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Steve turned and glanced her way. “Hey.” His Alabama accent making the word sound longer than three letters.
“Hi,” she said.
Steve stayed on the porch, but Baxter bounded over to her. For an old dog, he had a lot of bounce.
“You had company.” Steve motioned to the canine who was leaning against her leg. “He was waiting on your steps.”
“Really?” Della knelt down and looked the dog in the eyes, confirming he was okay. Had Chase not put the dog inside?
She felt Steve studying her. “He belongs to Chase.”
Steve leaned back against the porch rail. “Yeah, I know.”
“You do?”
“Remember, I knew where his cabin was? He had the dog then.”
Yeah, she did remember now and could kick herself for asking. Steve had spotted her there with Chase. They hadn’t been doing anything, but Steve had been hurt.
And she’d felt like shit because of it.
“I heard you went to a murder scene,” Steve said.
“Yeah.” Della looked up to the moon hanging low in the sky. Silence filled the night and the distant campfire smoke flavored the cool air.
“Do you want to talk?” he asked.
She looked back at him, and her panic must have shown.
“Not about us,” he continued. “I mean, I know we need to talk about that sooner or later, but right now, I meant about the scene.” He shuffled his feet. “We used to talk about things like that.”
She looked at him and her heart skipped a beat with her next thought. We used to talk about a lot of things. And right then another painful truth hit. Steve was just another thing in her life that had changed. Yet here he was, not trying to pressure her, just offering to talk, to listen. To help.
Chase’s words echoed in her head. Not everyone ends up together. You still have a choice.
“It had to have been hard,” Steve said.
She dropped on her backside and leaned against the front of the cabin. Baxter dropped down beside her. “It was,” Della said.
“But this is still what you want to do as a career.” He stepped closer. “Why would you want to see stuff like that?”
She looked at him. “I don’t want to see it, I want to stop it.”
He sat beside her, but not so close they touched. She recalled sitting out here on the porch with him so many times. Feeling so … scared of what she was feeling.
“I don’t get it.” He picked up a piece of pine straw off the porch and started twisting it. “It hurts you, but you still want to do it.”
“But it feels right when I find the person responsible. Doesn’t it hurt you to see someone sick?”
He almost smiled. “Touché,” he said. “I guess I hadn’t looked at it like that, but you’re right.” There was silence. The night noises echoed around them. “I saved my first life while I was in Paris.”
No, I was your first. He’d given her a transfusion that had saved her life, but bringing it up felt too personal somehow, so she let it pass.
“How did you do it? Save the life?” she asked.
“A were came into the clinic I was assisting at. The doctor was out on a call. He had internal injuries, was bleeding out. I had to operate to stop it. I was scared he was going to die on me. But when he didn’t, it was … I don’t know how to explain it, but it was a powerful feeling. I’ve never been surer about wanting to be a doctor. It was like being validated.”
“You’re going to make a great one.” Della recalled what Chase had told her about her uncle.
