Leave a Mark (28 page)

“Close enough?” she teased.

The left side of his mouth lifted. “Well, now that you’re here, I don’t want you to get away,” he said, running his hand over her hip.

In response, she traced a finger through the
T
-shaped patch of hair on his chest. Wren didn’t want to be anywhere else, but she’d used up all her courage with
life-changing
, so she hoped he could read her mind.

Still, the silence stretched between them, and she felt he was waiting for her to say something. “This feels nice,” she whispered, and, at her words, Lee’s body relaxed a little.

Was he that afraid that she’d sleep with him and then head for the door? Wren bit the inside of her lip. It wasn’t as if she’d never done
that
before. She’d done it more times than she cared to admit.

Could he sense that about her?

“What are you thinking?” he asked, bringing his hand to her face and brushing back her hair again.

Wren held her breath for two seconds and grasped for the opportunity to change the subject. “I’m sure my hair is a crazy mess right now.”

At that, Lee narrowed his smiling eyes and scrubbed her hair wild. “I fucking love your hair.”

“Then you like messy.”

Lee shook his head. “Not messy. Natural."

And Wren laughed again. “My hair is blue and ink black. Not very natural.”

“No…” He picked up one of her wavy locks and rubbed it between her fingers. “…it’s better than natural. It is natural beauty embellished with art. Just like the rest of you.”

Wren felt herself blush, so she reached up and tugged at the wayward curl that flopped over his left eye. “This is pretty natural,” she said, twirling it around her finger.

Lee blinked up at it and made a face. “Ah, yes, Harold.”

“H-Harold?” Wren broke into laughter. “You named your cowlick?”

Lee’s eyebrows drew together just a little. “No. That was Marcelle. She said he demanded so much attention that he deserved his own name." The skin over his perfect cheekbones turned pink as he spoke. “She said she always knew when I was coming because Harold entered the room a full minute before I did.”

Wren’s mouth fell open.

Lee held a smile, but it didn’t meet his eyes. In fact, his eyes told her something else entirely.

That bitch.

“That—” She swallowed the word just in time “—that’s really mean.” And she reached up and kissed him right on the sexiest of his sexy curls.

Lee smiled at her for real then, his eyes warm again. He gathered her in his arms and squeezed her to his chest.

It felt so good.

With his lips pressed to her ear, he whispered, “I am so glad you are here with me.”

Held tight in his arms, it was easier to find her courage. “Me, too.”

Lee settled back, but he kept his arms around her. “Will you stay?”

She hesitated only a second. “How long?”

“Until morning?”

“Until morning?” she echoed, half-stunned. “You want me to stay ‘til morning?”

Lee chuckled and dragged his hand through her hair again. “I want you to stay longer, but I have to go to work in the morning." He moved his palm to her cheek and ran his thumb over her lips. “We can order pizza and take Victor for a walk. And then we can maybe watch a movie or something. Sound okay?”

It should have sounded scary, but it didn’t. Wren nodded and spoke against his thumb. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

“Good.” Lee yawned then, and Wren found herself yawning, too. He picked up his head and checked the clock. “I could use a nap. Would you take a nap with me?”

Her body was already slack, and Lee’s embrace was warm and welcoming. She could probably fall asleep in a matter of seconds. “Sure.”

Lee yawned again. “Awesome… You should know I’m a big fan of naps.”

Wren closed her eyes. “Nothing wrong with that,” she muttered. She tipped her head forward against his chest and breathed in his sagebrush smell.

Does anything smell better than that?
she wondered as sleep began to close in.

“Wren?” Lee whispered.

“Yeah?” she whispered back, feeling no need to move or open her eyes.

“Promise me you’ll still be here when I wake up.”

Her heart clenched, and her eyes opened, finding his. Wren brought her hand to his cheek and kissed him three times.

“I promise I will still be here when you wake up.”

And she was.

LEE HAWTHORNE WAS
in love.

He delivered a baby girl an hour after coming on-shift Tuesday morning — an hour after leaving Wren in his bed — when the realization struck him. He’d watched the baby’s young parents beam through their tears and become a family.

And he knew.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been in love. But nothing in his life compared to this. Both times before — with Marcelle and with Kirsten Parks, his girlfriend from sophomore through senior year at LSU — it had felt like a gradual ascent. Attraction had been base camp, where he started. And each encounter with them had taken him a little higher. Over time, he’d found more to see, more to discover.

This was no gentle ascent. It was a freefall.

If he were honest with himself, he’d been hooked that first night in the hospital. She’d been his patient, and he cared about all of his patients, but something set her apart. He’d never driven any of his patients home before. He’d never lifted them into his Jeep or walked them up to their apartments. Or cleaned their cats’ litterboxes.

And even then he hadn’t wanted to leave her.

Reading her thank-you note… seeing her at the grocery store… finding her among the trees at the courthouse… Flipping through these memories, Lee realized each held a signature of happiness, a brightness that outshone a host of other moments that should have seemed happier by comparison. Like his birthday. The night the Saints won the Superbowl. The day he got the Wurlitzer.

A few sketches of her cat had made him happier than buying a jukebox.

And if he had to pinpoint the moment when he’d fallen, it was on his front porch with a handful of fried peach pies. Looking back on it now, it was so clear to him that this was had been the point of no return.

Because she had proven that she could see into his heart. And not only could she see it, but she’d wanted to touch it. To fill it.

Wren Blanchard might be hard to catch, but she was easy to love.

Of course, Lee knew better. The last thing he could do right now was tell her. He
wanted
to tell her, but she would freak. That would have to wait.

They’d come so far in just twenty-four hours. After spending the whole day together —the afternoon in his bed — Lee had indeed woken to find Wren still in his arms, a sight that made him absurdly happy.

Wren had wanted a shower, and he was only too pleased to oblige, washing her hair and discovering three sparrows on her perfect backside. He dressed her in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and he ordered pizza as promised, which they ate standing in his rec room while battling each other over the ping-pong table. As they played, the Wurlitzer cranked out Queen, Rush, Sam and Dave, The Police, and Marvin Gaye, and Lee caught Wren shaking her hips more than once. He’d taken her back to his bed around ten, and they’d made love two more times before he fell into exhaustion.

Hands down, it was the best night of his life.

This thought had him smiling when his phone rang just after nine that morning. Digging it out of his pocket, Lee hoped it was Wren — he hoped, in fact, that she’d just woken up and was calling from his bed. But
Dad
flashed across the screen.

Shaking off his disappointment, Lee answered. “Hey, Dad.”

“Leland? Did you forget how to use your phone?” his father teased.

Lee rolled his eyes. “Um, clearly not, Dad. And I guess you didn’t either.”

His father chuckled. “What do I have to do to get you to come by and see your old dad? It’s been almost two weeks! Haven’t you had a day off?”

Lee was in the middle of rounds, but he veered away from the nurses’ station in search of more privacy. He ducked into an empty corridor that led to surgical. “Yeah, Dad. Sorry. I’ve been busy.”

“Are they squeezing out every last drop they can get from you? You know it’s not too late to accept Philip Maraist’s offer…” His voice trailed off with a hopeful lilt.

Lee forced a laugh. “Dad, I… um… I already accepted UMC’s.” He cleared his throat and tried to sound more assertive. “I start June 1.”

Silence.

“Have… have you signed anything yet?”

Lee stifled a sigh. “Yeah, Dad. A three-year contract. Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” He didn’t hold his breath, but it would have been nice if his father could have been happy for him.

“Son, you’re making a mistake.”

So much for being happy for me.

“I disagr—”

“And more than one, by the looks of it.”

Lee frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well…” It sounded like his words were squeezing through a straw, as if he were trying so hard to contain his frustration that he was suffocating himself. “…Barbara and I were hoping to talk to you about Marcelle.”

Lee’s brows shot up. “What?" He heard the edge in his voice, and he hoped his father did too.

“You see, she and Barbara have been talking…”

“Marcelle and Barbara have been
talking
?”

What the hell?
Lee had not seen Marcelle since the day after he’d brought Victor home. She’d come by to clear out the last of her stuff while he was at the hospital, and she’d left his key. She’d texted him once to see if he wanted his copy of
The Martian
back, and he’d told her to keep it. That was it. Nothing more.

“Yes, and it seems like she’d welcome the chance to reconcile and see if the two of you could work things out. You did end things pretty abruptly, Leland.” Dr. Thomas Hawthorne said these words with gentle admonishment, as though Lee had simply been careless.

Lee thought he was about to choke. He reached up and loosened his tie. “Dad, that sounds… a little weird. Don’t you think? I mean, we broke up. What is my stepmom doing talking to my ex-girlfriend?”

“Leland, they both love you. We all do. We just want what’s best for you,” his father said. “First, you break up with Marcelle, and now you take this charity job? Son, it’s like you’re throwing everything away.”

Lee had heard enough. “Dad, I have patients to see. Patients who need me—”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” he interjected. “I’m not saying there’s no value in what you’re doing—”

“No, you’re saying
you
don’t value what I’m doing,” Lee shot back.

“You’re angry,” his father said, sounding disappointed.

And Lee felt like he’d lost ground. A familiar weight pulled him down from inside his chest. Anger became heavier, feeling more like defeat.

“I’m not angry,” he lied. “I have to go.”

“You haven’t changed since you were eleven,” Tom said, effectively calling Lee a child. “You let yourself get angry, and you run away.”

The way he said it, Lee couldn’t tell which his father disliked more: the anger or the escape. He only knew that when it came to his dad, neither was acceptable.

“Dad, I have a patient who came in yesterday with toxic shock syndrome,” he said in the most civil tone he could muster. “I need to check on her, so if you wouldn’t mind—”

“At least come for dinner on your next day off,” his father said, intent on clearing the air. “When is that?”

Lee let go a sigh. “Next Tuesday.” But as soon as the word left his mouth, he cursed himself. He’d want to spend the day with Wren — at least as much of it as he could. He could invite her to join, but Wren wasn’t ready to meet Tom and Barbara Hawthorne, and Tom and Barbara Hawthorne weren’t ready to meet Wren.

He’d figure something out. Call later in the week and see if he could go to dinner with them after one of his day shifts ended — on a night when Wren would be working. Already he knew her schedule, and he wanted, as much as possible, to fix his to match. It wouldn’t be easy since she worked noon to ten p.m. and his twelve-hour shifts were six to six. But he wanted as much time with her as he could get.

“Sure, Dad. That sounds fine.” He pretended agreement, smoothing over the rough spots and giving his father what he wanted.

“Good, good,” he said, clearly satisfied. “We’ll see you then and talk some more.”

Lee gritted his teeth. “See you, Dad."

He hung up before his father could say anything else, squeezing his phone in his fist until his knuckles went white. An unwelcome memory flashed in his mind…

Lee, at fourteen, quietly seething as he caddied for his father at a golf tournament. As a member of his school’s Outing Club, Lee was supposed to be climbing at Enchanted Rock in Texas that weekend, but Tom had refused to let him go. He’d make better connections for the future, his father told him, on the golf course than “on the side of some mountain.”

When Tom first told him no, Lee tried to keep calm. The man responded to calm far better than if Lee got emotional. Lee tried to reason with him. He argued that his friends were the sons of those well-connected golfers, and their influence would serve him just as well. This was met with amused condescension, so Lee tried bargaining. E-rock this year; golf tournament next year. His father wouldn’t budge.

When Lee finally exploded in the middle of their kitchen, vowing that his mother would have been on his side if she were still alive, Thomas Hawthorne turned to ice. His eyes. The line of his mouth. Everything went cold.

“I can see you’re not mature enough to continue this conversation,” he said, looking down at fourteen-year-old Lee with undisguised disapproval. “And that gives me even more faith in my decision.”

Control and self-control. Those were the ideals Thomas Hawthorne worshipped. He assumed the former and expected the latter.

Lee was thirty-one years old now, not fourteen. He could do whatever the hell he wanted. Yet it galled him that his father could make him feel like a boy even now. And, even now, his anger mattered so little.