“Do we have to go back?” I asked. Gage was sitting next to me, one hand resting casually on the bottom of the steering wheel. We were waiting for the ferry to pull in after spending two days in Belcourt, a small community a couple of hours north of Sawyer’s Ferry.
“You’d rather stay in Belcourt?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I like it here.”
“It’s half the size of Sawyer’s Ferry. And I thought that was too small for you.”
“Small is starting to grow on me...”
Gage didn’t look all that persuaded. “I don’t think Logan would much appreciate being left on his own to run the hospital.”
“Maybe not.”
The trips to smaller communities had always been Gage and Logan’s thing. Since I’d been in town, they’d gone on the last couple together, leaving me to run the surgical department by myself.
This time, though, Logan had bowed out. I figured a couple of days away, even if they were mostly spent working, would be a nice change of pace, but I hadn’t expected Belcourt to be so beautiful. A camp more than a town, there was a single hotel, with even fewer rooms than the Sawyer’s Ferry Inn, and a general store that supplied the entire community with things they needed. Just like Sawyer’s Ferry, it was accessible only by boat and by air, with a tiny airstrip right in the middle of the city. Unlike Sawyer’s Ferry, Belcourt had fewer than a thousand residents and zero hospital facilities.
A small clinic serviced the town and the surrounding communities. And once a month, someone from SFRH made the trip up to perform whatever simple procedures could be done with the limited resources they had. More complicated surgeries required the residents leave town, but SFRH tried to make medical care as convenient as possible.
So we’d spent the last two days there, with back-to-back procedures, trying to fit in as many patients as possible before returning home. It was rewarding, but now I was ready for a day off.
We boarded the ferry and parked on the small lower deck between a horse trailer and another pickup truck.
“You wanna sit in here or head up to the deck?”
I shivered thinking about how cold it was outside. “It’s freezing.”
“I’ll keep you warm,” Gage promised.
The thought of standing out in the early-morning air, with the wind coming off the water gave me chills, but the trip was only half an hour and thirty minutes of cold wouldn’t kill me. “Yeah, let’s go.”
The stairwell to the top floor was at the front of the ship. I was halfway up when the ferry pulled away from the dock, throwing me off balance. Gage reached up to steady me, even though I was holding on to the railing. My skin tingled where he touched me, and I didn’t want him to let go.
Things between us the last week had been strained, and it didn’t take a fucking genius to figure out why. There wasn’t much time left on my contract before I needed to make a decision about where I was going to end up.
The decision should have been easy—a no-brainer, really. New York was the obvious choice. It was a slam dunk career-wise. If I was offered the job at Sutton, the budget alone for research was worth taking the position. There were a hundred reasons to go and only one reason to stay, and yet I was conflicted.
I’d put off thinking about it, and clearly, Gage was on the same page. We hadn’t discussed it since the day I’d gotten the letter. It was hanging over both our heads, pushing down on us, drowning us in tension, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to broach the topic.
Talking about it made it real, and while I knew I only had a couple of days left before I’d have to start making arrangements, one way or the other, I was pushing it back as long as I could.
I made it to the top deck without falling and breaking my neck. It was deserted. Apparently, everyone else was sane enough to remain in their warm vehicles downstairs. The wind whipped across the flat surface, carrying the smell of the sea with it. I walked to the side and rested my hand on the metal railing.
Gage came up behind me, close enough that I could feel his body pressed against mine. He blocked some of the wind, and having him there with me made me feel instantly warmer.
“It’s kind of beautiful,” I said. “When it’s not covered in snow.”
“I’m glad you came with me,” Gage said, his voice low against my ear.
“Logan isn’t as good at ferry-deck cuddling?”
Gage chuckled and I turned in his arms, leaning back against the railing. I slid my hand along his cheek and pulled him down to kiss me. The air outside was piercingly cold, but Gage’s mouth was warm on mine. He crowded even closer, and I melted into him, savoring the feeling of his weight against me. For a minute I lost myself in him. Nothing else mattered, and time slowed down. I wanted to stay like that forever, blissfully ignorant to the real-life shit we’d have to deal with later.
I didn’t know how many more kisses we’d have, and that made it so goddamn bittersweet. I tightened my grip on him, just for a second, delaying the inevitable end. It was a lot to think about, a lot to process, and I’d been avoiding doing just that. For now, it was easier to cling to him and pretend this was the first of many trips together.
Gage didn’t seem any more eager to let me go.
“Do you want chicken or steak for dinner?” Gage held up two ziplocks of frozen meat, one barely discernible from the other, which wasn’t a great sign.
My gaze darted between them, but I wasn’t hungry and neither option sounded all that appealing. As we neared closer to the end of my contract, putting off the conversation was becoming more and more impossible.
Gage felt it too. There was no way he didn’t. The groove we’d settled into after getting back from Belcourt was weird. We were fucking more than a gang of rabbits dosed with Viagra. Standing in the kitchen fully clothed and not on top of each other was a rare occurrence, but those few times when we weren’t naked and sweaty, or completely brain-dead from loss of bodily fluids, things were so goddamn uncomfortable.
It was as though we’d forgotten how to interact with our clothes on. At first, I’d dismissed it as an off day, but when it continued into the next and then the next, it became increasingly apparent that something was up.
And now I was getting tired of it. I only had a few days left, and I didn’t want to spend them Band-Aiding whatever was going on with sex.
I sighed, letting the resignation flow through me. “We should talk about it.”
“Talk about what?” Gage asked, doing his best to look confused. He wasn’t fooling anyone. This conversation had been hanging over our heads for three months, the weight of it growing by the day.
“You know what. We keep avoiding talking about what’s going to happen. I haven’t wanted to bring it up because I thought it would make things weird, but things are weird anyway, and the reality of it is that my contract is up and I need to make a decision about Sutton.”
“I know that.”
“I know you know that,” I said, growing frustrated. “What I don’t know is how you feel about it.”
“My feelings don’t matter as much as yours.”
“I’m not certain that’s true, and I’m asking you anyway.” I held my breath waiting for his answer. This was the moment that I’d been dreading—opening the lid to find out what was inside Pandora’s box. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted his answer to be, but my heart was pounding with anticipation.
“Of course you’re welcome to stay. You’re the best surgeon Sawyer’s Ferry has ever seen, and your positive outcome ratios are better than most surgeons in the country, but turning down Sutton to stay in a town with one operating room and limited resources doesn’t make sense.”
“So you want me to go.”
“What I want is irrelevant. You’re at the start of your career, and Jesus, Holden, you’re amazing. You would be stifled here, and ultimately I don’t think you would be happy. We’re cut off from the rest of the world. This isn’t New York. This isn’t even Anchorage.”
“I know but—”
“Turning down Sutton would be a mistake.”
“And what if there was no offer?” I asked, feeling the panic start to rise in my chest. I felt like I was desperately trying to hold on to something that was never mine to begin with. I had almost no control over it, and I hated that feeling.
Gage could tell I was getting upset. He crossed the room and pulled me against him, wrapping his arms tightly around me. “We could stand here forever talking about ‘what if,’ but it doesn’t change the fact that if there is an offer, the offer is too good for you to turn it down.”
I leaned into him, trying to sap the strength from his body and pull it into mine. I was barely upright, all my energy slipping away with each word out of his mouth.
“What if I don’t want it?”
“You do, though.” He squeezed me hard. “How could you not?”
He was right. I wanted it, but the thought of what I’d have to give up to get it made it feel so much less like a victory and more like a loss.