Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Gaines
Another family dinner equals another opportunity for me to stare at Eloise, this time from across a much more crowded room.
The last time we were in this brownstone together, there were only five of us present.
This dining room feels stifling now, with all these extra bodies separating me from the one body I want my hands on.
“Do you want some green beans?” Stevie asks from where she’s sitting next to me. “You keep looking at those beans over there by Eloise. Spoiler alert. They’re not my favorite.”
A chorus of laughter fills the dining room.
Sinclair plucks the bowl from the table and sends it down the row of people between us.
Keats gets his hands on it before Berk does, and then finally, Stevie hands it off to me.
“Mom says if I eat ten, that’s good enough,” she whispers. “I’ll create a distraction, so you only need to shove five into your mouth. Are you ready?”
Letting that sink in, I chuckle. “Sure. Go for it.”
She clears her throat and stands. “A poem by Stevie Morgan.”
Keats shoots her a look. “So, you’re using Morgan again? What happened to you being just Stevie?”
Her hands drop to her hips. “What happened to you being polite when someone is sharing a poem?”
Their back-and-forth bickering is legendary. I may have earned a slice of that little girl’s heart, but her uncle will always own the majority of it.
“Ready, set, go,” Keats volleys back. “Let’s hear it.”
Stevie steals a glance my way, so I stab my fork into a small bean and slide it between my lips before I lie to the little one, “That’s five.”
“I need more time to perfect my poem.” She drops back into her chair. “Carry on with dinner, folks.”
Another round of laughter carries through the room.
I look at Eloise to find her smiling, but her gaze quickly shifts to Sinclair.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Stevie pushes the bowl of beans away from both of us.
“He doesn’t,” her dad answers for me. “Gaines is married to his work.”
That sends all eyes on the table in my direction.
“What fun is that?” Maren asks. “Even doctors need love in their lives.”
“He doesn’t need love,” Keats scoffs. “I’d bet good money on the fact that he’s having as much fun as he can handle.”
“Like playing games fun?” Stevie questions with a perked brow. “Do you still play basketball at the park?”
“Sometimes. When I find the time.”
It’s a pick-up game with a bunch of people from the hospital at a community court not far from there. I’m part of a group chat that keeps us all updated on when a game is about to begin. If I have an hour or two to spare, I’m always there.
“You should find the time with Dad.” Stevie jerks her thumb toward Berk. “I’ve been playing with him. If I can beat him, I know you can.”
The sound of a phone ringing fills the air.
Almost everyone at the table drops their gaze to search for their device.
“It’s me.” Eloise is already halfway out of her chair. “I’ll take it in the other room.”
“It’s a boy,” Stevie surmises. “She told me she broke up with Philip, so I think she’ll have a new boyfriend today or tomorrow. She’s so pretty.”
That she is.
I follow Eloise with my gaze as she disappears out of view.
I’m tempted to stand, too, with an excuse that I need to check on a patient, but I keep my ass where it is because Stevie has already dove into another pressing question from the list on a paper set next to her plate.
“Why did you become a doctor?”
Berk’s gaze meets mine, and he tosses me a look that I’ve seen before. It’s apologetic and sympathetic at the same time.
He knows my past. He wasn’t always around to walk through it with me, but when I needed an ear, he made the time to listen, just as I did when he lost his wife and had to piece his life back together.
“He likes helping people,” he answers for me. “I was there the day he graduated from medical school.”
“You were?” Stevie’s gaze darts to her dad. “Do you have a picture from that day?”
“Plenty,” he says. “’I’ve got a great one of the four of us.”
Stevie looks beyond her dad to where Sinclair and Keats are. “You were there too?”
Sinclair is a decade younger than I am, but I remember her gift fondly on the day I graduated from med school. She’s a published writer now, but her love of the craft was present even then, so she prepared a mini handwritten autobiography of my life up to that point.
It wasn’t complete by any means because no one knows all the details of the life I’ve lived. Not even Berk.
“We were all front and center that day,” Keats tells her.
“I’m sorry,” Eloise says as she steps back into the room. “I have to run. A friend needs me.”
A look of alarm crosses Stevie’s expression. She’s up and on her way toward Eloise in no time flat. “Is it Penny? Is she all right?”
“She’s good.” Eloise skims a hand over Stevie’s head. “It’s another friend. He needs help with something.”
He.
Again, that fucking jealousy itch is back.
The only way I know how to scratch the goddamn thing is to bury myself inside of her.
She won’t make eye contact with me, so I drop my gaze back to the bowl of beans. Stevie was right. They’re not good.
“It was great seeing all of you,” Eloise says to the room. “Dinner was amazing as usual, Astrid.”
“Thank Keats for that.”
Keats glances over his shoulder at Eloise. “I can’t and won’t take credit for those beans. Those were fucking awful.”
“You owe a hundred to the fund,” a chorus of voices unites to say that, including Eloise’s and mine.
It’s a Morgan family tradition that if anyone swears, they need to donate a hundred dollars to a charity founded by Berk in honor of his late wife and Stevie’s mom.
I finally sense Eloise’s eyes on me, so I look up.
I want to ask where the hell she’s going, but I don’t own her time. We’re not committed.
“I’ll help Mom find a new bean recipe,” Stevie announces to everyone in the room before she grabs Eloise’s hand. “You’ll call me about taking my measurements, right?”
“Tomorrow,” she promises with a kiss on Stevie’s forehead.
They share a hug, followed by a smile, before Astrid, Maren, and Sinclair trail Eloise out of the room.
“She’s going to knit me a special dress for the school dance,” Stevie tells Berk, Keats, Jameson, and me. “She’s a pretty cool kind of aunt or cousin. She’s my friend. Eloise is my friend.”
I envy the kid for finding one word to describe her connection to Eloise.
I could toss out a million of them, and not one would describe what’s happening between us and, more importantly, what can never happen between my lamb and me.