Chapter Twenty-Four
“Why am I doing this again?” Jared looked down at the suit and tie Whitney had hand-pressed and grimaced.
“Because it matters to me.” She stood back and viewed her handiwork. Jared looked good in a suit—he always had—but Whitney was happy to note that the sight of him all gussied up did no more to her equilibrium than if he’d been wearing his usual scrubs. This was what it felt like to coexist amicably with a former lover, to work side-by-side and beg favors.
It felt like nothing.
At least, it felt like nothing compared to the gaping hole in her chest that no amount of Valerie’s cupcakes and Lifetime movie marathons could fill.
“Do this one favor, and I’ll wipe the slate clean. We’ll be strangers meeting for the first time. Colleagues. I might even let you assist me on some of the bigger surgeries.”
Jared let out a soft snort. “How generous. Are you sure this isn’t a last-minute attempt to get rid of me for good? Sending me in to pretend someone is my patient so I can look at her confidential files could get my license revoked. You know that.”
“Remember that time you had your dick inside Nancy the anesthesiologist?” she said lightly. “We’ll call this even.”
Jared’s brow lowered as he adjusted his tie. The heavy frown lines etched into his face would never fully disappear, but Whitney liked to think that they were softening a little.
“Fine,” he said. “But this is the last time you get to hold that against me. You promised.”
“She promises.” Kendra wrapped her arms around Whitney’s waist. “Though do you really think you should go through with this plan of yours, Whit? I’m not so sure throwing something of this magnitude in Matt’s face is such a good idea right now.”
Neither was she. The last thing she wanted to give Matt right now was one more barb, an I-told-you-so moment that would probably deflate what was left of his respect for her.
But what other choice was there?
“Would you do it for me?”
“Of course I would,” Kendra automatically replied. There wasn’t a whole lot in this world her friend wouldn’t do for her.
“I would too,” Jared put in. “Even if it meant you’d end up hating me for the next twelve years.”
Whitney nodded. Despite his popular reputation among the general masses, Jared wasn’t perfect, and no amount of law breaking on her behalf would change her opinion on the subject of infidelity. But even Whitney had to admit—if there was one thing this man knew, it was how to exist in a world where relationships were founded on a bizarre mixture of love and hate.
“Then do it.” She checked her cell phone for the time. “We’ll meet outside the office at thirteen hundred hours.”
Both Kendra and Jared whipped their heads to stare at her.
“What? I’m nervous, okay?”
That was the understatement of the decade. Nerves were a pre-surgery shake off, the pitter patter of her heart in the moment before Matt entered her.
These weren’t nerves. It was the earth tilting on its axis, shaking her from the last clinging grasp she had left.
Well, too bad. She hadn’t let go yet.
And if she had anything to say about it, she never would.
* * *
Matt was so grateful to finally get Laura to a doctor he didn’t mind that she asked him to wait outside in the car. It had taken the combined efforts of him, Natalie, Laura’s sister and the nosy neighbor across the street, but their collective nagging had worn her down and convinced her that she couldn’t give up without at least hearing all her treatment plan options.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
He put his feet up on the dashboard and settled in for a long wait. No reading material, no papers to look over, no phone calls to make...all he wanted to do was close his eyes and give in to a profound urge to sleep the rest of the day, week, month away. He wasn’t particular as long as time passed and eased some of the ache that settled on his soul.
A flash of black leaving the office caught his attention before he got very far with that plan. Matt dropped his feet to the floor, leaning closer to the windshield to get a better look. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that black flash looked an awful lot like the infamous Dr. Fine, dressed to kill.
The car door opened, and Matt had to look down to realize that it was his own manic grip that held the handle firmly. Before he had time to recognize that the constant ache he’d felt for the past few days had been replaced by a boiling hatred, he was halfway across the parking lot.
“What are you doing here?”
Jared turned, his heavy brows raised as he looked up to find Matt looming over him. “One could ask the same thing of you.”
The man was coolly distant—so much so Matt wanted to shake him. If anyone had the right to be outraged at the turn of events, it was him. “I don’t really think that’s any of your business, is it?”
“No, it’s not.” Jared stuck out his hand, holding it there so long Matt had no choice but to take it. “It’s nice to formally meet you. I’m sorry we weren’t able to do this under more congenial circumstances. Jared Fine.”
“I know who you are,” Matt grumbled. Still, courtesy compelled him to respond in kind. “Matt Fuller. Did you happen to see my ex-wife while you were in there?”
Jared’s brows knit. “Unless she’s an eighty-year-old woman in a muumuu or a chirpy receptionist who looks like she should still be in high school, no. Most of the office is out for lunch.”
“She might be back with the doctor.”
“The doctor is also out for lunch. Look, Matt—I don’t know how to say this without it being really awkward.”
In a voice he barely recognized, Matt asked, “Don’t you think we might have passed awkward the day I walked in to find you with your arms around my girlfriend?”
Jared backed off, clearly hearing how close Matt was to losing it. And he was close—he seemed to constantly walk the edge these days. “Fair enough. But I think you might want to ask your, uh, Laura about her diagnosis. She’s not inside there, and she doesn’t have cancer. I think you might be missing a few vital pieces of that puzzle.”
The yellow lines of the parking lot blurred in and out of focus. “How would you know anything about it?”
“Because Whitney asked me to check her records.”
He dared to say her name out loud. All was fine until that man’s lips—once a vital part of Whitney’s life—formed the syllables Matt couldn’t say out loud. “I have never punched a man in my life, but I have to warn you, I’m dangerously close to changing my views on violence as a means of solving my problems.”
“And I’ve punched more men than you probably care to find out,” Jared returned calmly. “So go right ahead.”
They stood at a stalemate for a full minute before Matt realized how ridiculous the whole situation was—a thought bolstered by the sight of Laura coming out of the café located around the corner and behind the doctor’s office.
“What’s she doing getting coffee instead of seeing her doctor?” he wondered out loud, watching as she tossed an empty paper cup in the garbage and checked her phone. He looked at Jared and back at his ex-wife, no answers making themselves clear in the meantime.
“Whitney wanted to tell you herself, but maybe you should go talk to your ex-wife instead. I think you might have a lot to discuss.” He gestured at his watch. “I should go. I have surgery at two. Can we pretend this whole conversation never happened?”
“Nothing would make me happier,” Matt said, but he was already jogging up to Laura and didn’t catch what, if anything, Jared had to say in return.
“What are you doing?” Matt took Laura’s arm as she stepped down from the sidewalk. He led her to a black bistro set on the café patio, making sure she was settled comfortably in her seat before taking the one opposite her. “You promised us you’d talk to a doctor today. This isn’t a joke or some kind of game. This is your life we’re talking about.”
“Oh, you know.” Laura’s eyes filled with tears and she waved her hand. “I, uh, just couldn’t do it.”
“What do you mean, you couldn’t do it?” And why had Whitney asked Jared to check Laura’s records? There was no possible benefit to that, unless...no. It was too awful to even contemplate. “What’s going on here?”
Laura’s fingers trembled. They did that a lot lately, but Matt had assumed it was part of the illness. Now, he realized, it might actually be fear.
“Oh, Matt. I’m so sorry.”
“What aren’t you telling me—why are you here eating scones instead of seeing a doctor? And why do you refuse to answer all our questions about your diagnosis?”
“It’s not what you think.”
Had Jared been telling the truth? Oh, God. Had Whitney? “You mean it’s not cancer?”
Her lower lip trembled.
“Laura,” he warned, not fooled for a second.
“It’s mono!” she wailed.
Matt sat, stunned and immobile. A gust of wind picked up around him, lifting the edges of Laura’s dress, playing with her hair and painting her in the delicate image that had so long existed inside his memory. But when the wind fell flat, bringing her crashing down with it, Matt felt as though he, too, had been cast upon the ground.
“When you say it’s mono, you mean a special kind of cancer, right?” he asked slowly. “That’s a new name for it?”
Laura shook her head miserably and began playing with the bracelets around her wrist. “No. I mean it’s mono. The kissing disease. I probably got it from William, and it’s just now taking hold. The doctor says that between the virus and my stress about us and everything...”
“Us?” Matt shook his head as if to clear it. “Stress about us?” His voice was overloud, he knew, and the couple the next table over were listening with a keen tilt to their heads, but he didn’t care. How many books had he read on ovarian cancer in the past month? How many times had he delayed his plans with Whitney to take care of Laura?
How much of my life have I already sacrificed to this woman?
“It was just so hard when you left.” Laura’s voice cracked, and the eavesdropping couple scooted closer. “Everyone hated me for what I did—my dad, my sister, even my supposed friends had this way of getting quiet whenever I came near. And what with the house and trying to find a job and William dumping me...I don’t think I ever realized how much I depended on you for everything.”
“Not everything,” he said coldly.
Laura burst into tears. The woman the next table over handed her a napkin, which Laura promptly buried her face in. “And then for the first few months, you were so nice about checking in and making sure I was okay. That is, until you started dating that woman.”
Matt’s heart stopped. “Don’t you dare call her that woman.”
“You know what I mean. You disappeared, you moved on without me.” She sniffled loudly. “And then I began to feel really sick and you started coming around again. The doctors really did suspect cancer at first—that much wasn’t a lie. But when the diagnosis for mono came through, I was afraid you’d start pulling away again. Can you blame me? Can you really be mad at me for holding on to whatever I could of us?”
“Yes.” He got up from his chair, feeling cold all over. “I can.”
“Wha—” Laura’s jaw fell open and she scrambled to get out of her chair.
Matt turned his back on her, trying to gather his thoughts, attempting to moderate his billowing rage into something that wouldn’t make him look like a man transformed into a monster on the street.
And then he gave up.
“I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been.” He kicked the empty chair and squared off to face her. She took a cautionary step back, and Matt didn’t feel an urge to stop her. He felt proud of that. “You cheated on me—how is that in any way not clear? You took another man to your bed—our bed—on more than one occasion. And you’re the one who asked me for a divorce. Don’t you remember? You couldn’t pretend anymore, that’s what you said. We’d lost our connection and you hated to live a lie. You wouldn’t even try counseling.”
“I was wrong, I know that now.”
“We were both wrong.” He caught sight of the woman at the next table giving him a small fist pump, cheering him on. “You shouldn’t have thrown us away like that without even trying to fight. And I shouldn’t have stuck around as long as I did trying to make you feel better about the choices you made. Whitney was right.”
Laura had been doing nothing but manipulating him for months. And he’d let her.
“You don’t love her. Not like you love me.”
“That’s one thing you have absolutely right.” He was yelling now, channeling all the fury he’d flung so carelessly at Whitney into its proper channel for once. “I love her more than you’ll ever know.”
And if it wasn’t too late, he might have a chance to keep doing just that.