From the Beginning Read Online Free PDF Page A

Award written all over it. He could almost taste the award and so could his director.
He closed his eyes and with a sigh let them all go. For more than a decade, Amanda had taken second and third and sometimes even two hundredth place to his work. This time, everything else was going to have to wait.
     
     
DESPITE HIS BEST INTENTIONS, the sun was setting before Simon finally caught up to Amanda again. Wanting to give her some space, he’d spent part of the afternoon shadowing Jack in the clinic. But by the time he went to the tents to find her, she’d been long gone and he’d spent much of the early evening searching the clinic and village for her—and cursing himself for letting her out of his sight. Especially after what Jack had told him.
In the end, he’d had to ask the other doctor where Amanda might have wandered off to—which had grated, since every time he opened his mouth it felt as if the other man was condemning him for his callous treatment of her through the years.
Then again, maybe it was his own conscience doing all the condemning.
The surgeon had pointed him toward the desert, and Simon had followed his directions until he’d happened upon her, about a mile and a half away—in the middle of an empty stretch of dry, cracked sand.
She was sitting on a large, flat rock, her knees drawn up so that she could rest her chin on them, and she looked so young, so vulnerable, that it was hard for him to imagine it had been so many years since he’d first met her.
Five years since he’d last held her, loved her.
And before today, eighteen months since he’d so much as laid eyes on her.
Part of him wanted to rush up to her, to wrap her in his arms and pretend that everything was the same. That they were still lovers, still friends.
Still parents.
But another part, the one that was buried under guilt and pain and his own anger, couldn’t help wondering how much more rejection he could stand.
At Gabrielle’s funeral, Amanda had frozen him out so completely that he still hadn’t thawed a year and a half later. It had been a defense mechanism, a way to bury her own pain—but knowing that hadn’t made it hurt any less.
They’d stopped being lovers not long after Gabrielle was born. Amanda had feared that what they’d had together wasn’t stable enough to raise a child and he’d gone along because he hadn’t wanted a relationship that would tie him down. But they’d remained friends, right up until their daughter had died.
Then Amanda had excised him from her life with such brutal efficiency he swore he could still feel the blade.
But this wasn’t about him, he reminded himself fiercely as he struggled for something to say. This was about Amanda, about getting her well again.
“If you’re going to spend all evening skulking in the shadows, don’t be surprised if someone mistakes you for a rebel and shoots you.” Her words were cool and collected, a marked difference from their earlier meeting.
“I didn’t want to disturb you—I figured you might shoot me yourself if I did.”
“I’m not the bloodthirsty type.” She still hadn’t bothered to look at him. “I would have thought you’d know that by now.”
“Yeah, well, people change.”
“More like circumstances change them.”
There was an underlying bitterness to her tone that had him moving forward and sinking down beside her on the rock. She didn’t protest as he expected her to. Instead, she scooted over to make more room for him. He wanted to think of it as progress, but Jack’s words haunted him—especially when he got his first glimpse of her blank face. It was as if the Amanda he’d known had simply disappeared, leaving only this shell of a woman behind.
She didn’t say anything else, and for the longest time, neither did he. He was too caught up in how strange it felt to be near her again, yet how eerily familiar, as well. She smelled the same as she always had—like lavender and peaches and cool spring evenings— despite the