It was early afternoon when I heard a clatter in the foyer. The front door banged open then slammed shut. Two seconds later, Jenna stumbled through the kitchen archway.

Hair a mess. Clothes splattered with dough and streaked in frosting.

Frazzled and unnerved.

Her gaze darted to Evan, who was sitting on his knees on the stool next to me with his elbows propped on the counter as he Snapped with Josiah.

As if he hadn’t been through the trauma of yesterday.

Jenna had been at the coffee shop this morning when I’d called to let her know what had happened. The weekend manager had been short-staffed, so she’d gone in to pick up the slack.

She went right for him, hauling him into her arms, hugging him tight and peppering a bunch of sloppy kisses all over his head and face.

“Is he okay?” she asked, her eyes cutting up to me from over his head.

I nodded, fighting that rush of terror I was struck with when I thought of what might have been. Instead, I forced myself into focusing on the fact he was here.

Whole.

Healthy.

“He got a little out of breath. Chanda and Richard were concerned, so they rushed him in. He was fine by the time I got there.”

No. It hadn’t been our first urgent trip to the ER, and I hated to accept that it certainly wouldn’t be our last. But it was the life we lived. But it sure didn’t ever get any easier. Terrified that one day the diagnosis wouldn’t be so simple. That our worlds might be rocked once again.

“Thank God,” she said, squeezing him tighter. He pulled back, sending her a huge grin, shaking his head as if he thought she was being ridiculous.

She set him back on the stool and ruffled his hair before dropping down low to be sure he was watching her face. “You have to stop scaring me like that.”

He gave her an indulgent nod, signing, I DON’T MEAN TO SCARE YOU, AUNTIE.

Jenna only signed well enough to pick up on whatever my son was trying to say.

She ran a tender hand down the side of his face. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”

Evan immediately went back to his iPad.

Straightening, she ran both her palms over her face and blew a big puff of air between her lips.

She gave me that look, the one asking if I was okay.

I grimaced, not sure how to answer that question. Yesterday had been horrible, bad enough to drop me to my knees, and still one of the best days of my life.

I was struggling to process all the emotions roiling inside me.

I could still taste Kale on my breath and feel him on my skin.

“Yesterday was rough,” I told her, “but I promise I’m okay. I’m just thankful it turned out the way it did.”

I turned to make sure Evan couldn’t see me speaking before I set my attention back on Jenna. “You know I’m going to have to borrow more money to pay for that visit.”

We’d figured paying out of pocket for Evan’s medical care for a year was going to be steep. But we hadn’t prepared for any emergencies, praying we could eke by on the bare minimum, going with it, riding on the hope that it would all work out in the end.

“Don’t you dare mention money, Hope. I told you from the start, I’m in this with you.”

I blinked, pushing out the words around the heavy emotion in my throat. “I just hate that I’m putting your livelihood on the line, right along with mine. It isn’t fair to you, Jenna.”

“Pssh.” She waved me off with a wry grin. “Don’t give yourself so much credit. Who do you think the criminal mastermind is around here? If I hadn’t have come up with the idea, you never would have been in the middle of this. Just be thankful I’m your BFF—best friend felon.”

My brows lifted. “Best friend felon?”

“Um, I did go into a dark alley to make that happen. Doesn’t get more gangster than that.”

“So hardcore,” I teased her, letting myself latch on to her mood. Because she was right. It was all gonna work out. I just had to hold out a little longer.

“Hey, that dude was scaaaary,” she drew out, before she fanned herself. “And hot. On all things holy, that man was hotter than Hades. Hell, he might have been Lucifer himself.”

Only Jenna.

She dropped her smile. “But seriously, the last thing I want you worrying about is money. We’ll figure it out, no matter what. We’re almost to the end. We’ve got this, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

Shucking off the heaviness, I grabbed a coffee mug from the cupboard and waved it toward her. “You want?”

Her eyebrows disappeared behind her messy bangs. “After a day like today? That cup had better have wine in it.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “Wine it is.”

Ducking into the fridge, I pulled out a chilled bottle of rosé. I hunted in the drawer for the opener, focused on tearing off the foil and popping the cork.

“So, why didn’t you call me yesterday?” she asked. “You know I hate the idea of you having to go through something like that on your own. One call, and you know either me or your mama would be there in a flash.”

There was a hint of hurt in her tone. A little bit of conniving, too.

Because Jenna knew me so well that I was pretty sure she’d waltzed through that door and saw everything about me was different.

That my insides had been rearranged to make room for something new.

Something beautiful and wonderful.

Magical.

I could feel the flush race up my neck, and I dropped my face toward the floor, trying to conceal what was probably written all over me, anyway.

“Harley Hope Masterson, you better fess up right now . . . because I see that pink hitting your cheeks, and you haven’t even had a sip of your wine.”

I peeked up at her. “I didn’t have to go through it alone.”

“And who might it have been at the hospital with you?”

Evan caught my attention in my periphery when he sat upright, nonchalantly signing, K-A-L-E.

Little stinker. He had a knack of knowing exactly when to start paying attention, picking up on the little bits I might want to keep hidden.

But there had been no hiding what I felt this morning when I’d gotten up and could hear the deep tenor of Kale’s voice echoing through my walls.

After I’d thought he was sneaking out when I’d wanted to beg him to stay.

I’d tiptoed out to find the staggering sight of the man in there with my son. Cooking for him. Laughing with him. Caring for him.

After the night we’d shared together, seeing him there like that had almost been too much.

Triumph glinted in Jenna’s eyes as they slanted from Evan toward me. “Oh, really.”

Evan was back to divulging all my secrets. YUP. AND HE SPENT THE NIGHT AND MADE ME BREAKFAST. HE’S HER BOYFRIEND.

The last he said with a little shrug.

No big deal.

Jenna choked, sputtered over her laugh, that original triumph shifting to an all-out celebration of victory. “You little slut.”

“Jenna,” I hissed, glancing at Evan, who’d decided we were boring after all, his attention wrapped up in watching Josiah dancing around the screen with his face the center of a flower.

She stalked toward me, a gleam in her eyes, and then turned so her back was toward Evan. “Was he good? Oh, God, I bet that doctor is amazing with those big hands. I told you all you needed was a big, yummy dick and all would be right with the world.”

Her words deviated from a salacious secret to a breathy wisp to the worst kind of tease.

“A lady never tells,” I tried to defend.

Though I might as well have been shouting it from the rooftops with the way heat went flushing over every inch of me, the memory of the way he’d touched me. Bringing me to ecstasy as if he were the one who’d always possessed my pleasure, the one sent to deliver it.

“Oh, come on, Hope. That’s a total crock, and you know it. You’ve at least got to tell me if the man knows where the clicker is.”

How she and I were friends, I didn’t know. When I didn’t answer, her grin just grew, yet, her voice turned soft. “At least tell me he knows how to treat you right. That’s the only thing I want for you. Don’t ever settle. Not again.”

I cracked, whispering, “He definitely knows how to treat me right.”

In every way.

We were all hushed secrets behind the corner Jenna had backed me into. “How right?”

“So right.” My tummy flipped at the thought.

“Like . . . how . . . how right?” She angled her head, prying the truth out of me.

“Like, so very right. Like I’ve never felt anything close to the way I do when I’m with him. Not in all my life.”

She squeezed me in her arms like a miracle just had happened. “Praise Mary.”

Then she pulled me back, staring at me as all the prying tease left her voice. “Are you okay?” she asked me again. Though this time, the question was entirely different.

Because when I said she knew me, she knew me. She knew I’d never have slept with him if it didn’t mean something to me.

I searched around inside myself for what to say. How to express what it was I really felt. “My life is crazy with Dane right now . . . I feel like I’m running faster and faster, trying to outrun him, praying he doesn’t catch us.”

All the while not fully understanding why he was chasing us in the first place.

My words started to become breathy, the horror of what Dane might actually do, what he might actually want.

“I’m terrified of what’s coming. But somehow . . . that world? Right now, it feels like it’s stronger than it has ever been. Like maybe Kale is holding some pieces together I might have lost if I had to do this alone.”

“He’s good with Evan?”

“He’s amazing with him.”

She rubbed her thumbs where she was still holding me by the arms. “But you know it’s got to be more than that, Hope. This can’t just be about Evan. And I know you live for that boy, as you should, but you deserve to find happiness in the middle of that, too. Real happiness.”

I knew she was prodding. Digging deeper. Forcing me to evaluate everything. That was Jenna’s way. Goading and coaxing and shoving me toward something she might think I needed and then urging me to look at it for what it was.

Playing devil’s advocate. “It’s so much more than just that.”

I glanced at Evan before turning back to her. “Evan will always be my first priority, and I’ll never allow a man into our lives who doesn’t care about him. But this . . . what I feel?” I splayed my hands flat across my chest. “It’s overwhelming and wonderful and terrifying, and what happened between us last night? It was bigger—more powerful—than anything I could have imagined.”

Magical. A fantasy that shouldn’t have been real.

“I want to feel like this, every day, for the rest of my life. And I want to get to do it with him.”

She huffed an affectionate breath and edged back. “Oh, Harley Hope. You’re already in love with him.”

Maybe it made me a fool.

Naïve and unsuspecting.

“I don’t think I could have stopped myself from falling for that man if I’d tried.”

She quirked a playful brow. “He is delicious. Sex on a stick. Tell me we are naming a cupcake after him.”

“Watch yourself,” I tossed at her with a small laugh.

My phone chirped on the island. I went for it, unable to stop the force of my smile when I read the text.

“Look at you over there, grinning like you just swallowed a big ol’ canary,” Jenna teased. “Don’t think I need to ask you who it is. What’s he sayin’?”

“He wants Evan and I to go over to his place for pizza and a movie this evening. He said he’d pick us up since my car is still over there.”

“Oh, Harley Hope. I think that man just might be a keeper.”

“I know.”

He was so, absolutely a keeper. I could only pray he was really ready for it. For us. That he understood what being with us would be like.

Because Evan and I? I knew we were a big decision. What I knew would be a huge change to his life . . . his previous lifestyle so different than the kind of life we had to offer.

But I knew, with all of me, that Evan and I could fill his life with so much joy. The kind of joy he had evoked in me.

And my heart?

It was always hung on hope.

And all I was hoping was Kale could see it, too. That he really wanted it.

That he would take a chance on us.