CHAPTER ONE
Lucky for Peyton, the Everton Urgent Care Clinic rarely lived up to its name. In the ten months that she’d been working at the clinic, much of her time had involved bee stings, skateboard accidents and the flu.
Which was completely fine with her. She’d moved home to Everton because “boring and ordinary” sounded awfully good after her years of intense medical training. Patching up the kids of her fellow Evertonians fed her soul. Considering that she’d left home with a completely shattered heart, sobbing her way onto the plane that would take her to college—well, it was that things were nothing but blue skies and skinned knees these days.
She added a line of wound-sealing glue to the gash on Benny Rodriguez’ knee. The ten-year-old’s face was clenched in an expression of dramatic agony.
“This is just as good as stitches, as long as you stay off your skateboard for a while,” she told him.
He sniffled and examined his knee. “Will it make a scar?”
“If you’re really lucky. But probably not. I’m quite good at this.” She winked at him as she added a bandage over the wound. “You can take this off in a couple of days,” she told Benny’s mother, who nodded wearily.
“I know the drill. And the only way he’s staying off that skateboard is if I throw it on a bonfire.”
“Mama!” Benny jumped off the exam table.
“Which I will do,” she continued ruthlessly, “unless you do what the nice doctor tells you.”
Peyton smiled as the two of them left the exam room in a flurry of Spanish. Her heart swelled as she tossed her disposable gloves away. This was exactly why she’d come home. Helping innocent kids enjoy their childhoods, keeping her community healthy, living a peaceful life free from drama—it was all she’d ever wanted.
Well, not ever. For a brief, insane time—the time of Jack Cooper—she’d wanted something else. Something wild and passionate and all-consuming.
Everyone in town knew how that had turned out.
Meredith, the charge nurse, appeared at the door of the exam room. “Looks like a day for sports injuries. You ready for another?”
“It’s springtime in Arizona, what else can we expect? Bring it on.”
Meredith handed her the clipboard with the patient’s information, which she scanned quickly. High school baseball player who got disoriented during practice and tripped over second base. Possible sprained wrist, possibly dehydration, definite embarrassing moment.
Well, she could certainly relate to embarrassing disasters in high school.
Smiling wryly at that thought, she looked up and for one weird, surreal moment, could have been back in high school. Except that the man she saw was a grown-up, all-filled-out, drop-dead handsome version of Nick Kolanowski.
Even though she and Nick had been spending lots of time together since she’d returned to Everton, she still hadn’t adjusted to the change in him. In high school, he’d been the secret crush of many a girl because of his quiet good looks. She used to think of him as hiding behind his dark hair, which fell nearly to his jaw line. In many ways, he was the opposite of Jack. Soft-spoken instead of wild, reserved instead of charismatic.
In the past ten years, he’d definitely come into his own. His old shyness was gone and he carried himself with a confidence she found truly sexy. They’d been hanging out at least once a week since she’d gotten back—jogging, rock-climbing, bingeing on random Netflix karate movies, and playing endless games of Scrabble. In high school, she and Nick had competed fiercely over grades and school honors. Now it was all about scoring the most points in Bananagrams.
“Hi, Peyton,” Nick said with that quiet smile of his. “It’s us again.”
Nick’s hand rested on the shoulder of a scared-looking teenager holding his wrist against his chest. Nick was now a History teacher and the baseball coach at Everton High. The urgent care clinic was located close to the high school, so she’d been seeing a lot of Nick and his players.
As Peyton smiled at Nick and her white-faced patient, she realized the same player had been to the clinic a couple of weeks ago.
“My favorite baseball team is always welcome, though I’d rather see you guys on the field.” With a wink, she quickly checked the clipboard to remind herself of the last injury he’d presented with. A bruised foot caused by dropping a water cooler on it. The kid was definitely accident-prone. “So how is your wrist feeling, Dale?”
She led him to the exam table, which he leaned against. He was a tall, skinny, freckled boy with a shock of red hair. Maybe she should prescribe some SPF100 while he was here.
“Not bad,” he said in a very unconvincing tone. She gently drew his arm away from his chest so she could examine the wrist. The swelling had already puffed it to the size of a small water balloon.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know. I just got dizzy.”
She glanced at Nick, who was watching with close attention. He had beautiful eyes, a deep brown shot through with bronze, perfectly set off by his dark coloring and squared-off features. In most high schools, he would have been top dog. But Jack Cooper had gone to Everton, and that meant that every other guy got overshadowed.
“The on-field temp was pretty high,” Nick told her. “We kept taking hydration breaks, but it’s possible he didn’t drink enough water.”
“He seemed disoriented?”
“Oh yeah. He hit a bunt, which was great—nice one, Dale—then ran right for second base. He nearly ran over the pitcher. When he hit second, he stubbed his toe and went down hard.”
Poor Dale’s face turned bright red. “I’ve been practicing that bunt,” he muttered.
“You laid it down perfectly.” Nick squeezed his shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile. “We’ll work on the base-running part.”
Peyton jotted down a note to do some research on disoriented athletes. If Nick said they’d been taking water breaks, she believed him. He’d always been a diligent and responsible person.
Unlike his biggest rival, Jack, who’d been carefree and dazzling.
She shook aside the memory of Jack Cooper. Forgetting him had taken most of her college years. By med school, she’d rarely thought about him. But coming back here to Everton made it much harder. Especially when she ran into anyone from high school.
And Nick wasn’t just anyone. Nick was the one who’d first stumbled across Peyton in her heartbroken, post-Jack state.