Second First Kiss

“Keep listening, my friend. You’ll see.”

“You keep calling me friend, but for the record, I don’t think of you only as a friend.” Jasher slid his arm behind her and set the photo album aside. “Friend, yes, but much more than that.” He placed a soft kiss on Sage’s brow, and then one on each of her closed eyelids, and then on the tip of her nose, and then—

“I’m not finished telling you about my dark past. It gets worse.”

“Oh, but things were just starting to get better.”

“If I don’t tell you this stuff, you won’t be able to make an educated decision. You won’t know what kind of danger you’re putting yourself in by trying to …” How could she put it without sounding alarms? Get more serious? Give her a ring that meant a promise? “Take things to the next level with me. I’m poisonous.”

“Yeah, poisonous to all my inhibitions. They die a little more every time I breathe your scent, Sage. Soon they’re all going to be gone, and I’ll host a little wake for them.” He traced his expert fingertip across the line of her blouse’s collar.

Oh, he was dangerous.

But he was also in serious danger.

“You still need to know about Ivan.”

“Ivan.” Jasher’s gaze followed his fingertip. Now it traced her jaw. “Go on.”

Sage reached up and took his distracting fingertip in her grip. “Ivan and I dated in undergrad.”

“Ivan.” Jasher breathed the word as if forcing himself to focus. “From college.”

“He wanted to be a forest ranger. Our college had a great program, and being in the mountains, it had a really good relationship with the US Forest Service.”

“Outdoorsy guy.”

“Yes. And a good guy. Soldier, too.” Sage opened the photo album to the page that showed Ivan. “Captain Ivan Musgrove.”

“An officer, huh?” Jasher bit his lips. “You do know it’s not really cool to tell a guy who’s really, really into you about all the good qualities of your exes, right?”

Sage forged ahead. “His national guard unit was called up for active duty. He was assigned to Afghanistan, and would be gone between six months and a year.” Sage could still picture his face. “On the night before they flew out, he offered me his fraternity pin. He’d had it fashioned into a ring.”

“To ask you to marry him?”

“More of a wait for me, and let’s see where this goes.”

“And did it go?”

“He was injured by a roadside IED. Lost both legs.” And his dream career. “A guy can’t very well be a forest ranger without legs—any more than a guy can play basketball without a shoulder.”

“That’s devastating. What did he do instead?”

“I wish I knew. When he came back, we stayed together for a few months, but ultimately he broke up with me when he changed colleges, since his major didn’t work for him anymore. Said it was better that way.”

“Maybe it was.”

Yeah, but— “I shouldn’t have taken his ring, Jasher.”

“He gave it to you. What were you going to do, break up the night before he left for active duty?”

That was not the point at all. “I’m not finished yet.” She was only halfway done. “I haven’t told you about Hayden Thurgood, who dated me during my nurse anesthetist training. He was in med school. We were actually pretty serious, and to prove it, he combined his grandmother’s wedding ring and a fireworks display he’d set up all by himself. I told him about the curse.”

“And he didn’t believe in it.” Jasher might be scoffing now, but once he’d heard about Hayden’s fate, that would end.

“I wasn’t going to keep the ring, but he insisted I think about it over the weekend. I cared about him. I didn’t want to put him in danger.” Just like she couldn’t put Jasher in danger. The image of the moon in the center of that gold circle, like it was a halo, danced in her mind—like a promise of eternity, with silver light always glowing inside it. “Just for the weekend, I said. By Monday morning, he’d received the results of his midterm exams. They asked him to leave medical school.”

“Lots of people get kicked out of medical school. It isn’t the right path for everyone.”