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Jessica was right. He was an excellent human being.

I felt my chest filling up, like love and gratitude and appreciation were solids that took up space inside me. I could feel the emotions pouring from my heart, streaming from the tips of my fingers, bursting from my mouth like a shout.

I would jump in front of a bus for this man. Take a bullet. Fight a mob. I would defend him to the death, kill someone for so much as looking at him wrong.

I wanted to go back in time and punch myself in the face for causing him even a moment of unhappiness. My devotion to him shot adrenaline into my system, made me feel frantic to find him so I could thank him, even though thanking him wasn’t and never would be enough.

I must have looked hysterical, tearing through the hallways sobbing, throwing open doors, mascara running down my face. It felt like a dream. One of the ones where your legs won’t move fast enough and you can’t find what you’re looking for.

And then there he was.

He was coming down the hallway from the direction of the locker rooms. This beautiful, benevolent angel of a man.

I ran at him, grabbed him by the hand, and yanked him toward a supply closet.

“Uh…” he said, letting himself be dragged. “What are we—”

I pulled him into the small room and shut the door behind me, panting.

He stared at me. “Are you okay?”

I gasped for a moment before blurting it out. “Are you Benny’s kidney donor?”

I watched the question move across his face.

I shook my head. “I know you don’t want anyone to know. And I won’t tell anyone. Not even Benny. But I have to know, for myself, if it’s you. Please. Is it you?” My voice cracked on the last word.

He peered at me quietly. The moment stretched a thousand years.

I tried to read his expression, tried to glean the answer from the tic in his jaw or the resigned set of his eyebrows, the searching in his kind brown eyes. I had to know, I had to know.

I watched his lips part and then he said it: “Yes.”

I threw myself at him.

Chapter 17

Jacob

She dove at me.

I caught her and staggered back a few feet before I regained my balance.

She hugged me like I’ve never been hugged in my life. It was like she was collapsing at the end of a finish line.

“Thank you,” she sobbed. “Thank you thank you thank you.”

“I…it’s okay,” I said. “I wanted to.”

She wept into my neck, and my instinct was to wrap her in my arms and comfort her, even though I knew these weren’t sad tears. And when I folded them around her, she clutched me tighter and everything I was going to do, the organ donation, the surgery, the recovery, was worth it for this one moment alone.

I’d thought that any show of gratitude would make me uncomfortable. But for some reason I didn’t mind it now that it was happening, and I think it was because it was happening with her.

I liked her.

And I liked making her happy and I liked seeing her this way and I liked this hug.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t been hugged—really, really hugged—since Amy. And even then, I couldn’t remember the last time we’d held each other in any way that felt like this. She’d been so frustrated with me and I’d felt so distant from her, the intimacy had ended long before the relationship did.