Page 118 of Near Miss

Sunlight, my brain says.

Love, my heart sings.

Beckett

One Year Later

It’s a different hospital lobby. A different set of sounds. Different lighting. Different food—and if the staff are to be believed, it’s just as good as the old place.

It’s a different elevator that opens across from me.

But it’s the same beautiful girl.

Dark hair pulled back into a ponytail that swings across the back of her scrubs. She wears black ones now.

I’ve learned a lot of things in the last year, and apparently different colours of scrubs denote different things. When she’s not wearing a lab coat, she wears black ones because she spends her days messing with chemicals and sectioning livers now.

Eyes that might as well be gemstones light up when she sees me leaning against the pillar by the door.

Her nose wrinkles and she tips her head, considering, before she points at me. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“I’m not sure if you follow sports.” I give her a lazy grin, hand reaching out, twining in her hair before I gently tug down on her ponytail. “But I do hold a few records you might be familiar with.Most consecutive field goals in the regular season? Bagged that one three years ago.”

She shakes her head.

“Tons of teams I’ve never missed an extra point against?”

She shrugs, and it’s a simple gesture—but it’s a beautiful thing, because the corners of her lips flick up.

I kick off the pillar and angle my head down towards her. Kissing distance. The only one I really care about now. “Longest field goal in professional football history?”

“No.” She shakes her head one more time before she snaps her fingers. “Gatorade commercial.”

Laughter catches in my throat, and I grin down at her.

“I think I know you, too. You’re that unbelievably hot doctor who made earmuffs the best-selling merch item last year. First time in franchise history.” Wrapping my hand around the back of her neck, I lean forward, brushing my lips against hers. “You’re spending the rest of your life with that guy—pariah turned man who made kicking sexy.”

Greer steps back, holding up her hand, inspecting it under the light like she’s looking at particularly interesting tissue on a slide up in the lab. She taps her bare ring finger, brow furrowing. “Am I?”

“Say the word.” I shake my head, wrap an arm around her, and press my mouth to her temple. “Thing’s burning a fucking hole in my pocket.”

She pointed out this ring at an antique store one afternoon. Mentioned in passing it was pretty, that back before she was scribbling lines, it was the kind of ring she thought she’d want to wear on her finger for the rest of her life.

I took that pretty literally and turned around and bought it right in front of her.

It was a bit of a step backwards and forwards at the same time: old Beckett sweeping in with this gesture he thought might fixthe whole thing, erase all those years where she lived in between these lines that made it hard to breathe, and real Beckett, more in love with a girl than he’s ever been with anything in his entire life.

“Someday.” She blinks up at me, smile turning quiet. Shy, almost. “Soon.”

Jerking my chin towards the front doors, I pluck at the shoulder of her scrubs. “Where’s your lab coat? I was kind of hoping you’d bring it home. It does something for me.”

Her head tips back in laughter when the sunlight hits her face. A breeze lifts her hair, and she rasps, “You want to play doctor tonight?”

“Sure.” I shrug, steering her towards my truck. “Let’s pretend I have Victorian wasting disease and you need to nurse me back to health.”

“Wasting disease was tuberculosis, Beckett. I don’t think you’d enjoy losing all those precious leg muscles, even if it was just pretend.” She rolls her eyes, but they sparkle and her cheeks sharpen with a smile. “How was practice?”

“Good. Booted a ball 71 yards but it wasn’t fair.”

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