But then she stepped away and paced in the grass in front of me. “I didn’t want you to have to take care of me like this. This was exactly what I was worried about all this time.”
I shook my head, dismissing that thought completely. “I don’t care. I’m sorry, don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to let you push me away anymore. I’m in too deep. And I love you. From the day you first confided in me freshman year, I’ve been ready to do whatever I could to help you. So even if you still had me in the friend zone, I’d be right here.”
I pictured her face that day, so scared and yet so beautiful. It wasn’t far off from the way she looked right now, in fact. And just like back then, I felt an overwhelming need inside of me to do whatever I could to help her get through this.
“I feel guilty I brought you into my mess in the first place. Instead of dumping it all on you at school that day, I should have gone home and whined to my mom.”
I reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her toward me again. When she wouldn’t look at me, I hooked a finger under her chin and drew her face up so I could catch her eyes. “Don’t say that.”
She blinked up at me. “I feel like I’ve been a huge burden ever since.”
“Hey, seriously, stop. You’re not a burden. We’ll get through this. I don’t remember what class I was skipping when I ran into you that day, but I’m really glad I didn’t suddenly decide to be a good student and show up.”
“It was anatomy. Frog day, remember?”
I shuddered. “Oh, yeah. How could I forget?”
I liked to think of myself as a tough guy, and I may be a Marine who’d been on two deployments, survived recruiting duty, and enjoyed jumping out of airplanes as often as possible. But cutting into a frog and poking around inside of it? No thanks. I wouldn’t say I wassqueamishbecause I didn’t like what that did to my ever-important man-pride, but yeah. I willingly took theFon that assignment without looking back.
“You must have blocked it out,” she replied. Then she stood up on her toes and pressed a soft kiss to my lips before burying her face in my neck and hugging me tightly. “Thank you, Paul.”
“Of course.”
She pulled away after a moment, leaving me yearning to draw her close again. “Do you have to get back to work?”
I shook my head. “No. They gave me the rest of the day.”
“Wanna go do something fun? I need to take my mind off this.”
“Yeah, sure. Something chill, though, right? No strenuous activities until you get this implant up and running.”
Shelby rolled her eyes. “First of all, daily light exercise is actually good for my heart. It improves blood flow. And besides, if you’re that worried about things that make my heart rate go up, does that mean you’re going to stop kissing me? Because trust me, your kisses docrazythings to my heartbeat.”
“Uh, no,” I said, enjoying her teasing tone. “I’m pretty sure kissing counts as the good kind of exercise.” I punctuated my statement by bringing my mouth to hers again, kissing her deeply. Then it occurred to me that we were still standing in front of a medical building, so I pulled back and let out a shaky sigh. “Is this thesomething funyou had in mind? Because I’m down, but we should probably go somewhere else.”
She laughed and shook her head. “No. I was actually thinking we could go to Hilton Head and go to the beach? I love sitting by the water this time of year.”
“That sounds great.” I held out my hand for her to take, and we walked to our cars to head in that direction.
The whole way there, I played some music and did my best not to overthink all of this. Shelby’s condition may be worsening, but now she’d be able to get a device that would provide some much-needed peace of mind. And at the end of the day, I knew that would help both of us to stop living in fear.