Page 113 of Finding Jack
“When you called me last night, I was already in the city. I’d been hoping you’d see me today, but then you called...”
“And you told me I had bad timing.” The realization was dawning on me. “But not because you think we’re over?”
He smiled. “No. Because you ruined my surprise.”
I gave him a smaller smile in return. “Sorry about that. But I’m glad you’re here. There are things I need to say to you in person. More apologies I should have made a while ago.”
His expression grew serious, and he shook his head. “When you left Featherton, I was pretty upset. I thought I was mad at you, which is why I didn’t text you or call you. I figured you didn’t understand anything about me, that I’d read you all wrong, that I was better off without you.”
“Jack, I—”
“No, it’s okay. Because then you sent that text about how you started volunteering. And it turned everything upside down for me. You’ve tied me in so many knots since we met that I don’t know what’s up with anything anymore, even things I thought I knew for absolute truth.”
My hands relaxed. “I know how that feels.”
“The fact that you were willing to do something that hard, it shook me. Out of complacency. Out of self-righteousness.” He reached up to brush back hair that wasn’t there anymore, and his hand drifted to his lap as if he was uncertain what to do with it. “Most importantly, it shook me out of self-pity. I realized that I wasn’t mad at you when you left. I was mad at myself.”
I looked down at my lap. “I still shouldn’t have said what I said.”
He sighed. “Maybe you should have. You were wrong about me needing to go back to practicing, but you were right about me hiding. I didn’t realize how much I’d isolated myself until you came along. You shook me up in ways I needed.”
I rested my hand on his knee. “If it’s any consolation, you did the same thing to me.”
He covered my hand with his, toying with my fingers. “Yeah?”
I swallowed as little currents ran up my arm from every place he touched me. “I had a perfect life figured out for myself. A plan for my career. For a relationship. Five years, ten years, I saw it all laid out in front of me, clear and simple. You were nowhere in there. And yet…”
“And yet there’s no version of the future where I don’t see you. How did that happen, Em?”
“I don’t know. But it happened to me too.”
“That’s what I came here to tell you. And then you ruined it with that call last night.” Another smile twitched at the corner of his lips.
A warm tendril of hope had unfurled inside me when he’d walked through my door, and now it grew and stretched. “I have faith in you to fix this, doctor.”
“Good, because it’s my turn to do the fixing,” he said. “You took a risk and came up to see me. As happy as that made me, I didn’t understand what a huge gamble that was until I packed my life into my car to drive down here to you.”
“Your life into your car?” The tendril of hope grew to a flame fueled by wonder. He had done that for me?
He threaded his fingers through mine and met my eyes. “When you told me last night that you were willing to work on this long-distance, and to do whatever it took…” His voice trailed off. He shook his head with an air of disbelief. “I promise you, I planned this grand entrance into your life before you even called. Ask Sean. I’ve been here since yesterday afternoon.”
“A grand entrance into my life,” I repeated. “Is that also why you cut your hair?” I touched the close-cropped strands near his temple. Then I remembered something he’d said when he first walked in. “Wait. You said you packed your life into your car. And when you came in you said something about cutting your hair for a microscope?”
“Yeah.” He brushed his lips across my knuckles and this time heat shot straight up my arm. “Sean mentioned he needed a roommate, so I figured I’d help him out and move to San Francisco. It kind of worked out since the UC San Francisco School of Medicine offered me a teaching and research position.” He watched my face closely, but he didn’t need to. He could have seen my jaw drop from the top of Coit Tower, and he smiled at my reaction. “I can’t go back to treating patients, but I can work on the problem from a different direction. Have to keep this out of the way of the microscope.” He brushed a hand over his hair, clearly still not used to it. “It was time.”
Suddenly I was every romance novel cliché at once: pounding heart, sweaty palms, and there was no way my knees would support me if I had to stand. But luckily—so luckily, as Jack reached over to slide his hand around the back of my neck—I didn’t have to go anywhere.
“I’m here. I can’t go back to the work I did, but I’m not quitting anymore. Not medicine, and not you.” He leaned forward, gently touching his forehead to mine. “I love you, Emily.”
I slid my arms around his neck, thrilling at the brush of the soft, short bristles of his hair against my fingers. “Jack?” I whispered, a hairsbreadth from his lips.
“Yeah?”
“I love you too. Now shut up and kiss me.”
And neither of us paid any attention at all as Ranée and Sean spilled into the hall cheering.
Epilogue
