Page 73 of When You Became Mine

“Lawson, I have to do this program. It’s been my dream since I started medical school. But…” She looked away, the paper trembling in her hand.

“Of course, you have to do this.”

She nodded and grumbled, “The timing really sucks.”

I couldn’t agree more. I looked at the table I had set up for our romantic evening. “Yeah. How long will you be there?”

Her head fell back and her shoulders sagged. “A year.”

Fuck.

A year was a long time. Especially when you’d just started a relationship.

“Long distance is hard,” she whispered, pressing her lips into a thin line.

Fuck.

She was right. It was hard. I’d done it once right after I’d moved to Vegas. It had lasted a month before the distance had been too much.

I sucked in a deep breath and pushed the disappointment to the back of my mind. Ignoring the ache in my chest, I nodded. “Yeah, the time differences alone make it difficult. And you’re going to be practically living at the hospital.”

She bobbed her head. “I am going to be putting in long hours. Who knows when I’ll have time to do anything other than work and sleep.”

“You don’t need any distractions.”

She frowned. “Right, distractions would be bad.”

Somehow, in the course of ten minutes, I’d gone from being nervous to tell her that I loved her to being crushed because we were breaking up. But here we were, standing by the kitchen table that was set with flowers and wine and I was using all of my restraint to not flip it over in frustration.

Piper dropped the paper on the table and took a step toward me. “I mean, I don’t expect you to sit around and wait on me,” she whispered again, looking up at me through her lashes.

I laughed at the irony of her words. “Piper, I’ve been sitting around waiting on you for fifteen years. What’s one more?”

She clutched my hands in hers. “But that’s not fair to you. It would be selfish of me to ask you to wait.”

I dropped my lips to her ear. “Be selfish.”

She shivered as I nipped her lobe, and I stepped back and watched as she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, warring with herself. She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again, pinning me with her crystal blue stare. “I’ve been working for years to get into this residen

cy program. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. At least, it was. But now, it’s you I want. Is it possible for me to have both?”

She was asking me to wait for her. She was nervous to hear what I was going to say. But she didn’t need to be. I would have waited for ten more years. I would have promised her anything she needed me to in that moment.

I crashed my lips to hers and pulled her hard against me. Her arms wrapped around me immediately, her tongue gliding against mine, the pace punishing. Pouring every bit of feeling I had for her into the kiss, I continued to work her mouth until I was forced to come up for air or pass out.

I dropped my forehead to hers. “You can have anything you want.”

Her eyes lit up. “You work from home. You can work anywhere. Come with me!”

Dammit. There was the one thing she wanted that I couldn’t give her. I shook my head. “I can’t. I’ve got to stay here for a while longer.”

I felt like shit for not being able to tell her everything that was going on with my own job. But that would mean telling her who I worked for. And that was a conversation I wasn’t ready for.

Her face dropped. “Oh. Okay.”

She was disappointed, and even though I didn’t like seeing it, a small part of me was relieved that she was sad I couldn’t go with her. “That doesn’t mean I can’t come see you while you’re there. I have plenty of frequent flyer miles.”

She beamed. “I’m sure I’ll get a few breaks, and I can come back here too. A year isn’t really that long, right?”

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