Page 5 of Protection for Rowan

Seeing her after so many years had brought the emotions to the surface, making him wonder about so many things. If he’d seen her after the crash, would they have stayed together or at least stayed in touch? He’d been dumb about relationships in his early twenties. No question, he would have screwed up if they’d been together back then. Time had given him maturity.

Worry hit. What if he felt nothing for her? When he'd hugged her, he'd felt more than he had for anyone else he'd been with. If he felt nothing, that would be okay, and he could walk away and just be friends with Rowan. He had a suspicion he would feel something based on how his heart was reacting.

They weren’t making promises. This was just them reconnecting, nothing more. Heck, she’d been married. Going to dinner could just be them eating food together. He was making too much out of this. She might not want more than just a friendship. That would be cool. Most likely, nothing would come of seeing her again. But for his sanity, he had to give it a chance because deep inside, he’d always wondered if they would be good together.

Besides, if he walked away from this opportunity to get to know Rowan, he would regret it for the rest of his life. They may not work out, but he wanted to see if there was a chance with her.

He’d taken off early from work, so after his appointment, he headed in the direction of his house but stopped by Thario’s place on the way. He hadn’t always been Thario’s biggest fan, but he really liked the guy now.

“Hey, Shine, what’s up?”

“Just checking in. Making sure Frog remembers who I am.”

Thario rolled his eyes. Of course, the dude knew Shine worried about him, but it was one thing to stop in and check and a whole other thing to voice his concern. Some people might see his friendship with Thario as not genuine, but he wasn't playing at any angle. He really liked Thario now. Wrong impressions happened, but Thario had changed so much about his personality after the incident.

Thario checked the time on his phone. “What have you been up to? It seems early for you.”

“I had an appointment on this side of town.”

Thario narrowed his eyes, really studying him. “Hmm. An appointment. What’s really going on?”

Shine blew out a breath, and his lips twisted up to one side as thoughts rolled through him. How much did he want to tell Thario?

"Come on, man. Have a beer and tell me everything."

Shine closed his eyes and breathed out a heavy sigh. After a moment, he nodded. “Sure. Beer and talk. That would be great.”

Frog retrieved Thario a beer, but Shine knew the dog wouldn’t wait on him. He chuckled as Frog passed by him with the beer can in his mouth.

“Your dog is a hoot.”

Thario took the beer from Frog’s mouth and opened it, taking a long swig. “Frog is good. So tell me, what’s up?”

Shine opened his beer, then sat on the couch, scratching Frog’s head when he came over for a short moment before settling back beside Thario.

“Before I joined up, actually before I graduated high school, I met someone.”

Thario paused with his beer hung in midair. He raisedhis eyebrows, and Shine knew Thario wanted to say something, but he stayed quiet.

Shine rolled his eyes. “Go ahead, say what’s on your mind.”

“There isn’t a little Shine running around, right?”

Shine laughed. “I was a dork in high school. When I met this woman—girl. She was a girl then. But when I met her, I’d never kissed anyone. She was my first kiss.”

Thario’s eyebrows shot up high. “Oh, nice.”

He shrugged. "Not really. I'll never forget it, though. We'd gone to the same two-week camp. We found out we were flying back together, and we ended up sitting next to each other. We were in the row behind the emergency exit over the wing. Anyway, everything was fine, and we were both painfully awkward, but it was nice to have someone to sit next to who was my age and had just experienced exactly what I'd experienced at camp."

Thario wiggled his eyebrows. "So you kissed her and got into the mile-high club?"

Shine snorted, then took a sip of his beer. "Not quite. A few minutes after taking off, we hit birds. Enough to take out the engine. The pilot tried to recover, but he lost control when the second engine went out. We'd dropped too low, and there was a river. The pilot ditched—well, landed the plane in the river."

Thario’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit.”

“Yeah. As we were going down, we kissed. I told her I didn’t want to die without ever kissing someone.”

Thario shook his head. “Holy shit. Really? You were in a plane crash?”

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