Page 23 of The Risks of Reuniting (Love Connections #1)

Chloe

Monday morning finds me lying in my bed running my fingers over the amethyst crystal necklace that Poppy gave me.

She said it was good for anxiety, and mine is through the roof.

Last night was practically sleepless, to say the least. I mean, I went through some things yesterday, and my brain could not shut off about it.

It's light outside, but Lima has a strange sort of light.

It's softer, hazier. The sun has to work to press through the clouds created by like a bazillion percent humidity, and I've yet to see it burn through at any point.

Breakfast is going to be served soon, and I'm seriously considering skipping it.

I slide the necklace over my head and let the crystal settle in amid the other chains I wear on a regular basis.

I picture Poppy's hopeful face as I press my palm against it, poking it into my sternum.

I smile softly before deciding I'm strong enough to keep moving. Poppy would expect nothing less.

A knock sounds on the door and I stiffen under my blanket until I hear Dr. Joseph's voice call a greeting.

I would never wish a dental emergency on anyone, but if he's here it means there's going to be a legitimate reason for it.

I feel a little guilty for being relieved.

I've found that having something to focus on when you're emotional is a good thing, and I'm thankful for the distraction .

"I hate to bother you before breakfast," Dr. J says when Rachelle answers the door, "but there's a man here with an abscessed tooth, and I have that special tingle in my spine that tells me today is going to be extra interesting."

I toss aside my blanket and jump up, offering a smile as I come to stand beside Rachelle. My arm aches, and I hug it against my chest, trying to pretend there's not a pink tint on the bandages where my wound leaked overnight.

Dr. J looks steadily at me. "Are you feeling up to helping this morning?" he asks.

"You heard."

His eyes flick down to my arm and he nods. "Holt has a big black eye, Cesar's lip is swollen and scabbed, and Emilia was telling everyone all about it." He pauses and the look he gives me is gentle when he says, "News travels fast in this small compound."

He knows there's more to the story. He's like part psychic or something, and I honestly believe him when he says his spine had tingled that morning.

He has an eerie sense of things to come.

His eyes are a dark brown that seems to swirl when you see them up close, but the laugh lines around them keep it from being creepy.

"Holt seemed . . . less vibrant this morning," Dr. J adds.

My shoulders sag. "Oh."

Rachelle leans toward him and comically whispers loudly, "Holt told her he's still in love with her."

He looks at me, tilting his head to the side as he purses his lips thoughtfully. "I can see it. A dental emergency will make today easier for you then. Nothing like a good distraction to keep a person from overthinking. "

I shake my head with a grin. "I'm pretending to be stronger than that." I pause. "And Holt got caught up in the moment."

"I think Holt wants to have a few more of those moments," Rachelle teases, but it's kindly meant.

I roll my eyes and move to the dresser to gather fresh clothing. "He was comforting me after the attack."

"I personally support Chloe's efforts to avoid Holt," Dr. J pipes in.

I stop what I'm doing and look over my shoulder at him, and find Rachelle doing the same. "I'm not avoiding him."

"Too bad," he shrugs.

"What? Why is that too bad?" Rachelle asks.

"It would be a boring story if she fell right into his arms, don't you think?" he answers with a grin.

Rachelle laughs and I roll my eyes before going back to gathering clothing. "We'll be there in a minute," I toss over my shoulder.

Dr. J leaves and Rachelle closes the door behind her before joining me at the dresser and reaching up to the hanging items. Her scrubs are always freshly pressed, and I smile at the image of her biting her lip over the ironing board, getting those kittens perfectly smooth.

"You did not have to tell the doctor about Holt," I say. "It's embarrassing enough that it happened, but now he'll give me amused looks over patients' heads."

Rachelle bumps her shoulder against me. "No he won't. He's a good sport."

I take off my pajamas and slide into my dark green scrubs. "What do you think about what Holt said?" I ask with some hesitation, keeping my eyes down. "You know, that he'd have married me."

She pauses in tugging on her socks and I look up to see her staring sightlessly at the wall.

"It was so raw, you know? Like, those words were pulled from a place so deep inside him that they couldn't be anything but true.

" The air feels heavier around us and I bite at my lips.

Her gaze clears and she looks at me. "It was really heartbreaking in a way.

So romantic, but so not the right way to go about it, you know? "

I nod. "Yeah, I know."

"Are you okay?"

I shrug. "That, I don't know yet."

We take turns using the bathroom and make our way to the clinic ten feet away from our front door. The commute doesn't get much better than this.

Dr. Joseph is already seated next to an exam chair with a patient, and nods at us as we enter.

"Chloe, why don't you put a clean bandage over those stitches so no germs from the dental work get in there, and then come assist me.

Queen Thing, please prep the second chair, I'm expecting another visitor before we're done here. "

I take off the soiled bandage, wipe my arm down, and wrap a long strip of steri-wrap around my forearm twice until it's covered well.

It's definitely tender this morning, but I do my best to keep from wincing.

I don't want Dr. J to send me away. I want to work.

I put on gloves and a mask and sit across from him, looking into the patient's mouth as he continues the exam.

The poor guy has one heck of a rotten tooth and a bulging abscess around it.

I can only imagine how much pain he's been in.

It breaks my heart knowing he wouldn't have had help if this humanitarian center wasn't here, and I wonder how long he's lived with the pain.

This type of thing doesn't happen overnight.

Dr. J asks the man a few questions in Spanish as I look to make sure everything is prepped, and then we get to work, with me handing the doctor tools and consulting a little on treatment.

My mind wanders and I feel my own spine tingle thinking about how Holt instinctively jumped in to protect me in a desperate moment, and how he held me close when the dust had settled.

I don't care who you are, that's pretty swoony.

My chest grows warm and sad at the same time.

"Tell me a story. Preferably the one about Holt and Chloe, and why he said he's still in love with you," Dr. J surprises me by saying.

I look up in question, but his head is down and his hands are busy inside the patient's mouth as he works.

I swallow and think about how to answer.

Dr. J chuckles lightly at my hesitance. "Doesn't have to be a long one. "

I let out a breath and smile as his eyes pop up to mine for a millisecond. "You're wrong about that. It is a long story."

The dentist I work with in Salt Lake doesn't like to have conversations while he's working, so it's been an adjustment to be with someone so chatty.

He gestures to the man we're working on. "Good news, I have time."

"Well, Holt and I dated for a year, then we broke up about ten months ago," I reply.

When I don't say anything else, he chuckles. "So much for it being a long story." I laugh too, and then he continues. "Why did you break up?"

"Oh man," I say without thinking. "That's the golden question."

"It must have an answer, or you'd still be together."

I look over my shoulder to where Rachelle is wiping down and organizing tools, and she pauses, also interested in my answer.

I can't blame her, really. I may have told her last night, but if there's a chance I'm about to share more detail, she'll want to hear it.

Makes sense – I'd want to know if she was mixed up in some sort of tragic love story.

"Holt got into pharmacy school at Chapel Hill in North Carolina," I begin. But, then I don't really know where to go and so Dr. J pops in.

"And he didn't ask you to come along?"

I shake my head and am relieved when he signals me to turn on the suction and it's too loud to talk over for a few minutes.

The patient waves his hand and I stop, and we pull our instruments out of his mouth so he can say something to the dentist. While they speak in a language I only know about three percent of, I watch and try to pick up on what the situation is.

After a few moments Dr. J tells me to adjust the suction to another part of the patient's mouth and gets back to work.

"All right," Dr. J says once we're underway again. "So, I'm guessing he did ask you to come along and you said no?"

I tip my head side to side. "That's the short answer, yes."

"Why?"

"Why is that the short answer, or why did I say no?"

"Why did you say no."

I clear my throat and adjust my seat slightly.

The nice thing about confessing all of this to Dr. Joseph is that he's basically a stranger who I will never see after our service is over in a couple weeks.

He doesn't know me well, he doesn't know Holt at all, and he won't have skin in the game.

I talked this through with my friends, family, and cousin group at the time, but they all had definite ideas, and to be honest, most of them did not agree with me. That had stung.

Maybe it would feel good to talk to a neutral third party. Although, how this was even a topic of conversation boggled me. I had not seen this coming when I signed up to volunteer.

"Holt and I were both doing four-year degrees at the University of Utah," I start. "I graduated with my dental hygiene degree a semester before he graduated with a degree in chemistry, with the intent to get a PharmD directly afterward."

We're interrupted again by noisy tools, and my mind tracks back to those early days.

Holt was magnetic from the first time I saw him at the library.

I was with Allie, and we'd had our heads bent over a presentation on proper flossing techniques when he'd sat across from us.

I'd looked up and paused mid-sentence, just staring at the man like my brain had stopped working.

He was handsome, yes, but that wasn't it.

There was something about his open expression and the way he'd smiled over at us.

He'd said something about sharing our table, but I hadn't really heard his words.

Two hours later I knew nothing more about flossing and we'd made plans for our first date.

Holt had told me later that he'd had the same reaction.

He'd seen an empty chair, took it, and looked up and saw me, and that was that.

How did you go from instant connection to broken in one year?

I turn off the suction when Dr. J motions for it, and when he looks up with raised eyebrows, I get back to the story.

"Anyhow, while he finished his last semester I got to work settling into adult life.

I got a great job at a dental office. I purchased a little two-bedroom condo, and nearly paid off the small student loan I'd had to get, and I felt like I was putting down roots for both of us.

He'd helped me pick out the condo, and I thought of it as our place – that before too long we'd marry and he'd move in.

The University of Utah has a great pharmacy school and I assumed he'd get accepted there and things would keep going on our same track. "

"But it didn't," Rachelle states sadly, giving up all pretense of not listening in, and coming to stand by me.

"He got accepted at both the University of Utah and Chapel Hill.

He'd never told me he was applying there, so it came as a shock.

But, I was happy for him and assumed he'd stay in Salt Lake, so I didn't give any thought to Chapel Hill.

When he came to me a week later and said he'd decided on Chapel Hill, I didn't take it well. "

Dr. J nods. "That would have been a big surprise."

"Huge surprise. I was out here building us a foundation to start life, and he was rejecting it to move across the country," I respond.

"Rejection hurts," Rachelle sighs.

Oh, it had hurt. Everything I'd done, I done with us in mind, and he'd acted like it was nothing to uproot everything and move. Like my career, and my house, and my family and friends were expendable. Like his dream was the right dream and I should pick that too.

But mostly it had hurt that he'd been considering this whole different plan without ever communicating it to me. I'd been in the dark, and that had made me feel like an idiot on top of being sad.

"I asked him to accept at the U and stay where we had family and friends, where I had a career and a new house, but he said he felt like North Carolina was where he was supposed to be.

It felt like it didn't matter where I felt like I was supposed to be – he was going there with or without me.

I wasn't part of the equation." The pain washes over me, still fresh, and I feel my voice locking up a little, so I reach once more for the amethyst gem and stroke it lightly.

"We couldn't reach a compromise, so we broke up. That was ten months ago."

"Had you spoken to him since then?" Dr. J asks.

I shake my head. "Not until the moment he saw me at the Atlanta airport on our way here. The universe threw us both a huge curveball."

"Wow," Dr. J whistles. "That's one heck of a plot twist."

"Yeah," I mumble.

"And he says he still loves you?" he asks.

I nod. "Yeah."

"Do you believe him?" he asks.

But before I have to answer, I'm saved once again by a patient. Two women come in the doorway, one crying and the other supporting her. Just like Dr. J said, today was going to be extra interesting.