“I’ll wait. It’ll kill me,” he said with a pathetic laugh, “but I’ll wait.”
He wiped his hands on his pants, anxious about what he had to tell her next. “And I have to be honest with you. I’m C—”
“Can you hold that thought?” She stuck her index finger up between them. “I…” She waved a hand down her body.
“Well, don’t change on my account.”
She pursed her lips, playing at indignation and fighting a smile before scampering to her room. A few minutes later, she returned in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She typed something on her phone, then slipped it into her back pocket. “Everyone is going back to the hospital. Want to come?”
“No, you go. Have some family time.”
She balanced herself on one foot at a time to put on her shoes. “What were you going to say before?”
He watched her tie her still-wet hair up on the top of her head. With the glasses on and no makeup, she looked younger, innocent, and the urgency to tell her his secret left him. He didn’t want to add something else to her growing pile of stress. “We can talk about it later.”
She accepted his answer and ushered him out the door, locking it behind them. He walked the few steps to his car until her soft voice stopped him. “Chris?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not pushing me to do anything. It seems I’m pretty willing when it comes to you.”
And he didn’t know what he loved more, the blush of her cheeks when she admitted that, or her self-proclaimed enthusiasm, because his own enthusiasm was still half hard.