Pucked Love (Pucked, #6)(85)
He’s still uncommonly beautiful, more now than he was when we were teenagers. I swear his shoulders are twice as broad as they were a decade ago. I can barely hold his eyes without being submerged in a deluge of memories I thought I’d buried long ago. I’d nearly forgotten how arresting his eyes are—okay, that’s untrue—but it’s been a long time since I’ve been hit with the full force of them. The vibrant blue with a halo of amber edging the iris, the burst of gold that colors nearly a third of his right eye draws me in and briefly holds me captive, just like it always did when we were younger.
“DJ.” It’s just my name. Two small syllables. But the effect of his voice is bone jarring. I feel the grit of his pain like sandpaper on my heart.
I fight to keep my voice even. “I go by Lilah now.” The words leave my mouth before I can call them back and find a different, more appropriate greeting. I shift my gaze away, anywhere but him. Martin looks frail in that hospital bed, and I wish Jeannie were here, a lifeline I can cling to, something to keep me from being torn apart from memories I don’t have the strength to handle. After all, the present is already crushing me under its weight.
“I didn’t realize Martin had been admitted until a few minutes ago. How long have you been here?” I lock down the emotion and switch gears to professional mode. This I can do. This I am good at. I read through the chart at the end of the bed, then cross the room to check the monitors—though my mind barely registers the numbers.
“I don’t know. Awhile, I guess. I just got into town and then…this happened.” I can feel Ethan’s eyes on me. I self-consciously touch the end of my ponytail, having given up on wearing it down by lunch. My scrubs are a size too big, and my running shoes are old and scuffed, my good ones still soaked from this morning. I look as bad as I feel, and I hate that I care about the way he perceives me and that it’s even a thought, with Martin hooked up to monitors, his prognosis uncertain.
“His vitals are good, but we won’t know anything long-term quite yet. Where’s Jeannie?”
“Mom stepped out to get some coffee.” He rubs the back of his neck, as if he’s trying to ease the tension. “So you’re a nurse here?”
The fact that he has to ask, that it’s not something he knows, feels like another shot to the chest. Maybe he’s making small talk, but it still hurts to be reminded that he knows nothing about my life.
I look down at my scrubs, as if they hold the answer to his question—which in a way they do, considering the hospital name is emblazoned on the pocket over my heart. At my silence he clears his throat. “I thought you were at Mercy in Minneapolis.”
“I transferred a while ago.” I’ve been here since just after the New Year. The last time Jeannie mentioned Ethan was two weeks ago. She’d said something about hoping he’d come for a visit before the hockey season started, not that it would make a difference to me since he never made an effort to see me when he blew in and out of town.
A very small part of me is happy he’s here—for Jeannie and Martin. But the bigger part, the part that he discarded so carelessly all those years ago, is hurt that this is what it’s taken to get him in the same room as me for the first time in almost a decade.
He shoves his hands into his pockets, then withdraws them, smoothing them over his thighs. “I figured you’d be working on your residency by now.”
I can’t tell if it’s a dig, or if I’m interpreting it that way because this day has been full of them. “Sometimes we have to readjust our goals.”
“Yeah. Don’t I know it,” he mutters.
I don’t have a chance to ask about the deeper meaning of that, or stoke the already awkward fire raging between us, because we’re interrupted.
“Delilah!” Jeannie’s holding two coffees, one in each hand. When our eyes meet, I see every worry and question. From her fears about Martin to my interaction with Ethan—all of it passes in the few seconds before she opens her arms for me. Like a mother would. Like she’s always done.
And I fall right into that offered solace, because I feel as though I’m a ball of wool, unraveling into a darkness that doesn’t seem to end. I wrap my arms around her, seeking comfort, not just for Martin, but for everything that’s happened today.
The possibility that I could lose the man I’ve come to see as a father—after my own dad left my mom, me, and my five siblings behind in search of a life that didn’t include us—is excruciatingly untenable. Even after Ethan and I broke up, Martin was the one who helped make sure I wasn’t getting ripped off when I bought my first car, taught me how to fix my leaky sink, and always had a smile and a hug whenever I came over to visit. I don’t know if I can handle this—not with the way the rest of my life seems to be falling apart, too. Especially with Ethan standing here, hints of the boy I once loved hidden behind those arresting eyes. It took me long enough to finally get over him disappearing from my life and now I wonder if I ever really did get over him at all.
I have years of pent-up frustration, resentment, and disappointment churning in my head and in my heart, and all I want to do is throw it all at Ethan. But there are more important things going on right now.
“It’s okay. Shhh, Delilah; he’ll be all right,” Jeannie says quietly, rubbing slow circles on my back.