The Nurse's One Night to Forever

Riley felt sorry for her friend. “Oh, Cassie, are you sure?”

“Absolutely. He’s mine.”

Cassie’s certainty stunned Riley. “How do you know? I mean, you’re not together...”

“We’ve had a fight.” Cassie shrugged. “I don’t like it, but it’s what we do. Just like we make up. We do that really well, too.”

Riley shook her head. “Aren’t you afraid that someday you won’t make up? That eventually he’s going to walk away and not come back?”

Cassie gave her that look again. “Why would I be afraid of that?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because he loves me,” Cassie said, with so much confidence Riley couldn’t question the sentiment. “Just as I love him. A disagreement—a thousand disagreements—won’t ever change that. We’ll always make up.”

Riley stared. “I... I guess I understand that.”

“If you feel about Justin the way I think you do, then you do understand. When you love someone you can’t not make up because you can’t imagine life without them.”

Looking beyond her friend to her fairy tree, she saw the place where she’d rebuilt her life, established a home and found peace. Had she really made an oasis away from reality? Or a fort to hide within?

Nothing wrong with a home being an oasis or a place where one felt protected, she assured herself.

“You should call him,” Cassie suggested. “As in right now—pick up your phone and call him.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “What exactly is it you’d have me say if I did?”

“The truth. That you miss him and are sorry for whatever happened between the two of you.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she defended, although she wasn’t sure she was telling the truth.

“You didn’t do anything right or he’d still be here.”

“Well, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black!” she shot at her friend.

“You’re right. I’m calling Sam.” Cassie pulled her cell from her pocket and punched in Sam’s number. Scooting into a sitting position, she got up, then hobbled toward the house. When she reached the back door, she gave Riley a pointed look, then said into the phone, “Hey, baby, I miss you...”

No doubt her friend would make up with Sam and they’d act as if nothing happened. Until the next time.

“That’s not the life for me,” she said aloud, causing Daisy to lift her head in question. “Who needs all that drama?”

Not that her relationship with Justin had been filled with drama. It hadn’t.

She thought Cassie was crazy, but she envied her friend that faith in Sam. What would it feel like to be that loved?

Exactly the way Justin loved you before you pushed him away.

Oh, how Riley hated that nagging voice in her head.

Justin hadn’t loved her. He’d—

Why had he even spent the last few months with her? There had to be easier relationships for him than one with a girl who was jaded about love and had been jilted at the altar, like her.

Yet he’d stuck by her, showered her with affection despite her struggling to give him any back outside of their physical relationship.

Why?

He could so easily have been done with her after she’d left that first night. Instead he’d reached out to her, nurtured their relationship, tried to make her feel safe.