No matter how hard he tried, Drew couldn’t get his heart rate to slow down. It hammered against his rib cage, reminding him of that time he drank six shots of espresso while cramming for a final. Evidently he didn’t need caffeine to get this effect; all it took was unintentionally admitting to London how he’d felt about her all those years ago.
Why was he obsessing over this? Fifteen years had passed. They’d both gone on to build successful careers and live separate, fulfilling lives. It shouldn’t make one bit of difference that he’d finally owned up to the fact that his teenage self had been in love with her.
So why did his damn heart still feel like a tambourine inside his chest?
The Uber that Drew had insisted they take back to his apartment pulled up in front of the entrance. A line of people wrapped around the building, no doubt waiting to get into the noodle restaurant on the ground floor. Drew didn’t understand the hype, but apparently some celebrity had talked about it on Instagram or TikTok. That was all it took for an unknown commodity to become a household name these days.
“Maybe next time we should just come back to your place and order some of these noodles,” London said as they walked past the line. “Although we probably wouldn’t eat until midnight.”
“As a resident, I have a direct line to the building’s concierge.” He waited for several people to clear the door before he and London entered the building. “I can have food from any restaurant on the property delivered right up to my apartment and bypass the long lines and wait time.”
“Hmm,” she murmured, sounding impressed. She leaned closer and whispered into his ear, “You. Me. Noodles. Naked. That sounds like a date.”
“That is not a date,” Drew said. “That will happen, but it would not count as a date.”
“Does a date with Drew Sullivan end with us getting naked?”
“Hell yeah,” he said.
“That’s what matters. Let’s go and do that now.”
Her playful, teasing tone eased the anxiety he’d been grappling with. London wasn’t acting any differently after what he’d let slip a little while ago, so he could stop stressing about it. Of course, he now had to grapple with the fact that she knew how he’d felt about her back in high school and it apparently hadn’t changed anything for her.
They turned the corner, and Drew’s footsteps halted at the sight of his uncle Elias standing in front of the building directory.
“E?” he called.
Elias spun around, his eyes bright with his smile. Drew’s joy upon seeing him in the flesh was visceral. He rushed over and brought him in for a hug.
“What’s up! It’s good to see you, man!” Drew said, clamping him on the back.
“You too.” Elias tightened his arms around him before letting go. “You’re looking good.” He pointed at the directory. “But you didn’t tell me you were living in a shopping mall.”
“It’s called a mixed-use building,” Drew said.
“It’s a mall,” Elias returned.
Drew chuckled as he gestured to London. “E, this is London Kelley. We…uh…went to high school together. London, this is my uncle Elias, although he likes to tell people he’s my brother.”
“Because no one believes I’m old enough to be his uncle,” Elias said. He extended his hand to her. “You’re the one who’s the doctor, right?”
“I am,” London said, clearly surprised. So was Drew.
“Doreen mentioned you a few times over the years,” his uncle continued. “She would call you that pretty girl who was just as smart as my nephew here.”
Elias looked pointedly between London and Drew. His brow dipped slightly before his eyes widened with sudden awareness.
“Uh, you know, I was going to bunk on your couch for the night, but maybe that hotel across the street would be better,” Elias said. “They have a rooftop bar and pool situation that’s worth checking out.”
“No. No, don’t,” London said. “I was on my way to pick up my car from the hospital so that I can head home.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Yes, I was,” she stated more firmly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Damn. He knew there was no way his night could continue on the path it had been headed prior to finding Elias waiting for him, but still. Damn.
Drew took out his phone. “I’ll call you an Uber.”
“Put that phone away. The hospital is only three blocks from here,” she said.
“But it’s almost nine o’clock.”
“I’m a big girl, Drew. I can handle a short walk by myself, even after dark.” She held her hand out to Elias again. “It was lovely to meet you. Although we probably did meet back when Drew and I were in high school.”
“I still remember the speech you gave at graduation.”
London beamed. “That was a pretty memorable speech, if I do say so myself.”
“Legendary.” Elias smiled.
Drew looked between the two of them. Was his uncle flirting with his…his hookup partner?
“If you won’t let me call you an Uber, you can at least let me walk you to the hospital,” Drew said. He looked to his uncle. “I’ll text you the code to get into my place, E. It’s on the twenty-second floor. Apartment 2209.”
“Would you quit this chivalry nonsense,” London said. “I’ll be fine. Enjoy your time here, Elias.”
And then she turned and walked back the way they came. Drew couldn’t tear his gaze away from her. Even after she’d rounded the line of customers and exited through the building’s double doors, his eyes remained focused in that direction, as if she would change her mind and come running back. He would put Elias up in a hotel suite for the night, and he and London could pick up where their plans had left off.
“Shit, man, why didn’t you say something?” Elias said, smacking Drew in the chest.
“Me?” Drew said. “Why didn’t you text before you left Dallas?”
“It’s called a surprise,” Elias said. “But if you had told me you were going to be otherwise occupied in the evenings, I would have known better than to just show up unannounced.”
“Well, you did say you would be stopping by on your way to your camping trip,” Drew said. “I just didn’t remember it was this week.”
“Because the trip was originally planned for next week, but there was some kind of mix-up and they offered me and my friends a bigger cabin if we agreed to come a week early. But I could have gone straight to Big Bend if I knew I’d be interrupting…well, that.” He hooked a thumb back toward where London had gone. “Damn, Drew. Even I would tell me to get the hell outta here if I were you.”
Drew chuckled, shaking his head. “You don’t want to know how close I came to doing that.”
“You should at least go make sure she’s okay. You keep looking back for her.”
“I should,” Drew said. He sent London a quick text, telling her that he was on his way. But she responded just as quickly, letting him know that she was already at the crosswalk across from the hospital’s parking garage.
“Too late,” he said, putting his phone away. He picked up the duffel bag at Elias’s feet and wrapped his other arm around his uncle’s shoulders. “Now that you’ve fucked up my plans for the night, let’s get drunk.”
They took the elevator up to the twenty-second floor.
“I’m not sure if you knew this when you mentioned it downstairs, but you actually do have to sleep on the couch,” Drew told him as he deposited the duffel on the coffee table. “Trident is using the spare bedroom as a conference room.”
“You want me to show you where I’ll be sleeping over the next few days?” Elias asked. “You could put me in the bathtub and this place would still feel like the Ritz compared to those cabins.” He walked over to the expanse of windows and let out a low whistle. “It’s unfair for one man to have such a great view all to himself.” His uncle looked at him over his shoulder. “You are living here alone, right?”
“Technically,” Drew answered.
Elias turned around fully and crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for further explanation. He wasn’t getting anything more.
“Don’t ask,” Drew said. “And don’t try to make it into something it isn’t. London and I reconnected at our class reunion a couple of weeks ago, and she happens to work at Travis County Hospital, where Trident is working. We’ve just been hanging out.”
He skipped the part about their being naked most of the time they hung out, because his uncle didn’t need to know that. Of course, Elias likely already expected it, given his reaction to seeing Drew and London together.
He went over to the refrigerator and grabbed two bottles of a local IPA he’d picked up from the gastropub downstairs. He brought the beer over to where Elias still stood, looking out the window.
“What the hell is this?” his uncle asked when Drew handed him a bottle.
“Try it before you turn your nose up at it. There’s more to life than Budweiser.”
“Yeah, it’s called Bud Light.” He took a swig from the bottle and grimaced. He swallowed and took another sip. He looked at Drew out of the corner of his eye. “Whatever,” he muttered as he tipped the bottle back again.
Chuckling, Drew took a sip from his own bottle before he motioned at the window. “You know, there are some pretty nice condos in Deep Ellum where you could have a view like this all the time. Just say the word and my real estate guy would have you moved in.”
“No thanks. I’ll stick to my little hovel in North Dallas. Move me to Deep Ellum and the next thing you know I’ll be drinking weak shit like this every day.”
Drew could only shake his head. They both knew that he would offer to buy Elias a new house, because he always offered to buy his uncle a new house. They also both knew that E would turn him down, because he always turned him down.
Drew figured if his uncle was ever in true financial need, he would push his pride to the side long enough to come to him. Maybe.
They walked over to the couch and plopped down, simultaneously stretching their legs out and crossing their ankles on the coffee table on either side of the duffel bag.
“You gonna admit that you and the pretty doctor are doing more than just hanging out?” Elias asked.
“Nope,” Drew said.
“That’s fair.” His uncle nodded. “Not my business anyway.” He took a long pull on the so-called weak beer. “How’s the work you’re doing here in Austin going?”
“We’re trying to save a state-run hospital that is so far in the red that it would have been shut down years ago if it wasn’t publicly funded.”
“In other words, you have your work cut out for you,” Elias guessed.
“Yeah.” Drew sighed. “We’ve got maybe another week of the audit, which means the hard part is about to start.” Drew looked over at him. “We have to make recommendations about what should be cut from the budget. Do you continue to fund the in-house lab, the nursery for employees’ kids, the nutrition program? Not all of them will survive.” Drew tipped his bottle back. “I don’t even want to think about it right now.”
“Well, I have something you probably want to think about even less,” Elias said.
Drew closed his eyes. “Don’t start.”
“You can’t put this off any longer, Drew. You’re here in Texas for the first time in a year. And you’re less than two hours away from Hye.”
He looked over at his uncle. “It’s not as if I’m on vacation, E. I’m working.”
“Are you saying you can’t afford to take a single weekend off to go box up your mom’s house? You don’t even have to put the stuff in boxes. The Realtor left color-coded stickers. Green for keep, yellow for donate, red for trash. She’ll take care of everything, but she needs some guidance.”
Drew released a deep groan as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. He cradled his head, roughly massaging his scalp. He flinched as Elias’s hand gripped his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“I know this isn’t easy, Drew. Nothing about this process has been easy. But it has to be done.”
“Why?” he asked, looking back at his uncle. “I own her house. Why can’t I just leave it as it is?”
“Because you know damn well that isn’t what Doreen wanted. She left instructions—”
“For it to be used as a transitional home for domestic violence victims. I know,” Drew said.
Because she had been one.
Drew knew hardly anything about his dad, and his mother never talked about him, but Elias had remembered enough to give Drew some insight into just how awful that motherfucker had been. Elias had been eight years old when Drew was born, and was being raised by his older sister after their parents had been killed in a house fire.
Over the years, his uncle had shared bits and pieces of the terror Drew’s mother had escaped the night she’d packed up her little brother and her newborn baby and left her abusive boyfriend. She’d found her way to a shelter for domestic violence survivors—the Clubhouse, as his mom had nicknamed it for Elias’s sake.
After eight months, Drew’s mom was offered a home in a safe neighborhood that cost next to nothing in rent. It allowed her to afford childcare while working and going to school. That transitional home, as Drew later learned it was called, had been the key to his mother’s being able to break free and build a new life for him and Elias.
As of today, Drew had funded more than a thousand transitional homes around the country. He’d hired a Realtor whose sole purpose was to coordinate the purchase and renovation of foreclosed homes that could be donated to area shelters as transitional housing.
But Drew also knew that Elias was right. He could buy a million homes around the country, and his mother would still be upset at the thought of her house sitting unused when it could provide shelter for a family escaping the same kind of abuse her own family had faced all those years ago.
Drew dragged his palms down his face.
“Let me talk things over with my team,” he said to his uncle. “If I’m going to be absent for a few days, the lull between audit mode and recommendation mode is probably the best time for that to happen.” He looked back at Elias again. “I can’t believe I wasted my good beer on you.”
“See, I would have thought you’d be more upset about that pretty doctor leaving early for the night than about the beer.”
Drew shut his eyes. “Don’t remind me. I just might make you sleep in the bathtub.”
Elias threw his head back and laughed. Drew had no choice but to join in.