Page 56 of Love Me Boldly

I nodded, but my chin wobbled, and I closed my eyes.

“Jonah needs you strong and healthy, Holly. We’ll do whatever it takes, whatever the results. That, I promise you.”

“Thank you.” My voice broke as the first tear fell.

Dr. Myers tugged some tissues out of a box and brought them to me, and she pressed them into my palm. “Take all the time you need before getting dressed. Everything you’re feeling is totally normal, but don’t lose yourself to the worst fears, okay?”

“I’ll try.” I laughed and then cried and as she left the office with a soft, understanding smile, I blew my nose.

The biopsy was painful enough, but it wasn’t the beginning of the pain I’d suffered, and it wouldn’t be the last. Not with the luck I’d had in my life.

Dr. Myers was right, though. Jonah needed me. And a quick glance at my watch told me if I sat there crying and wallowing in my feels for too much longer, I’d be late picking him up.

Single mom life was a rocking life indeed.

I never regretted keeping Jonah and doing everything I had to do to work for us, but along the way, I lost all the rest of my hopes and dreams.

Getting cancer would truly be no surprise.

I slipped off the table and got dressed.

There was no time left for wallowing or thinking of the past.

What was done was done.

I stepped out of Dr. Myers’s office and headed down the hall. Dr. Myers had been my gynecologist for as long as I had been getting female exams. The shock in her eyes when I walked in with a six-month-old baby in my arms had been one amusing conversation.

“Um… did we miss a few appointments?”

She’d eased the awkwardness with perfect comedic timing and had been encouraging ever since. At least I had a doctor who truly cared. I couldn’t imagine going through this with someone who was cold and clinical.

I hit the button for the elevator and stepped back to wait.

“Holly? Holly Jones?”

My spine straightened as a man called my name. I only came to Boone when I had to, but it’d been years since I worried about running into someone I knew.

I turned, and all the blood in my face fell to my toes.

His face broke out in a wide smile. “Holly freaking Jones. You’re really here! How’s it going?”

As he asked, he came rushing toward me. Decked out in blue scrubs and a long white coat with a stethoscope draped around his neck, Eli was no less handsome than he’d always been. In fact, age, and it appeared, med school, had been kind to him.

“Hi, Eli.” I barely got it out before his arms were wrapped around me, hugging me tight. It took me by surprise, the fact that one of Graham’s friends would dare to speak to me, much less touch me, after the way everything with us ended all those years ago, but there he was, hugging me like he’d seen me yesterday.

After tensing for a second, I returned his hug.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” he said and pulled back. “How are you? You look great.”

“Um…” I glanced down the hall and back to him. This was one of Graham’s friends. A guy I’d hurt and hadn’t done it kindly. He was the first guy, the only guy, I could have really seen myself having a life with. Everything crashed and exploded to the ground when I learned my own father had been responsible for killing one of Graham’s friends.

It was Eli who warned me to stay away from Graham if I wasn’t serious about him in the first place. I should have heeded that advice the moment he said it. I didn’t, which was why I was surprised that he was being so kind.

“I should go,” I told him. “It was good seeing you.”

“Don’t.” He reached out his arm to stop me from moving toward the elevator. “Catch up for a second, would you? I hardly get to leave this building, and it’s good to see someone I know. I just…I can’t believe you’re here. I thought you would have taken off after graduation.”

His brow furrowed, like he was trying to remember the past, and he was slowly working to put the pieces together.

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