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A self-destructive kernel lurked in his mind, urging him to rip open that baggage and spill it into the dark air between them. A masochistic off-loading, to see how she’d handle it. Instead, he kept his reply as sterile as a surgical field.
“Sounds about right.”
A bullshit reply. But the answering depth of understanding in her eyes felt weighty, palpable. Not the vacant, template sympathy he’d gotten from so many others back in L.A. Not the impatience and “tough love” he’d always gotten from Nicola. Everyone there wanted to fix him. Not because they cared. Because his despair was inconvenient and uncomfortable forthem. No, he didn’t want to do yoga, or pray, or try fucking CrossFit or essential oils or burn a goddamned Himalayan salt lamp.
Rowan didn’t cluck her tongue and offer nonspecific apologies or spiritual solutions or trite greeting-card pleasantries. This woman seemed to know what it meant to be damaged. She was simply allowing him to be… not okay.
Until now, Harry hadn’t realized what a gift that was.
He felt seen for the first time in six months. Like more than only a vessel for his virulent self-loathing.
He felthuman.
Harry took the bottle and held it up in a solitary toast. His hand shook.
As he drank, Rowan looked down at her own hands and rubbed them together. “There have been times in my life where the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning was stubborn curiosity about what might happen that day.”
Harry drank and gave a little grunt of acknowledgment. Simple curiosity. Such a pragmatic reason to survive. Curiosity was at the heart of science, and one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with medicine.
He certainly felt curious about the woman sitting across from him now.
Some of the party lights winked out behind her. Night coalesced around them, silent and substantial.
“I don’t know why I told you that,” she said.
“I have one of those faces, I guess. Maybe I should have gone into psychiatry instead of obstetrics.”
“Delivering babies is pretty important.”
He took a deep breath in through his nose, blew it out through tight lips. “So is mental health.”
“I might have been a doctor,” she said. “But I like and understand plants a lot more than people.”
Hell. He might’ve been a doctor, too.
He took another pull on the wine, and she watched. Her gaze felt heavy on his mouth, and he imagined he could taste her on the smooth glass rim of the bottle. It sent an unexpected bolt of heat straight to his groin.
“Well. My family is glad to have me back.” Harry swallowed hard and swiped the pad of his thumb across his lips. “Med school took me to Baltimore, then California for four years of residency. Arden—ah, that’s my little sister—she was still in middle school when I left. Now she’s in college. I don’t even know what she’s majoring in.”
For a while, they bobbed in silence. Harry passed the wine back to Rowan, and she tucked the neck of the bottle in her fist. She took a long drink, then licked her bottom lip with a generous swirl of her tongue. His jeans felt uncomfortably snug in the front.
At least that part of him wasn’t broken. Maybe he simplyneeded generic human contact. Another person’s heat. A willing mouth and body to use as a tool to slow the spread of darkness inside him.
“It’s not polite to stare,” she said, snatching him out of his trance.
Harry cleared his throat, shook his head, averted his eyes. “You’re a botanist, right?”
“I will be once I’m employed, I suppose.”
“Tell me about what you do.”
That loud, sudden laugh again. “Okay, now you’re just being polite.”
He couldn’t help smiling. “I never ask questions I don’t want to know the answer to.”
“Are you just trying to keep me here?”
“What if I am?”
