The Starrs of New York had lived there when it had served as the nation’s capital, and they’d never left. Georgia’s father acted panic-stricken any time his children mentioned jobs out of state—the idea of him dying with his kids out of town permanently, leaving New York Starr-less for the first time in over two hundred years was unfathomable to him. When Randall had left for Atlanta, it had taken her father eighteen months to get over it, despite publically dining out on the fact his son was now Head of Neurology at a respected hospital.

But he needn’t have worried about Georgia. As the sun finally peeked over the horizon, revealing a sunrise full of purples and oranges so vivid it almost seemed unreal, she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. There was no spot in the universe more perfect than her thirty-third-story penthouse on the Upper West Side as the sun hit the trees and the park came to life. When the air was still fresh, at least as fresh as it got in Manhattan.

“I think that sounds like a fantastic plan, Dr. Kimura,” she said to the lead surgeon sitting in the hospital conference room in Tokyo. “Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance in your preparations.”

“Doumo arigatou gozaimasu, Dr. Starr,” he said with a bow before the web conference disconnected.

Georgia smiled and then hugged her cup of coffee as she sat in her greenhouse, grateful that her family had invested heavily in the early eighteen hundreds building boom. Building and redeveloping property that ran along what was now Seventh Avenue had made her family wealthy.

Large black containers of bamboo lined one wall, ready to be pushed out onto the large balcony in the spring. Two tall palms stood proudly on either side of an old stone-wall fountain that no longer pumped water, something she intended to fix in between chasing surgical dreams.

Her grandfather’s sudden passing four years earlier had been painful and difficult to recover from, as she’d lost the only really loving relationship in her life. She’d been the closest to him and he’d kept his promise—their secret—to pass the wonderful apartment, and more importantly his jazz collection, to her. When her father had threatened to retain legal counsel to fight the will, she’d threatened not only to fight him every inch of the way, but to publically disown him once she’d won. Realizing his perfectly engineered reputation would be ruined, he’d backed down. For all the posturing, Georgia suspected that it wasn’t the lawsuit he’d never gotten over, but the fact that she’d meant more to his own father than he did.

The greenhouse had been built long before planning boards became the issue they were today, for which she was grateful. The space would be a perfect place for children to play in. Something in her chest tightened at the thought—she was all too aware that her biological clock was tick-tocking. Children were something she secretly hoped for but didn’t have any clue how to make happen.

She laughed to herself. Of course she knew how to biologically make it happen. But first she’d need a guy. Not one like Ethan, the marketing exec she’d dated for a year who’d gotten progressively more frustrated that she wasn’t available to take mini-breaks whenever he wanted to go away. Or Charles, the director of a Wall Street firm who’d suggested she steer away from conversations about politics and feminism around his friends. And definitely not like Stuart, the start-up guy who she’d met for dinner a mere three times before he asked if she’d invest half a million of her savings in seed funding for his next big idea.

Was it too much to ask for a guy who could take everything about her in stride?

Even today, her day off, she planned to review several case files and pop into the hospital to visit the twins. And the reason she was up early enough to witness this glorious sunrise was the advisory video call she’d just finished with the surgical team in Tokyo regarding a separation they were considering undertaking.

Georgia walked toward the long narrow table that ran from one end of the greenhouse to the other. Because heating had been installed in the greenhouse long ago, her grandfather had been able to store his collection of bonsai here. There were over a hundred of them, looked after now by a specialist she’d hired because while she might have the thumbs for surgery, they were most definitely not green. The expert had said she could probably sell the collection for what he’d called “big bucks.” But big bucks couldn’t compare to the memories she had of her grandfather clipping the tiny branches while he listened to Georgia ramble on about school and home. He’d been the second generation to focus on surgery rather than real estate, and while her father liked to take credit for her achievements, it had been, in fact, her grandfather who’d helped her study and hone her skills.

The sky was lightening and the weather forecast had promised a mild day. She wondered if Lennon was looking out of the window at the beauty of it. When she’d called yesterday, as she had every day, to check on his condition, the staff had sounded more positive about his prognosis and mental health. Her heart had dropped though, when she’d heard that his friends had gone home. They were part of his lifeline, his support structure. She was sure of it. She’d seen their closeness, had envied the level of care they had for one another. It was something she had never experienced from anyone but her grandfather. Inspired, she reached for her phone and texted Lennon.

Hey, it’s Georgia. Are you awake? How many colors do you think are in this sunrise?

Georgia sipped her coffee as she tried to convince herself it didn’t matter whether he responded.

Three.

Three? A most uninspired answer. You mustn’t be looking at the same sunrise I am.

I am. Blue, orange, and purple. Now ask me how many shades?

Why, Mr. McCartney, I didn’t realize you were into semantics.

I’m not, but I’ve been staring at the damn thing for the last half hour trying to figure out what happens next. I figure by now I’ve seen every shade there is.

His response intrigued her. When they’d talked on Monday night, he’d periodically dipped his toe into a deeper kind of conversation but had danced his way out of it just as quickly. What did he mean by “what happens next”? She didn’t want to ask him directly.

Those sound like the kind of thoughts that need good coffee.

The little dots bounced, and Georgia felt a sense of excitement bubbling through her.

I haven’t had good coffee since I checked in here.

Quickly she ran to her bedroom, pulled on her Uggs, and dashed to the door. The elevator doors opened and she stepped inside. Once outside the building, she hurried to the little Italian coffee shop she loved where Alessandra, the daughter’s owner, made her two steaming-hot extra-large caffé latte and packed up some of the delicious fette biscottate. She loved the hard cookie-like bread, especially with the coffee. They reminded her of a spring-break spent in Italy.

With treats in hand, she hailed a taxi to the hospital. It was a risk, just showing up without invitation, but somehow she’d felt his loneliness through their text exchange.

If she got strange looks from the hospital staff for arriving at a little after half past six in the morning, she ignored them. When she got to Lennon’s door though, she found herself suddenly worrying about how windswept her hair looked.

He’s just a friend. And anyway she didn’t have any hands free to do anything about it.

She nudged the door open with her booted foot. “I figured the least I could do, you know, as your only friend in New York, is to bring you good coffee,” she said as she walked toward the bed.

Lennon was sitting up, head turned toward the window, and he jumped at the words. He attempted to push himself up on the bed, moving both arms together to master the action. It was something he’d likely never stop doing, the limbs wanting to work collaboratively.

“Hey,” he said, his voice rough as he ran a hand over his face. It shouldn’t vibrate through her like it did, nor should his half-smile warm her insides. He took the cup she offered as she tried to ignore the way stubble was growing along his jaw line.

“Wasn’t sure if you took sugar, so I threw some packets in the bag.”

Lennon sipped the coffee, his lips pursed against the lid. She needed to stop noticing just how soft they looked or she was going to start daydreaming about him all over again like a love-sick puppy.

He shook his head and then leaned back, wincing at the movement, and closed his eyes. “Damn, that is good coffee.”

Georgia pulled a chair up next to the bed. “Here, it’s gonna taste even better with this,” she said, pulling out the sweet bread and the small pot of preserves Alessandra had included. She smeared it liberally with a white plastic knife and offered it to Lennon, who put his coffee down to take it from her.

As he took a bite, she readied a slice of her own.

“Mmm, that is good,” he said as he looked ever so slightly over her shoulder. He’d done the same thing when she’d visited a few days earlier, looking in her direction but not quite looking at her. At first she’d wondered if he had focusing issues, but had ruled it out when she’d noticed he had no problem looking at his phone or the TV on the wall. He avoided looking into people’s eyes directly.

“Told you,” she said. “Now you can continue thinking deep thoughts.” Georgia sat back in her chair and crossed her ankle over her knee. They munched on the bread and sipped coffee in an easy silence for a little while as the hospital began to stir to life and the sun rose higher on the New York skyline.

Lennon looked out the window. “Is that why you are here? Because I was thinking while watching the sun come up?”

“Not really. I don’t get to hang out in hospitals all that much, so I thought it would be fun to spend my day off here.” She sipped her coffee to hide her grin.

For a second his eyes held hers, the voltage that seemed to pass between the two of them both real and inexplicable. “You’re an awful liar,” he said before popping the rest of his bread into his mouth.

“Perhaps. Maybe I just wanted to bring my new friend some great-tasting coffee. Maybe I was bored at home. Maybe I wasn’t sure how I was going to spend my day off until I thought of you.” Shit. She hadn’t meant to say that. Well, not that way. “I mean, the sunrise and all . . .”

“I get it,” Lennon said with a hint of a smile. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. None of his smiles ever did. There was too much pain. “For what it’s worth, you’re just about the only person I can tolerate right now. Given that I’m not exactly subtle about my feelings, I’m sure the staff will be thrilled when I’m discharged the day after tomorrow.”

She hated that it was time for him to head back to Canada.

“You must be glad to be going back to Toronto.” Maybe they could keep in touch somehow. Although by then she was sure she’d have convinced herself to get over this stupid crush.

He looked at her straight on for the first time. His eyes flared a little as he took her in. “I’m not going back. Not yet . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t think I’ll get what I need there.” He lifted his residual limb.

“What is it you think you need?” Georgia asked. It felt wrong to be anxious to see if she could help him, if she could be the thing he needed.

Lennon sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I guess I just need a little distance right now. Space to breath.”

“So, where are you going to go tomorrow when you get discharged?”

“I figured I’d get a hotel reservation. Room service, laundry, and all that,” he said, raising his bandaged arm. “Something close to the hospital.”

His tone was so . . . dejected. She didn’t get it. He had family. He had people who wanted to look after him. And yet he was choosing to be alone.

“I can’t say I fully understand that decision, but I can help. Do you trust me to find you someplace?” she asked. “My family owns a series of apartments. Let me see if any of them are free.”

Lennon studied her for a moment. A look of disbelief marring his features. “I’m fine, Georgia.”

“You aren’t. Not yet. But you will be. Let me find you a place. There were two in my building that were being renovated. I’d need to check whether either of them are finished. I could keep an eye on you.”

Lennon raised an eyebrow. “You going to turn into one of those stalkers I need a restraining order against?”

“Shut up,” she said with a grin. “No stalking tendencies. Just genuine concern that you don’t end up without a support system, because I know that doesn’t work.”

“Fine. See what you can find and send me links.” He looked toward the pile of suitcases and musical equipment in the corner.

A series of seven round cases that looked like they were made from the same material as heavy-duty fabric suitcases stood lined up along the wall. The band’s name was written on the front, Lennon’s name was written on the side.

“Is that all your stuff?”

Lennon nodded. “What could be saved. We lost some equipment. I asked the road crew to leave them here.”

“Your drums are cool.”

“They’re not my drums. Not anymore.”

* * *

They weren’t his because he was never going to play them again. And if one more person brought up Def Leppard’s Rick Allen who played with one arm, as if knowing another drummer had gone through what he was going through suddenly made everything better, he was going to lose his shit.

The guys had wanted to take the kit on to Toronto with them but he’d refused, asking them to simply dump them in the corner of the room. And he vacillated over the reason why. He wanted to destroy them, at a minimum get rid of them, but in the small hours of the morning he wondered if it wasn’t because they might be the very thing that could lead him through this.

Georgia took another sip of coffee, and the simple band of rose gold that graced her middle finger glinted in the early morning sun as it shone through the window. She didn’t look concerned by his comments, nor did she look pitying.

Unlike his lawyer, who’d had a fit the previous evening when Lennon had instructed him to sell his condo and split the proceeds into three trust funds for his bandmates’ children, Petal, Arwen, and Daniel, and to update his will in general. Given Lennon and Dred shared the same lawyer, he guessed Dred had told their lawyer of his situation. At first, the lawyer had assumed the injuries were life-threatening, but reassuring him that they weren’t had resulted in questions about why Lennon was updating his will and selling assets that had veered too close to the truth.

When he’d studied the sunrise this morning, he’d wondered whether it would be one of the last he’d see.

It had been beautiful. Like the dark-haired woman with brown eyes and pale skin who sat near enough for him to feel the energy coming from her. She turned the diamond stud in her ear as she sipped her coffee.

“So,” she said, but before she could finish her sentence she let out a large yawn.

“Keeping you awake?”

“Oh God, I’m sorry. That was so rude. I had a call with Japan before I got here, and I worked late last night. What I was going to say is do you have a buyer for them already?”

Georgia wasn’t what he expected. When he’d mentioned to the hospital-assigned physical therapist that he’d be getting rid of them, she’d tried to lecture him on not giving up. She’d spouted motivation crap that could hang on a wall about focusing on the end goal, letting adversity be his greatest teacher, and finding out what he was made of. If she’d started in on what to do when life handed you lemons, he would’ve thrown the bedside chair out the window and followed quickly after it, just to get away from the mindless waffle. That same chair on which Georgia, wearing cute skinny jeans that made her ass look perfect, was now sitting.

“The drums?” Georgia repeated. “Did you sell them yet? Because I want to buy them.”

Lennon did a double take. “You play?”

Georgia shook her head, her silky hair swishing as she moved. He wanted to reach out and touch it, but she was sitting on his left side. The side with no fucking hand.

She kept her warm brown eyes on his, and it burned. The connection left him breathless. “No, but I’ve always wanted to learn.”

He could teach her. Sit her down and show her how—fuck—he couldn’t play anymore. “Take them. One less thing for me to carry out of here,” he said, lifting his stump as a visual aid.

“Will you sign them for me first?”

How could he refuse when she smiled at him like she was right now? Sweet ruby lips and all white teeth in a perfect line. And little lines at the corner of her eyes that told him she was happy, even if the dark circles beneath them told him she was tired.

“Yeah. Lucky for you, I’m right-handed.” He’d meant it as a joke, but even he knew his tone wasn’t the least bit funny.

“Will you help me set them up?” she continued as if he hadn’t just pointed out why he obviously couldn’t. “I mean, I don’t need you to teach me or anything, but would you set them up for me so I can mess around on them?”

His plans hadn’t involved anything beyond getting released from hospital. Being around to set them up implied making appointments he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep. “Sure,” he agreed anyway. “It’s the least I can do, seeing that you saved my ass.”

He’d found that kind of statement reassured the nurses and therapists and psychologists about the state of his mental health. Anything that made them think he was experiencing normal emotions—something he’d never done—and made them believe he wasn’t going to do anything they considered stupid.

But goddamn, that fucking smile of hers was going to kill him. It crept under the first layer of his skin. He wondered if she even realized the way the tip of her nose scrunched up when she was happy. He suddenly wanted to know more about her.

“What made you pick neurology?”

Georgia sighed and shook her cup as if testing whether there was any coffee left in it. There wasn’t, which was interesting because it was so scalding that he’d only drunk a quarter of his, for fear that the roof of his mouth would be boiled off. She placed the cup down on the wooden table at the side of the bed. “Genetics.”

“You wanted to study genetics?”

“No. I come from a long line of neurosurgeons,” she said. “My grandfather, father, and four brothers are all neurosurgeons.”

Not interacting with people emotionally had made him an expert at observing others and picking up on clues that gave away what they tried not to show. The indifferent way she flicked her hair over her shoulder, the way she blinked in quick succession as she spoke, and the tone of her voice made Lennon wonder if she even realized that her proud veneer was etched with melancholy.

“Did you want to become a neurologist?”

“No. I never wanted to be a neurologist because they don’t operate.” She smiled as if she’d just cracked a really funny joke he didn’t get.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Never mind . . . neurologists and neurosurgeons aren’t the same, but we often work closely together.”

He liked that she was so smart. So clever. Yet she didn’t talk to him like he was stupid. But instead of asking how they were different—which would have been like admitting he wanted to get to know her—he said, “Poh-tay-to, Poh-tah-to. Whatever the fuck it is you do, did you want to do it?”

“Of course, I . . . Well, I guess I wanted medicine, but . . . yes, I mean of course.” Her cheeks pinkened, like she was genuinely confused by the question.

“Did you consider being anything other than a neurologist?”

“Neurosurgeon,” she corrected. She pulled her hair over one shoulder and began to braid the ends. “I considered becoming a mermaid when I was four, and I had a brief spell wanting to be an astronaut when I was ten, but outside of that, no. It’s the only thing I considered doing.”

A stray piece of hair fell in front of her face, and he wanted desperately to lean over and push it behind her ear. If he’d known she was coming, he would have moved the motherfucking chair to the other side of the bed.

“You’d have been a spectacular mermaid,” he said without thinking.

Georgia blushed and shook her head. “I’m not that great of a swimmer.”

Lennon shrugged. “Who cares? Show me a guy who looks at a mermaid and thinks, ‘Wow, look at the speed on that mermaid,’ and I’ll show you a liar.”

Georgia laughed in response. “Fair point. But I wasn’t going to be a mermaid for the looks I could get from men. I remember watching The Little Mermaid and just wanted a pet Flounder and Sebastian.”

“So, you aren’t all serious neurosurgeon, then? Do you have a fish tank at least?”

“No,” she said, the smile on her face dying. “Childish things get put away and all that. What the hell would I do with a giant saltwater tank?”

Lennon fidgeted so he could turn to see her better. “I don’t know. Sit in front of it. Relax. Talk to your damn fish.”

He imagined arranging for a fish tank to be delivered, a saltwater one with a crab and whatever type of stupid fish Flounder was. He’d get someone to do the math on what a lifetime maintenance would cost on a salt water tank, given that she was already so fucking busy. It was the one thing he could give her.

“Life isn’t always a Disney movie,” she said quietly.

He laughed sadly. “No, it fucking isn’t.”

Her phone buzzed and she glanced down at it, taking a second to scroll through something.

“Do you need to take that?”

Georgia shook her head. “Occupational hazard. You never know when you’ll be called in an emergency.” She dropped the phone into her purse. “You know, at the children’s hospital, I see these kids with horribly aggressive conditions. . . . Sometimes they come in dressed as princesses, or superheroes.” Georgia put her heels up on the metal frame of the bed. “Any time I’m not helping them feels like a waste of what I was meant to do.”

She looked up at him, and even though it pained him, he held her stare. His palms—palm—began to sweat as his stomach clenched. He needed to work through it. If he could just figure out how to hold her stare. Once upon a time, with a therapist’s help, he’d imagined a bucket list with emotional shit on it.

Be loved by another human being.

Make love to a woman while looking into her eyes.

Have a family of his own.

Over the years, it had changed.

Be left alone.

Be free of his past.

Feel love once.

He shook his head as he felt tears burn his eyes. Ever since Petal had kissed his bandage, waves of sadness had washed over him and taken him under. But he wasn’t going to lose it in front of Georgia. He wasn’t going to be that needy guy. Right now, he was feeling inspired to be there for her, to encourage her to slow down and live the life he’d never get the chance to.

“Still, you don’t need to work all the time. I bet you’re a better surgeon when you’re relaxed, rested.”

Georgia shrugged. “Maybe. But what I’m doing right now works. It assuages the guilt I feel at not helping more kids. So, I check my phone in company, and I yawn, and when I go back home in a little while, I’ll read through some files for upcoming surgeries. I guess I can’t bear the idea of someone dying on my watch if I could have prevented it.”

His mind went back to the accident and remembered all at once telling her to let him go. She hadn’t. She’d told him that his work here wasn’t done.

What if she was actually his work?

What if it was his job to save her from herself before he left?

Clearly, she would take it personally if he went ahead with his plans. He couldn’t bear the idea that she would feel responsible for him—for what he wanted to do.

Which left him at a crossroads.