Page 20 of Forever After All

But really, he’d asked for it.

“Okay.” The word came out surprisingly casual, despite the panic drumming in his head. “Well, I’m just going to refill the feed bins before I head out.”

“Thanks for that.”

Jess had her hand over everything in the stables, and she held her own like no one he’d ever met before. But the feed bags were heavy, and he made a point to take that weight off her shoulders whenever he could. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do it, it was that he didn’t want her to have to do everything.

She rubbed Kiwi’s mane. “I’m going to stick around for a while.”

Linc tipped his hat at her. “See you in the morning.”

Hopefully, she’d put him out of his misery before breakfast.

Chapter6

Jess

Jess tacked the feeding schedule to the bulletin board and picked up the chalk. She rolled it between her fingertips as she tried to quiet the unrest in her head.

She picked a verse or some kind of motivational quote to write on the chalkboard next to the bulletin board every day. The stables were her place.

Well, Brett had just as much sway in the stables, but he’d never said a cross word about her verses and sayings.

Thankfully, he hadn’t asked. She didn’t want to talk about how she’d started the habit when one of her counselors suggested it. She also didn’t want to talk about how much it helped target her focus every morning.

Sometimes, she left the sayings for a few days or a week. Sometimes, they changed daily.

Today, she wasn’t feeling the William Langewiesche quote she’d written yesterday.

So much of who we are is where we have been.

It was true, and sometimes, she wanted to embrace the hardships that had led her to the place she was today.

Other days, she wanted to scream until her throat was sore and beg God for a redo.

She grabbed the eraser and wiped away the chalk before making up her mind and writing the words on her heart.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23

The storm inside her was doing a good job of firing up her indecision.

She turned over Linc’s words from the night before until they stopped making sense. Had he been asking her to be his date to the wedding, or was he just saying he could pick her up?

When she’d asked him to clarify, he hadn’t, and that was unlike him. She appreciated Linc’s directness, and she’d always thought he knew the reason why she preferred the straight-edged approach.

Jess stared at the verse on the board. It was one she’d written and read many times. She’d memorized hundreds of verses, and this one spoke to her on a deep level.

Guard your heart.She’d been doing that her whole life, and if God’s word said it, then it was truth.

Thankfully, this one was something she’d learned well, and there were few people she trusted wholeheartedly.

Linc was one of those people. Why was she overthinking his invitation to be his date to the wedding?

Because he hadn’t actually said “date.”

He’d given her a non-answer, and she hadn’t known what to do without a definite understanding of the expectations.

Expectation was the root of all heartache. Or so she’d heard. She knew expectations, but she’d learned to shut off heartache. She was probably immune to it, along with ninety-five percent of the other human emotions she either didn’t possess the capacity for or didn’t understand.

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