14. Billie
Billie
I didn't sleep. My brain refused to allow that sense of peace to wash over me for the entire night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in that house with Gage, sitting on dusty floorboards while he fell apart, and I clung to his hand like it was a lifeline.
The way he'd looked at me when he apologized, like I was something precious he'd broken and couldn't figure out how to repair.
The way his voice had cracked when he said he wanted his friend back.
The way every cell in my body had screamed that I wanted to give him so much more than friendship.
I couldn't keep lying to myself that this was going to work. That I could fit him inside the mold of nothing but a patient.
I sat at my kitchen table at five-thirty in the morning, nursing my third cup of coffee and staring at the ethics guidelines I'd printed out. The words might as well have been written in a foreign language for all the sense they made through my sleep-deprived haze.
A physical therapist shall not engage in any sexual relationship or conduct with any of his or her patients.
Clear enough. Black and white. No room for interpretation.
A physical therapist shall not engage in any conduct that constitutes sexual harassment of his or her patients.
Also clear. Though I was pretty sure the guidelines didn't account for what happened when your patient was the boy you'd once loved with the desperate intensity only teenagers could manage, and seeing him broken and healing was awakening feelings you'd thought were buried forever.
When a physical therapist's personal relationships compromise or appear to compromise professional judgment...
I stopped reading and pushed the papers away.
There was no point in pretending anymore.
My professional judgment had been compromised the moment Xander called to tell me Gage was coming home.
Maybe even before that. Maybe it had been compromised for eleven years, waiting for him to walk back into my life so I could finally understand the difference between loving someone and being in love with them.
Because sitting in that house yesterday, watching him cry for everything we'd lost, I'd realized the truth I'd been running from since the day he'd arrived back in Willowbrook.
I'd never stopped being in love with Gage Farrington. It had just been hidden behind all the hurt and pain of him leaving in the first place.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs interrupted my spiral of self-recrimination. Aunt Helen appeared in the kitchen doorway, her gray hair twisted into the neat bun she'd worn for as long as I could remember, her robe tied precisely at her waist despite the early hour.
"You're up early," she said, moving to the coffee pot with the efficiency of someone who'd been dealing with other people's crises for decades. "Or should I say you're up late?"
"Couldn't sleep."
She poured herself a cup of coffee and settled into the chair across from me, her sharp eyes taking in my rumpled clothes, the careful way I was avoiding eye contact, the exhaustion written across my face.
"This is about the Farrington boy."
It wasn't a question. Aunt Helen had raised me from the time I was ten years old, had seen me through heartbreak and triumph and everything in between. She could read me just as well as every other person in Willowbrook who'd passed through her classroom.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I admitted, the words coming out smaller than I'd intended.
"About what specifically?"
"About him. About us. About whether trying to be friends is the stupidest thing I've ever agreed to do.
" I wrapped my hands around my coffee cup, seeking warmth and comfort from something that couldn't disappoint me.
"He apologized yesterday. Really apologized, not just saying sorry but explaining why he left, admitting he was wrong.
And I told him we could try being friends again. "
"But you don't want to be his friend." Helen's voice was matter-of-fact, cutting straight through the careful rationalization I'd been building. "Not just his friend, anyway."
"I don't know what I want." The lie tasted bitter on my tongue.
"Yes, I do. I want everything we never got to have when we were kids.
I want to find out if the way he used to look at me, the way he used to touch my face like I was something precious, if any of that was real or just teenage hormones and small-town boredom. "
"So why did you agree to friendship instead of asking for what you really want?"
"Because I'm terrified." The admission came out in a rush. "Because what if I push for more and he runs again? What if friendship is all he can handle right now, and wanting more drives him away? What if I'm reading feelings into his apology that aren't there?"
Helen sipped her coffee, studying my face over the rim of her cup. "What if you're not?"
"What?"
"What if you're not reading feelings that aren't there? What if that boy is just as scared as you are, just as confused about where the boundaries should be? What if he agreed to friendship because he's terrified you don't want anything more?"
The possibility she was suggesting made something flutter in my chest. Hope, maybe, or recognition, or the dangerous kind of wondering that led to taking risks.
"You think he wants more than friendship?"
"I think you're both idiots if you spend the next few months tiptoeing around each other and pretending you're satisfied with careful distance when what you really want is to fall into each other's arms and never let go."
Heat flooded my cheeks at her bluntness. "Helen..."
"What? You think I didn't notice the way you used to look at each other when you were teenagers?
You think the whole town didn't hold its breath waiting for you two to figure out you were meant for each other?
" She leaned forward, her expression gentle but direct.
"That boy loved you, Billie. Really loved you, the kind of desperate, all-consuming love that only teenagers think they can survive. And losing you nearly destroyed him."
"Then why did he leave?"
"Because he was convinced he was toxic to everyone he cared about. Because Regina made him believe that loving people meant hurting them. Because he thought leaving you was protecting you from him."
I felt tears start to burn behind my eyes. "But it wasn't. Leaving hurt more than anything he thought he was protecting me from."
"I know, sweetheart. But eighteen-year-olds don't always make logical decisions when they're in pain."
"And twenty-nine-year-olds do?"
Helen smiled. "Twenty-nine-year-olds have more experience with heartbreak and more tools for handling it. They know the difference between love that hurts and love that heals. They understand that running doesn't solve problems, it just postpones them."
She stood and carried her cup to the sink, then paused at the kitchen doorway. "The question isn't whether you should risk loving him again, sweetheart. The question is whether you can forgive yourself if you don't at least try."
I sat there after she left, staring at my coffee and trying to sort through the tangle of emotions her words had stirred up. Hope and fear all twisted together until I couldn't tell which feeling was strongest.
But underneath it all was one truth I couldn't ignore anymore. I didn't want to be Gage's friend. I wanted to be his everything, the way I'd thought I would be when we were seventeen and believed in promises that lasted forever.
The only question was whether I had the courage to tell him that. But first there was something far more important that I needed to do.
By seven-thirty, I was dressed, over-caffeinated, and as ready as I was ever going to be for the conversation that would change everything. I'd called Xander and arranged to meet him at his office at eight-thirty, but first I needed to acknowledge something I'd been avoiding since yesterday.
I needed to admit that transferring Gage's care wasn't just about professional ethics. It was about choosing him over the safety of clinical distance. It was about deciding that what we could be to each other mattered more than what I was afraid of losing.
It was about finally being brave enough to find out if love could survive the second time around.
I walked through the rehabilitation center's familiar hallway toward Xander's office, past the therapy rooms where I spent most of my working hours.
His space was tucked into the corner of the building.
Functional, comfortable, and slightly chaotic in the way that distinguished his domain from the rest of our carefully organized facility.
Medical journals stacked on every surface, family photos tucked between diplomas, a coffee maker that I knew from experience looked like it had seen better days but still produced something that could charitably be called caffeine.
He was waiting for me with two cups of that questionable coffee and an expression that suggested he'd already guessed why I was there.
"So," he said, settling into the chair across from his desk instead of behind it. "How long have you been planning to transfer his care?"
I blinked. "How did you...?"
"Because I've been watching you both pretend you're not circling each other like teenagers with crushes, and yesterday something shifted.
Plus, you look like you haven't slept, which means you've been thinking in circles about something that has a clear professional answer but a complicated personal one. "
I took a sip of coffee to buy myself time and immediately regretted it. "Your coffee is terrible."
"Blake tells me that daily. Don't change the subject."