* *
AFTER HIS BRIEF meeting with Karen, the assistant director, Tony decided to stay for rest of the day. The kids at Little Mountain were a different kind of intense than the ones at St. Paul’s Mission. He could see a little of himself in the eyes of the children at both places.
He was signing out at the front desk when Sabrina closed and locked the medical office. For a brief moment, their eyes met.
He caught a whiff of honeysuckle as she whisked by.
Taking his visitor badge off and setting it on the counter, he nodded at the woman behind the desk. “Thanks. See you tomorrow.”
Without waiting for a response, he turned and almost ran to the parking lot. He stopped short when he saw her open the door of a beat up gray Toyota. At least he thought it was gray. Wasn’t that the same car she drove in high school? It’d been on its last leg back then. How had it lasted this long?
Catching up to her, he cleared his throat.
“I’m in a hurry, Tony.” She kept her back to him and opened the door.
“Please. I need to get this off my chest.”
She tossed her purse on the seat. “You’ve got two minutes.”
Tony rubbed his palms on his jeans. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “I am so sorry for the way I treated you. And the way I left. I never meant what I said that night.”
“Yes, you did. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have said it.”
“That’s just it. You ruined your reputation by vouching for me the night I was accused of robbing that store, so I couldn’t let you take any more chances on me until...” He paused. “Until I could deserve you.”
Sabrina shrugged and looked down at her feet. “It doesn’t matter anymore. We were young. I’m over it. I went on with my life, just like you.”
“Is that what you think I did? Just went on with my life like nothing happened?” He pointed to the diamond on her left hand. “Looks like you didn’t have a hard time moving on.”
She whipped her head up to look at him. Anger flashed in her eyes. “You’re the one who left me. You have no right to judge me for the decisions I made when you left.”
Is that what he was doing? Judging her? The truth was, he was jealous of the man she’d loved enough to have a family with. Angry, even. “I only left because I thought it would make things easier on you.”
She threw her hands in the air. “How was leaving me when I needed you the most supposed to make things easier for me?”
“When I heard you tell Adalie you wanted to put college off for at least a year so you could go to Louisiana with me, I panicked. Without me around stirring up trouble, I thought the town would forget about me, and you would go to college like you were supposed to.”
“Well, guess what? It didn’t work.”
“If I’d stayed, you’d never have become a nurse. We’d both be stuck in this little town forever.”
Her hands curled into fists. “Here’s a newsflash for you. I’m not a nurse. I still haven’t finished college and I like this little town.”
Tony sucked in a breath. “Your scholarship—”
“Got yanked right after you left.” She pulled herself up tall. “And thanks to your disappearing act, people just shook their heads when they saw me. So I pulled a page from your book and ran away, too.”
“I didn’t know.” Stepping over to her, he took her face in his hands. How had things gone so wrong? “Everything was planned. You were going to finish school and become a nurse.”
“No, we had everything planned. Then you decide to leave. I have the same CNA certification I had when I graduated high school. That’s how perfect our plan worked out.”
The words slapped him in the face. He had hurt her. On purpose. And it killed him. Had he done it for nothing? “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care. Not anymore.” Sabrina slid into the car and slammed the door.
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