Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Sam

Chloe Fisher is in town.

Rory’s words echo through my head for the millionth time. Chloe. In town. This town. The one I’m in right now. It’s no surprise, not any more than it is for me to come back. Chloe’s from Silver Ridge and her father still lives here.

So why the fuck is it getting under my skin so much? And why can’t I get her off my mind? I’ve made it a point not to think about Chloe. I haven’t let the vision of her dark auburn hair flash through my mind. I haven’t missed the feel of her fingers sweeping against mine, wanting to grab my hand but too shy to link our fingers together.

I haven’t let myself think about the pale orange-and-red freckles that dot Chloe’s cheeks when she’s in the sun too long, how her hair curls around her face at the base of her neck when it’s hot outside, or how good she looked in a bikini the summer of her senior year. She visited her grandparents the first half of the summer and came back a cup size bigger, but I wasn’t distracted with her breasts or her hourglass figure. Nope. Not at all.

Just like how she hasn’t haunted me over the years, despite me refusing to believe in ghosts. Chloe is always there, in the back of my mind. Taunting. Teasing. Reminding me how much I fucked up.

“Sam?” Mom asks, in a tone that lets me know she’s called my name before. We’re all seated in the formal dining room, with an oversized table that’s rarely used unless we’re all together like this. We were never allowed in here as kids, since Mom said she wanted at least one nice, clean room in the house when people came over. The dining room is one of the first rooms you see when you walk in the house, opposite a small sitting room. The day Mom ordered ivory-colored couches and a pale pink area rug was the day Jacob, Mason, and I were banned from going in it.

“Yeah?” I ask, realizing my fork is hovering in the air, a bite of grilled chicken halfway between the plate and my mouth. I can feel everyone exchange glances, aware I wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to whatever was being said.

“Are you all right, honey?” Mom goes on.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I shove the chicken into my mouth, buying some time before I have to speak again.

“Mason said he put potato flakes in his bloody cut,” Rory says slowly, brows pinched together. “Like the ones from the box.”

“Why?” I ask, still chewing my chicken.

“I looked it up online and it said it would stop the bleeding.” Mason holds out his arm, showing off a nasty-looking scar on the inside of his left arm. I know enough from working in trauma to recognize a knife wound when I see one.

“Please tell me you’re joking.” I set my fork down and reach for my glass of water.

“It worked.” Mason runs a finger over the dark line on his arm.

“And it didn’t get infected?” I ask incredulously.

“I didn’t say that.” Mason raises his eyebrows, and we laugh.

“You know you could have—”

“Called, yes, I know,” Mason huffs.

“Even I can get you antibiotics,” Jacob goes on. “My patients are animals, so you’d fit right in.”

“Hilarious,” Mason spits, and Rory looks at me, silently laughing. It’s a bit of a running joke between the four of us. Rory is a nurse, I’m an anesthesiologist, and Jacob is a vet. Mason is the only one of us who didn’t go into medicine, and we love to give him shit about it.

“Got any good OR stories?” I ask Rory, winking. With us being the only two in human medicine, and both working primarily in operating room settings, it’s easy for us to dominate the conversation with our most recent war story, dealing with difficult patients or going into the very real topic of losing patients, which is something you’re never quite ready for, no matter how much they prep you for it in school.

When I was working general surgery, we had more success stories than not, but now that I’m in trauma, our “success stories” might mean someone pulling through but with life-changing injuries that require months if not years of therapy to get back to just a slice of normalcy.

“Oh, I do!” Rory cuts into her chicken, laughing at the thought of whatever she’s about to tell us. “It was our first scheduled surgery of the day, so we had the guy come in at five AM. He showed up half an hour late and smelled like alcohol so strong I felt drunk just standing next to him. He had dried vomit on his chin and shirt, and when we asked if he’d been drinking, he flat-out denied it. Then his wife showed up demanding we go through with the surgery because they already put a deposit down or something that didn’t even make sense. She was screaming, like literally screaming at the poor intake nurse.”

“Gotta love when family members get involved like that,” I say with a laugh.

“They’re the best.” Rory rolls her eyes. “Dr. Jones came out and tried to talk some sense into them, explaining why he won’t operate on someone who was clearly drinking right before surgery due to safety concerns, and the woman lost it even more. She threw a decorative vase from the end table in the waiting room at him, and we had to get security to escort her out. The drunk patient—who really needs his gallbladder removed—stumbled along behind her and then threw up all over the hallway right outside the OR waiting room.”

“Lovely,” Mom says with a grimace. “God bless you two for going into your line of work. You know I don’t even like the sight of blood.”

“You’d hate my job then,” Mason quips. He can’t say much about his current case, but we know he’s dealing with some sort of child sex trafficking ring. It takes a lot to unnerve me, but things dealing with violence against children gets to me, just like the two children we treated whose own parents were responsible for what happened.

“What about you?” Rory asks me. “You don’t get too many crazy people anymore, do you?”

I shake my head. “A good majority of the people brought into the trauma center aren’t even conscious. Family members can be irate, but it’s usually because they’re in shock and don’t want to accept what happened to their loved one. Their misplaced anger is understood. We had an older man a few weeks ago lose it when we said he had to respect the wishes of his wife’s advanced directive, which had DNR orders.”

“That’s tragic,” Mom says, shaking her head.

“And you wonder why I chose to work with animals,” Jacob grumbles.

“You’ve had some interesting owners to deal with, haven’t you?” Dean asks. “Rory told me about someone getting pissed you couldn’t reverse-neuter their dog.”

Dad laughs. “That crazy lady still leaves one-star reviews all over F******k.” We all laugh and continue laughing over stories of difficult or just plain stupid people we’ve dealt with over the years, but my mind shifts back to Chloe.

I should have asked Rory what else she heard, but it’s too late now to bring her back up into the conversation without it being obvious. Is Chloe in town with anyone? She was reportedly dating Charles Baldwin, a famous actor who stars as the main character in Chloe’s book-to-TV-show series.

And why is she here? To get away from the flashing cameras and prying eyes in LA? To bring home a guy to meet her father? But more importantly…why the fuck does that last question make me feel uncomfortable?

I don’t care. Not anymore. Chloe isn’t mine. She never was. I’m happy with how things are going in my life, and now that Stacey and I are officially over, I was looking forward to casual sex with a different woman every night. No strings, no obligation, no chance of getting involved and ultimately hurt.

And the best part is then I won’t hurt anyone. I’ve been upfront with anyone I take home, making sure they have no expectations. I won’t leave them broken and alone, too naive to admit I was running from myself and my own insecurities at the time.

But that was the past, and I doubt Chloe has even paid me even the smallest thought. She’s probably changed now and running into her again would be a disappointment. I miss the old Chloe, and there’s no way years of living in LA, walking red carpets, and signing seven-figure book deals wouldn’t change a person.

“Are you guys going out on the lake again tomorrow?” Rory asks.

“In the morning,” Jacob tells her. “It’s supposed to storm later in the afternoon, though, so we’ll have to wait and see. You want to come?”

“I do!”

“Are you bringing Adam?” Mason asks with his mouth full, and Mom glares at him.

“No,” Rory rushes out and looks at Dean. “We’d love a few baby-free hours together.”

“So you can work on baby number two?” Mason teases.

“Let’s hope not in the boat,” Dad says with a grimace.

“If you’re so eager to have another baby in the family, you have a kid,” Rory says pointedly, and right on cue, Adam starts crying. Rory makes a move to get up, but Dean stops her, saying he’ll get the baby.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were half a dozen mini-Masons running around already,” I say.

“Same can be said for you, you whore,” Mason retorts, and Jacob laughs.

“Are we going to Silver Lake or all the way to Lake Michigan?” Rory asks, ignoring our bickering.

“Silver,” Jacob answers. “By the time we go to Lake Michigan, it’ll be storming, and I really don’t want to get stuck out there—again.”

“The boat is new,” Dad grumps, offended when we insult the old clunker of a boat we had before.

“The lake is hot as fuck,” Mason warns Rory, and Nana Benson swats him on the back of the head.

“Language,” she hisses. “There’s a baby present.”

“It’s not like he can—” Mason starts and then turns his head down. “Sorry, Nana.”

“It is hot out there,” I agree and take another bite of food.

“Good,” Rory says. “It’ll be fall before we know it and we'll be missing the heat of summer. And then we’ll be buried under snow. Though it’s not as bad in Eastwood as it is here. Funny how being just a few hours south makes a big difference in the snow.”

“If a transfer to Miami comes up this winter, I might just take it,” Mason tells us.

“No, you won’t,” Mom says right back. “That’s too far.”

“Did you forget I spent two years in Arizona?”

“No, I didn’t at all. I only saw you three times those years you lived out west.”

“I was undercover,” he reminds us. “And it paid off. We got the bad guys.”

“What time are we going out?” Rory asks, taking the baby from Dean so she can nurse him.

“Seven?” Jacob suggests and everyone shudders.

“Why would I voluntarily get up at seven?” Mason looks at me, knowing I get up early for work a lot too. “Nine.”

“Fine,” Jacob huffs. “Nine it is.”

*

“I think the storm is rolling in faster than we expected.” I twist in my seat, beer in hand. We’re in the busy part of the lake today, and it’s packed with people doing just the same as us. Saturdays are always busy, but with school starting next week, I think everyone is trying to get out and enjoy one last hurrah before going back to the grind.

I used to live for summer, and it seemed the older I got, the faster summers went by. Then I got into med school and summers were a thing of the past.

“It is,” Dad says, looking at the weather radar. “We have time for one more lap around and then we should head back. It’ll take a while to cross the lake.”

Since it was so busy today, we had to park and dock on the other side of the lake, the “quiet part” reserved for fishing and kayaking. It’s a no-wake zone, so it takes a long-ass time to idle through the water.

“Who’s up?” Dad asks, and Mason and Rory play Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who gets to go on the tube once more. Rory wins, and I’m pretty sure Mason let her. We’re all big softies when it comes to our little sister…even though she drove us crazy when we were kids.

The gray clouds look like they’re starting to clear up when Rory climbs back onto the boat, but the radar tells a different story, and I’d rather not get caught in a thunderstorm on the water. The boat ramp will be all backed up by then, with people clambering to get loaded up and out of the storm.

I pop the top on another beer and sit next to Rory in the back of the boat. I don’t drink very often, both because of being on-call throughout the week and because I’ve gotten pretty damn dedicated to working out this past year. It’s been a good distraction and the perfect way to blow off steam when I have a rough day at work.

“I don’t even like beer but that looks good,” she huffs.

“Can’t you have a little?” I ask.

“I can, and I had like half a glass of wine the other night that pretty much made me drunk,” she laughs. “I’m going to nurse Adam as soon as we’re home, so no booze for me. My boobs hurt.”

“But they look good.” Dean playfully elbows her, and she giggles.

Taking a long drink of beer, I lean back and enjoy the breeze on my face as the boat gets going. It’s hotter than hell out here, and with the storm approaching, it’s getting humid. The sun is still beating down on us for now, and once we hit the fishing area of the lake, the heat will get to us all, I’m sure.

“You going to see your girlfriend later?” Mason asks Jacob.

“I don’t have a girlfriend, dumbass.” Jacob finishes his drink and tosses the empty bottle into the little recycling bin we have on board.

“Ah, right. Mr. Ed is your boyfriend.”

“Hilarious,” Jacob deadpans, knowing his lack of reaction will only piss Mason off even more.

“Are you dating anyone?” Rory asks, trying to come off as casual. “I have some single friends if not.”

“No,” Jacob tells her. “You are not setting me up with anyone, and don’t all your friends live in Indiana by you now?”

“Yeah, but maybe you’ll fall so madly in love you’ll want to move!”

Jacob cocks an eyebrow. “And leave my own practice? She could come here instead.”

“Maybe, but you’ll never know if you don’t get out there and try.”

Jacob looks at me and sighs. “You have two other brothers who are both still single, you know.”

“Yeah,” Rory agrees. “But I’m going with the brother I have the best odds to match someone to. Mason is, well, Mason, and Sam is getting old yet refuses to believe it.”

“I’m the same age as your husband,” I remind her.

Rory looks at Dean, making a face as she slowly nods. “I know, and trust me, I remind him all the time how lucky he is to snag a younger woman.”

“So much younger,” Dean says dryly as he puts his arm around Rory. “And I’m going to risk siding with your brothers for once,” he goes on, looking at Rory. “Quinn used to try to set me up all the time and it was annoying,” he says, speaking about his own sister. “Really annoying.”

“Fine,” Rory huffs. Yawning, she rests her head against Dean’s shoulder. I slowly drink my beer, watching the lake whiz by, and the hot air slaps us in the face when we slow to make our way through the other part of the lake.

Rory pokes me, getting my attention. She points to a coastal-style house along the lake. It has a private dock, and a woman is lying out on it, long legs stretched out on her lounge chair. Her dark red hair is gathered up in a messy bun on the top of her head, and she has a book open over her face, shielding her eyes from the sun.

“I think that’s Chloe!” Rory whispers, though there’s no way the woman on the dock can hear us. Almost choking on a mouthful of beer, I cough, sputtering to turn and inconspicuously stare at the woman on the dock.

My heart skips a beat in my chest as my eyes linger on the woman on the dock. It’s been years since I’ve seen her, yet I still instantly recognize her.

It’s Chloe.

I’d recognize that auburn hair anywhere. I run my eyes up her long, lean legs—which she used to complain made her look “gangly”—and feel a tug on my heart that I wasn’t fucking prepared for. I want to jump off the boat and swim to her, telling her everything I should have said years ago. And I also want to drop to the floor of the boat and go by unseen so I can put this all behind me and continue living my life in denial.

“What makes you think that?” Dean asks, thankfully, since I’m still not able to find my voice.

“Her dad lives in that house,” Rory says, continuing to whisper. “She bought it for him a few years ago.”

Right as we’re passing by, Chloe sits up, blinking in the bright sunlight. It’s too late to make a move, so I just sit there, frozen like a deer in headlights. Would Chloe even recognize us after all these years? I’ve hardly gone a day without her creeping into my mind. Have I even crossed hers once?

Chloe reaches down and picks up her sunglasses from the dock and puts them on. She’s smiling, I can tell from here, and stands, bringing her phone to her ear.

Fuck, she looks good, and I feel like I did the summer I turned eighteen and Chloe went boating with us. I was so attracted to her it was hard to be around her. She was sixteen. I was eighteen. I knew I couldn’t pull her around to the side of the boat and kiss her like I wanted to, and as a horny teenager, the sight of her in a yellow bikini was enough to get me hard. I avoided her the best I could, and she cried the next day, thinking I didn’t want to be her friend anymore.

If only she knew.

Chloe brings one hand to her face, shielding the sun from her vision, and looks out at the lake. Rory makes a move to stand and wave to her, but Chloe turns at the last second. Relief washes over me, quickly followed by disappointment, like she slipped through my fingers all over again.

It’s been years since I’ve seen her in person, and it might be years before we’re face-to-face again. I should have called out, driven the boat over to her dock and at the very least forced an awkward hello.

But it’s better we didn’t. Move on and put it behind me. Because I’ve moved on just like Chloe has…though who the fuck am I kidding? Not even I believe that lie.