Page 12 of The Doctor's Surprise Family

“Wake up,” I said.

Blake stared at me. “What?”

I pinched the back of my hand. My blunt nails dug in. I knew from class you could feel pain in dreams, but this didn’t feel like any dream. Everything was too detailed, too everyday — a stack of bills on the table. A scratch on Blake’s chin.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Did Memphis fall through?”

Blake toyed with his fork. “I never matched here.”

“So you knew this whole time? You knew, and you lied?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “Or, I didn’t mean to. Or, no, scratch that. I’m making excuses. I wanted to tell you, but…”

“But? But what?” I hated the shrill note that had crept into my voice. I had to hold it together. Stay dignified. If Blake didn’t care, he couldn’t know how much I did. He couldn’t see what this meant to me, or how it hurt.

Blake shrugged in a way I’d once have found cute, all lost and helpless. Like this wasn’t his doing.

“You were so stressed,” he said. “You were having those nightmares. I wanted to wait till your match came through.”

“So you let me keep—” I felt my face crumple. My voice cracked, my lips twitched, and my eyes stung and watered. I blinked back my tears and took a deep breath. “You’re trying to tell me you did this forme?You let me believe we’d be working together, when you’ve known for weeks you’d be half a world away?”

“It sounds really bad when you put it like that.”

“How would you put it?”

Blake opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked like a goldfish. I almost laughed.

“You knew what I thought and you didn’t correct me. That’s the same thing as lying. You’ve got to know that.”

Blake sighed and deflated. “Yeah. Yeah, I knew. Sam kept on saying, you’ve got to be honest. I should’ve listened, but?—”

“Wait. Wait.Samknew?” I held up my hand. “No, don’t answer that.” Every word from Blake’s mouth, his betrayal got worse. I didn’t want to know who else had known — just Sam, or everyone? Our whole group but me? No, Joelle would’ve told me if Sam had told her.

“I never could find the right time to tell you.”

A harsh laugh burst out of me. “So you picked my birthday?”

Blake sat up straighter. “I picked a good day. I wanted to show you it’s not about you. This has nothing to do with what I feel for you, or how I see our future, or what comes next. We still have a while until graduation, then I don’t ship out for another few weeks. We can talk this all out and come up with a plan. You and me together. Can’t we try that?”

I pressed both hands to my face, trying to gather my thoughts. Blake had kept this from me. Shut me out of his life. He’d let me planmylife around a damn lie — and not just for a few weeks. Right from the start. He’d have had to apply for this before we were us. Months before Thanksgiving, he’d applied overseas. He’d let me fall hard knowing, knowing — and why had he kept going once Ididfall? He could have pulled out right up till he matched. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t. Didn’t that say it all?

“There’s long distance,” he was saying. “And I’ll get leave. And you can come visit. It’s not in some war zone. You can come, and we’ll talk, and?—”

I covered my ears. The answer was simple, staring me in the face: I felt more for Blake than he did for me.I’dhave withdrawn if I’d applied overseas, and the fact that Blake hadn’t, oh God. It hurt.

Blake took my hands and pulled them off my ears. “Hey. Hey. Don’t do this. We can work it out, right?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. Blake recoiled like I’d smacked him. I kind of wanted to, but then he’d know how he’d hurt me.

“Please, Claire. Please let me try to explain. I couldn’t risk not matching. I couldn’t?—”

“I get it.” I smiled, thin and taut, and kept my tone cool. “You’re moving on with your life, and you know what? That’s great. But I’m moving on too, and I’ll be busy. I can’t split my attention between work and long-distance. We’ve reached a natural endpoint, so no hard feelings, right?”

Blake’s expression would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been so tragic, a sort of floppy-haired kicked-puppybuh?I eased my hands free of his and I stood up.

“Wait, Claire, I?—”

“It’s really okay. You tried to spare my feelings. I get that. I do. Let’s not make more of this than it ever was.”

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