Read Online Just One Day by Sharla Lovelace - Free Book Online Page A

still damp. He was right. This was the day Brad gave me. It wasn’t going to get better.
    “I know. Just thinking about the other end.”
    Jesse frowned. “Other end of what?”
    “This day,” I said. I watched a tree by the road get stripped by the angry sharp ice, and I closed my eyes when I imagined the car. I may not have a choice to make, after all. Once Brad found out I’d taken off without a note and destroyed his car, he may take the offer off the table. The wind seemed louder than before, or maybe that was the roar of impending doom.
    “So, what’s on the other end?” he asked, his tone soft enough to bring me back to him.
    The old look in his eyes made my stomach tingle for a second. It was warm and familiar, like old friends or lovers would have. But how could it feel that familiar after so much time?
    “A note with a yes or no.”
     
    * * *
     
    Jesse leaned forward, knowledge already visibly washing over him. He asked anyway.
    “What’s the question?”
    I bit at my bottom lip and traced a scratch on the wooden table. “Oh, you know the one,” I said, focusing on the long mark. “Involves jewelry.”
    He picked up my left hand by the ring finger. “I don’t see any jewelry.”
    I stared at my hand in his. “Yeah, that would be the quandary.”
    “So, what’s the problem?” Jesse asked, leaning over to make me look at him.
    “I don’t know,” I said, sliding my hand back from his and rubbing my eyes. “On paper, it all makes sense, just—” I shook my head. I didn’t know where else to go with it.
    “People aren’t paper,” he said. “Marriage is hard. You should at least start excited about it.”
    I laughed and ran my fingers along the back of the hand he’d held. It was still warm there from the contact. “I know. And I’ve been down that road. I guess I never really saw myself doing it again.”
    “Are you in love with the guy?”
    Coming from him, those words made my mouth go dry, and he seemed to know that because he shook his head.
    “Take our history out of it, Fremont. Close your eyes so you aren’t looking at me.” I studied his expression for a moment longer and then did what he said. I closed my eyes. “Now,” he continued. “Do you love him?”
    The quiet wasn’t really quiet with the violence of the storm swirling around us, but to me it was deafening. I clinched my eyes shut tighter and forced Jesse’s image away and Brad’s face to mind. His smile and laugh and quirky ways that were mostly funny. His easy way of getting me to calm down when I was angry or see his way of thinking. Damn it, I wanted to say I was in love with him, why was it so hard? Why did it feel more like habit than love?
    I felt a hand on mine again, and my eyes popped open.
    “How long have you been together?” he said.
    “Two years.”
    A look somewhere between disbelief and pity crossed his features, and he sat back in the booth.
    “I knew I loved you in one day,” he said, his voice low. He said it so easy, my skin lit up like a million little candles. He broke eye contact, looking out at the storm. “Say what you want about that, Andie, you knew it, too.”
    My head spun with a thousand questions. Questions that took my voice so I couldn’t ask them. How could we have been so sure in just one day, when here I was running in circles after two years?
    “It was the same with my wife,” he said, still staring unseeing out the window. “I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her after a week.”
    My questions about us would wait. I blinked back the unexpected burn behind my eyes, irritated at the emotion this man I barely knew could pull from me.
    “Tell me about her.”
    The words sounded foreign coming from my mouth since his blatant confession still rang in my ears. It was on long loop, repeating over and over in my head. He took a deep breath and let it out, looking like I’d just asked him to run naked down the highway. He closed his eyes.
    “It’s not