Aggie clapped her hands in glee. “That means we’re going to be related. Have you told him yet?”
“It’s too soon, I don’t want to scare him off.” Besides, she didn’t know if he was falling in love with her too.
“Scare him off?” Aggie repeated incredulously. “You know he’s the male version of me, right? He’s been waiting his whole life for a woman to fall in love with him. He’s going to want to hear you tell him you're falling for him.”
“What if I'm wrong?” she asked softly, dropping her gaze to the pale blue hospital blanket that covered her.
“Wrong?”
“I met Luke—twice—on the anniversary of the day I killed my husband. I agreed to go out with him, but our first date was ruined. We have a second first date, but that’s it. Then Luke gets dragged off to the police station, I get kidnapped, then he gets kidnapped, then we almost die. What if what we went through together is clouding my feelings?”
“No.” Aggie shook her head confidently. “If what you felt for Luke wasn't real then you wouldn’t have stood by him when the police suspected him of murder. If you had just been ready to move on and Luke didn’t mean anything to you, you would have cut your losses and looked for someone else to date. Don’t be afraid of your feelings, Summer. It's okay to take time, you don’t have to rush anything, but don’t push him away. Not now when you’ve already risked so much. Give yourself the chance to be happy. You deserve it. Luke does too.”
“I have a lot of mending fences to do and a lot of relationships to rebuild. I ran after I killed Carlton because I was ashamed of what I felt I had done and how people would see me. But Luke is rebuilding his relationship with Nick, and I want to rebuild my relationships with my family too.”
“I think that’s great. I’m so happy I built relationships with Clara and Naomi, now I can't imagine my life without them.”
Summer wanted to have her family back in her life, but what she wanted most right now was Luke. She wanted him back at her side, wanted him to hold her hand and keep her fears and memories of the last day at bay. She wanted to curl up in his arms and sleep for the next day.
As if reading her thoughts, he suddenly appeared in the doorway.
* * * * *
8:02 P.M.
The way she looked at him made his heart beat faster and his stomach flutter.
Summer looked at him like he was everything to her.
“You’re awake.” She held out her good hand to him, and he smiled as he crossed the room to grasp it. “How are you feeling?”
“I'm all right.” She nodded at the IV in her arm. “Whatever they’re giving me is working, my arm doesn’t hurt anymore.”
He was glad she was finally out of pain. He didn’t know how she had managed to keep focused at the cabin with the amount of pain she had been in. Her arm had been broken in three places and she’d had a metal rod inserted in it to help the bones heal.
“How’s your hand?” she asked.
“It’s fine,” he assured her, sitting on the edge of her bed. The doctor had said he had been extremely lucky that the nail had passed between the bones, and he would have no lasting ill effects.
“I'm glad.” Summer didn’t take her eyes off him, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her either.
They just sat there and stared into each other’s eyes. Luke could look into those amazing brown eyes forever.
“H-hmm,” Aggie cleared her throat. He had forgotten she was there. “I’ll leave you two alone. Get some rest, Summer, you need it. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Bye, Aggie, thanks for sitting with me.” Summer’s gaze darted briefly to her friend before returning to him.
“Yeah, thanks for staying with Summer while I gave my statement.” Luke, too, shot his sister-in-law a quick glance before returning his gaze to Summer.
“Goodnight, you two,” Aggie sounded amused.
When the door closed behind her, Luke shifted so he was sitting beside Summer, and put his arm around her. She immediately leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Why do you think he did it?” she asked.
“Chance?”
“Yes. I know he had a brain tumor, but why did that make him kill people? And why the nursery rhymes?”
“I don’t know. Jonathon and Allina said he witnessed his father being beaten up by a loan shark. According to his sisters who were also there, a nursery rhyme CD was playing in the car while they watched. Jonathon and Allina also said the day his father was arrested and he went into foster care, it was some nursery rhyme day at his school. Maybe that means something, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know, Summer. We’ll never know, it’s too late for answers now. You have to find a way to be okay with that. I know it’s hard, honey, answers make it easier to comprehend what we went through, but there aren’t any.”