Page 19 of Falling Back to You

My stomach tumbled at the thought of being on a blind date with my baby sister as witness. Except it wasn’t a date. It was a . . . favour. For Ruby. That was all. I didn’t date. Didn’t believe in marriage. Not for me anyway. Not anymore.

Nate, my last boyfriend of three years, had made it very clear no man wanted a chronically ill wife. He’d stuck around for a couple weeks after the accident before dumping me when it was determined I needed rehab to relearn how to walk and the likelihood of my ever working as an ER nurse again plummeted from Possible to An Unlikely Miracle.

A reckless driver had cost me my job, my health, and my boyfriend. Too much stress, and my body gave up.

“The perfect storm,” one of the specialists had announced after another round of expensive testing.

My leg was steady enough to not need the cane today, but I slowly followed after Ruby. Once we were in the middle of the field, she instructed me into a few model positions so she could experiment with lighting and framing, and I obliged. She was in the middle of a shot when a truck rumbled to a stop behind me. Guess my mystery guy was here.

“Rotate to the left towards the sun,” Ruby instructed, clearly relishing her role. “And look forlorn.”

I snorted. “Seriously?”

“Trust the process.”

“You do know that’s what Pheebs said when she tried dying her hair with Kool-Aid, right?” Our middle sister lived for experimentation, and turning her blonde hair purple in junior high had been . . . something. Mom had peaked.

“More forlorn and less derision, please.”

Trying not to laugh, I pulled out my best sad thoughts. The ones centered around my first love. A guaranteed tear-jerker.

“Yesssss, perfect. Hold that,” Ruby said. “Absolutely stunning!”

I held. And kept holding. Seriously, how long was this supposed to take? She could have done a hundred-yard dash and still had time to grab a latte from the café. My back twinged from holding myself so rigid. “Rubes, we good?”

Crunching footsteps approached me from behind.

Too heavy for Ruby. She pranced through life like a rainbow unicorn. Must be my mystery date. This is it. Wait. Ruby hadn’t told me what to do. But I was ninety percent certain standing here like a scarecrow wouldn’t cut it.

You’re overthinking, Macy hissed in my head.

I’d moved from overthinking into a whole new zip code—panic. A patient in cardiac arrest I could handle; interacting with a strange guy I could not.

Just do it. I whirled around, and my heart jumped right over sinking and straight to plummeting. All the way down to the bottom of my laced-up ankle boots. My eyes slid shut in horror. No, no, no!

Piercing blue eyes, broad shoulders, and a backwards cap—the stuff dreams were made of.

Cal Satterfield himself.

If this was a crime scene, we’d need that tape where they outlined the collapsed victim. Yup, this was a clear case of death by a phantom.

Except the ghost choked, and a stream of water doused the front of my sweater.

And look, I was an ER nurse. I’d worn plenty of unmentionable liquids in my time. But water spewed out of a cute guy’s mouth was a first.

Pounding Cal’s back—man, he was solid—I wiped the front of my sweater. Hopefully it wouldn’t show up on camera.

“Noelle?” he rasped when he could finally talk. It was unfair how warm and chocolatey his voice was after choking on water. He could have had the decency to sound like he’d sucked on a helium balloon or was auditioning for an Alvin and the Chipmunks remake.

But no.

Instead, that gorgeous voice sent shivers down my spine. It’d been over ten years since I last heard that voice in person, and yet it still affected me.

He spit on you. You should be disgusted with him.

He’d aged well. His ocean eyes were as bright and soul-searching as ever. But I didn’t want him to see my soul. I was a mess, and the last time we’d been face to face, I’d left him without a proper goodbye.

“Cal,” I whispered, trying to wrap my brain around the familiar face in an unfamiliar body. Gone was the lanky frame and the teasing grin. Shock bathed his face, and I wished it were the good kind. Instead it was the same face he’d made in high school biology when we had to dissect a frog. The man was green around the gills, then and now. Cal the teenager was the love of my life, but Cal the man . . . He’d filled out, broad and muscled in all the right places—ever the hockey player—and that backwards hat . . .