Page 118 of Off Plan

Rafe shook his head. “Not Beale, Fenn.Mason.”

Chapter Twenty

Mason

Searching for service…

No service found.

“Motherfucker,” I grumbled at the phone I’d propped on the dashboard, aware I sounded like Fenn. “Searchharder,damn it.”

The sky was sloshing down rain like I was at a car wash, and the sky was pitch-black. I could barely see a hand in front of me, and I’d turned the radio off to concentrate, so the only sounds were the swish of the wiper blades as they flew across the windshield and the pounding of rain on the hood of the car.

I took the exit for Cooter Key Bridge, and the traffic lights and glowing signs looked like watercolor images, hazy and surreal. I touched my brakes—Fenn’s brakes—as the traffic light turned red, and the Charger fishtailed just a little in the standing water before coming to rest in the perfect spot in front of the white line.

Figures he has the best brakes in the world, I thought with a relieved sigh, and I refreshed my phone to see if it could catch a fucking signalfinally.

To say that I was in a hurry to get home was an understatement and…

Whoa. Huh.Apparently Whispering Key had become home?

But the more I thought about it, the more right it felt. I just needed to talk to Fenn. Like, really,reallyneeded to talk to him.

Taking Gloria to the hospital had been an eye-opening experience. Up in New York, I’d gotten spoiled by how close things were. Even growing up in a small town where folks complained about how it took twenty-five minutes to get to a decent mall, we had access to EMTs who’d arrive within ten minutes—as I had reason to find out on more than one occasion. So while I’d always enjoyed my job and found it fulfilling, I’d never had a visceral understanding of how important I could be to someone, just by being in the right place at the right time.

I’d gotten it that afternoon.

Keeping Gloria (and Rafe) calm in the car, explaining her condition to the ER doctors—including the elevated white blood cell count on her last test and my concerns about the petechiae in her feet—had helped her get diagnosed with pericarditis, an infection of the lining around her heart, and put on a powerful antibiotic that much faster. I felt accomplished andneededin a way I’d never felt while working at my suburban practice.

Taffy had asked how many people I needed to be important to, and sitting in that emergency room, I’d known the answer: exactlyone.One patient I could help, one patient I could comfort, one patient I could someday save. That was exactly as important as I wanted or needed to be.

And of course, as soon as I’d realized that, I’d wanted to call Fenn and share this revelation, the same way I wanted to share all my happy and sad things with him. Except, some idiot (yeah, it was me) had deleted his number from my phone. And it was Murphy’s Law that Rafe had lefthisphone at home. And none of my calls to Beale or Taffy had gone througheither. And every moment that passed where I couldn’t get in touch with Fenn was fucking excruciating, because he’d become that important to me that fast.

For once, I wasn’t concerned about whether it wasokayornormalto care about Fenn that much. I wasn’t spiraling over whether the feeling had come on too fast to be trusted or would all go away tomorrow. I wasn’t overthinkinganyof that. Watching Gloria’s eyes fixed on Rafe’s above her oxygen mask, seeing Rafe consciously synchronize his breathing with hers, was the very best kind of gut check, and it was startlingly easy to see hownoneof the shit I worried about was important in the grand scheme of things.

It occurred to me thatnormalandtoo fastweren’t words we used to talk about ourownrealizations and decisions, anyway; they were the words we used to judgeotherpeople’s. Deep inside, Iknewhow I felt about Fenn—that he’d been the truest thing in my life from the very second we’d met, breaking down all my damn walls faster than I could throw them up, and that loving him was very, spectacularlyreal. I was done giving headspace to how other people viewedmylife. I was done avoiding risks.

Now, I just needed to find Fenn and convince him to take a risk on me, which I would do as soon as…

The ring of my phone was startlingly loud as I drove down the dark and quiet streets of Cooter Key.

Unknown caller. Could be Rafe at the hospital. Could beFenn.

I quickly accepted the call and put it on speaker.

“Dr. Mason Bloom.”

“Um, hey? Mase?”

Jesus.I huffed out a breath. “Victoria. Hey. Now’s not really—”

“I’m so excited you answered! I wasn’t sure if you would, since I’d changed my number, and um, I sent you flowers from that florist I love that does those ultramodern arrangements? But they couldn’t be delivered because you’re still in Florida or whatever, and I tried to DM you on Insta, but you didn’t answer, and I couldn’t call your family for your new address, because you know I haveneverbeen a favorite of theirs, so I wondered how you were.”

I almost snorted.I, I, I…How had I never noticed that Victoria talked this way?

Page 118 of Off Plan

Table of Contents