Maybe Garrett would finally yell at me about my schedule or demand that I cut back my hours and spend more time with him.
Or maybe he would be the braver one in our relationship. The one who finally admitted out loud that we weren’t the match my mother and sister insisted we were.
I mean, surely he had to feel it too. That we weren’t a real couple but two people playing the roles assigned to them long after the little real desire we had for each other had run its course.
I waited for his reply, literally holding my breath. And I couldn’t say what I’d feel if he wrote back either of those things. Sadness? The anger I never allowed myself to indulge? Relief?
But as long as it took him to type the message, his answer came back nice and short.
GARRETT: Okay. Understand. Text me when you’re on your way and I’ll meet you outside so that we can walk in together.
I let out the breath I’d been holding in a weird anti-climatic spurt. I should have known he’d be fine. Garrett was always fine. That was what made him such a perfect fiancé.
My mom and sister were probably right. I should try to be more grateful for the successful and handsome fiancé who put up with me instead of daydreaming about a guy who’d look at me like Luca Ferraro looked at his wife.
That hypothetical man was a ridiculous fantasy. Garrett was my real life. And as my sister, Skylar had pointed out on more than one occasion, there were plenty of other women in New York who’d be happy to snap him right on up.
I slipped my phone back into the Hermes bag my mother had gotten me as a graduation present from medical school—not because she was proud of me. She and my sister were the sort of old-school Southern rich that didn’t believe in modern things, like wives working outside the home for actual money.
They were the kind of women who sat on non-profit boards for popular charities and volunteered their nannies and maids for any and all grunt work. So Mom had been embarrassed, verging on mortified when I showed up to the graduation party she insisted on throwing for me back in Kentucky carrying a sturdy cross-body Baggallini I’d scored at Century 21.
I’d received the graduation gift the next day not in a box or bag but with the contents of my disappeared Baggallini already deposited inside my purse.
Of course, I hadn’t been bratty enough to turn down the gift—or even ask where my original bag had gone. I’d just taken diligent care of it ever since.
Because I was lucky and should be grateful for everything I’d received.
I needed to remember that. I mean, who complains about receiving a Hermes bag as a graduation gift? Or puts off marrying her gorgeous fiancé for two years when she’s supposedly dying for a baby?
I chastised myself as I turned to hang the expensive leather bag off the back of my seat as opposed to just plopping it down anywhere—
Without warning, a wave of adrenaline surged through my body, and every fear response I’d read about in medical textbooks started happening all at once.
Goosebumps—check.
Hair rising on the back of my neck—check.
Sudden urge toward flight or fight paralyzing me into freeze mode—check.
What the heck?
Only one person had ever made me feel like this in my life, and somehow I knew who had just entered the curtained-off cubicle even before I unfroze enough to look up.
This only made the internal reaction worse. My sympathetic nervous system released even more adrenaline and cortisol, increasing my heart rate and shunting blood away from my digestive system, which caused that butterflies in the stomach feeling that books are always talking about.
Sure enough, it was him…the huge Asian man who’d paid a visit to my office to talk about Dawn Kingston, the Mount Holyoke grad who’d mysteriously dropped out of her internship just a couple of days before she was due to start.
That had been ten years ago. But not much had changed.
The man who stood at the hospital cubicle room’s curtain was still difficult for me to describe—to look at even.
I was tall. Five-nine without heels. He wasn’t just taller than me but larger. So large that I was sure a lot of tailoring must have gone into his outfit—both the dark grey suit and the black wool coat he wore over it. Maybe even the scarf had to be lengthened to accommodate his height and girth.
He was also big in a way that went beyond size.
When he entered the room, he took up everything—all the space, all the oxygen, every single bit of attention.
I’m like any woman, living in New York. I usually assess men around my age by their appearance. This man was not cute. His face was three hard slabs with two glittering black shark eyes in front. Underneath that lay a large, crooked nose that obviously hadn’t been properly reset after a break and a wide unsmiling mouth.
