“So are you ready to go back out there and face your aunt?” she asks.
“I’d be more ready if we could just go out there and tell them we’re banging. Take the heat off me.”
“One: Don’t ever call it banging again. Two: I think I’ve decided that I’ll be the one to tell Ian.”
“You would rob me of that?” I gasp playfully.
She arches a brow. “Yes, I would.”
“Fine, fine,” I say, already feeling loads better. Even if I feel slightly embarrassed about my outburst. “I don’t care who tells him,” I say with a grin. I lean in then, letting my lips brush against hers. “As long as everyone knows who you belong to.”
“YouwishI did,” she snorts.
I let my kiss linger this time, pleased when she melts into it a little. “Yeah,” I murmur against her lips. “I do.”
I watch her throat bob with a swallow when I pull back, her cheeks slightly flushed and her teeth worrying at her lower lip in a way that tells me she’s pleased but would never admit it.
“Go out there and say you’re sorry,” she says, shaking her head.
I scratch at the back of my neck. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And when we get home, I want to hear all about this doctor’s appointment.”
Home.
It’s funny, my place has always just been some walls and the bed I go back to after a hard day, but when Abby calls my placehome, it almost makes me see the place differently. Like maybe itisa home, just because she’s there waiting for me.
It makes it easier to swallow my pride and get back out there.
“All right,” I say with a sigh. “We wouldn’t want to rob Bea of the tongue-lashing she’s going to give me for acting like a fool.”
“Oh, I’m looking forward to it,” Abby says with a grin. She presses up on her toes then, giving me a soft, chaste kiss. “But forthe record, it doesn’t make you a fool to have feelings. You’reallowedto feel your feelings, even when they seem too big.”
She turns to go then, leaving me in her wake. I’m ever in awe of the way she can say something so simple, and yet it can make it seem like things aren’t so bad.
I’m already dreading the way everyone is going to give me hell out there for my outburst, but when I think about Abby’s soft smile and her reassuring embrace, it feels like I can face anything, really.
Maybe with her, I can even face all the uncertainty I feel when it comes to my future. I don’t know what that doctor will say when I see him, can’t say for sure how it will affect me to hear whatever it is, but part of me thinks that as long as Abby is around, maybe I can get through it.
It hits me all at once then, just how much Ifeelfor this woman.
I wonder what she might say if I told her just how much.
Twenty-Seven
Abby
Dinner was a weird affairwhen Jack came back out of his room; I could feel everyone’s attention for the rest of the time we spent together, and I’m pretty sure I caught Lila studying me more than once throughout the rest of the evening. It was probably a bad idea, going after him like that. I could have let his sister or Ian do it just as easily, but when I saw how upset he was, it was like my feet moved on their own.
I still don’t know what to make of that.
We talked that night about his doctor’s appointment—how nervous he was for it, how afraid he was that he’s caused further damage—and it was an easy decision, offering to go with him. I could see the relief in his face the moment I offered, and that was enough to let me know it was the right call.
But now we’re here, and I don’t know what to say to the ball of anxiety beside me. Jack has been tapping his foot for the last twenty minutes while we’ve waited in the exam room after his newest X-ray, and I have to admit, evenI’mnervous to hear whatthey have to say. I meant what I told him when I said that everything would be okay one way or another, but with his team havingjustmade the second round, I know Jack feels like everything is weighing on his shoulders right now.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whisper, trying to give him some encouragement.
He turns his head to look at me, his mouth turned down in a frown. “What if it isn’t?”
