Page 119 of Falling into Place
“I’m good at accounting, but it doesn’t get me excited. I don’t look forward to it or think about how I might change up the way I arrange spreadsheets after I get off.”
“Really? A good spreadsheet really gets me going.”
She pinched him, and he laughed. “But the work I did at Mode? I loved every second of it. The flexibility, the creativity, the transformations. I get hyped up when I’m just scrolling on Pinterest and come across a sweater I love or a style that inspires me, and thinking about which client I could share it with. When Sasha was talking about Backstitch just now, it was like this weirdly perfect combination of everything I’m good at and love.”
“I thought the same thing. So why don’t you just sit with it for a day or two? It’s a lot to consider, and it’s smart to ask more questions and do some research. But if your gut reaction is positive, it’s worth exploring, right?”
Her brow furrowed, and she bit her lip. “Maybe ... but, Nashville? For six months? We literally just talked about trying this thing between us again. How can I just up and leave? What if ... I don’t know, what if we don’t survive it?”
“Hey.” He gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “If you decide to do this, I won’t lie and say I won’t hate it when you’re gone, but it’s gonna take something a lot bigger than that to get rid of me, Carly Porter. I won’t make the mistake of letting you go again.”
“I was in another relationship where someone left temporarily for a job,” she pointed out. “Didn’t work out so well.”
Yeah, because Benjamin was a dumbass,he wanted to say. “It did for me.”
That earned him a tiny laugh. He’d take it.
“I’m not Benjamin. I want you to do what you need to do for your career, and if you go I’ll be thinking of you, and yes, missing you, the whole time. I’ll text you every day and I’ll come visit when I’m not on call. Let me show you how much I’m in this with you. Because even if you fell in love with Nashville and didn’t want to come back, I’d find a job up there and follow you.”
Her cheeks flushed, and God, he’d missed that. “You would?”
“In a heartbeat.” He paused. “If you’d want me to.”
“Of course I’d want you to. I love you, remember?”
He sat back and tugged her onto his lap. Framing her face with his hands, he whispered one last thing into her mouth before he kissed her, something he planned to keep doing for most of the night. “I love you more.”
Three days later, Brooks was finishing up his shift, an unusual sensation stirring beneath his ribs.
It felt like hope.
He walked through the cafeteria, searching the rows of tables and into the various hallways and connected rooms where employees and visitors could take a break. As he neared the back corner, he worried the nurse had been wrong—maybe the kid hadn’t come for something to eat.
Brooks really hoped he hadn’t left. He wanted to be the one to break the news.
Just before he was about to give up, his eye caught on a thin form hunched over a table next to the vending machines.
The kid was swiping through something on his phone and didn’t look up when Brooks approached.
“Hey. Connor, right?”
The kid looked up and blinked at Brooks, then nodded, the circles underneath his eyes darker than any seventeen-year-old’s had a right to be. His dark-blond hair was unkempt, and he wore a wrinkled T-shirt, probably from attempting sleep on the rollaway bed in the corner of his dad’s hospital room.
“I’m Brooks, one of your dad’s doctors.”
“I remember you.”
“May I sit?”
Connor shrugged, but he locked his phone, which Brooks took as a good sign.
Brooks sat across from him and put his hands on the table for a few seconds, then pulled them into his lap. He should have taken off his white coat, probably. He didn’t need to make Connor any more uncomfortable than he already was.
But he was nervous and liked to slide his hands into the oversize coat pockets and sift through the several pens he kept handy.
“How’re you doing?”
Connor just sort of stared at him with a slight frown.
