization knocked me off-balance. He was staying in New York and he seemed
happy about it. But was that for me? It couldn’t be. We hardly knew each other, and I couldn’t reciprocate that kind of sacrifice.
“I don’t want to disrupt your plans,” I choked out.
I cared about him, and now an ache pulled at my heart because I knew what it felt like to be asked to give up something for
a relationship. I couldn’t ask him to do that. And how the hell could I live up to him giving up kids and coaching in an international league? I was barely around as it was.
This perfect night went upside down.
“Isa.” Austin waved his hand in front of my face. “You’re not disrupting anything. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“Yeah.” I blinked a few times and tried not to think about it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .”
“I’ll keep my hands to myself tonight,” he whispered, putting them up in the air innocently, trying to pull the conversation
back from the cliff it was headed down. “Promise.”
I smiled and forced a small laugh. I didn’t want this to end, so for now I was going to ignore a truth I wasn’t ready to face.
I leaned forward, picked up my glass, and took a giant gulp of wine.
“Can we go to bed a little early?” Every part of my body screamed to run, but I didn’t want to hide from him. I didn’t want
to freak out, even if I was freaking out a little. Because for the first time, having it all felt like it was still within reach. I had the interview, I had a great guy, and getting this close to perfect was scary.
If I could shut off the little voice in my head telling me I had to choose, maybe it would all work out. “I’m exhausted. I
think I just need some sleep.”
He pressed a kiss on my forehead, sweet and understanding, then nodded.