Page 2 of Love Medley (Med Wreck Romance #1)

Chapter two

Jake

T he Whitlock family dinner takes place on the last Thursday of the month, and I’m late again. Not on purpose, but not really by accident, either.

But missing this particular dinner was not an option, although it was tempting. In the end, this choice was the lesser of two evils.

Instead, I steel myself for the barrage of criticism that awaits me.

Sam, my girlfriend of a year, thinks I’m studying, and I still don’t know why it’s so hard to talk to her about my shitshow of a family.

It’s probably a sign. But that’s a problem for later me.

After exiting my beat-up 1991 Toyota Camry (one of the many dings against me, according to my parents), I run my fingers through my unruly hair. My mother will probably have something to say about its uncombed disarray, but hey, I’m here. And in clean clothes.

Granted, it’s a white t-shirt and jeans, hardly the formal dress code they enforce. Yeah, they won’t be happy with how I look. But that’s on them. I know why I’m here tonight. I know how this will go. So when they reject me, they may as well reject all of me.

I rap on the enormous arched door, then stand back waiting, thumbs hooked in my faded jeans pockets.

The Whitlock mansion is gargantuan and ridiculous.

It towers above me in all of its glory, white columns on either side of the brick porch.

This type of ostentatious display of wealth is unusual for the Midwest, but my parents are originally from the East Coast, so maybe that’s where they get their over-the-top sensibilities.

My mother opens the door, immaculately dressed in a Saint John’s suit with her signature pearls around her neck, and eyes me.

I second-guess my decision to have dressed so casually, but it’s my armor for tonight—I may as well completely lean into my rebel persona. I’ve never been able to fit into the mold of the perfect Whitlock, so why not be the direct opposite?

“Jacob,” she says finally, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. A faint floral scent wafts towards me—her standby perfume .

“Mother.” I endure the kiss and then take a step backwards to give her more personal space. She’s not one for excessive displays of affection.

“You’re late.”

“I know.” I bite down the ingrained compulsion to say I’m sorry. I’ve never been good enough and never will be, but I refuse to apologize today. If I do, I’ll never be able to say what I’ve come here to say.

“Why you insist on wearing that horrible thing, I’ll never understand.”

My mother frowns at the stud earring in my ear as she turns away from me, stepping into the cavernous marble foyer.

There it is—the first judgment lodged against me.

A pebble in my shoe: small enough to ignore for now, but just give it time.

Instead of responding, I inhale deeply, following her into the lion’s den.

To our left, a grand staircase with golden balusters winds upwards (I only learned what “baluster” meant when my mother and my brother Wyatt argued about real estate), but we bypass it on the way to the formal dining room marked by wide-open double doors.

Even after all this time, the extravagant decor still discomforts me—the Persian rugs and heavy matching draperies are smothering in their excess.

Crystal goblets and ornate silverware fit for a royal family rest on top of the stiff jacquard tablecloth.

Nothing about this place sits right—it’s the antithesis of me.

Even growing up, I always felt like an imposter, never fitting into the one place I was supposed to call home.

How did my brothers make it look so fucking easy?

The searing shame of being the only one that didn’t measure up is a direct sock to my gut.

At the head of the table, my father sits on a walnut chair upholstered in red velvet, with my brothers Sterling and Wyatt on either side of him. Psychologists would have a field day with that one.

Unsurprisingly, my brothers are on time. Sterling, my oldest brother, raises his eyebrows at me as he swallows a bite of his salad. He’s a cardiothoracic surgeon at Blackwell Hospital who acts like he rules the operating room and the staff.

If there were a perfect Whitlock son, Sterling would be the shining example. For so long I tried to follow in his footsteps, and it took me over two decades to realize that I would never be able to. I just need to accept that.

Wyatt, the member of the family I’m probably closest to, is the youngest partner in a prestigious law firm.

While he’s not as flashy as Sterling, he’s just as impressive.

I can’t recall the last time we met up, but that’s not unusual, he’s a workaholic.

As usual, he looks incredibly stylish in his tailored navy double-breasted suit and pink floral pocket square.

Winking at me, he stabs half-heartedly at a tomato.

In one snapshot, you can see the difference between me and them—Sterling and Wyatt, groomed to a shine, every hair in place, every spot on their resume perfect.

I’m the surprise baby and the perpetual disgrace, always arriving late and never meeting expectations.

Little do they know that I’m no longer even on the same train tracks as the rest of them–I’m headed for a completely different destination .

The wrong one, according to them. But at least I chose it.

My silver-haired father looks up from his plate, his gray eyes piercing my own. Those eyes are apparently the only thing I inherited from him.

“Jacob, you’re late,” my father says. Wyatt has now busied himself with the lettuce on his plate, while Sterling has an amused look on his face, as if my arrival heralds the beginning of the entertainment portion of the evening.

While my brothers are very different in temperament, in looks they both take after my father, with their lighter hair color and straight aristocratic noses.

“Yup.” Normally, I automatically match their formal tone, but tonight, I refuse to don the mask that I typically wear with them. Why try to pretend to be someone else when I’ll never measure up anyway?

I sit next to Wyatt and whip a white cloth napkin onto my lap. For all my faults, I have excellent table manners. "But it seems like you're enjoying the salad course anyway." I’m unable to keep the slight snark out of my words.

“We started without you because you’re never punctual,” my father continues, ignoring my tone. His pastime is enumerating everything I’m doing wrong, and the list is extensive. Even at twenty-seven, the unrelenting shame that I was unable to meet his standards still burns through me.

I guess some things you never outgrow.

Out loud, I say, “Traffic,” once again sidestepping the apology that keeps bubbling to my lips .

“How’s med school?” Sterling asks in his pompous voice. I’m sure he’s relishing his obvious superiority in our shared field, and I don’t even bother to suppress my eyeroll.

“It’s med school.” I was hoping to make it to the dessert course before dropping the bomb that I brought with me tonight, but it’s not looking likely.

“You’re pretty late in selecting a specialty,” my father says, his salad knife pointed at me. Maybe he's tempted to poke me with it, right alongside his relentless onslaught. “How are you still undecided?”

“Jake’s super indecisive,” Sterling says. “You know how long it took for him to decide on a college major.”

I grit my teeth; I hate when Sterling and my dad speak as though I’m not even present.

It’s true I took an extra year to graduate from Blackwell University, but I absolutely loved being there, soaking up the knowledge like a sponge clinging to every drop of water.

I took a wide variety of classes, desperate to learn something outside of the Whitlock-approved list. Eventually I landed on psychology as a major—not my father’s favorite, but as long as I took the premed requirements, he tolerated it.

And the additional tuition for that year ate at me even though I had a partial scholarship and picked up summer jobs to offset the extra expense.

That’s a feeling I know intimately—guilt.

“Yes, that’s true,” my father adds. “You need to decide and decide soon. Choose surgery like your brother.”

Surgery. No fucking way. The fact they don’t care to know me, the true me, still stings more than it should. Ironically, I suppose if I continued to pursue the “please Dad” line, maybe I would have ended up in that field, trying to become Sterling number two.

The thought makes me gag.

The only thing I've done so far is sit down; I haven't even been served the salad course. I guess I won’t be eating, even though they’ll likely have my favorite bread pudding for dessert.

I’ll buy my own damned bread pudding.

Removing the napkin from my lap, I place it on the table while bracing myself for their reaction to my next words. “Well, I might as well get this over with. I quit medical school a couple of years ago.”

My family freezes, all four of them staring at me.

I’m honestly shocked no one has discovered my secret.

After diverting my tuition letters and all other financial correspondence to my own mailbox, I had the academic fees funneled into a separate account that I was intending to return to my parents.

My biggest fear was that someone from the school would run into Sterling and accidentally reveal my secret ahead of time.

Even though I chose this for myself, even though it’s the right call, why do I still feel terrible about it? Why do I feel like this is a copout, just a way to legitimize my “second-rate citizen” status?

“What?” My mother is the first to speak, and her horrified voice mobilizes the rest of my family.

“This is a disgrace!” my father shouts, the veins in his neck bulging in an alarming manner. “Your mother has given you a lot of leeway over the years, but that’s over.”

I love how he even throws my mother under the bus .

While my father’s words aren’t a surprise, they still hit hard.

I gave med school a try because I genuinely enjoyed human biology in college.

But the more I listened to Sterling brag about his long hours and how little he had to interact with patients—like this was some sort of prize—the more I realized med school wasn’t the right place for me.

I didn’t want to spend a decade chasing a career just because it was what my father expected, especially when what I actually wanted—dedicated time with patients—could be within reach much sooner.

And in nursing, that kind of focused connection wouldn’t be a side benefit.

It would be the job.

Still, it was easy to stay in denial during the first two years of medical school.

I wasn’t bad at it. I passed my classes, kept up the image.

But deep down, I dreaded third year—the start of clinical rotations.

I’d be in the hospital, constantly observed and graded by doctors, forced to pretend I loved something I didn’t.

Forced to smile when I just wanted to scream.

While I’m an expert at hiding my true feelings—you couldn’t survive in this family otherwise—I just couldn’t do it anymore. It was torture—knowing that I was in the wrong place. In fact, being in med school felt like being in this house. Suffocating and wrong.

But then if that’s true—why does choosing this have to feel so damned horrible? Why does something logically right feel so wrong? Make me feel like I’m wrong?

But that’s the thing about being a Whitlock—stepping off the preordained path is equal to failure. Quitting med school instead of pushing through? According to them, that makes me weak. And weakness is something my father will never abide.

Still, I refuse to give in. Even if it means that I have to live with the fact that I’ll never be good enough in their eyes.

“After I quit, I entered a nursing program," I resume evenly, as if my parents hadn’t spoken. "I graduated last week and landed a job as an RN in the Blackwell Emergency Room. I start next week.”

Wyatt is the first to break the silence. He barks out a laugh. “Well, damn,” he says. Is that…admiration in his tone? “I’ll say this for you, Jake. You know how to make an entrance.”

“And an exit.” I rise from my chair. “I just wanted to share the news with you before you found out some other way.”

“You aren’t getting another dime from me,” my father says in a menacing voice. “You are a complete embarrassment to this family. What kind of self-respecting man becomes a nurse?!”

“Me,” I say with finality.

I pretend to drop a mic as I leave the room.