By the time he had his boy in his warmest pajamas, sleeping in his crib with the mist from the humidifier pointed right at him, Jensen had no idea how much time had passed.
But as he looked down at his son, he felt so grateful. His eyes burned to see that little face so peaceful, his chest moving up and down gently.
He grabbed the monitor, headed to his own room, and got his old Trinity Falls firehouse sweats out for Willow. They were still going to be enormous on her, butthey were the smallest things he had, and they were warm.
When he got to the bathroom door, he paused for a moment, not wanting to disturb her.
And as the grip of the scary moment relaxed, all his thoughts about Willow came rushing back like a wave.
17
WILLOW
Willow stood in Jensen’s bathroom with his massive robe wrapped around her.
She had finally stopped shaking. Honestly, she wasn’t sure if she’d been shivering from the cold, or if it had actually been more from adrenaline.
As a nurse, she had known on paper that Henry was almost certainly going to be okay. He didn’t have asthma, and there was a pernicious cough going around according to the other nurses at Tarker County General.
But it was one thing to know it on paper and another to hear a toddler you cared about coughing like that, and to hold him in your arms while his little body struggled for breath.
Jensen had handled things very well, even though it was clear he was terrified for Henry. He’d been cool under pressure and done exactly what she asked each time. Henry was a lucky kid to have a dad who was good in a crisis.
Don’t think about him.
But that was the problem. The moment she’d seen that text she had been in her car without thinking about it, just desperate to get to the people she cared about most in the world.
How did that happen so quickly?
All this time, she had been frustrated with herself for not being able to let go of an adolescent crush. It had taken an emergency to make her realize that what she felt was so much deeper.
Here she was, soaking in the warmth of Jensen’s robe, surrounded by his forest scent. Yet she was thinking about how much she cared about his son, and how capable he was—not about how handsome he looked, or how good he smelled.
Could this be real?
But that would make it so much worse. Because if she brought out the worst in him—made him want to sneak around and lie to her brother, maybe even to himself—then it didn’t matter if she really cared about him. She had to let him go.
A gentle knock at the door roused her from her thoughts.
“Willow?” Jensen’s deep voice was tinged with worry.
“Hey,” she said, opening the door right away so he would see she was fine. “How’s Henry doing?”
“He’s sleeping,” Jensen said, his expression so sweet as he talked about his boy. “Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for helping him.”
“I’m so glad you called,” she told him honestly.
He gazed down at her, his gray eyes alive with emotion, and for a moment neither of them said a word.
“Uh, well, this is the smallest stuff I’ve got,” he told her, handing her a very familiar bundle of gray clothing.
“Are these your firehouse sweats?” she asked. Ransom had a set too, back in high school. She had always been wildly jealous.
“Sure are,” he told her. “They’re not fancy, but they should keep you warm.”
“I always thought you guys were so cool, being firefighters,” Willow admitted, smiling down at the shirt with the firehouse logo.
“We thought so too,” Jensen chuckled. “I’m sure we were a liability half the time, but the chief taught us a lot, and we did help out. Though we were mostly washing the trucks and pumping water out of people’s basements during summer storms.”
