Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(29)

“What is?” Keira leaned next to him against the wall, relaxing when Mark rested his head back.

“This idea that we should be something they couldn’t, which is stupid because what they really want is for us to be just like them.”

“You think so?”

He looked down the hallway and then took a sip from his bottle. “They’ve screwed up their own lives, Keira and think we’re their second chance. They want us to get it right, but they haven’t got a clue what that right way is. So we are expected to do what they did, what their parents did.”

She picked on the label of her water, scratching the sticker until it clumped under her thumbnail. “My mom wants me married off before I graduate.”

“You’re eighteen?”

“Yeah.” Keira stood away from the wall and drummed her finger on the top of the water bottle, trying to gage Mark’s reaction, to see if he was just saying words he thought she might like to hear. When he only smiled at her, a relaxed, easy expression, Keira continued. “I’m barely out of high school and she’s already talking about me settling down.”

“And I thought my mom was bad.”

“No one’s mom is as bad as mine.”

With another of Mark’s warm laughs, Keira decided that she liked not being alone in the Stepford Five Year Plan. It seemed to Keira that Mark, like her, had no intention of fitting the in-need-of-breaking mold Keira had been working up the nerve to avoid her whole life.

“My advice—”

“You have advice?” she said, walking next to Mark back toward Steven’s office.

“Probably more than you want. I am very old compared to you.”

“How old are we talking?”

“A good four years, so I’m quite wise and ancient.”

Keira’s smile grew and she let herself enjoy the sensation of Mark’s hand on the small of her back when he opened the door for her. “So what’s this wise and ancient advice?”

Mark stopped her, a gentle pull on her fingers before they reached the lobby that separated her stepfather’s office and the hospital entrance. “One day, when you’ve had as much as you can take, tell your mother to kiss your ass.”

“Oh?” Keira said, between laughs. “Is that all?”

“That’s all there is to it.”

The sounds of the active hospital just a few feet down the hall collected around them as Mark slid his fingers away from her hand. He had a kind face and was relaxed now that the pretense of their first meeting was out of the way. She hated that her mother had been right about him. She hated that she’d judged him by the same standards she’d been held to her whole life. Her own expectations were a bundle of stereotypes she’s never challenged, but there Mark stood, looking at her as though he was surprised that she wasn’t a Stepford clone either.

“Have you done that yet?”

“Told my mom to kiss my ass?” At Keira’s nod, Mark frowned, but it was an expression of disappointment, not sadness. “In a roundabout way. She wanted me to do cardiovascular work like your stepdad. She even worked out this internship hoping I’d change my mind.” Again, his hands went to his bangs and Keira decided she liked that nervous tick; it made Mark seemed blissfully imperfect. “There are enough cardiologists and not enough ER docs. That’s where I’d like to be. Really, I’m just trying to figure things out.”

“Well, I hope you get you want, Mark. I hope we both do.”

A small step and Mark moved out of the way when two nurses ran in front of him, toward the hospital entrance. He smelled like sandalwood and his shoulder brushed against her arm. They watched the nurses join the activity down the hallway, but stood still when the ER doors flew open, ushering in gurneys and paramedics and all the chaotic madness of the hospital.

“I hope we do too, Keira.” Mark’s smile was easy again and his eyes went straight to hers, holding her attention, making her think of things that had nothing to do with her mother or her plans.

She was going to tell Mark she had enjoyed meeting him. Keira even thought she’d be bold enough to ask for his number, or at least give him hers. But then her stepfather darted through the office door.

“Keira, I’ve got to take a rain check. We’ve had an emergency come up.” And then he was gone, jogging down the hallway. Keira’s gaze left Mark and that big smile and his sandalwood scent were forgotten.

An EMT-guided gurney swept into the ER on a wave of piercing sirens and Keira stepped forward, led by something she couldn’t understand as Kona barreled in right behind it.





“Was he complaining of chest pains?”

“I’m not sure, he was in and out—”

“Has he ever experienced an episode prior to this one?”

“Episode? He has a bad heart.”

“I’ll need a list of his medication.”

Count to ten. Breathe. Just breathe.

“I don’t have that. My mom would know—”

“Do you have his insurance information?”

“No…I don’t—”

Kona’s temper was a thorn, piercing and sharp, but he had learned to control it. With time. With patience. Standing in front of this nurse in the green scrubs, her asking him a thousand questions he could never answer, made the urge to lash out hard to resist.