“I can’t see you.” Avery closed her eyes, then opened them again. There it was again. Jessica’s eye. “Seriously. I can’t see you.”
“Avery, that doesn’t make any sense. I’m right in front of you.”
“I know that,” Avery snapped. “Don’t you think I know that? I saw you a minute ago, and now I can’t see you. It’s like... I don’t know. My sight is gone.”
“We need to call the doctor,” Jessica said. “This isn’t normal.”
“Wait.” Avery closed her eyes. “No, I don’t have time to go see a doctor. There’s too much to do.”
“Avery, I think we should call El—”
“Hell, no. No way.”
“He’s on staff. He would know someone who can help?”
Sure, El worked at the university hospital, and so did most of his family of doctors, but she couldn’t see him again so soon. Their little encounter earlier had been painful enough. Hell, it was torture just thinking about him. It was better if she kept her distance.
Elwood was, for all intents and purposes, the love of her life. But she’d chosen to walk away from him. Their breakup had played out in such a way that had made him think she’d chosen her burgeoning writing career and the prospect of fame over him. Well, that’s essentially what he’d accused her of in the months after they split up. He had no idea that leaving him behind was the hardest decision she’d ever made, and being around him again would only open that wound.
El didn’t know the real reason she’d left him. He didn’t know that his brother, Dr. Lawrence Jackson, had played on her insecurities and she’d let him. She’d allowed another person to get into her head, to convince her that she wasn’t good enough, cultured enough, for El. In the end, she’d walked away from her heart because she’d actually believed it, and that was the greatest tragedy of all.
Finally opening her eyes again, she was mortified to find that she still couldn’t see more than Jess’s eye, but she kept her mouth shut. If she told her best friend, there was no way she’d be able to talk Jess out of calling 911.
The room swirled around her, and she let out a slow, shaky breath. “Jess?”
Then everything went black.
Elwood wasn’t a glutton for punishment. Usually he didn’t willingly put himself in harm’s way or make rash decisions that would affect his emotional wellbeing. He was a paid therapist, a medical doctor of psychiatry. It was his job to see to the mental welfare of his patients, to help them stabilize their symptoms. But this time...he’d purposefully done something that would no doubt interrupt his sleep for the next few days.
El jumped up and paced the confines of his office. Going to the Power Center just to get a glimpse of Avery had been the wrong move. He’d known it when he used a break in his schedule to leave the hospital, to walk the short distance to the campus auditorium. Along the way, he’d reasoned with himself on the whys. Why did he feel the need to see her? Why would this time be any different from their last encounter? Why couldn’t he get over her?
That last question had almost made him turn around in his tracks and abort the mission. Yet he’d kept going, using the nice weather as an excuse to propel himself forward. When he’d arrived—late—Avery was at the end of her speech. She’d obviously done a fabulous job as the standing-room-only auditorium was full of people laughing and crying and clapping.
When she’d faltered on stage, he’d known immediately that his entrance hadn’t been as subtle as he’d hoped. How she’d seen him in the sea of faces was beyond him, but he’d figured it was just the way it had always been. Like moths to a flame, when one of them was near the other, there was no way to stop the pull.
What he hadn’t planned on was his need to confront her. Well, confront was the wrong word. He needed to see for himself if she was still as beautiful as he’d remembered, if she still smelled like jasmine and orchids. Up close and personal, she was as breathtaking as a sunset over white beach sand with her topaz eyes, smooth mocha skin and pouty lips. Her signature flowing mane had been trimmed into a chin-length bob, but it was still the color of molasses. If he’d dared to step closer, he knew she’d fit right in the nook of his arms, snugly under his chin.
El knew that if he closed his eyes right then, he’d see her, hear her soft voice and feel her lips against his. It was his most vivid fantasy, almost as if she’d set up permanent residence in his thoughts and dreams. It didn’t matter who he was with—and he’d made it a full-time job to get over her—she was the woman he longed for.
Thoughts like those often gave him pause when he thought of Avery. She was goal-oriented, driven to the point of madness at times. But then she could be sweet, docile even. It had been those times—when she was only his, when there was no pressure from the world she’d created in her head or the demands of her career—that made him love her even more.
The knock on his office door jolted El out of his head, for which he was grateful. Enough of the Avery haze.
His administrative assistant, Sophie, poked her head into his office. “Dr. Jackson, you have a visitor.”
Elwood nodded. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Unc,” Drake said, pushing past Sophie. “I’ve been trying to call you all day. Let’s grab dinner.”
Ignoring his nephew, El smiled at Sophie. “Thanks, Sophie. You can leave for the day. Thanks for staying late.”
Sophie gave him a quick summary of his early morning schedule the next day, reminded him that she had a doctor’s appointment in the morning and would be late, then excused herself.
“I need a Sophie for my office,” Drake admitted, taking a seat on the couch intended for El’s patients. “What are you thinking for dinner?”
El leaned back in his chair and stared at his not-that-much-younger nephew. He hated when Drake called him Unc. At age thirty-five, El was only a few years older than Drake. They were more like brothers, than uncle and nephew.
“Do you always think about food?” El asked. “The only reason you’re here is because Love is out of town.” Drake’s wife, Dr. Lovely Grace Washington-Jackson, had been gone for a week and El had been forced to entertain his nephew every night. Even if he’d had a woman waiting in the wings, his nephew had made player hating his modus operandi for the week. “Maybe you need to take a cooking class so that you can make your own dinner when your wife is not available.”
“Hey, you need some laughter in your life,” Drake countered. “If it weren’t for me, you’d be sitting here at the hospital every night, charting and listening to yourself talk into that damn recorder.”
Drake had been insisting that El go out with Love’s cousin Lana. The sneaky matchmaking couple had blatantly set up numerous dinners under the guise of fake celebrations, like Love almost being pregnant or Drake successfully operating on a patient. Not that he didn’t hope Love would realize her dream of being a mother or that he wasn’t proud of his nephew’s impressive surgical record. But every single thing that happened didn’t need to be celebrated with dinner and drinks at a high-brow restaurant downtown.
“You don’t know my life, Drake. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t act like you did.”
Drake shrugged. “I’m just sayin’. If I don’t tell you the truth, who will?”
“How about you concentrate on your life with your beautiful wife. Leave my business to me.”
It was no use telling Drake to mind his own business. He’d learned early on that he had no private business growing up in a house