“I had to tell her because I needed a next of kin AKA medical proxy,” Jake tells me and I snap my head up to look him in the eyes. I’m shocked he picked her. “Terra, I couldn’t put the twins down or your parents like I’ve been doing since I was a kid because I didn’t want to pull their focus from you if something went wrong. And how guilty would they be if they had to… you know pull my plug because of this? It had to be someone independent and it was her or Kelsey.”
His mom. Wow. He hasn’t brought her up since he got back to town. “You know Kelsey isn’t the right person to contact in an emergency so it had to be Aspen.”
I try to take my heart out of this equation. It’s hard, but I do it, and realize that Aspen, unfortunately, makes sense. But I still say “You could have put down Nova.”
“Are you kidding me? That bleeding heart would have kept me alive at all costs, even if all hope was lost. She’s too much of an optimist,” Jake says with a smile. “I thought about making it Declan for like two seconds.”
“Yeah he would totally pull your plug without batting an eyelash,” I reply. “Unless there was a way to monetize your coma or whatever. Like if it could help sell lobster rolls.”
We both laugh, because we know we’re kidding. Mostly. But laughing makes my guts ache right now so I force myself to stop. He squeezes my hand. “I want to kiss you right now.”
“So do it.”
He looks around. “Is there a closet somewhere we could borrow?”
I open my mouth to laugh but he covers it with his own. The kiss is gentle, tame and short but absolutely perfect. When we break apart, we continue to walk.
As we get closer to my room, for some reason, I think about the conversation I had with Logan the night he drove me home from Jake’s, about our defense mechanisms. “I’m sorry Aspen just makes me irrational. I always saw her as perfect in all the ways I wasn’t. She was gorgeous and ballsy and an extrovert and healthy. For a long time I just felt grateful she would even be friends with someone like me. When she went after you and you actually started dating her, it reconfirmed she was better than me.”
“She never should have done that. And if I knew any of that history I never would have gone to prom with her let alone date her. But the girl I really had a thing for was off-limits and I’d pissed her off so she refused to even acknowledge my existence,” he reminds me and he’s grinning that easy, lazy smile that’s always turned my heart into a gold medal gymnast on a set of uneven bars flipping around like her life depended on it.
I take a deep breath. “A part of you lives inside my body, so ignoring your existence is an impossibility now,” I say as we reach my room.
We walk inside and I head straight for the bed. I’m tired and hot. He sits in the chair in the corner. “I didn’t give you a kidney to make you like me.”
“I know. But I was actually talking about the part of you that lives in my heart now,” I reply and study his face.
Yeah, I’m telling him I love him without telling him I love him. I’m still too scared to throw it right out there.
He looks me straight in the eye. He looks vulnerable, and it takes my breath away more than the walk did. “I was a damn fool for waiting this long.”
“Yeah, we both were,” I smile and he laughs for a second but then winces.
Nova appears behind him in the doorway. She waltzes in and perches on the window sill, a paper cup of what’s probably an herbal tea in her hands. Her brown eyes slide back and forth from Jake to me and her smile is smug. “Good walk?”
The surgeon appears in my doorway before either of us can answer Nova. “So I’ve got good news and bad news.”
The light, calm feeling that had filled me disappears completely. Jake pulls himself out of the chair and walks over to my bed, sitting beside me. “Okay… shoot.”
I reach for Jake’s hand as the surgeon explains. “Jake, you’re going home this afternoon.”
“Just me?”
She nods. “Terra, you’ve still got a fever.”
Oh no.
Jake reaches up and presses a palm to my forehead. His eyes lock with mine and he knows I know. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“I was hoping it was nothing.”
“It might be,” Dr. Leclerc explains. “It’s not ideal but it’s not uncommon.”
“But it’s also a sign of rejection according to Google,” Jake says.
“Google says a lot of things,” Dr. Leclerc gives us a smile. “It’s like a drunk uncle at thanksgiving. Spews advice on everything whether it’s facts or not.”
“So it’s not a sign?” Nova interjects and I already see her hand slip into her bag, no doubt looking for her phone so she can update my family.
