Page 30 of Someone to Watch Over Me

“What’s he do?” Gage asks.

“He’s an OB-GYN, of all things.” She makes a face that has the rest of us laughing. “Not sure how I feel about him being all up in lady parts all day.”

“Eh, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” Derek says with a smirk, knowing we’re all going to jump on him, which we do. He just laughs and holds up his hands to fend us off.

“As you well know,” Roni tells him, “some are way better than others.”

He gives her a dopey grin. “You’resoright about that, love.”

The rest of us laugh while they make eyes at each other.

They’re so damned cute and happy and in love.

“How do you guys do it?” The words are out of my mouth before I even decide to say them.

“Do what?” Roni asks, brows furrowed in confusion.

“Make it look so easy. You two, Iris and Gage, Wynter and Adrian… Where do you find the courage to try again?”

Derek and Roni exchange glances.

“May I?” he asks her.

“By all means.” Roni crosses her arms and smiles as she settles in to hear what her fiancé has to say. They, too, plan to raise each other’s children as siblings.

“If I’m being entirely honest,” Derek says, “you’d have to be crazy to let yourself fall in love again after what we’ve been through.”

Roni sputters while the rest of us laugh. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting him to say that.

“I’m serious. You’d have to be certifiably insane to risk that kind of hurt a second time. But… It’s a matter of asking yourself which is worse… The thought of losing this new person you care so much about or living without them for the rest of your life. When you look at it that way, the equation starts to feel a little less bonkers.”

Roni stares at him. “How is it possible that makes total sense?”

His smile lights up his handsome face. “Because you get it. You had to make that same decision.” He shifts his gaze my way. “We all have to make that decision at some point, and there’s nothing wrong with deciding you’d rather not risk it all again. If that’s what’s best for you, then so be it.”

“How do you know what’s best?” I ask him.

“All I know is that by the time I met Roni, I was ready for something more than what I had being Maeve’s dad and the deputy chief of staff to the president. While those things are wonderful and fulfilling, being with Roni and now Dylan, too, helps to fill the gaping wound that Victoria’s death left inside me. I’ll always miss her and wish she could see Maeve growing up, but the raw ache of that loss isn’t as intense as it used to be.”

“Just to add to what Derek is saying,” Roni says, “I wasn’t in any way ready for him when he came along.” They met shortly after she lost her young husband to a stray bullet on a DC street. “That he was willing to wait for me to be ready told me everything I needed to know about who he is and what he’s about.”

“Thank you both for sharing that.” I hesitate before I add, “This has been a tough week with Tom in the hospital and trying to deal with the PTSD his emergency resurrected. It’s been a while since I’ve been in this screwed-up place, and I have to say I don’t miss it.”

“How is Tom?” Joy asks.

“He’s doing much better. Due to come home Friday with cardiac rehab in his future.”

“And how areyou?” Brielle asks.

“I can’t stop seeing him unconscious on the floor.”

“Those memories will lose some of their sharpness in time,” Hallie says.

Her late wife, Gwen, died by suicide, and she was the one who found her, so she knows of what she speaks. She’s been seeing Robin, who has stage-four breast cancer. Hallie has been struggling with whether she can cope with being in a relationship with someone who has been given a terminal diagnosis.

“You’re right. They will.” Memories of things that happened when Jim was ill, things I thought I’d never forget, don’t haunt me the way they used to. Likewise, Tom’s emergency will fade in time. Intellectually, I know that to be true. In the meantime, however… “I’ve also learned that faulty hearts are prevalent in his family. His dad and two uncles died prematurely, and his aunt had bypass surgery.”

“Oh shit,” Derek says.

---