Page 20 of Love and Other Lost Things

Jane looked up, surprise registering on her face as her eyes swept across him. “Nik,” she finally said, a little breathlessly. “What are you doing here?”

“I was”—he gave a completely ambiguous wave that could have indicated any direction—“in the neighborhood.”

“Oh.” She reached up to tug her knit Buffalo Bills hat down on her forehead. The royal-blue band matched her eyes. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were flushed pink from the cold, full lips parted slightly from exertion.

And, just like that, Nik was seventeen years old again, and the two of them were running across the baseball field behind the high school. It had started snowing that morning, falling steadily all day long until the grounds were transformed into a magical wonderland by the time their last class of the day had let out.

Or at least it had felt magical to Nik. Everything had been magical when Jane was around.

Jane’s cheeks had glowed pink, eyes bright as she half laughed, half shrieked in mock fear, dodging the snowball Nik lobbed in her direction. She’d come to a stop and bent over, her blond hair falling around her face as she scooped up a handful of white powder and tossed it in his direction.

Snowflakes had drifted over him like frozen bits of confetti, landing in his hair, clinging to his eyelashes, and sliding down his neck. “Damn, that’s cold!” Nik had pulled at the collar of his coat, trying to shake the snow loose while Jane cackled beside him. He’d spun slowly in her direction, one eyebrow raised, a half-smile tugging at his lips. “Is this funny to you?”

“No.” Jane had stood up straight, attempting to smooth her features into a serious expression and failing miserably. She’d pressed a gloved hand to her mouth to hide the grin still lingering there. “Not at all.”

He’d moved quickly, shifting his weight forward and wrapping his arms around her. Before Jane had been able to react, she’d tumbled backward into a thick snowbank. He’d landed part-way on top of her, their arms and legs entangled. A puff of white powder had settled around them, giving the world a misty quality. Or maybe that had been Jane again.

He’d leaned back to look her in the face. “How do you like the snow, now? A little cold?”

She’d shifted under him but hadn’t moved away. “I’m not cold at all,” she’d murmured. “You always keep me warm.”

As their eyes had met, all humor gone now, something had stirred in his chest.

Nik had never been sure of the exact moment he’d fallen for her. Their mothers had enrolled them in the same preschool when they were three and, apparently, they’d been inseparable from the very first day. NikandJane. One word. He couldn’t remember a moment from his childhood that Jane hadn’t been right next to him. He’d always loved her, and that fact had been as much of a part of him as his dark hair and sense of humor and desire to be a doctor. It just existed.

But that day in the snow, with her blue eyes shining up at him with so much trust, that was the day it had occurred to him that maybe she could feel the same way. That was the day he’d decided he was going to tell her. Before they went away to Cornell together, he was going to take the leap and bare his soul and let her know that he wanted to start their new life together as so much more than friends. That he wanted to start their new life as… everything.

It had taken him a while to work up to it, but he’d finally told her on graduation night. And for one amazing moment, he’d believed they could have it all.

Right before she’d disappeared into thin air.

And now he was idling in his car in front of her house, still unable to quite convince himself she was real.

“Are you on your way home from work?” Jane asked, her voice wary, eyes darting to his and then away, like she wasn’t quite sure where they should settle. A little part of him was glad that he’d left her feeling as off-balance as he’d been since the moment he’d spotted her in the aisle last night.

“Yeah, night shift.” He put the car in park.

Jane turned away from him and focused her attention back to the sidewalk and the snow shovel she held awkwardly in her hands. Nik watched her scoop up a small, ineffective pile of white fluff and attempt to tip it onto the grass. Before she could make it there, the snow slid off the shovel and over her boots. She huffed and tried again, with the same result.

Nik climbed out of the car. “It looks like you could use a little help.”

“I’m fine,” Jane snapped. “I just—” She gave her shoulder a couple of shrugs, like she was trying to shake off the soreness.

He eyed the mark on her cheek where she said she’d run into a cabinet. It would have been quite a feat to injure her shoulder the same way. The rage from the night before ignited in his gut. Had someone hurt her?

“It was a long drive. Days in the car,” she finally mumbled, defensively. “I’m just a little stiff.”

Nik stepped closer, so near he could reach out and pull her against him. For a wild moment, he considered it. Last night, he’d barely brushed a hand against her cheek, and it was like someone had set his palm on fire. What would it feel like to have her back in his arms after all these years?

Jane’s eyes widened, almost like she knew what he was thinking. But she didn’t step away. Her tongue flicked out to nervously wet her bottom lip, and somewhere buried beneath the surface of her unease, he saw a flash of desire that mirrored his own.

What the hell am I thinking?

Before he could do something epically stupid, Nik grabbed the shovel from Jane’s grasp and got to work on the snow drifts.

“I can do that,” she called, but he was already halfway down the sidewalk, taking out his frustration on the piles of snow, filling the shovel and heaving the contents onto the lawn, giving a stubborn piece of ice a kick with his shoe. At the edge of the neighbor’s yard, he finally stopped, breathing hard, sweat beading on his forehead and beneath his scrubs. Shifting the shovel to one hand, Nik yanked off his coat and gave a sigh of relief as the cold air seeped into the flushed skin of his bare arms and the V at the neckline of his scrub shirt.

He turned in Jane’s direction. She stood at the edge of the driveway, clutching one hand with the other, her eyes roaming over his shoulders, his chest, and down to the stomach he kept flat with his daily runs up the mountain, where he’d bought a cabin last fall.

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