Page 5 of Wish For Me

I reached down and helped her to her feet.

“Thanks,” she said, once she got to standing.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought—”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Thank you for being so concerned about me. That was really nice of you.”

She said it in such a way that I wondered if someone in her life hadn’t been concerned for her in a long time.

“You’re welcome,” I said.You’re welcome?

We stood there awkwardly a moment—or at least I did, while she brushed the snow off herself and looked around. The guys across the street were gone, the music dulled behind the closed door of the bar.

“Are you—” I began at the same time as she said,

“Well, see you.”

Okay then.

She gave a curt nod, then turned abruptly and beginning to trudge away through the snow.

She was just going to walk away in this? What if she fell again?

Floof yipped from my coat as if agreeing with me. “Wait!” I called. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?”

She paused, then turned around. “It’s the middle of the night. I don’t know you.” Then she looked toward the bar and laughed softly. Thankfully, it was a rueful kind of laugh, not loopy-sounding like before.

“My car is right over there.”

Floof yipped again.

She eyed the fur ball under my coat.

“She’s my grandparents’ dog,” I explained, as if that information was important for her to know.

She looked back up at me, her brows furrowed. “Why are you walking around with your grandmother’s dog at this time of night? In a snowstorm?”

“I needed to get out of the house. It wasn’t snowing this badly when I left.”

She glanced up at the falling snow, quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You really want to take me home in this?”

“Of course. I don’t feel good leaving you out here on your own after that…fall.”

She grimaced.

“I fell at least three times before I ran into you,” I said. That wasn’t true. I had very good balance. But I could have. And it made her smile, which made my stomach do a little weightless flip.

I registered right away that she was cute, but I’d been so panicked it wasn’t something I’d dwelled on. Her hair was a deep brown, wavy as it came out of her wool hat. Straight dark brows topped hazel eyes that were dark around the irises. Her cheeks were pink against her pale skin, and brightly freckled. And that smile—wide pink lips and a slightly crooked incisor—fuck cute. She was gorgeous, in an imperfectly perfect kind of way.

“What’s your name?”

“Leif.”

“Like the Viking?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And thank you for that. Most people say ‘like the tree’.”

She smiled again. “What, you don’t like being called a tree?”

---