“Open it,” she urged.
He closed his eyes. “Because I don’t deserve thattwice. I barely deserved it the first time. Kelly was the kind of woman you only get once in a lifetime.”
“That’s not true.”
“You don’t know that,” he shot back.
“I knowyou.” Her voice cracked a little, but she didn’t care. This was serious and important and needed to be said. “You’re kind and funny and—God help me—brilliantat figuring people out. You don’t have to earn love by being perfect, Dusty. You just have to let someone in. I know because I never have.”
“Would you?” he asked. “I mean…if the right guy happened to be on the bow with you in the sunset?”
Tessa froze, heart hammering. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t think I’ve ever offered that to anyone before.”
He reached for her hand and eased her closer, his fingers warm, his grip gentle. Neither of them moved for a long time.
Then, slowly, like gravity was pulling them together, he leaned forward and kissed her.
It wasn’t wild. It wasn’t rushed. It was careful and warm and deep, like they both knew this was a line they couldn’t uncross.
And when he finally pulled away, she sat back hard against the bow bed, breath gone, heart racing.
“Wow,” she murmured.
He didn’t answer. But he looked at her like he was afraid to say anything that might break the spell.
She wanted to say something. Wanted to ask him to try, to risk, to want more.
But she didn’t. She could only be so honest, so she drifted back into character with an easy laugh and a wink. “I think I like therapy.”
He grinned and they just rested there without saying a word until the sun had disappeared over the horizon. Eventually, they pulled up the anchor and rode back to the marina. The whole time, her heart felt like a tangle of nerves and hope.
Because she didn’t want to be hisno-strings girl.
And she wasn’t sure he’d ever let anyone have his heart again.
Sweat. Water. Panic.
Jonah thrashed left to right, covered in perspiration—or was it seawater?—knowing one thing. Only one thing. The baby was…gone. He was gone! Where did he go?
One moment, Jonah was walking along the beach with Atlas—just like they had that morning, those tiny toes squirming against his chest, sun on his shoulders. Then the sky had gone black. The waves rose like giant fists, swallowing the shore, pummeling them to the sand.
He lost the baby in the surf. But someone kept calling him.
“Jonah! Jonah!”
Who was that? Wait. He knew that voice. He loved that voice. It was his mother, screaming his name as he jerked from side to side, searching andsearching, but all he could hear was his mother calling.
Her voice from the sidelines of a football game. Her voice from the front door when he was on his bike. Her voice from…heaven.
She was calling him from a place where he’d never been and would never go.
“Jonah!”
Where was she? And where was the baby? He tried to shout, but every time he opened his mouth, nothing would come out, and saltwater slipped between his lips.
Finally, he saw a woman in the surf. But that wasn’t Melissa Lawson. That woman had curly blond hair tumbling over her shoulders. She wore a Baby Bjorn around her neck. It was empty.
“Where is Atlas?” she screamed.
