Page 16 of Always Been You

As they walked to his truck, he wondered if she was feeling the same thing he was. Like there was a rubber band stretching between them, and it was about to snap. He opened the door and held out his hand. She took it and stepped up into his truck. She sat back, and the moonlight illuminated her like it was her personal spotlight.

"Damn," he whispered.

"What?" She looked at him with concern.

"You're so...," he swallowed over the lump in his throat, "…so beautiful."

Her lips parted, and she stared at him with a wide-eyed innocence that he'd never seen from Jess before. Not even when she was wide-eyed and innocent.

Without thinking about what the repercussions might be, he felt himself leaning forward, his lips closing in on hers like a heat-seeking missile.

He was so close he could feel their breaths intertwine when his phone went off. His work phone.

"Fuck," he cursed beneath his breath and pulled it from his pocket and saw that he had to go in.

"Is everything okay?"

"It's work. I have to-"

"I don't need a ride." Jess started to get out of his truck, but he reached out and stopped her.

"I'm taking you home."

She started to argue, but he said, "Please, Jess."

"Fine. But only because I lost the bet." She sat back and put her seatbelt on.

They drove to her house in a silence so thick you could cut it with a knife. When he pulled up to her house, she had the door open before he even came to a complete stop. When she hopped out, she said, "I want a rematch," and shut the door.

He smiled as he watched and waited for her to get into the house. He'd happily give her a rematch...or anything else she asked for.

5

Jess rolled her hair around her finger as she twisted it in the waiting room of her doctor's office. Her Kindle sat on her lap, Bella Andre's newest release on the screen. Romance novels had always been her greatest escape and had gotten her through some extremely difficult times. And Bella's books, in particular, had been a lifesaver. She'd spent so much time reading about the Sullivan family that she felt like she was a member.

She and Ali and Brynn had all claimed their Sullivan book boyfriends. She'd chosen Zach. Brynn had gone with Marcus and Ali had snatched up Gabe. It was fun to fantasize about the men being real, but inevitably Ali or Brynn would ruin the fun and point out that Jess had her own real-life hero in Whisper Lake.

Ethan Steele. Sure, he didn't come from a big family with spokes in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Miami. But the girls would argue that he was serious romance hero material. Not only because he had a body that didn't stop, but he was also in law enforcement. His job was being a professional hero. He was loyal. He was honest. He was hot.

They weren't wrong. When Jess allowed herself the luxury of fantasizing about the future, Ethan was the man she saw in it. But like Ali had said about writing Mrs. McKnight, that had been purely make-believe. It wasn’t reality. Just the thought of it being real was terrifying. It was too much to handle.

What did a future even look like? She never expected to get a donor. She'd made peace with dying at a very young age. She never thought she'd make it to thirty, and yet, here she was, a little over a year from that milestone.

Last night, when she'd gotten in the truck, she'd been sure that Ethan was about to kiss her. And as much as she wanted that to happen, she felt relieved when it didn't. For so many years she'd been fighting her attraction to him that she wasn't sure what would happen if she let her guard down.

"Jess." The nurse called out, and Jess slid her Kindle back in her bag and stood.

She walked down the hallway, stepped into the small exam room, and began the routine that she knew all too well. She stepped on the scale, held out her arm to get her blood pressure, lifted her tongue to have her temperature taken, and made small talk with the nurse, Mandy. Jess had gotten to know Mandy pretty well over the past ten years she'd been seeing Dr. Richmond. She was a divorced mom of two boys that Jess felt like she knew even though she'd never met them. Mandy's husband had left her right around the same time Jess had her heart transplant.

"So how are the boys?"

"Good. Parker starts kindergarten this fall. It goes so fast."

That's what Jess had always heard. Sadly, she'd never find out because she didn't plan on having kids. It wasn't entirely because of her health, though that was a concern. It was also because she'd never had that maternal instinct; there was never any biological clock ticking in her. She loved being an "auntie" to Ali's nephews and Brynn's son Ryder, but that was about it. Diapers. Sleepless nights. Terrible twos. Braces. Report cards. Terrible teens. None of that appealed to Jess.

"And what about you? What's going on with the anesthesiologist that asked you out?"

"Oh," Mandy shook her head at the same time a blush crept up her cheeks. "Nothing. I don't have time for that between the boys and work,"

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