Once in Every Life

Just looking at him made her heart speed up, her throat go dry. His name slipped from her lips and was lost in the breeze. Her fingers tightened around the scratchy rope.

"I ..." He moved, his footsteps a quiet thudding across the wooden porch. Then he stopped. "I'm going to bed."

Take me with you. Tess swallowed hard, trying to still her racing heart. "Why are you telling me?"

It took him forever to answer. Tess leaned forward, waiting. Ask me, Jack. Just hold out your hand to me....

"I wanted to say good night." 241

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"Oh." Tess's hands unfurled, slid down the ropes, and landed in her lap. "Good night."

He stood there for a while longer. Tess felt his gaze on her and knew he was trying to summon the courage to stay. Perhaps even to come closer.

"Well ... good night." He turned and disappeared into the house. The door creaked quietly shut behind him.

Tess let out her breath in a disappointed sigh. Standing, she hugged herself and walked idly around the tree. Tiny pebbles clung to her bare feet as she wandered across the dirt road and headed into the grass. Thin, swaying stalks

tickled her ankles.

She stared at Haro Strait far below, its shimmering gray-black surface streaked by a single, wobbling finger of blue-white moonlight. Stars danced like fallen diamond chips across the night sky.

She knew what she wanted to do right now, but she was afraid. The realization irritated the hell out of her. Never in her life had she been a coward, and yet now, faced with the greatest opportunity of her life, she was skulking outside like a frightened kitten. Waiting.

It didn't make sense. Adversity had always spurred her to accept greater and greater challenges. When they told her a deaf girl couldn't be a doctor, she proved them wrong; when they told her she might be able to get an education, but she'd never be able to find employment, she proved them wrong again; and when they'd told her cancer didn't have a cure, she'd dedicated her life to changing

that.

But somehow all of those challenges paled in comparison to this one. Then, she'd risked being laughed at or, at worst, failing where few had ever succeeded. Here, with Jack, she was risking something greater, something infinitely more precious.

Her chance to belong.

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What if he laughed at her, or turned her away? What if all the loving glances and quiet smiles were in her mind, a figment of her own love-starved imagination?

Then you'll get hurt. The answer came as easily as the question. Surprisingly, it calmed her down.

She'd been hurt before, and she'd always survived. If the worst happened tonight and Jack rejected her, she'd get over that, too.

Someone had to take a chance here; that much was obvious. Bot

h she and Jack were desperately afraid of being hurt, and they were both immobilized by that fear.

No more, Tess decided suddenly. She had a chance here?a chance she'd waited for all her life. A chance she'd died to find. And she wasn't going to throw it away because of a few fluttery nerves and old anxieties.

If Jack rejected her, she'd simply wait for another opportunity and try again. And again and again and again. Jack was her future, her destiny, and she wasn't about to walk away from him.

Jack sat stiff as a board on the sofa, the blanket thrown haphazardly across his knees, his hands coiled in his lap.

The house was still and quiet. Every now and then a breeze rattled the windowpane behind him, but other than that transient noise and the quickened tenor of his breathing, the place was silent. In the kitchen a lone candle sat on the table, its glow splashing across the white tablecloth.

Then he heard it. The doorknob was turning.

Jack's heart picked up speed, thudded in his ears. The door squeaked and whined, then clicked shut.

Lissa picked up the candle and moved toward him. Wreathed in pale, golden candlelight, she looked like an angel. Honey-hued hair curled riotously across her brow and hung in undulating waves along her arms. Her eyes, an even deeper brown in the uncertain light, glowed like