The next day, Nathan found himself in much of the same position that William had left him in the day before. He had gone through the motions, seeing his patients and taking his usual meetings. Elizabeth was never far from his mind, though. It had been less than 48 hours since he last saw her, but he found that he missed her terribly.

He was rarely startled but he jumped when his assistant Mary knocked on his door.

“You have a visitor who doesn’t have an appointment.” Mary looked annoyed at the fact that she had been forced to interrupt him.

“Can you reschedule them for next week?” Going through with his usual meetings was all he could manage. He wasn’t prepared for something new to pop up.

“She’s very insistent.” Mary sighed as though she knew whoever was waiting for him wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

“Who is it?” he asked, his curiosity peaking. He hoped it was Elizabeth. But Mary didn’t get a chance to answer him. In the blink of an eye, a woman shoved past her and stood before Nathan, eyes full of anger.

“Kate!” He gasped, looking at the last person he expected to pay him a visit.

“Miss, you have to wait,” Mary snapped at her as she tried to usher her from the office.

“It’s fine, Mary,” Nathan said.

“Yes, Mary, it’s fine,” Kate repeated, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“I’ll be right outside if you need me.” Mary glared, making no effort to leave the office.

“Oh, I’m not going to attack him.”

“If you say so.” Mary raised her eyebrows suspiciously.

“We’ll be fine, Mary.” Nathan nodded, finally convincing the woman to leave them alone.

“Are you okay?” He suddenly realized that something must be very wrong for Kate to willingly come to see him.

He gestured for her to take a seat but she didn’t move.

“No, I’m not okay.” She inhaled deeply as though she were too angry to speak.

“Is it your mom?” Alarm bells started to go off in his head.

“She’s all right. She’s as good as she can be.”

“Is it Elizabeth? Is she okay?” he demanded, worried that something was wrong with her. Maybe that was why she had darted off.

“No, she’s not okay and I think you know that.” The moment he heard the words, his heart stopped. Thinking even for a moment that something could be wrong with Elizabeth had him short of breath.

“Is she hurt?” he asked, unable to think straight.

“Physically, no.” Kate was steaming mad. She had come to his office to set him straight and tell him to leave her sister alone. She had told herself that she would be calm and cool about it. Standing there in front of him, though, her temper was getting the best of her. “But emotionally, she’s a wreck.”

“I don’t know what to say to you.” Nathan sensed why she was really there.

“Then maybe you should just listen!” Kate was unwilling to let him off the hook without listening to the speech she had prepared.

“Okay.”

“My sister is the strongest person I know. She always has been,” she began. That was what bothered her the most about what Nathan had done to Elizabeth. He had made her strong sister feel weak and vulnerable.

“I know.” He did know it. It was one of the things that he loved most about her.

“It’s not your turn to talk.” She finally took a seat across from him before she continued.

Nathan was one of the most respected doctors in the country and he wasn’t used to people talking to him in that tone. But he remained silent because he knew that he had deserved Kate’s harshness.

“Nobody’s stronger than her. Years ago, you broke her apart. She’d hate that I’m telling you this because she doesn’t want anyone to know just how much you wounded her, especially you. But I think you need to know that. You need to understand that her heart bleeds every time she sees you.”

“I’m so sorry.” He lowered his gaze.

“You should be!”

“I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Leave her alone. It’s bad enough that she has to see you every time we come to one of mom’s appointments. She doesn’t need you popping by the house, taking her to places where you went when you were in love.” Kate knew that they needed him to take care of their mother. What they didn’t need was him trying to become a part of their life again.

“I just wanted to support her.”

“I know what you wanted. You wanted to feel her love again. You wanted to pretend that she’s still yours.”

“Kate, I didn’t mean to…”

“You can’t do it.” She cut him off. “You can’t erase what you did. You can’t erase the pain you caused.”

“I hate myself,” he whispered, giving himself over to the pain in his soul.

“Good. You should.” Kate strained to hold off the tears that were welling in her eyes.

“Do you really hate me that much?”

“I don’t hate you.” Kate sighed. She hadn’t come to talk about her own feelings, but it seemed unavoidable now.

“I think you do.”

“You hurt me. You were like a brother to me.”

“I’m sorry.” He felt weakness in his knees.

“I don’t want your apology. I want you to stay away from my sister!” Kate was done talking about herself. She had come to convince him to leave Elizabeth alone and that was what she planned to do. “Can’t you see how much you’re still hurting her?”

“I love her!” Nathan finally admitted both to Kate and to himself. Kissing Elizabeth again just confirmed what he had known all along, that he had never stopped loving her. He hoped that Kate would understand why he couldn’t stay away from her sister. She had already been gone from his life for too long.

“I don’t care!”

“I miss her every day. Her love is the greatest loss of my life.”

“You didn’t lose it. You stomped on it and still, for some reason, she can’t break away from what she thinks she feels for you.” Kate wished that she could hate him for all that he had done.

“What do you mean?” He desperately needed to understand her last words.

“You wouldn’t have the power to hurt her like you do if she didn’t still love you.” Kate hated to let him know how much power he still held over her sister, but he needed to understand why he could never just be her friend.

“She loves me?” he asked, shocked by the possibility.

“And you don’t deserve it,” Kate was quick to point out.

“I’ve loved her my whole life.” He felt his heart beating wildly in his chest.

“If that was true, you would never have left her.”

“I’ve regretted it every day since,” he continued. He needed her to understand that he had suffered during the separation too.

“Liar!”

“Kate…”

“Tell it to your fiancé!” Kate recalled how furious she had been when she had learned that he was planning to marry someone other than her sister.

“I don’t have a fiancé anymore.”

“But you did. You moved on and Liz has spent years aching because of you.”

“I never wanted to hurt her.”

“What you wanted doesn’t matter. Do you think that I don’t know that you thought she’d stay here and wait for you like an obedient little lap dog?”

“It wasn’t like that,” he countered, though he knew there was partial truth to it. When he had called off the wedding, he had never considered that he would lose her. What he had expected was that she would accept his decision and wait until he decided he was ready for a wife. Her walking out on him was the last thing he had imagined happening.

“You thought she would wait, though, right?” she said as if she sensed his thoughts.

“You’re right.” Looking back, he couldn’t believe that he had been so self-centered and arrogant. He should have put her first, before anything.

“That makes it worse. You never thought about what she wanted or what you promised her. You thought she would wait on the back burner until you were ready for her.”

“I didn’t think she’d go.”

“That’s what makes you so toxic to her. You’ll never put her first and my sister deserves to be cherished. You took her for granted.”

“You’re right. I did. But I realized…”

“And she deserves better than you,” she interrupted him one last time. “I don’t want you to hurt her again. I won’t let you!”