Protecting What's Mine(86)

He could still remember how it felt. A victory a long time coming. Landing the girl he’d been thinking thoughts about since thirteen or fourteen.

“I took her to dinner at the Italian place. She was sad about Luke, but I worked my charming magic to cheer her up. It was working. We talked and laughed. And I was feeling pretty hopeful. So I suggested that since she didn’t have a prom date and I didn’t have a prom date that we should go together.”

He remembered exactly how she’d looked as he asked. Looking back, he could see the hesitation. But at eighteen, all he noticed was the yes. “She said yes,” he continued. “I was so sure that she was finally seeing me.”

Mack leaned back against the brick between dirty windows, listening.

“Garrison and I had it out the next day. He came at me wanting to know why I was moving on his girl. I wanted to know if she were his girl why he’d just let her go like that. We went a few rounds. Nothing serious. Moretta broke it up. And Garrison took off all pissed off. She called me later that night. ‘Good news! I don’t have to cramp your bachelor style. Luke and I are back together and he’s taking me to prom.’”

She winced. “Ouch.”

Linc shoved his hands in his pockets. “It was just a crush. I was eighteen. I didn’t know anything about life or love.”

Sometimes he still felt that way.

“You knew her favorite flower. And you get sad when you talk about her. Feelings are feelings whether you’re eighteen or eighty.”

“She hadn’t even taken me seriously. She said I was a good friend helping her make Luke come to his senses.”

“A dick move,” she said.

“She was eighteen and in love.”

“Oh, so Karen could be in love, but you just had a crush?” Mack pointed out.

“Girls are emotionally more mature than boys,” he argued.

“A fair point. But that doesn’t mean your feelings weren’t real.”

They’d been real. Real enough that even years later, when he’d arrived on the scene of the accident that had taken her life, he’d frozen in place. She was already gone when they got there. All the dozens of what-ifs running through his mind.

What if he’d fought for her?

What if she’d chosen him instead of Luke?

What if she’d seen beneath his flirty teenage exterior?

But he hadn’t. She hadn’t.

And at some point, he’d stopped believing there was anything else but the easy-going, serial flirt. He was a good man but never good enough to be someone’s partner.

“I was there. On the scene,” he said, the memories rising up as they did sometimes late at night when he couldn’t sleep. “I remember thinking that it was officially the end. I didn’t even know I’d held out hope that someday she’d see me. Choose me. We lived in the same town, ran into each other everywhere. It wasn’t like I was hoping she’d get divorced. I’m not that big of an asshole. But I guess I’d always hoped that maybe there was still a chance someday. Someday I’d have that. And then it was all over. No more chances.”

Mack didn’t say anything as she pushed away from the wall. She just wrapped her arms around his waist and held on tight.

“Sorry for bringing the mood down,” Linc whispered against the top of her head.

“Don’t be a dumbass,” she said. “Ask me how I got this scar.”

He went still for a beat. “Are you sure you want me to ask?”

“We’re sharing painful shit. You shared. I share.”

He nudged her chin up so she’d look at him.

“How did you get your scar, Dreamy?” he asked, tracing a finger over the jagged ivory mark.

She took a breath and let it out slowly. “I was a resident in an emergency department in Texas. A patient was brought in. Car accident. I knew him, but we were short-staffed, and it was life or death. I worked on him, did everything I knew how to do, and it still wasn’t enough. He never revived. I called it.” Her eyes had a faraway look in them.

“I lost the patient. My first. His girlfriend—I knew her, too—was…distraught.” Her voice was tight. “When I told her he was gone, she broke a glass vase at the nurses’ station and came at me with a big shard. It took two orderlies and one really pissed off nurse to get her off me. I couldn’t even fight back. She just kept saying that I killed him. I ended my shift getting stitched up.”

“Bad enough to lose one, but to have someone blame you?”

“Loudly. In my workplace, where I was trying so hard to prove myself,” Mack recalled. “She was high. Turns out, so was he. He overdosed. He might have survived his injuries. I did everything I could. But I still felt responsible. Even now, whenever I learn a new procedure, a new protocol, I wonder if I could have saved him if I’d known more.”

“Ghosts,” Linc said.

Her gaze returned to him. “Yeah. They’re always there, lurking in the background.”

“How do we exorcise?” he joked. Then winced. Ty was right. He was hiding.

“Maybe we just move forward and leave them behind,” she mused.

“Sometimes it’s a tough choice,” he said, tucking a wavy piece of hair behind her ear. “Knowing when to abandon the past and when to build on it.”