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“That’s fine,” Trevor replied. “Nick doesn’t mind taking the fish home with him, do you, bud?”
“Not in the slightest,” Nick said. “I’ll fry them all up tonight, but you’re really missing out if you don’t want any, Harper. Fresh fish is really only fresh when you pull it out of the lake. By the time you get it to the restaurant or the grocery store and do all that stuff to it, you’re not dealing with fresh fish anymore. It’s fish, but fresh? Nope.”
“I’ll take your word for that one,” I told him. “As amazing as your fried fish sounds, I think I would rather grab some take out or something that I didn’t have to spend the day watching on the end of that line.”
“But yet you like fishing?” Nick asked.
“There’s tons of fishermen and women who do catch and release,” Trevor cut in before I had the chance to respond, and I smiled. It felt good to have Trevor coming to my rescue, even if I wasn’t actually being attacked.
It was a level of protectiveness that made me feel like I was not only wanted, but that he was guarding me. He didn’t want anyone to get close to me, and I was okay with that. I liked the fact that he wanted me to be his and his alone, and I felt the same.
“I do like fishing, and if you were paying attention, you would know that this was the first time I have gone in as long as I can remember. Maybe with time I might get a little braver and try some for dinner. For now, however, I don’t think I can stomach something I caught that same day,” I told him.
“Seems pretty straightforward to me,” Trevor said, having my back with this.
“I’ll hold you to that now,” Nick told me. “Every time you come along on this little trip we do, I’m going to ask you if you’re going to have yours for dinner.”
“Be prepared to ask a very long time for that then,” I smirked. “I’m stubborn, I’ll have you know, and I can outlast a lot.”
“She’s right about that one,” Trevor said, and Nick gave us both a look that made me chuckle. He clearly wanted to know what brought that up between us, but neither of us were going to explain. It was just something he was going to have to wonder and go with.
The afternoon flew by, and I was sure to take some pictures of the fish to show to my mom and Raya when I saw them again. I knew they were going to laugh when they found out I went fishing.
I wasn’t very outdoorsy at all, so the fact that I was willing to come out here and go fishing with Trevor on a whim would show them just how much I cared about Trevor, too.
I could only imagine the smile my mom would have on her face when she heard the news. It was what she wanted, and though I wasn’t going to let myself think of what sadness waited in the future, I was glad to be finding someone to love and grow old with while my mother was still here to see it.
She wanted nothing more than for me to be happy and settled in life, and I knew it was one of the things that she worried about being sick. She didn’t want to pass on to the next life without me being secure in this one. It was something she told me more than once.
And with Trevor in my life now and things moving the way they were with us, I knew my mom would be thrilled with this little fishing trip. It would show her that I was serious about this, that I wanted this.
She would approve, I knew she would.
TWENTY-ONE
Trevor
“Oh,and there’s someone who wants to meet you,” Sarah told me.
I was standing outside my office at her desk, making small talk with her before we moved on with our days. She was the secretary for the whole office, but she was amazing with how dedicated she was to each of us. She always made sure to give me a briefing every morning when I showed up for my shift, and she always wished me a good night when I left in the afternoon.
She was an older woman, and I often wondered how she was so set in her routine.
She should have retired a long while ago, and with each passing day, I now wondered how she managed to keep up with the long work hours she pulled as well as taking care of her ailing husband when she got home from work.
Most days she was at the office when I showed up, and she was still there when I left. And it repeated day in and day out. I couldn’t remember a time when she had ever called in sick, and that was amazing for someone of her age and working in a medical field. She didn’t even leave the office for cold and flu season.
We might not be part of that unit, but when you worked in a hospital, there were germs everywhere. Still, day in and day out, she came to work, always with my report for me the first thing I walked through the door.
Usually, those reports were more about the patients who had called with questions or those who had been called to give updates. But there were also bigger bits of news such as when I was going to have an important patient coming in, or when I was getting a new patient.
Today, however, the news was that there was some CEO who wanted to talk to me.
“He came up here out of Texas, from what I understand. Wants to take you to lunch and talk you into going down there and working for him in his big wig hospital,” she said.
“Oh, Sarah, you really think he’s going to want me that badly? It would take quite a bit to get me out of here, you know,” I said.
“I don’t know, I just know that he’s got the fancy clothes to go with the fancy name, and I’m sure he’s wanting to build up a fancy hospital with fancy doctors,” she rambled.
