Page 20 of No Way Home
I gave her a brief smile. “I’ll try to remember that.”
“What kind of doctor do you want to be?” Sage asked, voice soft.
I turned to look at her, hands trembling in my lap. She was pretty in a quiet, I’ve never worn mascara in my life, kind of way. Dark blond hair, big, innocent blue eyes. I loved that James was head over heels for a girl who wouldn’t know what to do in Sephora.
“I’m debating between a thoracic surgeon and a hematologist-oncologist,” I said confidently. “I’ll be able to make a final decision when I get into my fourth year of med school.”
Bowen leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “So, you’re basing your life’s work on how much you’ll make, not what you’re passionate about.”
I blinked, shocked.
Griffin snorted. “Wow.”
“Bowen,” Silas said, giving him a look. “This is one of those times when you don’t say exactly what pops into your head.”
Bowen shrugged. “I mean, she picked the two kinds of doctors that make the most money. It’s like she looked at the chart and said, ‘Oh, okay then. I’ll do that or that. No idea what they do, but I want to be rich so…”
I stared at him as if we’d entered the Twilight Zone. This was not the guy I’d gone out with. At all. Did he have multiple personality disorder? Schizophrenia? Was he jealous that I was with Griffin?
Don’t flatter yourself. If he wanted you, he wouldn’t have dipped the minute you turned your back.
“Uh.” I tucked my bangs behind my ears. “Actually, the highest paid doctors are neurosurgeons and thoracic surgeons. Not hematologist-oncologists.” I looked him right in his annoyingly beautiful eyes and very calmly and carefully said, “I think it’s kind of presumptuous of you to assume you know why I’m interested in those two fields, since wejustmet. But I’m happy to tell you if you’d like.”
He patted his mouth, like he was already bored with this conversation.
“I’d like to hear,” Sage said.
“Me too.” Griffin squeezed my thigh. Because he already knew what I was going to say.
But I looked directly at Bowen so he’d know I wasn’t intimidated. “Maybe I chose those two types of doctors because the year I turned sixteen, instead of getting a license or shopping for prom dresses, I held my mom’s hand as she finally succumbed to the leukemia she’d been battling for four years. Super fun watching your mom drown from the inside because her blood turned to sludge—so thick with cancer cells her lungs couldn’t do their job.”
The room was uncomfortably quiet. Nova whimpered, and the sound felt sharper than it should have. Bowen was stiff, eyes hooded, ashamed. But he didn’t apologize.
Could I have sugarcoated it? Sure. But it hadn’t been sugarcoated for me and my dad. It had been our stark, devastating reality—andit was the reason why I was so focused on cancer and everything chest and lung related.
I exhaled, releasing some of my nerves. “Or maybe, it’s because when they said we’d exhausted all of our treatment options, and there was nothing left to do, I watched my dad sob with his head in my mom’s lap. It was the first time in their marriage, he couldn’t fix what was wrong, and now he was going to have to say goodbye to the love of his life.”Bowen’s cheeks looked hot but I couldn’t care. “So maybe I want to be a thoracic surgeon or hematologist-oncologist so I can save another teenage girl from losing her mom the way I lost mine.” I shrugged one shoulder and glanced at Sage. “But, like I said, I’ll know more in my fourth year.”
My words hung in the air for a moment.
Griffin squeezed my leg and gave me a proud smile.
“Bro.” James broke the silence. “You got cooked.”
“Whatever.” Bowen went back to stabbing his mashed potatoes like the details of my mom’s death were completely forgettable. Then, to twist the knife a little more, he leaned over, kissed Nova again, and whispered loudly, “I don’t know if I’ve told you lately, but you have the best legs I’ve ever seen.”
My eyes burned and my chest ached.
But I would not let myself cry. My mom’s death deserved my tears. All the friends I’d had to hug goodbye every time we moved on to our next tour deserved my tears. When my dad’s best friend was killed in action. The time we lost our house in a flood and all our pictures with it. Last year, when my Bichon Frise, Zsa Zsa, who’d been a gift from my mom on my sixth birthday, passed over the rainbow bridge.
But Bowen Dupree?
Nope.
I glanced at Griffin and made a decision to be grateful.
Because I’d learned something tonight. Serendipity was a real thing, and it had saved me from the wrong Dupree and pointed me toward the right one.
I don’t know who I went out with at Sole Mates—but the guy who won me over then was not the one sitting across the table from me now. This guy?
