“Yeah,” he admitted.
“I’ve been thinking about us, too. Which is why I stopped by.” Britt had never shied away from hard things. She preferred to deal with difficulties head-on, then move past them. “Are we good?” she asked. “You and me?”
Are we good?
She’d posed that question to him following every disagreement that had occurred between them. He’d always tried to honor her directness with a direct answer in return. This time, though, the fully honest answer was no. They weren’t good because what was between them wasn’t goodfor himanymore.
He was so raw at the moment that he didn’t trust himself to say that. His black state of mind could easily goad him into speaking something he might bitterly regret later.
Are we good?
“I don’t know,” he answered. That, too, was true. “Are we?”
“I don’t know, either.” She scrutinized his face. “But I’m willing to do whatever I need to do to make sure that our friendship stays strong. I can’t overstate ... how much you mean to me.”
Tenderness tore free, spilling through his chest. “I can’t overstate how much you mean to me,” he said in a low, hoarse voice.
He could tell her that he loved her, right now, the two of them standing in the hush of a new day. Just three short words.I love you. The statement gathered on his tongue, waiting.
Except he knew Britt wasn’t ready to hear it.
Also, he wasn’t exactly handling the small rejection she’d given him yesterday well. If her decision to limit their total number of kisses to one could rock him like this, then it didn’t seem possible to survive the rejection that would follow hisI love you.
“I think we might have needed to have a longer conversation yesterday on the beach.” With a gesture of her hand, she invited him to sit on the brick step she’d been sitting on when he’d arrived. “I think I rushed us, and I wish I hadn’t.”
He sat and used his bicep to wipe sweat from his forehead. His hair was drenched, his shirt sticking to his skin.
She took a seat beside him on the step, then bumped his shoulder with hers.
He aimed a look at her.
Coaxing mischief lit her eyes. Without words, she was daring him to lighten up. She bumped his shoulder again. He bumped her back.
“What did we not talk about yesterday that we should have?” she asked him.
“I have more questions about your accident.”
That sobered her. “What would you like to know?”
He wanted to know everything. He asked her specific questions about how she’d capsized. What had gone through her mind while underwater. How much pain she’d been in. How she’d gotten free.
She answered every one in detail, and he absorbed each word, even though the scene she painted turned his chest into a cold, hollow void. Paddlers bigger and stronger than Britt had been pinned against strainers by water current until they’d drowned. If any piece of her situation had gone differently, she’d be dead.
The health flowing from her assured him that she was fine. She’d lived. But it had been a very close call. He couldn’t stop thinking,What if?He couldn’t quit visualizing the situation she’d been inand imagining all the ways it could have killed her. He couldn’t stop picturing her lifeless body, pale and soaked.
He asked her about the helicopter ride that had carried her to the hospital and about her surgery. Her recovery. Her rehab. “What aftereffects do you have now?”
“Stiffness and sometimes soreness on that side of my waist. That’s about it these days. It took quite a while to build up my stomach and lower back muscles, but I’m almost there now.”
“Do your doctors think you should take it easy?”
“They did at first, but eventually they cleared me for strenuous exercise. The accident happened almost a year ago.” A beat of quiet. “I felt like I had good reasons for not telling you, back when it happened. But after I was better, I should have told you. There’s really no excuse. I should have said something about it much sooner.”
“Even if you had good reasons for not telling me when it happened, you should have overruled them,” he said levelly. “You should have told me right away.”
“That would have been a horrible phone call to receive while you were in the middle of a trip overseas.”
“Right. But I don’t want you judging for me what is and what isn’t too horrible for me to hear.” He met her gaze. “Bad things and good things happen, and I want to know about all of them.”
