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I was okay with that.
TWENTY-FIVE
Trevor
I wokeup in bed the next morning surprised to find that I was alone.
There was still the indent on the pillow next to me where Harper had been sleeping, but she wasn’t in the room. I looked around. Her dress was still on the floor where she’d left it changing into my t-shirt, and from what I could tell, her bag was still in the bathroom, too.
She may have gone to do the same thing that I had done in her house, and perhaps she was getting ready to make breakfast. It would be a nice gesture, but I didn’t want her feeling like she had to do that for me.
I treated her the way I did because of how I felt about her, and I wanted her to feel free to do the same to me. I didn’t want her to ever feel like she had to do more than she was doing, or that she wasn’t doing enough to make me happy, or anything like that.
My entire life was quickly becoming revolved around her.
And I was okay with it, too.
She hadn’t done a thing to make this happen, it was all on me. But, the facts were the facts, and that meant that I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I walked out to the kitchen to find her sitting at the table. There was a cup of coffee in front of her, and that note I had gotten from Abraham. She was looking at it, then she looked at me.
“Good morning,” she said with a bright smile. “I made coffee. I was going to make breakfast, but I honestly often skip it myself, so I just didn’t.”
“Thank you, and don’t worry about that,” I told her. “I see you found my promotion.”
“Is that what this is?” she asked. “Where is it from?”
“Texas,” I said as I grabbed a mug out of the cupboard. “I wasn’t going to tell you about it until I knew more about it myself, and right now, I don’t know much at all.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “There’s an awful lot laid out right here.”
“I haven’t read it yet,” I said.
“Oh. Why not?”
“Because I’m not sure if I want it,” I told her. “I have been working hard my entire career to move up in the world, and this is my chance to do it. But, I also hadn’t anticipated my life being what it is right now when I set off on this in the first place.”
“You really should look at this,” she said. “It really could make up your mind for you.”
“Here, let me see it,” I said. I didn’t like the way this conversation was going, and I wanted to get the note out of her hand. Not that it would make any difference now that she knew what was on it, but the fact that she kept looking at it with that sadness in her face was enough to make me want to throw it in the trash without even giving it a second thought.
But, I also knew I had to be smart. This would be life changing, and I had to weigh all my options. I hadn’t even introduced the idea of how we would make this work to her yet, but with the way she was looking at the piece of paper in my hand, I got the strongest feeling now wasn’t the time to bring that up.
I didn’t want to scare her away with making this complicated. Things were going so well between us, I wanted to keep it going that way for as long as possible. Life was stressful, and there would always be times that were more taxing than others, but I felt it was of the utmost importance that we have a solid foundation before putting something like that on ourselves.
But, it was all entirely out of my control.
She saw the note, I was offered the job, and this all happened to come about around the same time she and I were making real strides in our relationship. I felt I was being asked to choose between the two of them, and I wasn’t even sure what the benefits to taking the job were yet.
I didn’t want to know what they were before thinking about this more because I knew how good of an offer it would be, and I was right. The money that was being offered as a starting salary was more than I would make at my current hospital in five years.
I would be instantly a celebrity surgeon, and I knew I would be thrust into fame. I might not actually wind up on tv with my own show, but I had dreams of writing books and making appearances – and this was the first step to making that happen.
It really was the package of everything I had ever wanted. And if I had gotten this offer three months sooner, there would have been no question about me taking it. I would have taken it at the lunch with Mr. Mardquart. But, life had a funny way of doing things sometimes, and I now had to figure out what I was going to do.
“That’s incredible,” Harper said. “I’m really happy for you, really.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t hard for me to see that it was forced. She was obviously just saying she was happy for me because that was the right thing to do when someone was given a chance to better themselves in life. Being my girlfriend, she was even more expected to be happy for me and the big news this was in my life.
