Chapter 11
Callie
Afew days of perfectly normal veterinary work. Normal days of professional competence, pleasant small talk with clients, and absolutely no thinking about blue-gray eyes or stupid call signs.
My sheets still smell like him. I've washed them twice.
I'm fine.
"You look terrible," Sophie announces, appearing in the doorway of The Reading Nook's back office where I'm supposedly helping with inventory.
I don't look up from the clipboard. "Thanks. That helps."
"When was the last time you slept?"
"Last night."
"Actual sleep. Not lying awake replaying conversations in your head."
"I don't know what you're talking about." I make another note on the clipboard, refusing to meet her eyes.
Sophie plucks the clipboard from my hands. "You just wrote 'Dean Mercer is an idiot' in the romance section inventory."
I snatch it back. The words are there in my own handwriting, right next to Claimed by the Highland Warrior. "That was a note to myself."
"About inventory?"
"About life choices."
"Uh-huh." She crosses her arms. "Front. Now. We're staging an intervention."
"I don't need an intervention."
"That's exactly what someone who needs an intervention would say." She grabs my elbow and steers me toward the café area.
Carla is already waiting at my usual table, two mugs of coffee positioned like this was planned. Which it clearly was. The barista doesn't even look up from her organic chemistry textbook---just pushes one mug toward the empty chair.
"I didn't order that," I say.
"You didn't have to." Carla flips a page. "You have the look."
"What look?"
"The 'I made a terrible mistake but I'm too stubborn to admit it' look." She glances up. "Also, you've been here every day this week and you keep sighing. Loudly."
"I don't sigh."
Sophie sits across from me and slides the coffee closer. "You sigh like it's an Olympic sport you're trying to qualify for."
I take the coffee because arguing with both of them seems exhausting. It's my usual order---oat milk, one pump vanilla latte. Of course it is. Everyone in this town knows everything about everyone, including my emotional state based on caffeine consumption patterns.
"I was right," I say into the mug. "He didn't ask. He assumed. He talked to his brother before he talked to me."
"You were absolutely right," Sophie agrees.
I blink at her. "I was?"
"Completely. He handled it badly. Very badly." She takes a sip of her own coffee. "Now, want to talk about why being right feels so terrible?"
"It doesn't feel terrible." I pick at a scratch on the table.
Sophie raises an eyebrow. "You wrote his name on my inventory sheet."
The words come out tangled. I set down the mug harder than intended. "He should have asked me first. Before making plans. Before talking to his brother. Before showing up at my door with our whole future mapped out."
"Agreed."
"And I built my practice here. I have patients who depend on me. I have a life."
"You do."
"I can't just abandon everything because some pilot with a ridiculous call sign thinks Texas would be perfect."
"You absolutely cannot." Sophie leans forward. "So why do you look like someone who just lost something irreplaceable?"
I don't have an answer for that.
"I'm fine."
"Callie Marie O'Connor, you are the least fine person I have ever seen." Sophie's voice softens. "And being right doesn't mean you're not also running scared."
"I'm not scared."
"Your left eye is twitching."
My hand flies to my face. Dammit.
Carla makes another note in her textbook, not even pretending she's not listening to every word.
"What am I supposed to do?" The question comes out smaller than I intend. "He wants me to leave everything. My practice, my house, my friends---"
"Does he though?" Sophie interrupts. "Or does he want to build something with you and just sucks at asking?"
"Those are the same thing."
"Are they?" She leans forward. "There's a difference between 'come with me' and 'let's build something together.' He just went about it all wrong."
"In Texas. With his family. In a business I'd have no ownership of."
"Did he say that?"
I open my mouth. Close it. Try to remember exactly what Dean said.
Come with me. To Iron Creek. Jake said they need a vet.
You'd have challenging work, resources you don't have here, a whole operation to build from the ground up.
We'd be together.
"He said I'd have resources," I mutter. "Better than what I have here."
"Which is insulting," Sophie agrees. "Also maybe true?"
"Excuse me?"
"Cal, you're amazing at what you do. But you're also working out of a clinic you can barely afford to upgrade, with equipment that's older than some of your patients, and you've been talking about wanting to expand into behavioral work for two years but you don't have the space or the funding.
" She says it gently, but it still stings.
"What if he's offering you a chance to do the work you've always wanted to do? Just in a different place?"
"It's not my place, though. It's his family's business. I'd be an employee."
"Would you?" Carla interjects without looking up. "Or would you be a partner building something new with someone who loves you enough to completely rethink his life plans?"
I stare at her. "How do you even know he loves me?"
"Everyone knows he loves you. He told half the bar at the Rusty Spur last week." She turns another page. "Javi has a very big mouth."
Of course he does. This town. This impossible, gossipy, well-meaning town.
"I built everything here from nothing," I say, and my voice cracks. "After Denver. After Tyler. I came back and I built this. By myself. It's mine."
"It is," Sophie says. "And it's incredible. You should be proud."
"But?"
"But you can build again." She reaches across the table, takes my hand. "Can you rebuild what you're walking away from with him?"
I can't finish my coffee. Can't look at either of them.
Three days of telling myself I made the right choice. That I was justified. That Dean was wrong to assume.
Three days of missing him so badly I can barely breathe.
"I don't know how to do this," I whisper. "Trust someone that much. Bet everything on someone staying."
Sophie squeezes my hand. "I know, babe. But staying safe isn't the same as being happy."
Maggie shows up at the clinic at four-thirty with a pie.
Not just any pie. A full, perfect cherry pie with a lattice crust that probably took hours. The kind of pie that says I'm here to meddle but I'm going to be nice about it.
"Intervention pie," I say as she walks through the door.
"Thought you might need some." She sets it on Linda's desk with the kind of authority that makes Linda immediately produce plates and forks. "Got a minute?"
Linda points toward my office. "Exam rooms are clean. Last appointment just left. You're officially off the clock, Doc."
Traitor.
Maggie settles into the chair across from my desk like she owns it, cutting two generous slices of pie and sliding one my way. "Heard you've been having a rough week."
"Let me guess. Sophie called you."
"Sophie texted. Carla called. Your receptionist sent up a flare." She takes a bite of pie, chews thoughtfully. "Whole town's worried about you, honey."
"The whole town needs a hobby."
"You are the hobby." Maggie's smile is gentle. "That's what happens when you live somewhere people actually give a damn."
I stab my fork into the pie. It's perfect, of course. Tart and sweet and exactly what I need even though I didn't ask for it.
"I made the right choice," I say. Not a question. A statement I'm trying to make true through repetition.
"Probably." Maggie cuts another bite. "Question is, are you happy about it?"
"I don't know."
"That's honest, at least." She sets down her fork. "Can I tell you something?"
I nod, because arguing with Maggie feels pointless. She's going to tell me regardless.
"My husband---Sean---he was career Army.
Met him when I was twenty-two, married him six months later.
Everyone said I was crazy. Said I'd be a widow before I was thirty, that loving a soldier meant learning to grieve.
" She's quiet for a moment, and there's something raw in her expression.
"They were right. Lost him in Afghanistan when I was thirty-four.
Twelve years we had together. Twelve years of deployments and missed birthdays and not knowing if he was safe. "
"Maggie---"
"But here's the thing." She looks at me. "I wouldn't trade a single day. Not one. Even knowing how it ended. Because those twelve years? Being loved by that man? That was everything."
I can't swallow past the lump in my throat.
"Safe isn't the same as happy, honey." Maggie's voice is gentle. "And you haven't lost anything yet. You're just scared you might."
"He didn't ask, Maggie. He just assumed I'd say yes."
"He did. And that was wrong." She picks up her fork again. "But that boy isn't your ex. Tyler left because you said no. Dean's been holed up at that base for three days probably losing his mind trying to figure out how to fix this."
"How do you know that?"
"Because Javi came in for lunch yesterday and said Dean's been running training drills like a man possessed. Top had to physically remove him from the obstacle course before he hurt himself." Maggie gives me a knowing look. "That's not a man who's moved on. That's a man who's miserable."
Good. He should be miserable.
The thought of Dean miserable makes me want to drive to that base right now.
"I don't know if I can do it," I admit. "Trust someone that much. Leave everything I've built. Start over in a place where I don't know anyone, where I'd be dependent on his family's business, where everything could fall apart if we---if he---"
"If he decides you're not worth it?" Maggie's voice is soft. "If he leaves?"
I can barely say it. "Yeah."