Page 124 of Clara Knows Best

He didn’t answer right away.

“What?” she screeched. “That was supposed to be a no-brainer! You live and breathe surgery!” She grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake, but she didn’t seem angry. “Jesse, you’re in love with this woman!”

He finally got home at two in the morning. He stopped inside his front door and looked across his condo, trying to see it as Clara would see it.

It was a new build, modern but welcoming, in a neutral color palette that wouldn’t overstimulate his exhausted brain—because, in all honesty, he mostly came here to sleep. One wall of the living room was brick, with an enormous flat screen above an electric fireplace insert. The living room flowed into the sleek kitchen, warm wood tones and cool veined marble.

Clara would look good here, he often thought. His annoying imagination conjured her up, put her on the sofa flipping through a fashion magazine. She glanced occasionally at her phone, checking his location. Still at the hospital.

“I get it,” he said aloud.

He gave so much of himself to his job that there was barely anything left to give to a relationship, let alone a family. He had a gift, and that meant he had a responsibility to use it. That had never bothered him before, but now he wondered if it would be selfish to put his personal happiness first.

As always, there was a little voice in his head saying,Surgery is what I’m good at. It’s how I’m useful. If I quit, I have no value.But that was the voice of his inner foster child.

His heart, by far less eloquent, just wanted Clara.

“I can’t do this halfway,” he told his empty condo. “If I want her, I have to go all-in, or I won’t be able to keep her. And then I’ll lose her family, too.”

And hedidwant her. He wanted her to cover his eyes and douse him with hairspray to prevent hat hair. He wanted to walk her in and out of the grocery store after dark. He wanted to watch her princess persona disappear while she decimated friendly strangers on the tennis court. He wanted the total peace of having her nearby even when they were each doing their own thing.

Heck, he wanted her to bring him dying animals and tell him with total faith that she knew he could save them.

The more he thought about it, the more he knew that giving up the chief surgeon job was the right choice; he was too young for it anyway, and he’d have other chances.

But that didn’t mean he could quit his job and move to little Romeo to be a general practitioner, did it? He liked the idea of living in a closer knit community and having relationships with his patients, and he liked the low-stress atmosphere of Romeo Family Health. But giving up surgery altogether would feel like losing an arm, or worse. Clara was worth it, but it’d break him. And he wouldn’t be using his gift.

He lay awake for over an hour, despite his exhaustion, looking at the picture he had taken of the pair of them lying on the tennis court, and trying to think of a solution that would suit everyone. Clara liked Austin, but she didn’t need a partner who was too busy to see her. If he stayed in Austin, his work-life balance would gradually deteriorate despite his best intentions. That wasa hard truth. He lost total track of the outside world whenever he stepped foot in the operating room.

Always in the back of his mind was the knowledge that he simply did not know how Clara would react if he made some kind of pass. If he asked her for a date, there was a chance that she would turn him down, and given his quasi-sibling status, it was kind of a big chance. Maybe she wouldn’t want to cross that line, knowing it couldn’t be uncrossed.

She’d joked about it, though. And she’d kissed him, for crying out loud. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. If she took convincing, he was prepared to convince her.

Finally, he texted Hart.

Want to grab breakfast tomorrow?

Despite the late hour, Hart replied almost immediately with a time and address, and Jesse had a feeling that a series of unstoppable events, like toppling dominoes, had been set into motion. He just hoped the inevitable conclusion, when it came, wouldn’t be catastrophically bad.

51

“It’s been over six weeks since Jesse left,” Clara told her mother over coffee and scones. They were having breakfast at Daily Bread before work. “Time for you to pay up.”

Dr. Wilder didn’t look worried. “Double or nothing?”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Twelve weeks. Two hundred bucks.”

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Clara said carelessly. “He’s avoiding me, you know. He won’t come back as long as I’m still living here.”

“He’s probably just busy with work.”

“Maybe he got the promotion he was wanting,” Clara realized, and tried to feel happy for him.

“What promotion?”

“Some guy was retiring, and Jesse wanted to replace him as some kind of chief.”

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