Page 39 of The Doctor's No-Strings Deal

They sat down with their drinks, and Charlie was a little worried that Megan had chosen a hot drink rather than an iced one, knowing full well there was a less than zero percent chance she was going to throw it at him in a minute.

“Well,” she said, already fuming, “what is it you have to confess?”

Charlie got the impression she already had an idea what he was about to say, so he dove into the deep end. “My father… knows someone at Our Lady of Mercy, and he told me he pulled some strings.”

She clenched her teeth. “And you let him?”

He shook his head. “No. You can’t forbid my father to do anything he’s already decided to do. I tried to talk him out of it, but…” Honesty was going to be harder than he thought. He sucked it up and finished what he’d started. “I could have tried harder to stop him, and I didn’t. I feel terrible about it, but I didn’t feel I had much choice in the matter.”

“Did he have a gun to your head?” Megan said, her cheeks reddening in a rather concerning way.

“Not literally,” Charlie said. “But if you really knew what it was like to grow up in a family like mine?—”

“You mean one that hands me everything on a silver platter?”

This was going about as well as he had expected. “No… Well, yes, but what they take is every ounce of freedom and identity you might have built on your own. I’m not Charlie, don’t you see? I’m a Sullivan, and that’s all the matters. Nothing I do outside their plan for me amounts to anything. This is all I have.”

“So you’re telling me you’re a coward?” She was piercing with her words, and he supposed he deserved it.

He looked away from her as he answered with the truth. “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

CHAPTER 19

MEGAN

It took every bit of self-control Megan had not to reach across the table and punch Charlie in his stupid face right there in the café.

“I knew you’d be angry,” he said.

“Then why did you do it?”

“I told you. I didn’t see a way out.”

“No, not that.” She stood, and he flinched. “Why did you lie to me? Why did you let me fight and stress out for no good reason? Do you have any idea how much sleep I lost?! I worked so hard! I made sacrifices. So did my mom. You saw me every day. There was no chance you didn’t see what I was going through, but you decided to keep it from me anyway. You could have told me the truth. You could have told me it was useless. Then at least I could have gotten some god damned sleep!”

Megan didn’t know what kind of reaction it was she expected out of Charlie. She hadn’t really thought her words through. They were just an angry impulse, but that didn’t make them any lesstrue. Regardless, what she saw in him now would have been the last thing she would have predicted, given the opportunity.

He looked miserable. He looked like he was holding back tears. Part of her wanted to comfort him — the stupid part, she told herself. Why did she even feel sorry for him? He had everything. He didn’t have to work for anything, really. He could only fail up. The fact that Megan had to fight and claw just to avoid moving backwards made her want to scream.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was a woman from a poor family, and she could so easily lose everything after one thoughtless outburst. For all the freedom he claimed he lacked, Charlie never even considered her carefully balanced position, how one strong breeze could knock her down, and she would never be able to make her way back up to where he sat so easily.

Megan nodded to herself, having made the decision to retaliate the only way she really could. “No, I’m happy for you. Really. And I feel sorry for you, too. You’ll never know whether you would have gotten the fellowship on your own merits. But you’ve got it, and as long as that’s all that matters to you, you’ll probably be fine. Oh, who am I kidding?” She folded her arms. “You’re always fine. Anyway, we should reevaluate our agreement since we’ll be working at separate hospitals. You’ll probably need someone else to help relieve your stress. So we should end our arrangement to tie up any potential loose strings.”

“Loose strings?” If she thought he looked miserable before, that was nothing compared to now. All the light seemed to have gone from his eyes at once. “Are we breaking up over this? I thought we agreed?—”

“Don’t be silly, Charlie. You have to have a relationship in order to break up. As far as I can tell, we never did.” With that last cut, she walked out of the café without a single glance back.

She made her way to her locker to pack up and go home. She needed to take the rest of the evening to process what she’d just experienced, and the fact that her heart was breaking over it. No matter how tough she pretended to be, or how much she wanted to slap the man who had done this to her, she still cared about him. She still had all those happy memories of getting to know him, sneaking off with him, and going through the same stressful situations with him.

She had thought he was sharing the stress of the fellowship with her, which was why she’d been confused when he dealt with it the opposite way he’d been dealing with all the rest. Apparently, instead, he’d been dealing with the stress of lying to Megan, which made spending time with her the opposite of relaxing.

Megan slammed her locker shut, and turned to see Kayla standing behind her. “You made the right decision,” Megan said, “not bothering to apply for the fellowship. It was fixed from the start. The rest of us never stood a chance.”

It took Kayla a few seconds to put two and two together, but she did — far more quickly than Megan had in the end. “The Sullivans threw their weight around, didn’t they?”

“You could say that.”

Kayla sighed in sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Megan. I know how hard you worked for that.”

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