Light-headed with exhaustion, Luke rose to his feet. He swayed, then propped a shoulder against the window’s wood trim to steady himself. The hours had hollowed him out, so it took him longer than it should have to realize Mom had quit talking. Instead, she was studying him with so much compassion that he honestly couldn’t take it.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I am.” Since returning to the hospital yesterday, he’d only been home for twenty minutes to shower.
“How about you go to your apartment and get some sleep?” she suggested. “I’ll sit with her for the next few hours, and then your dad will take the next shift.”
His worry about Finley and his regrets about how the treasure hunt had ended kept him awake most of last night. Yet the idea of going home caused resistance to sharpen within him. How was he supposed to trust other people enough to leave her? He’d prefer to remain here 24/7.
Mom came over and rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. It brought back a flood of memories from when he was a kid. All the times she’d hugged him, felt his forehead when she suspected he had a fever, ran her fingers through his hair.
“Finley would want you to take care of yourself,” she said. “She’s depending on you not to fall apart, so you need to rest.”
She was right. If he continued like this, he’d be of no use to Finley. “You’ll contact me immediately if they decide to bring her back to consciousness?”
“Immediately,” she confirmed.
“And you’ll give my number to all the people who are taking shifts through the night and tell them to call me if that happens?”
“Already have.”
“And the whole night is covered?”
“It is. Everyone in Misty River loves her. It wasn’t difficult to fill every slot.”
That night, Akira answered the doorbell to find Ben standing in the hallway outside her apartment, holding a bouquet of flowers. She pulled him inside, kicked the door closed, and hugged him.
Almost two days had passed since he’d called to tell her about Finley’s injury. It had been a wretched two days.
Fear had been stalking her. So had disbelief. How could healthy, vibrant Finley—whom she’d seen at work just a few days ago—be lying unconscious in an ICU bed?
A year ago, Akira had been a patient in that same ICU, fighting for her life. That time, she’d been so sick that it had been hard to pray. This time she could pray, and so she had been.
She basked in the comfort and steadiness of Ben’s hug. This evening, they were scheduled to spend time with Finley from ten p.m. to one a.m. But they had a few more hours before they’d need to leave for the hospital.
When she pulled back, they quietly measured the nuances of each other’s faces. She’d developed the ability to look beyond his exterior to his character. And what she saw there lit a candle of hope within her.
He was kind, easygoing, humble. He had integrity and strong faith. He was trustworthy and, if she needed it, he would give her the shirt off his back. He liked kids, same as she did. He lived a life firmly centered in things that mattered. Instead of a destructive presence, Ben promised to be the opposite. He was everything his mother had told her he was, and more.
She was the unremarkable little sister. Unlike her family members, she had not racked up towering achievements. Her ambitions were modest. But this man who really was too good to be true found her valuable and beautiful. She could see that he did, in his eyes. And it made her want to cry.
“For you,” he said, extending the bouquet.
Her dad gave her flowers every Valentine’s Day, but no other man ever had. Reverently, she accepted the bouquet from him.Pale pink primroses. Branches of lightest green. White peonies. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She inhaled gratitude and the fragrance of the flowers. “Are we marking a special occasion?”
“Nah. Just because.”
Once she’d placed the bouquet in a vase, they took seats on the two tall rattan bar stools that fronted the island. She spun toward him until their knees touched. “Finley’s accident has me thinking,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“My bad boyfriends, followed by my slow recovery, made me reluctant to risk dating. But it strikes me now that there’s a different takeaway.”
“Which is?”
