Page 81 of Just One Kiss

When nobody moved to greet the Dixons, Carly’s father filled in the gap. Probably saw rudeness as another one of Josh’s shortcomings.

“Jim, Gloria,” Gus said warmly, “good of you to come.”

Jim stood tall and thick, wide like a freight train. Josh, by comparison, was muscular and athletic, but not quite as solid as his dad. Even now, Carly had to wonder if the son had a chance at overtaking the father.

“We weren’t sure Josh would stick around, so we wanted to be here for Jaden,” Jim said loudly. His laugh rippled through the room with no place to land.

Gus looked flustered, but he quickly recovered. “We’re all just waiting now. Grady went to get some coffee. You want me to have him get you some?”

Jim lifted a hand with a quick shake of his head. “We’re fine, but thanks.”

Gus nodded, then took a step back as Jim locked eyes onto Josh like a hunter in the wild.

Carly watched as Josh slowly stood, as if waiting for a heavy blow. He started walking, and for a second she thought he might actually speak to his parents, but he bolted out the door without so much as a word.

Confusion crisscrossed the room, and Gloria quickly piped up. “He’s just so nervous this morning,” she said, as if she knew anything about Josh.

“Is he okay?” Quinn kept her voice low.

Carly glanced at her. “I’m not sure.”

“Go see.”

Carly didn’t want to care. She didn’t want to think about how any of this was affecting Josh when it was so clearly destroying her. She wanted to wallow and figure out how to put everything back together once Jaden was out of surgery. She needed a plan of attack. A checklist. Something she could control.

Emotions were messy and feelings tipped her off-kilter, and ever since Josh had returned, she’d been having all the feelings and fighting all the emotions.

For some perplexing reason, her heart had gone back to high school, and she could only think of the boy who’d slept in the garden shed that night and so many other nights before and after.

Scared. Confused. Devastated. Injured.

That boy had needed her. Did he still?

The pager buzzed.

Surgery has started. Jaden is doing well.

She read the update aloud, then sat for several more minutes, turning over options in her mind.

“Go,” Quinn said. “It’s okay.”

Carly quietly slipped into the hallway, leaving her dad to make pleasant conversation with Jim and Gloria Dixon. She clung to the pager, and for a moment she wished everyone who’d come to show their support would show it by leaving them alone.

Of course she didn’t mean it, she was so thankful for her family—but she didn’t want any of them to see how scared she was.

And she definitely didn’t want any of them to notice the web of confusion in her eyes every time she looked at Josh.

She walked down the hallway to an atrium where she spotted him staring out the window overlooking the lake. The atrium was all glass, and the sunshine poured in, filling the space with light.

What did she say? She couldn’t tell him she was a ball of confusion. She couldn’t tell him that the second she’d closed the door after he left that morning, she’d slid to the ground and cried for five minutes straight.

And she certainly couldn’t tell him that his prayer had nicked the lining around her heart, giving her anger a place to escape.

She knew Josh. She needed to remember that. He was a man who couldn’t stick. A man who ran. A man she could not rely on.

People didn’t change, no matter how much you wanted them to. Her mother had left them and never returned. She went off and found herself a new family and a new life without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror.

And yet . . . was it wrong to hope?

---