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Ty followed Michelle’s gaze as she glanced at the older couple walking in their direction on the sidewalk in front of her condo. Their faces showed interest in what was happening between him and Michelle.
She turned back to him and hissed, “Come in. I don’t want to have this conversation in front of my neighbors.”
Stepping back, she allowed him to enter, followed and then closed the door behind her. Ty continued on into the kitchen, setting the boxes down on the closest counter. He turned to find Michelle standing behind him in what could only be described as a warrior’s stance.
“When were you going to tell me?” she demanded, her look boring into his.
“Tell you what?”
“That you were offered a job at the hospital,” she all but shouted at him.
“I didn’t think it mattered. You knew I planned to leave. I’ve tried a number of times to discuss it with you but you didn’t want to talk about it.”
She had the good grace to look away. “So when do you plan to call ahead for a coffee-maker, pack up your boxes and get on your bike?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
She gasped, her face going pale. Her next words came out in a strangled voice. “That soon.”
“Yeah.” The word drifted off as if he hated to say it. His heart constricted in agony. He was hurting her. Just as he’d hoped he wouldn’t do. He hadn’t expected the depth of pain he’d feel knowing he had to leave her. That she wouldn’t be a part of his life but he couldn’t stay. That was for her sake. He was no good for anyone.
She stood back and studied him. “You are more like your parents than you think.” There was a note of censure in her voice.
“I’m nothing like them,” he said sharply.
“Think about it, Ty. You don’t stay in one place. You’re always running. You don’t even really own anything.”
“Don’t you get it? If I stayed I’d end up failing you. I found that out a long time ago. I’d let you down. I did that once and I refuse to let it happen again.”
“How do you know? You’ve never stayed in one place long enough to see what you’re capable of. You won’t know until you try.”
“I know,” he said, with a surety as immovable as the Appalachian Mountains as he backed away from her.
She shook her head sadly. “You carry so much guilt over Joey. You were a kid. You couldn’t have done more for him.”
He made an aggressive step in Michelle’s direction and bared his teeth as he spat the words. “I could have made my parents take him to a doctor. The hospital. I could have taken him myself. I could have asked someone for help.” He bit the ugly words out. “You don’t know anything about me. What makes you think I wouldn’t let the same thing happen to you?” He pointed his finger at her. “I’m not good enough for you.”
Michelle stood her ground proudly through his tirade. For that he had to admire her. A lesser person would have been frightened.
“I would never have taken you for a coward,” she said with a tone of regret. As if she’d had a revelation, she continued in an even voice, “You’re afraid to commit. You’re making excuses not to. You’re not afraid you’ll not be here if I need you. You’re afraid that you might get hurt if you are. You’re running because you do care.” She narrowed her eyes and gave him an earnest look. “Don’t you ever get tired of running from the past?” She waved a hand around. “It’ll never stop following you.”
What did she want him to admit? That, yes, it followed him everywhere, never left him? He looked at her for a long moment. “You talk about me being a coward. Have you told your team how sick your mother has been? Have you confided to anyone outside of me in years? Hey, maybe that’s the way you want it. You knew I’d be leaving so it would be easy to tell me. You wouldn’t have to invest yourself in anyone. You are still mourning your father. Still trying to be the perfect little girl. Where has that got you? No friends, no life. No happiness.”
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You have some nerve…”
“Hey, you believe you have all the answers? I’m thinking that maybe you need to realize a few things also. Realize that you can’t control everything. Your mother’s cancer. Whether I leave or not. All you can control is you and your life. And you decided to close off people years ago.”
Michelle’s mouth drew into a thin line and her eyes widened as a stricken look covered her face. She blinked and cleared her throat before she said in a subdued voice, “That all may be true but that still doesn’t change the fact that you are still trying to deal with not standing up to your parents. Not insisting they take Joey to a doctor. You went into medicine to help and that’s all well and good.
“But you run around from one place to another like the masked hero doctor. Spreading your brand of medicine and happiness as a shield against dealing with your past. You didn’t leave your parents’ lifestyle behind, you just ran away from them. And the pain. No matter how great a doctor you have become, it can’t bring Joey back. All you can do is live well and honor him. That much I have learned in the last few weeks.”
Her words hurt. Cut to the quick. The strong, clear-minded and confident Michelle had returned with a vengeance and pinned him to the wall. “I care about you, Michelle, I do. That’s why I have to go. I don’t want to watch as disappointment fills your eyes.”
“That’s the biggest bunch of bull I’ve ever heard. You don’t know what it’s really like to care about someone. Not since you were sixteen have you stuck around long enough to find out. You’re not fooling anyone but yourself. And I’m not sure that you’re doing a good job of that either. You don’t care enough about me to stay and try to build a real relationship. You’re taking the easy way out. Never getting emotionally involved.”
He glared at her but she didn’t slow down. “Maybe we’re not that different after all. But I do know one thing, I want a man who will be beside me through thick and thin. You’re right, you probably aren’t that person.”
A stabbing pain tore through Ty’s gut with those words. Michelle had given up on him, had decided he wasn’t worth the trouble.
“Well, I guess everything that needs to be said has been. Goodbye, Michelle.” He headed for the front door, the takeout boxes forgotten, the food gone cold just like his heart.
CHAPTER TEN
TY PULLED THE motorcycle to a stop near the campsite. He’d been on the road for weeks and had covered five states in search of his parents. Traveling from one to another, he checked locations they’d frequented as a family years earlier. Each spot he visited held good and bad memories.
When he’d left Raleigh and Michelle, he gone to his next assignment, which lasted only two weeks, sure that he would move on as if nothing had happened. Michelle would forget him in time and he would remember her as a pleasant interlude during a work assignment. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. He missed Michelle with a pain so consuming that it was almost tangible. At work, he remembered the intensity of her eyes snapping at him over her mask. On his motorcycle it was her thighs pressed tightly to his as he turned a curve. The worst was when he played his guitar. She’d ruined the joy for him. Michelle was in his blood.
Trying to outdistance the growing grief that roiled in him, he’d not accepted the next anesthesiologist position offered. Instead, he’d decided to take some time off and travel. He’d ridden his bike far and fast, trying to clear his head and hopefully his heart of Michelle. That hadn’t happened. If anything, he’d become more miserable. He was constantly fighting thoughts of what Michelle would think about the places he was seeing, wishing she was there to share them. The worst was that he worried she might move on and no longer give him any thought.
After another aimless day he had fallen into bed. Sleep had eluded him. In the early hours of the morning he’d given up and seen the situation for what it was. He was hopelessly in love. It was time to face the truth and do something about it. But he had to face the past before he cou
ld ask Michelle to share his future. If he was going to do that, he had to find his parents. The thought of doing so made his stomach contract but it still had to be done. Now he was parked at a camp in central Florida. He’d been told his parents were there.
Placing his helmet on the seat of his bike, Ty walked across a grassy area towards the mobile campers parked under the trees. As he approached, a man in ill-fitting clothes came out to meet him.
“Can I help you?” the man said in a gruff voice that held a note of suspicion.
It was part of the lifestyle to be distrustful of any outsiders. Ty found it ironic that for years he’d been an outsider. The one new to the hospital, the staff, the OR team. In those places more times than not he’d been welcomed.
“I’m looking for George and Miranda Lifeisgood. I was told they might be here.” His parents had changed their last names long ago. They’d said they’d had left their old life behind and their last names as well. To his knowledge they had never legally married. Smith was his mother’s parents’ surname and Ty had taken it when he’d move in with them.
“Who’s looking for them?” the man asked, glancing over his shoulder.
Had he been signaling to someone? “I’m their son.”
“Son?” he asked, as if he didn’t believe Ty. “Didn’t know they had one.”
“Are they here?” Ty asked with a note of frustration. The woman in the last camp he’d visited had been sure his parents were traveling with this group. Ty started to step around the man when another one came out from among the campers and headed in his direction.
There was something familiar about the man’s walk. He wore clothes similar to those of the first man but this one had the bearing of a leader as he stalked across the ground. His curly dark hair was streaked with gray and hung freely around his shoulders. As he came closer Ty knew without a doubt that it was his father. He was an older version of what Ty saw when he looked in the mirror.
Ty’s heart beat faster. All of a sudden he had the urge to turn and leave but he had to face his demons and that meant talking to his parents.
“George,” Ty said. He had never been allowed to call his parents by anything other than their first names.
“Ty? Is that you?” his father asked, coming to a halt just out of touching distance.
Ty nodded. “Yes.”
“What brought you here?”
So much for the warm family welcome. He hadn’t expected more but it would have been nice. In reality he’d not treated them much better at his grandfather’s funeral. “I wanted to see how you and Miranda are.”
His father looked at him so long without saying anything that Ty feared he would reject him.
“Come, your mother will be glad to see you.” His father turned and walked off, not waiting to see if Ty followed.
