Page 19 of Free to Breathe
Now look at us. Even as I stare uncertainly into my future, I would never trade a minute of the time I spent on this earth with my family. Phil and the girls? They’re my true family now. The people I’d go to war for and shed all the blood in my body to ensure darkness doesn’t touch them the way it once did.
And I’m doing that.
Scooping out the antipasto from Genoa into a bowl, I hear a car pull up in my driveway. When we built our personal homes on the farm, the firm regulation we had from Collyer’s Planning and Zoning was that we had to use the original foundations as our home sites. Ironically, mainly since I chose the location before things ever went down with Colby, my home is built on the site where a barn was originally.
Fate trying to tell me something, maybe? Fortunately, I love my home. Using the footprint from the original barn, the architect designed a stunning house with an enormous first-floor great room and a deck that overlooks the field of wildflowers interspersed with pine trees I often walk through when I need to escape the reality of my life. There’s nothing quite like losing myself in the scents of the meadow, of waning buttercups and lavender, and blooming goldenrod to remind me there’s a circle of life that started long before me and will continue long after I’m gone.
Glancing over at the wildflowers I gathered and arranged in the ceramic pitcher on my kitchen counter, I smile. I’m really a simple girl. Even in the South Carolina shit town where I was born and raised, I found my beauty in everyday things. It’s why I was so devastated when the men came into my room that warm summer night, after I had been walking along creeks in the low country. I wasn’t just taken and touched for someone else’s sick pleasure. I had my innocence stripped as well.
My granny would have taken her shotgun and put holes in some people before she’d have ever let me be carted off. I take comfort in knowing that. Since I don’t discuss my past outside the family, few know she’s why I became a baker. I wanted to honor her every day by recreating the smells so imprinted on my young brain as a child.
When we were trying to ensure our past couldn’t catch up with us, Charlie had asked me if I wanted to find any of my relatives. I looked at him and said if they could leave me to those monsters—my mother and father who sold their daughter as a sex slave to cover the cost of their drug habits—then no, I had no need for that kind of family. Even if they were blood kin to my granny.
I’ve never looked back. I never will. With the future so uncertain, I only have now.
Unclenching my jaw, I move the antipasto over to the table so Bryan and I can sit and talk. As I peek outside, I see a Mercedes pulling into my driveway and parking. When Bryan’s dark blond hair emerge from the car, I grin.
Despite the fact that he really is my Bearer of Doom, he’s become a close confidant. I suppose even when it’s Death who’s knocking at your door, you might as well invite them inside and give them respite because if they’re bothering you, they’re leaving other people you love alone. Granny would have been impressed with my manners.
With that morbid thought, I throw the door open. Leaning against the jamb, I wait for eyes hidden behind sunglasses to look toward me. “Did you bring me a gift? You know I love presents,” I call out.
Bryan scoffs. “You forget I’m not one of those people who pander to your every whim, Cori.”
I pout dramatically. “So not fair, Bryan. I’ve been mostly a good girl.” Scrubbing the toe of my Chuck against the floor, my long lashes flutter as the corners of my lips tip up in a smile.
“Yes, I can absolutely tell.” Bryan’s voice is sarcastic as he makes his way around the trunk of his car toward me. “That look on your face just screams reassurance to me.” He takes the stairs two at a time, and within seconds he’s standing in front of me, giving me a quick scan. I don’t know what my face gives away, but his raised eyebrow says, “Good, my ass. Let’s go inside.”
I roll my eyes at him before gesturing him through the door. Closing it, I can’t help but admire him. I mean, he is gorgeous, but I wonder why Bryan is wearing a full suit.
We’re just having lunch, right?
* * *
We’ve been exchangingbanter back and forth, eating the delicacies Caleb procured for me from Genoa, when Bryan sets down his fork. “I have something important to tell you.” His hazel eyes are serious.
Setting down my fork with a thick piece of salami on it, I say, “I have something to tell you as well.”
“You first,” he insists.
I shake my head adamantly. “No, you came here for a reason. You first.” Call it instinct, but I have a feeling his news is going to impact what I have to share.
He lifts his glass of water. After taking a sip, he puts it down. “I’m leaving Hopkins, Cori. I know how hard it was for you to find a program you were happy with. I didn’t want you to be blindsided.”
I gape at him, my mind reeling. Finding Dr. Bryan Moser was like finding a man: it was an impossible probability. He not only cares about the surgical relationship with the people he operates on, he cares about them personally. Case in point is him sitting at my kitchen table eating antipasto, telling me this versus sending me a cold form letter to notify me of his departure. “Why? Where? When?” These fundamental questions are about all I can get out while I feel like my chances of survival are narrowing minute by minute.
He reaches up to loosen his tie and unbutton the top button of his dress shirt. “There are too many reasons to name, Cori, but I have an opportunity here to do some good with the neurosurgery and neurology department that I can’t do with an established program like the one at Hopkins.”
I’m floundering, reeling at what Bryan is telling me. Replaying it again, my brain latches onto one word. “Here?”
“Caught that, did you?” he asks softly. “Greenwich Hospital’s program is actually a branch of Yale-New Haven, but it needs someone strong in the driver’s seat.”
“And they just offered it to you?” I yell excitedly.
His arrogant smirk reminds me a lot of Keene’s at that moment. “Would I be here otherwise?”
I jump up from my chair and give an excited whoop.
“I guess I don’t need to worry about whether or not you’ll be coming with me as a patient?” he asks dryly.
