Present Day

Mara sat in an orange plastic chair in the hospital’s waiting room, wishing she had a light sweater to combat the artificially cool air. Hours had passed. Anxiety at not knowing Jeremy’s condition, coupled with her intellectual knowledge of how bad it might actually be, made her feel like she could jump out of her skin at any moment. Instead, she sat perfectly still, occasionally allowing her lips to move with a silent prayer.

About every five minutes, she stopped herself from going to the nurse behind the desk and asking for updates. Knowing how the emergency room system worked, that nurse wouldn’t know anything and would just send her back to her chair to wait some more. The nurse had her own job to do and didn’t need a restless woman hounding her constantly.

The familiar sounds and smells gave Mara a pang of homesickness that brought tears to her eyes. It would do no good to cry about it. She’d cried all the tears she would allow herself to cry months before. This part of her life, the organized chaotic efficiency of an emergency room, no longer existed for her.

The double doors leading to the back swung open, and Ben walked through them. Surging to her feet, she stopped herself from rushing toward him and slipped her hands into the pockets of her shorts, clenching them into fists. Ben looked tired. That couldn’t be good.

“He’s going to live,” he said immediately, clearly reading the anxiety on her face or possibly in her body language. “Thanks to you.”

She started to shrug but caught herself. “That snake was so big. I knew the bites were bad.”

He nodded. “Doc said if you hadn’t have done what you did, things would have gone a lot worse.” He pulled his car keys out of his pocket. “Ready to go?” She looked at the double doors. No, she was not ready to go. She did not want to leave. Instead, she wanted to go back there and read his chart, confer with the doctors, and make sure they’d put the best course of action into play. She wanted to check on her patient, scribble notes to the nurses, and reassure the parents.

Instead, she smiled and said, “Sure.” He put a hand on the small of her back and led her to the parking lot. With the sun all but gone, she expected the night air to have some chill to it, but instead of cool evening air, she stepped into muggy heat.

Settled into the passenger seat of Ben’s car, with the air conditioning blowing in her face, she looked out the window and out into the darkness beyond the parking lot. “Where did you learn to do that to a snake bite?”

She bit her tongue on the words “Columbia Pre-Med” and instead said, “John Wayne.” She glanced at him and saw his jaw tighten, knowing he resented that she’d sidestepped yet another question. “Ben—”

“No.” He visibly relaxed and stole a glance at her. “It doesn’t matter.” He looked back at the road. “When you’re ready, I’m here.”

Ready for what? To spill the ugly truth? If she asked that he’d likely press for answers. Answers she would never give. Not in this lifetime. Instead, she looked back out the window and rode the rest of the way home in silence.

Three Years Ago

Victor walked into the gym. Even at seven in the morning, men filled the facility, utilizing workout machines or punching bags, or sparring in one of the three rings. The collective sound, while chaotic, comforted him. In the early morning, the gym still smelled faintly of pine. In twelve hours, the place would smell like feet and corn chips. Even those smells comforted him, just like the dim lighting and the sweat-soaked air. His family owned gyms all over the borough. Among a massive family empire and various business interests, they sponsored boxers and mixed martial arts fighters. His uncle Boris managed a lot of the fighters, including Victor himself. At 27 and with three championship wins, he neared retirement. He knew that once that happened, his time in the gym would be spent upstairs where his father had his main office that smelled faintly of old tobacco and muffled the noise of the gym. For now, though, he stayed downstairs, in his territory, among the blood, sweat, tears, and tape.

“Yo, Vic!”

He glanced up into the ring and saw his trainer, Joe, tying the gloves onto Anthony, one of the company’s newest and most favored to replace him as he approached the end of his career. He lifted his hand in a greeting.

“Great fight last night!” Anthony said as Joe stepped back, and he shadowboxed a couple left jabs.

“Thanks, man.”

“You want to join me?”

He laughed and shook his head, pointing to the bruised eye. “Always take the day off after a fight, Anthony. Secret to my success. I’m going to drop off this uniform and maybe go feed pigeons in the park.”

“Pigeons?” Anthony rested his gloved hands on the top rope and leaned forward. “You afraid to fight me, old man?”

He felt his neck bristle with the challenge even as he saw the teasing gleam in Anthony’s eye. He held both hands up as if in surrender. “Yeah. You caught me. The weight of my championship belts would probably slow me down in the ring boxing you and your title-less self.” He waved in his direction. “See you tomorrow. Bet you won’t be so quick to challenge me then.”

Joe, an old boxing champ from 1977, pointed at him. “Victor. Get your eye checked out. By a doctor. Do that before you do anything else today. Clear?”

Thinking of honey brown eyes and hair the color of the most beautiful sunsets, he saluted his trainer. “Already saw a doc this morning.” He walked past the ring, spinning around to face Joe. “She wants to see me again. No worries.”

As he went to his locker and unpacked his bag, replacing the items with clean clothes and filling a laundry bag with dirty items, he thought back to his encounter with Ruth that morning. It had shocked him when she had invited him to church. No one had ever done that before. He’d go through almost anything, though, to see her, including this elusive thing called church. He paused and frowned as he shoved a pair of socks into the laundry bag. He had no business pursuing her, all things considered. Why was he doing this?

He had a destiny sitting upstairs, a destiny that involved taking over his father’s empire. For now, boxing took up all his time. Everyone knew that once he retired, he’d take his place at his father’s right hand, and Ruth Burnette certainly had no business next to him there. Of course, he didn’t have to retire just yet. He could box a couple more years, buy a little more time.

He remembered the first time he met Doctor Ruth Burnette in that coffee shop. She’d turned and looked up at him, her eyes wide with shock and embarrassment over their collision, and he’d momentarily been stunned into immobility. She had long curly hair, the color of the richest sunsets streaked with orange and red and gold. He wanted to touch it, to feel the warmth he just knew it radiated. Her pale brown eyes, the same color as the freckles scattered across her porcelain skin, shone with an inner light of life and happiness. He’d realized he was staring when he saw her lips moving, but could hear nothing besides a buzzing sound in his ears.

Shaking his head, he slammed the locker shut. He’d go to church. Maybe it would be the most awful thing in the world, and all this concern for the future would dissipate by evening’s end. He carried the laundry bag to the cart in the corner of the room and tossed it in there. One of the girls would see to the laundering and return of his items. Instead of walking back through the gym, he pushed the door to the alley open and stepped out into the cold January morning. As he walked toward the street, a snowflake fell and hovered in front of his face, dancing away from him in a swirl of icy wind. He suddenly realized he hoped church wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.