both their sakes, he’d been right to take the job in Nashville. She might not realize it yet, but he’d done her the greatest favor of her life.
* * *
“You don’t seem yourself today.”
Savannah glanced up at her nurse supervisor, who also happened to be one of her dearest friends. Should she tell Chrissie the truth?
If so, how much of the truth?
The man I thought I was spending the rest of my life with told me last night that he’s moving two hours away? Or, I’m pregnant by a man I was crazy about but currently just want to strangle?
Neither seemed the right thing to say at work, where she had to hold it together and not cry out her frustrations.
“I’m okay.”
Chrissie’s brow lifted. “You usually walk around as if your feet aren’t affected by gravity. I’ve not seen you smile all day. So I’m not buying ‘okay’.”
Savannah gave a semblance of a smile that was mostly bared teeth.
Chrissie winced. “That bad?”
Savannah nodded. “Worse.”
“You and Charlie have an argument?”
Had they argued? Not really. More like he’d told her he was moving and she’d verbalized that they were through.
“I heard he turned his notice in yesterday. I wasn’t going to say anything until you did, but you’ve looked so miserable today that I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”
There it was. Confirmation that he was leaving. Everyone knew. Charlie was leaving her.
“I’m not sure what to say. My boyfriend—former boyfriend,” she corrected, “is moving out of town. I was shocked by the news and haven’t quite recovered.”
Chrissie’s expression pinched. “You didn’t know?”
“You probably knew before I did.”
Her friend’s eyes widened. “He hadn’t mentioned he was considering a move to Nashville?”
Savannah shook her head. “Not even a peep.”
Chrissie looked blown away. “What was he thinking? He should have talked such a big decision over with you.”
Maybe her expectations hadn’t been unfounded if Chrissie thought the same thing as she had. What was she thinking? Of course he should have mentioned the possibility of a move. They’d been inseparable for months. Her anger was well founded.
“Apparently not.”
“You said ‘former boyfriend’,” Chrissie pointed out. “You two are finished, then?”
Savannah had to fight to keep her hand from covering her lower abdomen. She and Charlie would never be finished. There would always be a tie that bound them.
A child that bound them.
Still, she didn’t need him, would not allow herself to need him. Some fools never learned, but she wasn’t going to fall into that category.
Toying with her stethoscope, she shrugged and told the truth. “Yeah, as a couple, we’re finished.”
* * *
Wincing, Charlie paused in the hallway. Neither woman had noticed him walking up behind them. Neither one knew he was overhearing their conversation.
Should he clear his throat or something?
He shouldn’t feel guilty for eavesdropping. If they didn’t want someone to overhear their conversation they shouldn’t be having it in the middle of the CVICU hallway.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Chrissie told Savannah, giving her a quick hug. “I thought you two were perfect together.”
Perfect together.
They had been perfect together, but wasn’t that the way most relationships started? All happy faces and rainbows? It was what came along after the happy faces and rainbows faded that was the problem.
He was just leaving before the bright and shiny faded, before hell set in and people died.
Charlie absolutely was not going to be like his father.
If Rupert had been miserable at giving up his dream of a career in medicine, then he’d made Charlie’s mother doubly so until her death in a car accident when Charlie had been fifteen. That had been after a particularly gruesome argument that Charlie had tried to stop. He’d never forgiven himself that he hadn’t been able to protect her from his father. He’d tried, failed, and look what had happened, at what she’d done to escape his father—to escape him?
Guilt slammed him and he refused to let the memory take hold, instead focusing on events before that dreadful night. Why his parents had stayed together was beyond Charlie. They should have divorced.
They should never have married.
No doubt his mother would have been a hundred times better off if Rupert had walked away instead of marrying her and making her pay for her pregnancy every day for the rest of her life.
Regardless, Rupert had stayed with his wife and had instilled in Charlie the knowledge that giving up one’s dreams for another person ultimately led to misery for all involved. His mother had seconded that motion, and when she’d died it had confirmed that her son was not worth living for. Charlie wasn’t able to make another person happy, nor was he able to protect anyone from life’s harsher realities. Those were lessons he’d learned well.
Thank goodness he was leaving before he’d sunk so far into his relationship with Savannah that he couldn’t resurface.
That she couldn’t resurface.
The next two months couldn’t pass soon enough.
* * *
Savannah didn’t have to turn to know that Charlie was behind her. Something inside always went a little haywire when he was near and, whatever that something was, it was sending out crazy signals.
“All good things must come to an end,” she told her friend, not going into anything more specific, wishing she wasn’t so aware of the man behind her.
With time, she wouldn’t even remember who he was, she lied to herself, trying to balm the raw ache in her heart, trying to cling to her anger. Anger was easier than pain.
“You really aren’t going to try to make a go of it long distance?”
She shook her head. “I don’t do long distance relationships.”
Perhaps, under the right circumstances, she would have, but nothing about what had happened with Charlie was right. He’d blindsided her and left her emotionally devastated.
Chrissie gave her a suspicious
