We just stood there, holding each other as so many unsaid things passed between us. Things we could only feel. A small tear slipped down my face, and I wiped it away, finally pulling back.
“You gave me a kidney?” I asked.
He just nodded, watching me as if he were afraid I would disappear if he blinked. “I’d give you my heart if you needed it.”
I did need his heart, but not in that way. Where did I begin? There was so much I needed to say. I swallowed hard. The Bible, the note—he must never have gotten them.
His hand slipped in mine then, and his thumb stroked my palm. “I got your note,” he said as if reading my mind, “and, Hannah, I want you to know that everything is on the menu. I want it all with you. I want to be the man who earns the right to call you mine today, tomorrow, and for every moment after.”
Something in him had changed. I could see it. There was a lightness there. The heavy burden he’d carried since I met him had been released.
I grinned up at him. “Jack, you seem different.”
Please, God, let it be what I think it is.
He tilted my chin up so that I could look into his bright, blue eyes and grinned. “He found me, Hannah. God pulled me up out of the water like you said He would.”
My heart burst with joy, and I knew I shouldn’t have doubted God’s plan for me, for Jack, for us. He’d put us together for a reason.
I traced the stitches over my shirt where his kidney was inside my body, keeping me alive. “You saved my life,” I told him.
He shook his head. “No, Hannah. You saved mine.”
He leaned in then and captured my mouth in a kiss as butterflies took flight in my stomach. The road we’d traveled to get here might not have been straight. Okay, it’d been windy and broken and filled with potholes, but we’d made it out to the other side and I’d never been more sure of anything in my life.
Jack was my person, the one God intended for me to spend the rest of my life with. I had no doubt that the dream I’d had when I was…asleep was a vision from God.
Jack, Noah, the white house on the lake. That was God’s plan for me, and I would welcome it with open arms.
Because Jack and I, we matched in more ways than one.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
JACK
Hannah woke up yesterday, we’d kissed, and everything was perfect. Except for Cedric.
Hannah and I were both getting discharged from the hospital today, New Year’s Day, and Cedric had finally gotten home from his vacation and checked his email. He sent me a stern response that I needed to video chat with him immediately and provide all of the proof that I was in the hospital and had gotten emergency surgery. He warned that, even with that, I could still be in violation of probation and forced to return to prison.
My stomach was in knots. I was so embarrassed to tell Hannah and her mom, but I did, and they immediately started praying over me and this meeting. Now Chloe was outside the door, pacing the hallway with both of them as I sat up in the hospital bed and opened my laptop.
Lord, please don’t let me go back to prison for doing the right thing, I prayed. But if I did go back to jail for saving Hannah’s life, then so be it.
I clicked on the meeting link and the camera opened up. Cedric sat behind a desk I hadn’t seen before, with a bed in the background. He was still at home and not yet back at work.
“Hello, sir.” I cleared my throat.
He sighed. “What kind of trouble did you get yourself into, Jack?”
Where did I begin?
“You know my friend Hannah from Willow Harbor?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Well, she was in a car accident and put into a coma. I care about her a lot, sir, so I flew out here to see if she was okay.”
“Without my permission,” he added.
