The Rebound Girl (Getting Physical) (28 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Whitney wasn’t an easily intimidated woman.

She’d back herself in a game of pool against an entire motorcycle gang, look Natalie Horn in the eye and tell her exactly what she thought about her so-called morality, fight this town until it finally accepted her and her friends for what they had to offer.

Those things were easy. Second nature. The right of a woman who’d forged a path through this life with a scalpel and a kick-ass pair of boots.

But
I
don’t
think
I
can
do
this
. She’d met her match, and it existed in the shape of approximately two hundred small humans—all of them trying to touch her giant rubber glob of fat.
Not
today
. Not when a scalpel and a kick-ass pair of boots wouldn’t get her Matt back.

She stood underneath a banner showcasing her face, the New Leaf logo and the name Dr. Vidra in bright white lettering. All across the gymnasium, other banners and businesses highlighted the various careers to be found throughout Pleasant Park. There was a nice old dentist to her right who had apparently been born in one of the historic homes on Main Street and was angling for free medical advice about a skin tag on his lower back. To her left, the baker who made the incredible orange dreamsicle cupcakes kept pushing the tray of samples closer to Whitney’s side.

They were nice people, friendly and seemingly happy to have her as part of their Career Day alumni. With the exception of Natalie Horn, who occasionally snuck by on silent ballet flats, there was no evidence that Whitney had been perilously near being branded with a giant red
A
on her chest.

She’d done it. She was in. Maybe it had taken a little more Jared Fine influence than she cared to admit, but the town had finally broken, had finally accepted her for who she was. All the pending approvals slipped through the red tape. All the petitions vanished overnight.

She should have been ecstatic.

She wasn’t.

What was the point in winning over an entire town when the one person who really mattered had seared her with a brand so much worse, so much more painful than a little red letter?

He’d gotten all the way to her heart. And it
hurt
.

“Is that real fat?” asked a dark-haired girl missing what looked to be about eight of her teeth. “Can I touch it?”

“I’m sorry. It’s not real. Fat is a lot more aqueous when we extract it.” Noting the girl’s puzzled look, she amended, “Globby and gushy.”

The girl poked the model, a twisted, yellow mass, and her eyes lit up. “How do you get it out? Do you cut it off? Like meat?”

Whitney swallowed the lump in her throat and knelt to the girl’s level. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard, after all. This girl had a glint in her eye Whitney recognized. Blood lust. Curiosity. These were things she could work with. “That depends on where I’m taking it from. The fat in your bu...I mean, bottom?”

The girl nodded, clasping her hands together eagerly.

“Well, that’s called subcutaneous fat. That means it’s easier to cut out pieces kind of like meat, though we use sharper knives. But the fat in your tummy?”

The girl touched her stomach.

“It’s mostly visceral. That means we can slurp it out with a tiny vacuum.”

“That is so cool.”

It
was
cool. She straightened and prepared herself to handle the next wave of students heading her way. She’d thought that talking to people would be the real agony—the coming here, the standing in front of a crowd that despised her. But the kids were unconcerned about any of the local politics surrounding New Leaf. Maybe their parents accepted Whitney only because they had no other choice, but to these tiny creatures, she was an interesting lady doctor who cut off people’s moles.

She could be the interesting lady doctor, no problem. She could even be the least-liked member of the New Leaf professional team, which seemed likely for most of the foreseeable future.

What she couldn’t be was in the same room with Matt for another minute, unable to do anything while he demolished her with his eyes. It would be one thing if he simply ignored her, erected a stone wall around himself and pretended he didn’t care. That she could handle. Hell, she was the queen of handling that.

But every time she looked up, he was watching—not with joy, not with condemnation, not with anything other than a deep, intense longing. All that, all for her, and still it wasn’t enough to carry him across the floor. She was too late. As he’d promised the night they first made love, he’d given her his heart to keep safe. And she’d crushed it.

“Do we get a break soon?” she asked Valerie, the cupcake magician.

“They didn’t tell you?” Valerie laughed. She had a deep smoker’s voice and a sheet of steely gray hair that went to her waist. A tiny waist, which, given her profession, spoke volumes about the woman’s restraint. “This is just the first wave—and these are the fun ones. Wait until we get the fifth and sixth graders. The only thing they care about less than talking to adults about jobs is, well, nothing. We’re as low as it gets. I’m lucky—I can bribe them with sweets.”

Whitney laughed, but it felt brittle, forced. She thought she’d have a chance to at least
talk
to Matt today. Every day, every hour that passed with the huge gaping void between them made her feel exponentially sicker to her stomach.

It was a feeling she’d have to get used to. Even if it killed her, sealed her fate in a glass coffin, she had to stop him from moving back in with the woman who’d taken a metaphorical machete to their marriage vows. Let her give him that much. Let her
try
.

As she watched him move through the gym, herding his class in a jacket complete with elbow patches and a teddy bear sticker on the lapel, she realized just how much she missed him. And perhaps more important, she missed who she became when he was around—a stronger, happier, better version of herself.

All these years, all those men, and no one had ever told her love was that simple.

A group of the aforementioned sixth graders came barreling up, easily identifiable from both their comparative size and the way they sneered over her table of tools—all of them carefully selected to appeal to the younger crowd.

“What’s this?” one boy asked. Based on the polo player logo on his shirt and the trendy, sideswept hairstyle inexplicably favored by this age group, she’d have bet her share of the practice he was Natalie’s son. The epicanthic folds on his eyelids were also a dead giveaway. “It looks like a chisel from my grandpa’s shed. Gross. What else do you use? A rusty hacksaw?”

“You’re actually pretty close.” She held up the tool and handed it to him. Maybe today’s efforts wouldn’t get her any closer toward filling the gaping, painfully hopeful hole Matt left behind, but she’d be damned if she was going to let herself lose face in front of a bunch of twelve-year-olds. “It’s called an osteotome. When I do a rhinoplasty—that’s a nose job—I shove this up the patient’s nose and bang it with a rubber mallet. Thwack. The bone just chips away.”

“No way!” several of the kids cried at once. Even mini-Horn let out an approving noise.

“You think that’s cool?” Today, she would win over children. Tomorrow, she could tackle Matt. Maybe. If her heart held up. With a deep breath, she held up a small file-like tool and flashed it at them. “Then you should check out my rasp.”

* * *

Matt could hear the shouts of the sixth grade class over at Whitney’s table. His first instinct—one of alarm—demanded that he rush over there and extricate her from their cruel, preadolescent grasp.

Not
my
problem
.
Not
my
concern
.

Whitney had more than proven that she could handle herself in this world. She wore a man down and took what she wanted. And then she moved on.

“Aren’t you dating that woman?” Michelle, the music teacher, sidled up and stared across the gym alongside him. Their target, the vibrant Dr. Vidra clad for once in a sensible white lab coat, held up something flashy and silver. “Would you look at that. The kids are just eating her up.”

“She’s good at telling people what they want to hear,” was all Matt would say.

It was too much to expect the day to continue on without running into her. He was partly responsible for her being here in the first place, having personally vouched for her with the school board a few weeks ago, even going so far as to ask Natalie to capitulate a little, if only as a favor to him.

Natalie hadn’t exactly been happy about it, but even she had to admit that New Leaf was growing on the community. Though resistant at first, the people of Pleasant Park liked the promise of new ideas, of new faces—and of new blood. If nothing else, they recognized the fountain of gossip gushing inside those four walls.

Even though Matt busied himself with his class and tried to keep them interested in the construction company owner and investment banker, he eventually found himself standing across her table.

Underneath the white lab coat, she wore a dark skirt and shiny turquoise blouse—professional clothes, albeit ones in the bright hues she favored. Her hair wound unbound and unruly down her back, huge loopy bracelets jangling on her arm. How a woman could look so coolly medical and mind-bendingly gorgeous at the same time was beyond him.

Also beyond him was what he planned to do about it. His body forgave, but his heart?

He wasn’t sure it still existed anymore.

“Hey.” She was the first to speak, the sole syllable breathy and warm.

He nodded once, unable to trust himself with the monumental task of speaking.

“How are you?”

Inanities—that was how she planned to do this. How wonderful it must be to call those up on a whim, to push feelings aside for the sake of polite conversation.

“I’m good, thanks.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “You?”

“Sad. Worried.” Whitney paused, weighing her next words carefully as she studied Matt’s angry gaze.

She was already playing with fire; there was no need to incite a blaze. Unfortunately, certain questions had to be asked if she intended to ever sleep at night again. Even if Matt never got past his hang-ups about Jared, she needed him to get past the ones with his ex-wife.

She swallowed a bitter laugh. Look at her—a rebound girl to the very end. She wouldn’t move on until she knew he was ready to face the world alone. With a deep breath, she asked the question burning on her lips. “How is Laura?”

“No.” Matt took a huge step backward, recoiling as if slapped. “I’m sorry. I thought I could come over here, have a conversation with you, clear the air. I was wrong. I cannot and will not talk to you about my ex-wife. Not now. Not ever. You lost that right.”

Something inside her snapped. She was guilty of many things and would go on to be guilty of a great many more, but this was one injustice from which she refused to back down.

“When has it ever been my right?” She was talking too loud, creating a scene, but she could no more stop herself from speaking than she could from trying to protect Matt. “Tell me that, please. As your fling, I wasn’t allowed to say anything because we were only temporary and you didn’t want me touching your life in any way that mattered. As your girlfriend, I had to be supportive and understanding or come across as a callous, unfeeling...you-know-what.” Too many tiny ears, too much adult interest. She lowered her voice. “I would think that now, as a woman who has to suffer all the resentment and blame you couldn’t be bothered to muster over your ex-wife, I’d finally get a say.”

Matt held up his hand.

With that one small motion, his entire classroom stilled and placed her tools back down on the table, and even made zipper motions across their mouths. Whitney fought the urge to do the same—his stern command was that strong.

“Come on, class. Career Day is over. Say thank you to Dr. Vidra for letting you touch her toys.”

Twenty-four small kids obeyed, their voices chiming a friendly thanks before they filed out of the gym. Whitney watched them go, hands on her hips, her foot tapping so furiously she probably wore a hole in the glossy plank boards.

Say what it did about her, but it felt good to have her anger back. Screw pain. Screw longing. Matt might not want to touch her toys anymore—and he might think Laura was none of her business—but this was not how their story was going to end. This was not where she gave up.

After all, she’d made the town of Pleasant Park accept her for who she was. Surely she could do the same for one stubborn, saintly man.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Why am I doing this again?” Jared looked down at the suit and tie Whitney had hand-pressed and grimaced.

“Because it matters to me.” She stood back and viewed her handiwork. Jared looked good in a suit—he always had—but Whitney was happy to note that the sight of him all gussied up did no more to her equilibrium than if he’d been wearing his usual scrubs. This was what it felt like to coexist amicably with a former lover, to work side-by-side and beg favors.

It felt like nothing.

At least, it felt like nothing compared to the gaping hole in her chest that no amount of Valerie’s cupcakes and Lifetime movie marathons could fill.

“Do this one favor, and I’ll wipe the slate clean. We’ll be strangers meeting for the first time. Colleagues. I might even let you assist me on some of the bigger surgeries.”

Jared let out a soft snort. “How generous. Are you sure this isn’t a last-minute attempt to get rid of me for good? Sending me in to pretend someone is my patient so I can look at her confidential files could get my license revoked. You know that.”

“Remember that time you had your dick inside Nancy the anesthesiologist?” she said lightly. “We’ll call this even.”

Jared’s brow lowered as he adjusted his tie. The heavy frown lines etched into his face would never fully disappear, but Whitney liked to think that they were softening a little.

“Fine,” he said. “But this is the last time you get to hold that against me. You promised.”

“She promises.” Kendra wrapped her arms around Whitney’s waist. “Though do you really think you should go through with this plan of yours, Whit? I’m not so sure throwing something of this magnitude in Matt’s face is such a good idea right now.”

Neither was she. The last thing she wanted to give Matt right now was one more barb, an I-told-you-so moment that would probably deflate what was left of his respect for her.

But what other choice was there?

“Would you do it for me?”

“Of course I would,” Kendra automatically replied. There wasn’t a whole lot in this world her friend wouldn’t do for her.

“I would too,” Jared put in. “Even if it meant you’d end up hating me for the next twelve years.”

Whitney nodded. Despite his popular reputation among the general masses, Jared wasn’t perfect, and no amount of law breaking on her behalf would change her opinion on the subject of infidelity. But even Whitney had to admit—if there was one thing this man knew, it was how to exist in a world where relationships were founded on a bizarre mixture of love and hate.

“Then do it.” She checked her cell phone for the time. “We’ll meet outside the office at thirteen hundred hours.”

Both Kendra and Jared whipped their heads to stare at her.

“What? I’m nervous, okay?”

That was the understatement of the decade. Nerves were a pre-surgery shake off, the pitter patter of her heart in the moment before Matt entered her.

These weren’t nerves. It was the earth tilting on its axis, shaking her from the last clinging grasp she had left.

Well, too bad. She hadn’t let go yet.

And if she had anything to say about it, she never would.

* * *

Matt was so grateful to finally get Laura to a doctor he didn’t mind that she asked him to wait outside in the car. It had taken the combined efforts of him, Natalie, Laura’s sister and the nosy neighbor across the street, but their collective nagging had worn her down and convinced her that she couldn’t give up without at least hearing all her treatment plan options.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

He put his feet up on the dashboard and settled in for a long wait. No reading material, no papers to look over, no phone calls to make...all he wanted to do was close his eyes and give in to a profound urge to sleep the rest of the day, week, month away. He wasn’t particular as long as time passed and eased some of the ache that settled on his soul.

A flash of black leaving the office caught his attention before he got very far with that plan. Matt dropped his feet to the floor, leaning closer to the windshield to get a better look. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that black flash looked an awful lot like the infamous Dr. Fine, dressed to kill.

The car door opened, and Matt had to look down to realize that it was his own manic grip that held the handle firmly. Before he had time to recognize that the constant ache he’d felt for the past few days had been replaced by a boiling hatred, he was halfway across the parking lot.

“What are you doing here?”

Jared turned, his heavy brows raised as he looked up to find Matt looming over him. “One could ask the same thing of you.”

The man was coolly distant—so much so Matt wanted to shake him. If anyone had the right to be outraged at the turn of events, it was him. “I don’t really think that’s any of your business, is it?”

“No, it’s not.” Jared stuck out his hand, holding it there so long Matt had no choice but to take it. “It’s nice to formally meet you. I’m sorry we weren’t able to do this under more congenial circumstances. Jared Fine.”

“I know who you are,” Matt grumbled. Still, courtesy compelled him to respond in kind. “Matt Fuller. Did you happen to see my ex-wife while you were in there?”

Jared’s brows knit. “Unless she’s an eighty-year-old woman in a muumuu or a chirpy receptionist who looks like she should still be in high school, no. Most of the office is out for lunch.”

“She might be back with the doctor.”

“The doctor is also out for lunch. Look, Matt—I don’t know how to say this without it being really awkward.”

In a voice he barely recognized, Matt asked, “Don’t you think we might have passed awkward the day I walked in to find you with your arms around my girlfriend?”

Jared backed off, clearly hearing how close Matt was to losing it. And he was close—he seemed to constantly walk the edge these days. “Fair enough. But I think you might want to ask your, uh, Laura about her diagnosis. She’s not inside there, and she doesn’t have cancer. I think you might be missing a few vital pieces of that puzzle.”

The yellow lines of the parking lot blurred in and out of focus. “How would you know anything about it?”

“Because Whitney asked me to check her records.”

He dared to say her name out loud. All was fine until that man’s lips—once a vital part of Whitney’s life—formed the syllables Matt couldn’t say out loud. “I have never punched a man in my life, but I have to warn you, I’m dangerously close to changing my views on violence as a means of solving my problems.”

“And I’ve punched more men than you probably care to find out,” Jared returned calmly. “So go right ahead.”

They stood at a stalemate for a full minute before Matt realized how ridiculous the whole situation was—a thought bolstered by the sight of Laura coming out of the café located around the corner and behind the doctor’s office.

“What’s she doing getting coffee instead of seeing her doctor?” he wondered out loud, watching as she tossed an empty paper cup in the garbage and checked her phone. He looked at Jared and back at his ex-wife, no answers making themselves clear in the meantime.

“Whitney wanted to tell you herself, but maybe you should go talk to your ex-wife instead. I think you might have a lot to discuss.” He gestured at his watch. “I should go. I have surgery at two. Can we pretend this whole conversation never happened?”

“Nothing would make me happier,” Matt said, but he was already jogging up to Laura and didn’t catch what, if anything, Jared had to say in return.

“What are you doing?” Matt took Laura’s arm as she stepped down from the sidewalk. He led her to a black bistro set on the café patio, making sure she was settled comfortably in her seat before taking the one opposite her. “You promised us you’d talk to a doctor today. This isn’t a joke or some kind of game. This is your life we’re talking about.”

“Oh, you know.” Laura’s eyes filled with tears and she waved her hand. “I, uh, just couldn’t do it.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t do it?” And why had Whitney asked Jared to check Laura’s records? There was no possible benefit to that, unless...
no
. It was too awful to even contemplate. “What’s going on here?”

Laura’s fingers trembled. They did that a lot lately, but Matt had assumed it was part of the illness. Now, he realized, it might actually be fear.

“Oh, Matt. I’m so sorry.”

“What aren’t you telling me—why are you here eating scones instead of seeing a doctor? And why do you refuse to answer all our questions about your diagnosis?”

“It’s not what you think.”

Had Jared been telling the truth? Oh, God. Had Whitney? “You mean it’s not cancer?”

Her lower lip trembled.

“Laura,” he warned, not fooled for a second.

“It’s mono!” she wailed.

Matt sat, stunned and immobile. A gust of wind picked up around him, lifting the edges of Laura’s dress, playing with her hair and painting her in the delicate image that had so long existed inside his memory. But when the wind fell flat, bringing her crashing down with it, Matt felt as though he, too, had been cast upon the ground.

“When you say it’s mono, you mean a special kind of cancer, right?” he asked slowly. “That’s a new name for it?”

Laura shook her head miserably and began playing with the bracelets around her wrist. “No. I mean it’s mono. The kissing disease. I probably got it from William, and it’s just now taking hold. The doctor says that between the virus and my stress about us and everything...”

“Us?” Matt shook his head as if to clear it. “Stress about us?” His voice was overloud, he knew, and the couple the next table over were listening with a keen tilt to their heads, but he didn’t care. How many books had he read on ovarian cancer in the past month? How many times had he delayed his plans with Whitney to take care of Laura?

How
much
of
my
life
have
I
already
sacrificed
to
this
woman
?

“It was just so hard when you left.” Laura’s voice cracked, and the eavesdropping couple scooted closer. “Everyone hated me for what I did—my dad, my sister, even my supposed friends had this way of getting quiet whenever I came near. And what with the house and trying to find a job and William dumping me...I don’t think I ever realized how much I depended on you for everything.”

“Not everything,” he said coldly.

Laura burst into tears. The woman the next table over handed her a napkin, which Laura promptly buried her face in. “And then for the first few months, you were so nice about checking in and making sure I was okay. That is, until you started dating that woman.”

Matt’s heart stopped. “Don’t you dare call her
that
woman
.”

“You know what I mean. You disappeared, you moved on without me.” She sniffled loudly. “And then I began to feel really sick and you started coming around again. The doctors really did suspect cancer at first—that much wasn’t a lie. But when the diagnosis for mono came through, I was afraid you’d start pulling away again. Can you blame me? Can you really be mad at me for holding on to whatever I could of us?”

“Yes.” He got up from his chair, feeling cold all over. “I can.”

“Wha—” Laura’s jaw fell open and she scrambled to get out of her chair.

Matt turned his back on her, trying to gather his thoughts, attempting to moderate his billowing rage into something that wouldn’t make him look like a man transformed into a monster on the street.

And then he gave up.

“I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been.” He kicked the empty chair and squared off to face her. She took a cautionary step back, and Matt didn’t feel an urge to stop her. He felt proud of that. “You cheated on me—how is that in any way not clear? You took another man to your bed—
our
bed
—on more than one occasion. And you’re the one who asked
me
for a divorce. Don’t you remember? You couldn’t pretend anymore, that’s what you said. We’d lost our connection and you hated to live a lie. You wouldn’t even try counseling.”

“I was wrong, I know that now.”

“We were both wrong.” He caught sight of the woman at the next table giving him a small fist pump, cheering him on. “You shouldn’t have thrown us away like that without even trying to fight. And I shouldn’t have stuck around as long as I did trying to make you feel better about the choices you made. Whitney was right.”

Laura had been doing nothing but manipulating him for months. And he’d let her.

“You don’t love her. Not like you love me.”

“That’s one thing you have absolutely right.” He was yelling now, channeling all the fury he’d flung so carelessly at Whitney into its proper channel for once. “I love her more than you’ll ever know.”

And if it wasn’t too late, he might have a chance to keep doing just that.