Page 11 of Just One Kiss

“I don’t know how good it is, but it’s caffeinated,” he said. He handed the tray over to Quinn.

“Grady, this is Jaden’s dad, Josh,” she said, taking the coffee.

Grady stuck a hand out in Josh’s direction. He smiled. “Terrible circumstances, but I’m glad we’re finally meeting.”

Josh shook Grady’s hand with a stern nod.

“Jaden’s told me a lot about you,” Grady said.

Josh tried not to think about the stories Jaden might’ve told this man about him. Jaden had been forgiving, yes, but he’d also made it clear that Josh would have to earn his trust. There was a difference between forgiveness and foolishness. Apparently his son knew what that difference was.

“He’s told me a lot about you too,” Josh said. “Thanks for helping him on the slopes. Means everything to him.”

“He’s a great kid,” Grady said.

Josh hated that he could take zero credit for that. “I think I’m going to find out if they’ll let me see him.”

Quinn squeezed his arm. “She’s a little stressed out.”

Josh took her words as a warning. Carly might take this whole thing out on him. He told himself to be ready for it. She’d never needed anything but words to injure a person. He’d been on the receiving end of her anger more than once—sometimes justified, sometimes not.

He hadn’t always understood how to handle that, but he was older now. Wiser. More confident.

Even someone as independent and controlled as Carly Collins couldn’t intimidate him.

But as he knocked on the door to Room 212 and prepared to see the woman who still held his heart, he knew that was one of the biggest lies he’d ever told himself.

And he braced himself for the impact of the tidal wave of emotion that was about to wash over him.

4

The knock on the door pulled Carly away from the window, where she’d been staring out over the lake for the last half an hour.

They’d taken Jaden back for more testing, and though her family was gathered in the waiting area, she’d chosen the quiet solitude of this tiny hospital room.

She needed to be alone with her thoughts, and, to be honest, her worry. But in doing so, she’d only given it a special place it didn’t deserve, and now she stood here, paralyzed with anxiety.

The what-if questions spun through her mind like sugar in a cotton candy machine. She’d played out every scenario she’d ever heard or read about. By the time the knock interrupted her thoughts, she’d practically put Jaden on the heart transplant list.

The door opened, and she expected her dad or Quinn, but it was Josh’s baby blues that greeted her from the other side.

“Josh?” His name came out as a whisper on her lips, and it was perhaps the most honest moment she could allow herself to have with him.

Because Josh Dixon could not be trusted.

Never mind that in that moment, she wanted to crawl inside his embrace and hand over a portion of her burden, like splitting a brownie in half so they could each share a piece of it.

“What are you doing here?” She begged herself to regain some semblance of composure.

“I told you I was coming.” Confusion spread across his face.

“That’s right.” It felt like a lifetime ago that they’d spoken on the phone, that they’d discussed their son fainting in the street during the parade. He’d said he was coming, but she hadn’t believed him. She’d stopped believing him the day he walked out the door.

But here he was, looking lost and disheveled and a little like the kid she’d fallen in love with so many years ago. His hair was shorter and darker now, and he’d let his facial hair grow for at least a day or two. She hated to think it, but it was a good look for him.

Easy, laid back and sexy as all get out. That pretty much summed up Josh Dixon. And none of those things were what she should be thinking about right now.

Untrustworthy, unreliable and unfaithful. That’s what sheshouldbe thinking.

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