Chapter 3

Tim

I’m still reeling from seeing Holly.

When she walked through that curtain and my brain first recognized her, I felt every cell in my body respond to her beauty.

She looked exactly the same as she did ten years ago.

Long, blonde hair, more of a golden tone, that’s thick and wavy. Crystal-green eyes with mile-long lashes and lips that look perpetually swollen by hard kissing. She’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, a true fact that caused me to be tongue-tied around her.

Which was fine, because it’s not like this is the best place to re-open old wounds. Because that is what would happen if Holly and I actually had a moment to talk.

Instead, I was happy to see her concentrate on Sam. She was so gentle… so patient and kind with him, that I could tell he was immediately at ease. She was efficient in her expertise, and I’m grateful for her care of him.

And then?

Then she was saying good-bye and walking past me out of the small, curtained room.

My hand shoots out and grabs her around the wrist. She jerks in surprise and for a brief moment, I focus on my fingers clasping loosely onto her. My dark skin against her pale, and a haunting image of my body covering hers as I made love to her sizzles through my mind.

“Wait,” I say as I drag my gaze up to hers.

Holly tilts her head slightly… in curiosity, and I clear my throat. “Do you have a moment to talk?” I ask her.

“Sure,” she says with a smile. “I just got off the night shift. It’s going to take a few minutes to get Sam discharged.”

Turning back to Sam, I see him talking to the nurse as she takes his IV out. “Sam… buddy… I’m going to step just outside this curtain a moment to talk to Dr. Reynolds. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, Dad,” he says with a toothless but brave grin. “I’m good. Amy promised me some stickers.”

I give a wan smile to the nurse. Moving my hand from Holly’s wrist to her elbow, I steer her outside of the curtained room.

“We can step in here,” she says and actually leads me over to a small office across the bay.

I follow her inside and she shuts the door, turning back to me with her hands tucked into her lab coat. Her smile is warm, her eyes open and searching.

“It’s really good to see you, Tim,” she begins, her voice quavering slightly.

I scrub my hand over my head, feeling the prick from the short bristles of hair as I keep my head shaved almost to the point of baldness. It’s just easier to take care of. “Yeah… you too,” I say distractedly.

“I didn’t think you’d want to talk,” she murmurs, her gaze dropping to the floor.

A brief moment of anger surges through me as I remember the last time I talked to Holly. It was just before our high school graduation. All the students were congregated outside, waiting to get herded into our auditorium for the commencement ceremony.

Holly had grabbed my hand and pulled me off to the side, far enough away from the other students so we couldn’t be heard. It was the first time I had seen her since my disastrous meeting with her father four days earlier. Since then, I hadn’t heard from Holly and she wasn’t responding to my calls or emails.

“Are you okay?” I’d asked her quickly, searching her face for any signs that her father had done something extreme.

Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine and her bottom lip trembled. My fingers came up under her chin, and I raised her face and made her look at me. “Holly… baby… are you okay?”

She gave an almost urgent shake of her head, and tears welled in her eyes. “Tim… I can’t… um,” she started, and then a tiny sob came out of her mouth.

This had me pulling her hard into my arms, and I kissed the top of her head. “Tell me. Tell me so I can fix this for you,” I urged her.

Again, she shook her head and actually brought her arms up to break my hold, stepping away from me. She took in a deep breath and blinked her tears away. “I’m sorry, Tim. But I can’t see you anymore.”

Rage exploded within me. “What the fuck? Because of what your father said?”

That bigoted bastard forcibly threw me out of his house four days ago when Holly decided it was time for me to meet her parents. She was nervous, and apparently rightfully so, but was convinced the only way to go about doing it was to pull the Band-Aid off quickly so to speak. So she told her parents she wanted to invite her boyfriend over for dinner… and they happily agreed.

When Holly brought me inside the living room to meet the esteemed Dr. Philip Reynolds and his socialite wife, Marielle, I knew the moment her father’s eyes landed on me that the evening had just taken a terrible turn. He exploded with offended rage, snarling that his daughter was not going to date “someone like me”. A quick glance at Holly had told me that she was utterly and completely stunned by her father’s outburst, seemingly shocked into absolute stillness. Only when her father latched on to my arm and started hauling me toward the front door did Holly jump into action, screaming at her father to let me go.

I was only eighteen years old, but I was already pretty much filled out. A six-foot linebacker for our high school football team, I outweighed Dr. Reynolds by a good forty pounds, but I didn’t make a move to fight against him. I couldn’t do that out of respect for Holly.

The rest was sort of a blur. Holly grabbed ahold of her dad. He shoved back against her, and she went falling to the floor. Then I was pushed out onto the front porch, and the door was slammed in my face.

Four days later, Holly told me she couldn’t see me anymore, and I became one of the sad statistics where my first love broke my heart and pretty much ruined me for any other woman.

Blinking away those bitter memories, I look at Holly now standing in front of me. I’d lost all track of her after graduation and, despite everything, I am immensely pleased to see she fulfilled her dream of being a doctor.

“I’m not exactly sure what to say,” I tell her truthfully. “It’s a little surreal running into you here… in New Orleans of all places.”

“I’ve been here for nine years,” she says. “Transferred my sophomore year from Columbia to Tulane. Did both my undergrad and medical school here.”

I blink at her in surprise because Holly had her life all mapped out when we were in high school. She was going to go to Columbia and then follow in her father’s footsteps to be a cardiovascular surgeon. She was going to join his practice where they’d work side by side to save people together.

“Your plans changed a little,” I comment.

“Just a little,” she says with a wry smile. “But what about you? What are you doing here?”

“Just visiting my sister for my vacation. I work for the New York City Fire Department in Brooklyn.”

“Denise,” Holly says with delight at the mention of my sister. “How is she? She was always so nice to me.”

“She’s good. Fantastic actually,” I say, and it starts to feel like old times again in the way we are lapsing into easy talk.

“And Sam,” Holly gushes. “God, he’s adorable. What’s your wife do?”

“We’re divorced,” I tell her, not feeling an ounce of awkwardness that Holly is asking about my ex. It didn’t seem solicitous, just curious in a friendly way. “Just about a year after Sam was born. But we’ve maintained a good friendship. She’s a teacher.”

Holly doesn’t say anything for a moment, cutting her gaze down to the floor and back. When she looks back up at me, her eyes are apologetic. “I’m really sorry, Tim. For everything. Just… I feel terrible and my father was just horrid… is horrid… and if I could go back—”

I cut her off. “Holly… it’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” she says bitterly. “I didn’t fight for us. I didn’t stand up for you. At least… not until it was too late.”

The melancholy tone of her voice causes the hair to stand up on my arms. “What do you mean, ‘not until it was too late’?” I ask her, my hand automatically coming out to grasp onto hers.

She squeezes my fingers. “My father and I—”

The door to the office opens abruptly and Holly drops my hand, leaning sideways to look past me. Amy has Sam by the hand, his other arm in a sling. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have Sam all ready to go.”

I smile at Amy, who hands me the discharge paperwork and turns to leave. I squat down in front of Sam. “How you feeling, buddy?”

“Fine,” he says with a coy smile, his eyes cutting back and forth between Holly and me.

“Good,” I say as I stand up. “Let’s get you home.”

Sam turns toward the door, but I hold him back with a hand on his shoulder. My head turns back to Holly. “When is your next night off?”

Her eyebrows rise in surprise. “Um… I have the next two days off, and then I pull a double.”

“Dinner tomorrow night?” I ask her. “We can catch up and you can tell me about your father.”

“Okay,” she says with a smile, her eyes round and warm as they rest upon me.

“Okay,” I tell her and return the smile.