Page 74 of One Breath After Another

When she shivered in the chair, because waiting rooms weren’t known for their heat, Luca shifted again before the leather jacket he’d grabbed out of his car earlier suddenly dropped down on top of her. He made quick work of shifting it around so that it covered Penny like a blanket. All the while, he said nothing.

He didn’t need to.

Now, he was all around her.

Support behind her.

Warmth she needed.

More.

Every breath she took brought with it the smell of him that clung to the leather jacket. The barest hints of cigarette smoke—she never saw him smoke—mixed in with something crisp, like pine needles, and the leather of the jacket.

“Is it scary?” Luca asked.

Penny was almost asleep now. “What?”

“When things change.”

“Yes,” she replied simply.

Because it was.

When everything was good, she found herself worrying about what was going to go wrong. Not that she dared to say it out loud. Then, it might actually happen.

“Luca?”

“Hmm?” he asked.

In her state—almost asleep but still partly awake—Penny wasn’t even sure if the conversation she was having was real or just something she was manifesting. Even so, she kept talking, telling Luca, “I liked you at first because of the way you looked.”

It took her a while to accept that fact, really. It wasn’t an easy conclusion to come to because she didn’t like the idea of being attracted to someone for the sake of attraction. Hadn’t she learned long ago that just because something looked pretty didn’t mean it actually was?

Luca proved her wrong.

Again.

A muffled chuckle answered her back. “Oh?”

“Yeah.”

But ... look at him. A single look from him screamed with intensity that Penny really didn’t know how to deal with. Especially when she knew his stares often accompanied his kindness and wisdom. He didn’t stare to ... appraise her. He did it to find who she was.

Who wouldn’t notice a face like Luca’s first?

“But then I liked you because you were kind and helpful,” Penny added as the darkness shrouded her vision, and she smiled. “And because you made me talk—you weren’t scared of me like everyone else is. You cared.”

And she just thought he should know.

“Go to sleep, Penny.”

She sighed. “Okay.”

• • •

“DON’T HIDE OVER THERE,” Roz told Penny.

Standing in the doorway of the bedroom, Penny didn’t dare step any closer to Roz and the bundle of blue she held in the rocking chair. “What if I wake him up?”