Slow Hands

imagined was watching over her—had been listening.
    Hearing they could not take turns visiting for several hours, they all decided to head home for what was left of the night. Only an hour or two of darkness remained. Soon it would be the dawn of Tabitha’s long-awaited wedding day.
    God, how life could change in an instant.
    One of Deborah’s friends—not Bitsy, the woman didn’t have a death wish—had shown up and offered to drive her. And Tabitha left with her fiancé—obviously they had some decisions to make about the wedding.
    Frankly, Maddy hoped her sister canceled the thing for good, rather than just postponing it until after their father recovered. But she sensed Tabby wouldn’t. One way or another, Tabby would probably marry the man. Because, despite loathing Deborah enough to ignore her advice, Tabby would go through it.
    Her sister seemed ready to believe there was no such thing as true love. And more, that maybe there was even something wrong with her—something wrong with all of them—that made them genuinely incapable of sustaining the emotion.
    Maddy could have told her differently. Because she had absolutely no doubt she was in love with Jake.
    For now . That was the problem. She loved him now .
    As for tomorrow? Well, despite her hopes and her dreams and her wishes over the past few weeks, she had remembered the truth—she didn’t believe in tomorrows and happily ever afters and love that lasted a lifetime.
    Yes, she loved him right this minute. But next year? Five years from now? Had anyone she’d ever known loved a lifetime?
    No. They hadn’t. Maybe in Jake’s world, not in hers. And the man was just too good to have to live with that uncertainty.
    Which left her with only one horrible, heartbreaking option.
    “You okay?” he asked after a long, quiet drive back to her building. The streets were deserted and the silence inside the car had been even louder than the one out of it.
    “I’m fine,” she said once he’d parked in her reserved spot. “Thank you for being there.”
    “I guess I should let you get upstairs and get some sleep. Want me to come back and pick you up later this morning to take you to the hospital?”
    A simple question. The one he didn’t ask, however, was the one they were both contemplating. Did she want him to leave at all?
    “Jake, tell me why you agreed to let me ‘hire’ you for thirty days. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
    He smiled gently, reaching over to brush her hair back from her weary, tear-sore eyes. “Well, first, because you flat-out said you wouldn’t have anything to do with me if I didn’t take your check.”
    True.
    “But also because I knew you’d never give me a chance to just date you like a normal guy. You’d have to keep control…guard yourself. Keep on pretending you were that untouchable ice queen.”
    He sounded so tender, so loving, despite describing her with a term she hadn’t even thought of in reference to herself in days.
    “I saw a chance to see if something real could happen between us, and I took it, fully intending to tell you the truth as soon as I thought you were ready to hear it.”
    “Today.” She glanced at the dashboard clock. “Yesterday.”
    “Well, I don’t know that I thought you were ready. But I did decide I needed to get it out in the open. I couldn’t go on with it anymore, not once I was sure how I felt about you.”
    Maddy held her breath, wanting to stop him, afraid to hear the words. More afraid not to hear them—to never hear them come out of this man’s mouth at all.
    She’d regret that until the day she died.
    “I love you,” he murmured, lightly touching her cheek, turning her face to make sure she met his eye. “I love you, Madeline, and I’m sorry I was dishonest.”
    She merely watched. She couldn’t give the words back to him, even though they were screaming a chorus in her brain.
    “Tonight was bad and I know what you’re thinking. That you can’t trust me, that maybe I lied to you for the same reasons Bradley lied to Tabitha, and came clean for the same reasons, too. But it isn’t true. I love you.”
    There she stopped him. He was in no way like her sister’s fiancé. She put her hand up, covering his mouth with her fingertips. “No. I don’t think you’re anything like him. I believe you.” She couldn’t deny him the rest of what she owed him. “And I forgive you. I know you didn’t set out to make a fool of me, or hurt me in any