Tessa: WHO???
Hadley: YOU CAN’T JUST DROP THAT AND LEAVE.
Erica: IS IT LUCY?
Me: Maybe.
Typing bubbles pop up from all of them at once. Then Scarlett drops the final message:
Scarlett: Ladies… He’s gone.
My phone starts ringing immediately. Scarlett. Decline. Hadley. Decline. Erica. Decline. Tessa. I finally toss the phone onto the cushion beside me before anyone else can call.
My head is still splitting, throat still burns and every inch of me aches. But none of it matters quite as much anymore.
Because somehow, on the worst day I’ve had in months, I walked into that clinic feeling like death… and walked out knowing I’d just met the woman I’d been waiting for all along.
FIVE
LUCY
By the next morning,I have looked at the clinic door so many times that I’m starting to annoy myself. Every time the bell above it gives that soft little jingle, my eyes lift before I can stop them, and every time it’s not him, a little disappointment curls low in my stomach. I pretend I was only checking to see who came in because that’s literally part of my job.
It should be easy to forget about a sick man who walked in with tissues shoved up his nose and almost passed out in the waiting room, especially when the phones keep ringing off the hook and patients keep needing forms and Sophie is running behind because half the town apparently woke up coughing. But I can’t forget. I keep seeing the way his huge hand braced on the counter like it was the only solid thing in the room, the way his voice went rough and ridiculous when he told me he was dying, and the way he asked my name like it mattered even though he looked like he could barely remember his own. My skin still tingles where his fingers brushed mine when I handed him the clipboard.
I stack intake forms into a neat pile and try to focus on the insurance card in front of me, but my mind drifts again. Tiny. The name does not fit him at all, which I’m sure is the point, but it keeps circling in my head anyway. He is enormous, all broad shoulders and tattoos snaking down his arms and a voice that’s too deep for the quiet clinic lobby, but he looked so miserable and almost boyishly harmless sitting in that chair with his hoodie pulled up and his face pale. I should not think the word cute about a man like that. I definitely shouldn’t feel this warm flutter every time I picture him trying to joke through the fever.
“Lucy.”
I jolt and look up so fast I nearly knock my pen off the desk. Scarlett is standing on the other side of the counter with a chart tucked against her chest and one eyebrow raised, and the look on her face tells me she has probably said my name more than once. I feel heat climb up my neck before she says anything else.
“Sorry,” I say, grabbing the pen before it rolls off the edge. “I was just going over Mrs. Langley’s paperwork. Did you need something?”
Scarlett’s mouth curves like she knows every single thought I’m trying to hide. “Mrs. Langley’s paperwork is upside down, babe.”
I look down and my stomach drops because it is. The entire form is turned the wrong way. I flip it around quickly, but that only makes Scarlett’s smile wider, and I wish the floor would open just enough for me to slip through. “I was organizing it,” I say, but I don’t even believe me.
“Sure you were.” Scarlett leans her hip against the counter and lowers her voice so the waiting room cannot hear. “You’reawfully distracted today. You wouldn’t happen to be thinking about a certain dramatic giant who came in yesterday acting like he was dying, would you?”
My cheeks go hot enough that I want to press the cold side of my water bottle against them. “No,” I say too quickly, and then I hate myself because that ‘no’ sounds more like a confession than a denial. “I mean, I was only wondering if he’s okay. He seemed really sick.”
“He’ll live,” Scarlett says, still watching me too closely. “Sophie said he has the flu. He’s home resting, or at least he better be because I told him if he showed up at Perdition last night, I would personally drag him back to bed.”
I picture her trying to drag him anywhere and a laugh slips out before I can catch it. “Could you actually drag him?”
“Not even a little,” she says, and then she grins. “But I’m scary when properly motivated, and Tiny knows better than to test women who have already survived the men in this club.”
I smile down at the desk because it's easier than looking at her. The club still feels strange to think about after the other night, not strange in a bad way, but strange because it’s nothing like I'd been taught to expect. Dad would look at those men and see danger and assume the worst. Instead, I watched Wyatt kiss the top of Hadley's head while they talked. Then Steele kept a hand resting on the back of Erica's chair and Cole stole cherries from Tessa's drink like teasing her was his favorite pastime. Then there was Tiny, looking like he was one cough away from collapsing, but still trying to make me laugh while he sat in the clinic feeling absolutely miserable. None of it fits inside the narrow little box Dad built for people like them, and that leavesme wondering what else he's been wrong about all these years. The thought makes my chest feel strangely light.
Scarlett taps the counter lightly, pulling me back to her. Her teasing softens, but the sparkle in her eyes does not disappear completely. “He asked about you, by the way.”
My fingers tighten around the pen. “He did?”
“He did.” She says. “Tiny asked if it’d be okay to have your number. Before you panic, he wasn’t weird about it. He just asked your name first, and then he tried to act like he didn’t care too much, which was a terrible performance because Tiny is about as subtle as a dropped toolbox.”
I bite the inside of my cheek because smiling feels too obvious. I picture him sitting in that chair, tissues in his nose, looking so embarrassed but still careful not to lean on me when I helped steady him. He barely knows me. Neither do I, I think, and the thought feels strangely cute. “He was probably just being polite.”
Scarlett lets out a quiet laugh. “Tiny is a lot of things, but casually polite about pretty girls is not usually one of them.”
