Page 103 of Tracking Safety

“Luke.” She wasn’t sure what she meant to say after it. His name was as far as she got.

He lifted a hand and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers brushing her jaw. The touch went through her like warmth through cold ground.

He didn’t pull away.

Neither did she.

He leaned in. The moment narrowed to only a few inches of dusk between them.

She’d spent months aching for this and telling herself she’d given up the right to dream about a future with her husband. But what if she’d been wrong?

Her eyes drifted closed. Her heart slammed against her ribs.

Luke’s hand came up slowly, like he was giving her every chance to step back. His fingers found her jaw, barely touching, just the weight of them against her skin. She didn’t step back.

She didn’t breathe either.

The whole world narrowed down to the inch of air between them. The warmth of him. The way he smelled like woodsmoke and something familiar she hadn’t let herself think about in two years. His thumb moved, just slightly, along her cheekbone.

She tilted her chin up.

Luke stepped closer, and his breath ghosted across her lips⁠—

“Mama?”

The voice carried thin and high across the yard from the porch.

Cora.

They shot apart as if an explosion had blasted between them.

Jenna’s pulse roared in her ears, and she pressed a hand to her chest as if she could steady it by force. Luke had gone still, his jaw tight, his hand falling back to his side.

Up at the house, Cora stood in the lit doorway. “Mama, you said you’d do my braid for tomorrow!”

Jenna swallowed hard and found her voice. “I’m coming, baby.”

She didn’t move yet. Neither did Luke.

In the near-dark, he looked at her, and she looked at him. The unfinished moment hung between them, charged and aching and entirely unresolved.

“We should go in.” His voice didn’t quite sound steady.

Hers wasn’t either as she said, “Yes, we should.”

But for one more breath, neither of them moved toward the house. As the last light died off the water, Jenna let herself stand in the almost of it just a moment longer.

Luke hadn’t kissed her.

But something had shifted all the same. Some door Jenna had believed was permanently closed eased open just far enough to let in a thin, terrifying line of hope.

She held onto that realization as they walked back up toward the warm windows of the house.

By ten, the house had gone quiet.

Luke lay awake on top of the covers in the dark, the way he had every night that week, listening to the old farmhouse settle and turning over everything he couldn’t fix.

The near-kiss at the pond sat in his chest, unresolved and insistent. He’d almost crossed a line tonight that he wasn’t sure he was ready to cross. He didn’t know yet whether he regretted the interruption or not.