Page 95 of Falling into Place
“I don’t save everyone.”
She paused her ministrations. “And when you don’t, it’s not your fault. You know that, right?”
He shrugged.
“Some things are outside our control.”
“Says the biggest control freak I know.” She heard the tiniest smile in his voice, and it released a fraction of tension from the moment. But the curve of his shoulders and unfocused look in his eyes said he was exhausted. He needed rest.
“Want to watch a movie?” she suggested. “I won’t even pick one that should but won’t make you cry. We can go with something light.”
“Sure,” he said. “That sounds great.”
Carly woke up the next morning her favorite way: with a warm body beside her. His large fingers traced a line from her shoulder to her hip and back up, featherlight and tender.
She opened her eyes and found his gaze on her. Normally she’d be self-conscious because she wasn’t one of those peaceful sleepers who woke up looking the same as when she went to bed. She slept with a mouth guard, drooled when she slept hard (which she usually did after sex), and her hair was always a hot mess.
But the look in his eyes as he gazed at her stopped her heart. Some unnamed emotion rose up inside her chest and gathered in her throat. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she whispered. She hoped he would never stop.
His expression remained serious and contemplative as he moved his finger to her shoulder to start another trail down her skin. “I was just noticing some things.”
“Noticing things?”
He nodded. “I’m a scientist. I observe.”
She had the urge to smile, but the intensity in his eyes stopped her.
He swallowed as he brushed his finger just beneath her jaw. “Your pulse is visible here. Steady and strong, and I felt your heart beating.” His palm flattened just below her collarbone. “I saw the rise and fall of your chest; the way your lungs expanded with air all on their own without the help of a machine.” His thumb gently traced her eyebrow. “I watched your eyelids flutter as you woke up, and your eyes became lucid as they focused on me, and your lips curved into a smile when you recognized me.” His chin trembled, so slight she might have imagined it. “So many tiny details that people hovering around hospital beds day and night are desperate to see from their loved ones, and I realized what a gift they are. What a gift you are.”
There was not one single word she could utter. Nothing to do justice for the way he’d effectively just stolen her breath and taken her heart into his hands.
The only possible response was to kiss him with everything she had, which is exactly what she did. And when her lips touched his, she came to a significant but unsurprising realization.
She was falling in love with Brooks Martin.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Brooks
I’m proud of you.
—Coach McKee to Brooks Martin, University Medical School graduation
One week later when Brooks was on his way to Coach’s house for Saturday morning coffee, something didn’t feel right. He couldn’t put his finger on it, exactly, but he checked his calendar to make sure there wasn’t somewhere else he was supposed to be, and confirmed his text thread with Coach that they’d agreed to get together today.
Maybe it was a full moon. He always felt edgy on full moons, as was typical for health care professionals everywhere.
He was thinking about what he’d tell Coach about Carly this week—like how fucking happy he was and that yes, Coach was right about her all along—when he turned onto Coach’s street.
Red and blue lights flashed bright, momentarily disarming Brooks before he processed the ambulance parked outside the house. The feeling didn’t fade even when, after he’d thrown the car into park andrun inside, he’d found Coach alive and well, yelling at the EMTs that it was “just a little chest pain” and everyone was “overreacting.”
Brooks convinced him to let them run some tests, and that a brief stay in the hospital wasn’t the end of the world. When it turned out their “overreaction” was, in fact, a mild heart attack, Coach became marginally more amenable to listening to what the doctors had to say.
Coach was admitted for observation, and Brooks felt better when he knew Coach’s every bodily function was monitored and the best cardiac medical care in the state was mere feet away.
Yet ... something still felt off.
Brooks didn’t leave the hospital that day, and either rotated with Linda or sat in Coach’s room with her, playing cards and shooting the shit to keep them occupied. James wasn’t on service, but after hearing a close friend of Brooks’s was in the cardiac unit, he popped in to introduce himself.
