Page 174 of Just This Once

“Come on,” I encouraged. “I want to see.”

Parker hissed out an irritated breath and rolled his eyes to the side before shoving his hand into a pocket and pulling up his keychain.

He glanced away, refusing to look at the results as he held up the tiny vial near me so I could watch the cloud inside swirl to life.

“Wow,” I murmured, shaking my head in awe. “That’s so weird how that works. The green really does fade to white the closer you get to death.”

Parker turned his head to look, only to curse under his breath when he saw the pale, pea-green tinge.

“Too close,” he grumbled, pocketing the amulet and shoving it out of sight. “That is way too fucking pale.”

“So,” I wondered, tipping my head at him. “If I don’t pull through, do youwantme to stick around and become a ghost, or do you want me to move on?”

He narrowed his eyes. “How about you just pull through?”

“And if I don’t have a choice?” I took his hand. “I’m being serious here. Do you want me to stay? Because I would stay. For you.”

Parker’s expression crumbled, and he bowed his head briefly, only to blow out a hard breath and glance up again, squeezing my fingers. “No. Don’t become a ghost for me. If there’s somewhere you need to go after this, then I want you to go.”

“So you’ll be okay?” I pressed.

He laughed harshly through a new flood of tears. “Not even a little. But you don’t need to suffer for it.” Lifting my hand to his mouth, he kissed my knuckles. “Don’t become a ghost for me. I’ll be okay. Eventually.”

I nodded, only to say, “I need to tell you…”

“Yeah?” he murmured, listening.

“Remember how I said you were basically the last guy in the group to choose from to help me with number four on my list?”

His brow furrowed. “Yeah.”

“That wasn’t true. Not at all. It didn’t matter that all your friends already had girlfriends. Every single one of them could’ve been as single and available as you were. I still would’ve wanted just you. You were always the only one I was going to go to.” Emotion clouded his eyes as I spoke, so I reached out anddrifted my fingers over his cheek. “You’re the only one I ever wanted.”

He shuddered and shook his head. “Why?” he rasped. “Why me? I’m the lemon of the group, the biggest, fucked-up mess out of all of them.”

“Because Iamyou,” I explained. “I get your pain. I understand your anger. And I wish for it all to go away while doing everything wrong to get rid of it. Besides, I like lemons. They’re good for the liver.”

“Hope,” he choked out before kissing me gently. Resting his forehead against mine, he whispered, “I love you, too.”

40

PARKER

Thane sat on one side of me and Alec on the other as I bounced my knee the next morning and checked my watch for the fifth time in the last minute alone.

We’d already been here for three hours, and they had estimated that it would take four to six to remove the sliver from Xander’s liver before they even started on Hope, whose operation to remove her old one and insert the new should take another five to twelve on top of that.

We were going to be here all fucking day, so I had no idea why I was already so impatient.

Across the room, the entire Union clan clustered, talking loudly over each other. Foster’s dad and Uncle Jesse—who was Xander’s dad—looked almost like twins, even though Scott was six years older than Jesse. Their middle sister, Paula, was a tiny, petite thing that didn’t even appear to be a Union at all, except for their trademark blond hair, of course. They certainly argued like siblings, though, as they bickered about who would take which shifts watching Xander after she got out of the hospital.

When I met Foster’s gaze, he rolled his eyes, and I smiled slightly, almost glad for a second that I didn’t have any family to fret over and irritate me.

But then I glanced to either side of me, and I realized I did.

All the Eisners, Alec and his mom, and my seven, along with their girlfriends, were flipping through magazines, playing on their phones, or chatting quietly with each other, either skipping out on work or school to wait through the day with me.

Even Keene had stuck around after I’d thrown a magazine at him earlier when he’d made a dumbass crack about my breakdown over Hope’s hospitalization being the reason why he was never falling in love. He was staked out behind a tall plant in the corner, out of my reach, but he was still here. And I was glad.

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