I’ve been lost without you.
God, I knew the feeling.
The pressure inside of my chest made it feel like my heart was either attempting gymnastics or planning an emergency escape route from my body.
My heart wants Will.
Nothing had been the same since I’d broken up with him. I missed his laugh and his smile and the way his sense of humor always turned my day on its axis and pointed it directly at the sun. I just missed him, and my gut instinct told me that no amount of time would ever make that feeling go away.
But he’d hurt me. He’d hurt me really fucking bad.
“You hurt me so badly, Will,” I whispered, and a pained expression formed his lips into a tight line.
“I know,” he acknowledged with apology in his voice and remorse in his eyes. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Mel. God, you have no idea. The idea that I made you feel like I was hiding things from you or I was being careless with your feelings hasn’t stopped tearing me up inside. I don’t want to hide anything from you. I want to share everything with you. My life. I want my life to be our life.”
“I just don’t understand,” I said. “When we talked that day in the exam room…” I glanced to Will’s sister, slightly uncomfortable that she was listening to all of this, but she did her best to shrink into herself. “…You told me ‘never.’ You’d never done that at work.”
He sighed. “I used to be different. Young, stupid…easy,” he explained, and a self-deprecating smile crested his lips. “I know that doesn’t exactly make me sound like the world’s greatest catch, but I’m being honest. The sex with Emily in the on-call room wasn’t even a memory. Truth is, it wasn’t the first time I’d hooked up in the hospital, but it was the last. When I answered your question, I wasn’t even thinking about that shit. I’d kept my dick out of the practice, and since the moment I laid eyes on you, I kept it out of everywhere else. I’d never done with anyone what we did that day. I’ve never done with anyone what we always do… You and I, we make love, Mel, even when we’re fucking.”
It wasn’t the flowery apology I would have dreamed of with Scott Eastwood, but it rang a whole lot more true. Still, uncertainty clung to me like the bloodsucking leech it was.
“My past is my past, Mel,” he said in a quiet voice. “I can’t take it back. Before you, my dating status was a big jumbled mess of pointless flirting and occasional, meaningless hookups, and that’s pretty much it. I wasn’t even interested in a long-term relationship or marriage until you.”
Marriage? He wanted to marry me?
He reached out his hand and linked it with mine and gazed deep into my eyes. “I’m sorry you had to feel like I lied to you. I’m sorry you had to watch that awful episode of the show without any type of warning. I know it’s not the same, but I know what the rock in my stomach felt like every time they surprised me with something else, so I can only imagine what watching that must have been like for you. But mostly, I’m sorry I made you feel like I was cavalier and thoughtless with you, no better than the viewers’ version of Dr. Obscene.” His thumb rubbed at the skin on the back of my hand with steady strokes. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, Mel.”
Just one simple touch and my body felt like it had finally come home. I looked down at our interlocked fingers and knew in an instant. We belonged together. The urge to sob became nearly relentless.
God, I felt like I’d been starved for his touch for one hundred years.
He gently gripped my fingers. “I know I fucked up, and I know you might never forgive me, but I promise, when it comes to you, I only want the best for you, Mel. I miss you, but if you think you’re better off without me, that’s what I want. Anything to keep you from hurting again.”
“Will,” Georgia whispered, and surprised, we both looked in her direction. She pulled a stack of papers out of her purse and held them out for him. “I think you need to show her these.”
Once he’d taken the papers and his eyes scanned the first page, a sharp, humorless laugh left his lips. “Gigi, you’re fucking insane. I honestly have no idea how you managed to get your hands on these. They were just signed yesterday morning.”
She giggled and rolled her eyes. “Just show them to her, Will.”
“Well,” he started, but he paused when his gaze locked with mine. A million different emotions crossed his face. Uncertainty. Hope. Determination. But the one that stood out the most was love. “These are for you, Mel.” He held the papers out toward me, and my heart skipped three beats in anticipation.
“What is this?” I asked as I glanced down at the crisp, white sheets.
“It’s your dream.”
I searched his gaze for a brief, poignant moment, but nothing had changed. His blue eyes contained an ocean’s worth of love. I moved my gaze to the top page and scanned the document for an answer.
Oh my God.
A gasp left my lips at the heading alone.
Official Investors’ Contract for The Melody Marco Women’s Clinic
My dream.
Immediately, my eyes filled with more tears, and this time, they found their way out in a tiny stream. I’d been so focused on staying away from Will so that I didn’t give up all the other things I really wanted, and the clever bastard had found a way to bundle those things together and pull them out of his pocket.
Baffled, I looked at Will. And then I looked at the contract again. I even skimmed over the entire document and found that Kline, Thatch, and Wes had been the ones who’d helped make this come to fruition. “You got the funding for the clinic?” I asked like a moron, my voice just above a whisper.
“I want you to be happy, Mel. Even if that doesn’t mean I get to be with you, I still want the best for you.” He tapped the second tongue depressor, still trapped inside the tight clutch of my hand. I shifted the papers and forced my hand to open so I could read it.
Your tonsils are almost as big as your heart.
“It’s a lie, you know,” he said, and I startled, my eyebrows pulling together.
“Your heart is way bigger.”
I had to pull my lips in on each other to fight the sting of tears buzzing in my nose. “You did all of this for me?”
His response was immediate and without hesitation. “I’d do anything for you.”
“God, Will,” I whispered through the emotion clogging my throat. “This is… It’s just…”
“You deserve this,” he said and slid his fingers underneath my chin until my eyes locked with his. “This is your purpose, Mel. This is what you’re supposed to do. And that’s why this is now your clinic.”
Somehow, Will had not only found a way to find investors for the one thing I’d become most passionate about, but he’d also named the clinic after me. It was almost too much information to process at one time.
“W-what do you mean, my clinic?”
He grinned. “I think it’s safe to assume that The Melody Marco Women’s Clinic has to be run by Melody Marco herself.”
“God, Will.” My lungs stuttered with each inhale and exhale. “I don’t even know what to say…”
“Melody Marco, I’m in love with you,” he said and, like a drum, my heart made itself known inside my chest. “I don’t want anyone else. Just you. Beautiful, brilliant, perfect you. I know, without a doubt, that I’ll never love anyone the way that I love you.”
Each one of his words touched my heart, and like a thread, they slowly sewed the wounded pieces back together.
“You’re everything to me,” he continued. “You’re the one and only person I want to wake up to every morning and the one I want to hold while we fall asleep at night. When I see you, I see forever, and I don’t want a life without you in it.”
I didn’t want a life without Will either.
I wanted him. I wanted us. And I wanted forever, too.
“I love you,” I whispered through my tears. “So, so much.”
“Yay!” Georgia squealed, but Will didn’t seem to notice.
He closed the space between us and enfolded his arms around my body until he lifted me off of my feet and wrapped my legs around his waist. “I love you, Melody. I love you so fucking much.”
I burrowed my face into his neck and inhaled his scent—clean laundry, his soft cologne, Will. God, I’d missed him, missed this, missed us. The mere thought of thinking I could have lived a life without him made my breath come in short pants.
I’m finally home.
I leaned back, and when my teary gaze met his, he asked, “So, are you going to accept the position to run the clinic?”
I giggled through my tears. “I guess it’d be a little weird if Melody Marco were working somewhere else, huh?”
A soft smile slid across his lips. “Those patients need you, Mel.”
“And I need those patients,” I stated and wrapped my arms tight around his neck. “But there’s something else I think I need even more.”
“What?” I almost laughed at the fact that he looked genuinely confused, until I remembered that that doubt was doubt I’d planted there.
I leaned close and put everything I felt into one word. “You.”
He brushed his nose softly against mine, excitement making his limbs flex into me. “You love me?”
I nodded. “I love you.”
“Thank God,” he muttered and melded his lips to mine. The kiss started out slow and tender, until we both felt the electricity of our special bond spark to life. Will’s lips became more persistent, and mine followed suit as I kissed him hard and deep and without concern for where we were or who might have been watching.
“Aww!” Georgia cheered and clapped her hands excitedly.
Her voice brought us both back to the present, and I giggled against Will’s mouth.
He pulled his lips away from mine and met my gaze. “I think it’s time we got the fuck out of here.”
“Uh…yes, please,” I agreed on a laugh, and he smiled.
Just then, Kline came sliding in the door at a run, his long fingers reaching out and grabbing the doorjamb to help slow himself down. “Georgie?” he asked, concern stark in his features.
Will and I bugged our eyes out at each other at the same time. Completely in sync.
Georgia just smiled. “Hey, honey. Guess what? I finally got good at lying!”
Kline was a smart guy, so it never took him long to catch up. Plus, he couldn’t have missed how unconcerned with Georgia Will and I were.
“I take it you’re not really in labor?”
As Georgia shrugged, I turned my attention back to Will and got lost in his smile.
Georgia and Kline could work out their own problems from here. I wanted a reunion. “Take me home, Will,” I whispered into his ear, but it didn’t spur the instant, on-the-move action I’d hoped for. Instead, he paused, and his blue eyes locked with mine.
“You are my home, Melody.”
Swoon. Yeah, those words were way better than anything else I could’ve imagined in my head. Even, the dirty, naked types of scenarios I’d started to picture…
God, I love him.
I pressed a gentle kiss to his lips and whispered against his mouth, “Ditto, Doc.”