From Hawaii to Forever Page 15

  He had no right to be angry. No right to confront her, to demand an explanation of what he’d overheard between her and Selena. Getting attached to one another had never been part of the plan. They’d agreed to that from the start.

  But he wanted to confront her, to ask her exactly what that conversation with Selena had meant, and what she planned to do. Even though he wasn’t sure if he could maintain control over his emotions.

  Oahu General was a small hospital, and despite his best efforts to avoid Kat he filed a patient’s chart behind the reception desk and turned to find her right in front of him.

  “Supply closet. Five minutes,” she whispered into his ear, and before he could respond she’d scooted away.

  For a minute he considered not meeting her there. But he knew he had to. He couldn’t stand not knowing if she was leaving for a moment longer.

  His face stoic, he headed down to the supply closet.

  * * *

  Kat stood waiting for him in the darkness. She knew she should tell Jack about the job offer—she really should. But not yet. She wasn’t ready. She wanted to enjoy her time with him for just a little longer before anything else got in the way.

  But when he arrived, instead of slipping quietly inside the closet as he usually did, he switched the lights on. Her stomach dropped when she saw his face. His expression was cold, even angry, she thought. And his next words confirmed her worst fear: he already knew.

  “So when were you planning to tell me that you’re going back to Chicago?” he said.

  His voice was dull and wooden. And his eyes weren’t angry, she realized. They were pained.

  “How did you find out?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  She flinched at the coldness in his voice. “For your information, I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll go back early or not. I did receive the offer of a job at my old hospital, with a promotion. But I made a one-year commitment to stay here, and it’s important to me to honor that.”

  “And what happens to your job offer while you’re honoring your commitment here? Are they going to wait around for you for another eight months in Chicago? I doubt it. You’re going to take their offer, and you’re going to take it now—because this is the kind of opportunity that a doctor like you can’t stand to pass up.”

  “A doctor like me? What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. You talk a good game about healing people, but it’s really all about the prestige and the glory.”

  She was absolutely disgusted. “I’m not your ex, Jack, and I’m not your family. Don’t start confusing me with people from your past. Yes, I’m successful and ambitious, but you have no right to tell me what my priorities are.”

  “Is that so? You’re not exactly difficult to figure out. You come to this island a big-city doc, thinking that you know better than everyone else, and then the minute something better comes along you leave. It’s all about the next step—it’s never about caring about where you actually are!”

  She glared at him. “Maybe if you’d quit living in the past you wouldn’t have such a hard time planning for your future!”

  “I’m living in the past?” he said. “You’ve been living in the past since the moment you arrived. You just wanted a break from your normal life—you never wanted to think about how the people who live here are actual people. You say you want to learn to slow down and live in the moment, but the truth is you just wanted a place to recover from the one time someone didn’t recognize your brilliance. And now that the world is ready to shower you with applause again you’re going to kick the dust of Hawaii off your heels and head back to the city as soon as possible. You talk about wanting to change your life, but you haven’t changed at all. You’re just going right back to the life you left behind.”

  Kat was ready to throttle him. He was partly right—just a little bit—and that little bit was enough to set her blood boiling. But she certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him know that some of his words had hit home.

  “At least I was able to leave it behind—even if it was only for a little while!” she said. “You haven’t left the past behind at all. You’re living in it every day.”

  “I am not!”

  “Are you kidding me? You let your past control every single thing you do. Because you won’t face any of it. You say you don’t date doctors, but that’s complete nonsense. You like doctors. You work with them every single day. You don’t have a problem with doctors. You have a problem with the one you’re related to. Matt. Your brother.”

  “What happened between me and my brother is none of your business.”

  “Then I’ll tell you something that is my business. Your whole no-strings-attached thing with relationships is ridiculous. It’s not the real you—it’s just you trying to avoid pain.”

  He inhaled sharply, as though she had cut him to the quick. And maybe she had gone too far. But she felt the truth of what she’d said deep within her. Jack’s whole defense system—his guardedness, his pretense of being unemotional and uninterested in relationships—none of it was the real him, the Jack she’d gotten to know after four and a half months on the island. Even if he couldn’t see it, she could—and she had to tell him, even if it hurt.

  He had grown quiet, his face dark. Then he said, “If no-strings-attached is ridiculous, then where does that leave us?”

  She didn’t know what to say. She wished more than anything that she could have had this conversation with Jack when she was more prepared for it. After she had made her decision and had planned everything she wanted to tell him.

  The silence grew. Finally, she said, “Look, Jack, this is just terrible timing. We’ve been having... I’ve been having a wonderful time. I thought we’d have more of it...”

  His lips were a thin line. “I don’t think it’s terrible timing,” he said. “In fact, I think it’s great timing. Not a moment too soon.”

  “Please believe me when I say that I haven’t made a decision yet. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Chicago Grace is one of the best research hospitals in the country, and I can’t turn that down lightly. But when I think about my time here... I don’t know what to do.”

  “Stay, go—it doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “We agreed no emotions, remember? This was never supposed to be anything more than physical. So it makes no difference to me what you decide.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No. In fact, I think you should go.”

  She felt something in her chest shift and crack. She tried to look into his eyes, those blue eyes that had so captivated her the day they met, but his face was turned away from her and his eyes appeared to be fixated on a random spot on the supply closet wall.

  He cleared his throat and said, “You can’t turn it down. It wouldn’t make any sense. You belong at a big research hospital where you can shine—not in a remote little hospital in the middle of the ocean.”

  “I just...” Her voice quavered and she blinked back tears.

  “Congratulations on your new job,” he said.

  * * *

  Hours later Jack was brooding on the beach—much as he had been the day he’d met Kat. He couldn’t stop thinking about their argument.

  “You let your past control every single thing you do,” she’d said. “Because you won’t face any of it.”

  What did she know about it, anyway? What business of hers was it whether he let his past control him or not? They’d agreed to keep things on a purely physical level, so why should she care about his past or how it affected him? She was the one who’d proposed their fling in the first place. They’d both always known that she was only here for a short time, and she knew that he didn’t like getting his emotions involved in relationships.

  “Your whole no-strings-attached thing with relationships is ridiculous. I
t’s not the real you—it’s just you trying to avoid pain.”

  It was true. In the heat of their argument he hadn’t been able to bring himself to be honest with Kat, but he could be honest with himself now. She was right. He kept himself distant and guarded from women because of the pain he’d felt over Sophie. More specifically, over Sophie and Matt.

  If it had been an ordinary breakup he would have gotten over it long ago, but the fact that Sophie had betrayed him with Matt meant that he’d lost the one person in the world he’d thought would always be there for him.

  Strange, he thought, how he’d tried so hard to avoid repeating the pain of heartbreak and yet here it was, as fresh as ever. Even though he’d tried to convince himself that his relationship with Kat was purely physical and emotionless, it wasn’t true. It really had been just his attempt to keep himself from getting hurt.

  Despite his best efforts to stay distant they’d gotten close, and before he knew it he had allowed himself to hope. When they’d tried to keep their relationship purely physical their lovemaking hadn’t quenched his thirst. It had only brought about a desire for more. He thought perhaps she might feel the same way, although he couldn’t be sure. And now he could never ask her. As much as he was hurting right now, the last thing he wanted to do was make it harder for Kat to leave him.

  You always knew she was here for just the one year, he told himself. What were you expecting? Don’t blame her just because you got your hopes up for something you knew perfectly well was never going to be long-term in the first place.

  But even though he knew it was the right thing to do, the mature thing to do, it was hard to accept the end of their relationship so soon after it had begun. He couldn’t say what their time together had meant to Kat. But for him it had felt like the beginning of something. Something he wanted to explore to its fullest extent to see where it would lead.

  He knew that it wasn’t realistic or fair of him to hope that Kat would change her career plans for him. After all, they’d only known each other for a few months. And when he stepped back from the hurt of it all and really thought about it he knew that he would never dream of asking her. As much as he, personally, didn’t believe in putting a career over personal happiness, that was his choice. Kat’s career was the thing in her life that made her happy.

  He’d never get in the way of her happiness—not for one second.

  Even if that meant that they couldn’t be together.

  The thought of it tore at his heart.

  For almost Jack’s entire life there’d only been one person he’d felt cared enough about him to help him figure out situations like this. More than anything he wanted to talk to that person now. He wanted his advice, he wanted his reassurance that things would be okay, or that even if things weren’t okay they’d stick together and figure it out.

  He just wasn’t sure he had the guts to make the call.

  “You don’t have a problem with doctors,” Kat had said. “You have a problem with the one you’re related to. Matt. Your brother.”

  His anger flared again. Was this what she’d meant when she’d said he let the past control him? As though he was too much of a coward to face his feelings?

  But now his anger was more with himself than with Kat. Because right now he needed help from someone he could trust. Even if that person had made a mistake. His inability to forgive was holding him back from getting what he really needed.

  Jack picked up his phone. He dialed a number that he’d deleted from his contacts but that had burned itself into his memory long ago.

  He wasn’t sure if he was ready for this conversation. But, ready or not, it was time for him and his brother to talk.

  The phone rang once, and then Jack heard a familiar voice answer.

  “Hi, Matt,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  EVER SINCE SELENA had advised her to take a few days off, Kat had been moving nonstop. She’d been packing, calling Selena, calling her mother, and logging in to Oahu General’s system to update her files. She’d been researching flights to Chicago and looking up the number of the real estate agent who’d found her apartment to see about getting out of her lease early.

  She had a million things to do, and she knew, all of a sudden, why it felt as though she had to complete every single one of those tasks right now: it was because preparing to leave helped her to keep her mind off Jack.

  As long as she kept herself busy she wouldn’t have to think about the pain in his eyes. And she wouldn’t have to dwell on that sensation of something cracking, deep within her chest. It was a feeling that had started as soon as she’d looked into Jack’s eyes and told him about the job offer. She was trying, and failing, to ignore it.

  She believed in love. She knew that with great certainty now. When she’d told Selena months ago that she didn’t think she could believe in love or in relationships she’d been lying to herself. She’d been trying to figure out who she was and what she believed at the same time she’d been trying to mask the pain that she’d felt about Christopher. The result had been a ridiculous cynical statement that she knew now wasn’t true.

  There was no denying her feelings for Jack. It was true that she hadn’t known him for long. She’d only been in Hawaii for a little over four months, and even less time had passed since she’d given herself permission to acknowledge her true feelings for Jack. It was too soon to know where things would go if they stayed together. And yet she felt deeply enough to know the relationship deserved a chance.

  She might not know how to describe her feelings for Jack, but she knew that the only thing that held her back from using the word love was time. If she left now she’d spend her life wondering what might have happened if she’d stayed. Wondering if he might feel the same way.

  But she had to leave, didn’t she? Jack had practically insisted she go. Chicago Grace Memorial was one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country. How could she possibly turn it down?

  The answer was that she couldn’t. Of course she had to go. People didn’t simply turn down positions like this. Did they?

  But if she wanted the job so badly why was her heart sinking? What was wrong with her? Normal people didn’t react with disappointment when they were offered everything they’d ever wanted.

  Taking the job would make her one of the leading infectious disease researchers in the country. She’d be able to do good, important work, and she’d be recognized as a valuable contributor to the field of medicine.

  When she thought about that, she recognized herself. It felt like who she was. But she wasn’t so sure she was as excited at the prospect of what daily life in Chicago had to offer. She knew that life well. Long, cold winters. Late nights spent at work. She knew she could handle that life, because she’d already done it for years. But handling day-to-day life and relishing it were two different things.

  In Chicago, she knew she would earn respect from her colleagues, but would she be able to count on their friendship? Before working at Oahu General she’d never dreamed there could be a hospital with such warm collegiality among its staff. She’d come to depend on her regular chats in Selena’s office, on the casual banter among the paramedics, nurses, and physicians. These past four months had been among the happiest of her professional life.

  When she thought about returning to her old life in Chicago, she had the strangest sense of dread. But surely no one in their right mind would pass up a prestigious job opportunity just because...just because they were happier where they were?

  Before moving to Hawaii she would have known the answer to that question. Happiness could wait. She was busy building her career. She would worry about enjoying her life after she’d retired from twenty or thirty years as a respected physician. Maybe then there would be room in her life for her to make decisions based on what she wanted for herself rather than the next logical step in her career.

 
But since she’d moved to Hawaii she’d been able to get a taste of what it would be like to have balance in her life right now. She still worked hard—that was certain. But when she came to work she wasn’t just passionate about her career: she had fun, too. She would genuinely miss the staff and the environment they’d created.

  Leaving the hospital would be hard.

  Leaving Hawaii would break her heart.

  She paused in her packing to savor the cool breeze coming through the window. There truly was nowhere else on earth that was like this place. Where else would she be able to walk to the beach from her apartment and see dolphins frolicking off the coast? And she’d gotten used to the riot of color among the flowers that lined Honolulu’s sidewalks. The thought of exchanging those tropical flowers for gray ice-covered walkways was disheartening.

  It wasn’t just that Hawaii was pretty. If it were only that her decision would be so much easier. There were plenty of pretty places in the world and she couldn’t live in all of them—it wasn’t physically possible. If her reluctance to leave was simply a matter of craving natural beauty, that was a problem easily solved. She could take a vacation somewhere beautiful any time she started to feel burnt out.

  No, the islands were beautiful, but it wasn’t their beauty that called to her. It was something deeper than that—more primal. Something she’d known in her bones the second she’d arrived. The moment she’d stepped off the plane she’d felt a sense of coming home. She couldn’t remember having had such a feeling of belonging somewhere since before her father’s death.

  Her father had had such heady hopes and dreams for her, and by great good fortune she had shared those same hopes and dreams for herself. It had meant so much to her to live up to his expectations—especially after he’d gone. And then, as she’d grown up, it had become important to her to live up to the expectations of her teachers, her professors at medical school, her supervisors as a student and her superiors at work.