Finally Ours (Harborview #2)

35. Angela

35

ANGELA

“Want me to carry you inside, Angel?” Carter asks me, turning off the car and unbuckling his seat belt.

“I’m not a baby bird,” I grumble.

“No, you’re not. But I want to take care of you,” he says simply.

“I actually hate being taken care of,” I say, even though I don’t mind being taken care of by him . The whole time we were on Isle North he looked out for me, and I liked it plenty.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” he says with a smirk.

“Oh shut up.” I pause, and look out the window so he can’t see my face. “I mind it less with you. But I’m fine to walk to the house all by myself.”

“At least let me carry you up the stairs?”

“Deal,” I say, mostly because I’m truly exhausted from the last few days, and the staircase in Carter’s house is massive.

We walk over to the front door, and as soon as we’re inside, Carter takes my purse out of my hands, slings it over his shoulder, and scoops me up into his arms like I weigh absolutely nothing.

“Mountain man strikes again,” I murmur.

He carries me up the stairs as promised and deposits me in his enormous, cloud-like bed.

“You rest,” he tells me. “I’ll get some dinner started.”

“I love you,” I say, because my heart is truly full of it. “Thank you for coming today.” Having him at the hospital with me made me feel so cared for, and so sure of his affection and love for me. It’s exactly the type of thing I need from him in order to feel safe in this relationship.

“Don’t thank me, Angel. I’m only doing exactly what you deserve.” He kisses me gently on the lips, and then heads downstairs.

Something about his comment feels strange to me, but I’m too tired to think it through and figure out why.

A few hours later, I wake up to the delicious smell of braising meat wafting through the room. I throw on one of Carter’s t-shirts, and go downstairs to investigate.

I find Carter standing over the stove wearing an apron, and staring at a pot of food intently.

“Oh my god, what is that smell?” I ask him. He’s wearing jeans and is barefoot, and I can’t help but appreciate the view of his ass that I get as he leans down and put the pot into the oven.

“Braised short rib ragu,” he tells me.

“Shut up. That sounds amazing.” My stomach rumbles as if to underscore my point.

“It will be done pretty soon.”

I open the cabinet and get a glass for water, and find Carter’s eyes devouring me.

“You look good in my shirt, Angel,” he says. “Really damn good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Come here.”

He pulls me into his arms and I nestle my head against his chest, luxuriating in the feel of his hands stroking down my back, and his lips against the top of my head. We pull away from one another after a minute or two, and I convince Carter to let me help him with the rest of dinner. In addition to the ragu, he made fresh pasta dough, and I help him roll it out with the machine and cut it into wide strips.

“How’d you get into cooking?” I ask, watching as he chops up vegetables for the salad with chef-like precision and skill.

“During the first year of my PhD, all I did was work. And for a long time, birding and hiking were my only two hobbies. But when I ended that first year burnt out and depressed, I realized I needed to find something new,” he says. “I needed something in my life that wasn’t related to work. I always liked cooking shows as a kid, so I tried this. I like it because sometimes at the end of a day doing research, I often have nothing to show for it, at least not anything big. But with cooking, there’s an end product within a few hours. And it makes other people happy.”

I study the man in front of me, and consider how strong and self-aware he is. He knows himself far better than most people do, and he’s strong. Solid.

“That makes sense,” I say. “I guess that’s similar to why I like art. It’s nice to make something beautiful when I spend a lot of time at work around illness.”

Carter finishes the salad and I set the table in the breakfast nook, opening the doors to the patio and letting in some air. Carter places a full plate of ragu and pasta in front of me, and one bite has me moaning.

“This is so fucking good. If I wasn’t already in love with you, this would convince me.”

“Glad to hear it,” he says, smirking.

After we eat, I lay down on the couch and cradle my food baby, and Carter sits on the floor next to me, stroking my leg with his hand.

I realize that for the entire day he’s been taking care of me: rushing to the hospital to make sure I was okay, seeing to my every need, making dinner for me. And it’s been wonderful, but Carter deserves some care as well, especially since he had a big meeting with his supervisor today.

“How was your meeting today?” I ask. “Does Judith think you’re ready to submit?”

“Yeah, she does, actually. I think I’ll be done really soon, and I’ll make the summer submission deadline.”

“That means a fall graduation, right? I better start planning your party.” I don’t know if Carter’s the party type, but even if he isn’t, I know Jamie, Hunter, and Cat will want to celebrate with him, and so will my moms. And even if Carter and his family aren’t that close, I’m sure they’ll make the effort for something as big as his PhD.

“As long as it includes a keg of beer and is at the beach, I’m good,” he says.

“Do you know what you’ll be doing after school is finished?” I ask, because it occurs to me that we’ve never talked about it. I assume that Carter wants to be an academic, but I’m not really sure.

Carter’s hand stills against my leg and he’s quiet for a moment.

“I’m not actually sure,” he says. “I have an interview next week for a teaching position at the university.”

“That’s amazing!”

“Yeah, it would be perfect for me,” he says, but something sounds off about his voice.

I sit up and climb off the couch and onto the floor in front of him so that I can see his face. And just as I suspected, his face says it all—at least to me. To anyone else, he’d appear composed, but I know all his tells.

“What’s wrong? Please tell me,” I ask.

“I got a job,” he says, but the way he says it sounds like it’s a death sentence. He rubs his forehead with his hands and then scrubs them over his face. “A really good one, too. Working as a postdoctoral research assistant on a project focused on the conservation of seabirds. I interviewed for it a month ago, before everything with us happened.”

I nod, understanding that he wants me to know that he didn’t tell me about it because it happened before there was an us.

“A job is good,” I tell him. “And that sounds like something you’d love doing.”

“It is. But it’s in Iceland.”

Fear lances through my heart, chilling me right down to my bones. Iceland is halfway across the world. Iceland might as well be another world. Suddenly, I’m back there, back when he wouldn’t take my calls or answer my texts, back when I was desperate to hear from him but he was too busy chasing this dream of his to make time for me. And in hindsight, I get it because we were so young, but if he did the same thing again, I don’t think I’d survive it.

“I’m not taking it, Angel. I already decided that I didn’t want it before I got it.”

“It sounds like the perfect job for you, though,” I say, because it does. I saw how deeply he loves being out in nature studying birds and wildlife while we were on Isle North. I saw how he came alive when we were on the water with Archie. It’s where he belongs.

“The perfect job for me is one that keeps me in Harborview. With you. I told you I wasn’t leaving again, Angel, and I meant it.”

He says this with such conviction that the fear drains out of me. But it’s replaced by a feeling I can’t name—deep unease, like something just isn’t right.

But the look on Carter’s face is so earnest and open, so kind and loving. It’s like he’s just waiting for me to tell him that he’s made the right decision, that everything is fine between us.

And I want him to keep being happy, to keep looking at me like that, so that’s exactly what I do.