“How could I forget?” she said. “You guys worked on that for days.”
“But you were the only one willing to be the first to actually try it out,” Jensen said.
He saw her in his mind as she was then—her long brown hair in a messy ponytail, and a smudge of dirt on her cheek. But the look in her crystal blue eyes had been like summer lightning.
“I wiped out,” she said now, with a look of chagrin. “I scraped my knees on the rocks. I still have a scar.”
“I got you Band-Aids,” he remembered.
“And you carried me back to the house,” she said, nodding.
She looked away from him and down at Henry again, and Jensen swore her cheeks were flushed.
Is she blushing?
“I never could figure out why you ran up and grabbed the rope like you did,” he said. “You were so brave, Willow.”
“I only did it to try and impress you,” she said. “I was scared to death.”
“You didn’t look scared,” he said, shaking his head. “You looked so fierce.”
She smiled and gazed into the fire as the light flickered on her face, making her cheeks glow.
“Why were you trying to impress me?” he heard himself ask.
She didn’t say anything for a long time. Just when he was about to give up and ask her something else, she turned to him, fixing him in that bright blue gaze.
“I had a crush on you,” she said simply. “I wanted you to like me.”
His heart seemed to forget how to beat.
“Not a real crush, though, right?” he managed to ask. “You were just a kid trying out feelings on someone you trusted.”
But her gaze slid back to the dancing flames.
“It was real,” she said after a moment. “But don’t worry, I won’t stalk you now or anything.”
“That doesn’t worry me,” he said automatically.
His heart had remembered how to beat again, and now it was pounding wildly in his chest, making him think all kinds of thoughts he shouldn’t be thinking.
But how was he supposed to help himself?
Here she was, with his child on her chest, telling him that she used to care about him, making him feel things he never thought he would feel again…
“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, turning back to him. “I didn’t mean to make things weird. I just wanted to get it off my chest. I mean, I honestly thought you always knew.”
Her expression was stricken, and he could have punched himself for putting that look on her face.
He knew he had to do something, say something, to show her that it was all right, that it was more than all right.
“Willow,”he breathed.
He reached for her, his hand meeting hers on the rough bark of the log they were sitting on. Even through their gloves, he felt a charge of electricity sizzle through him at the innocent touch.
The sound of voices floating down the hill snapped him out of his trance.
Willow pulled her hand away just as his mom and Mrs. Lennox arrived.
