“Mmhmm…” was all I could manage out as I fixed my position on the couch and maneuvered my leg into a position that alleviated a little bit of the sting. I bit back every swear word I knew. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I finally said through gritted teeth.

She was already on her feet and in the kitchen before I could expound on exactly how it felt. She returned with one of the ice packs I’d kept on standby since surgery and placed it gently on my knee.

“Thank you,” I said, trying to muster up a smile.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Her cheeks were still flush from the position we were in only a few moments ago.

Real smooth move, dipshit. Had her right where you wanted her and had to go and be a big damn klutz.

“I think so. Just bumped it in the wrong place.” I was mad at myself and slightly embarrassed. Things had been going so well and then… boom. She gave me a moment to compose myself before letting a soft snicker slip through her lips. “This is funny?” I asked, letting her laughter pull a smile from me. The pain had started to fade and I knew that I hadn’t done any real damage to my knee. My ego on the other hand…

“I mean, it’s a little funny,” she replied, leaning in to kiss my cheek softly. “You just injured yourself dry humping me on a couch like we were teenagers. You kind of have to laugh about it.”

She was kind of right. It might have been my most rookie move ever. So I did what she suggested and laughed. Seemed Georgia and I did a lot of that together.

I hoped that Brett didn’t think I was avoiding him after our little adventure on the sofa. The last thing I wanted him to think was that I wasn’t enjoying our time together. The truth was, it had been a long time since I’d enjoyed myself so much. I thought about him more than I wanted to admit. His smile. The way he made me laugh. The way his lips felt on mine. The way his hands felt on my body. The way he made me feel like a woman again. After losing Jamie, I’d shut that part of my body and mind off. With Brett, I felt like it was slowly being thawed after years of being frozen and numb.

Up until he thumped his knee on the coffee table, I was considering taking things further with him. Everything about what was happening between us felt right. Or at least felt good. Really good. Like I didn’t think about anything other than the sensations he was provoking from my body good. The lust that was building inside of me for him was overwhelming. I chalked it up to my hormones being stockpiled away for the last three years. Feeling the weight of his body on mine almost had me bursting at the seams.

When we’d been forced to stop to ice his knee, I tried to bring myself back to reality. I knew that sex between us was probably going to happen sooner or later. At least I hoped it would, but I also didn’t want to seem too overeager. Despite what my body was trying to tell my brain and as much as I like being outside of my head and just going with what felt good, I couldn’t.

I’d gone from losing Jamie and feeling like I’d never feel—or want to feel—the touch of another man, to craving that closeness. But, like everything I did, I couldn’t stop analyzing the risk/reward side of my time with Brett. Especially after our conversation about his job. I knew that motocross was dangerous. Nora had told me. Brett had told me. It wasn’t until I started researching it more after talking to Brett about it that I started to realize what I would be signing up for if I continued my relationship with him. The idea of going through another loss like I’d experienced with Jamie made me want to shield my heart.

“But he could die, Nora.” I told my sister on the phone. Of course she called to make sure that I remembered I had to meet the moving truck in a few days. “How do you stand that with Reid? It’s a dangerous job.”

“He could get hit by a bus tomorrow, G,” she reasoned. “Or find out that he has some disease or, I don’t know, an asteroid could destroy the entire world.”

“Seriously? I’m voicing legit concern and you’re giving me the Armageddon line of reasoning?”

“We live in a world of unknowns,” she said. “You can’t spend your entire life thinking about the worst case scenarios.”

“How do you do it? How can you stand to watch Reid put his life at risk every time he starts up his bike?”

“Because I love him and he loves his job.”

“That simple, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

It was easy for my sister. She hadn’t lost the love of her life. I felt selfish even thinking it, but she didn’t really know what it was like for me. Sure, she saw how I was affected, but she didn’t feel it. She didn’t live through it.

“I don’t know,” I said before telling her good bye. “I guess I’ll just have to wait and see how I feel further down the line. I might be getting way ahead of myself anyway. I don’t even know what we are exactly.”

I kept telling myself that what we had was new and not supposed to be something that was causing me to think so much. Simple, he’d said and I agreed. The more time we spent together the less simple things were becoming. We barely knew each other, but it didn’t feel that way when we were together. Either way, it was hard to say if his job would even be an issue in the long run. He was leaps and bounds ahead of his PT schedule and telling me that he felt stronger every day. It wouldn’t be long before he was headed back home and riding his bike like nothing had even happened. I might be left back in Halstead without ever hearing another peep from him.

If love was what it was going to take to get me to support his work, then we still had miles to go. Mile and miles.

* * *

“Good morning, Mrs. Wilson,” I said to the middle-aged woman who was watching television from her hospital bed. It was my rotation in Cardiology. I usually loved this floor, but today was proving to be a challenge. Mrs. Wilson, for example, who was post-operation and apparently came off anesthesia with the side effect of being a grouch. She’d suffered a heart attack that needed repaired in surgery. I know she didn’t plan on having a heart attack and the recovery was not exactly pleasant, but her life had just been saved. Being gracious about her second chance on life seemed like a stretch for her. Staring death in the face hadn’t stopped her from trying to sneak a cigarette in the bathroom or stopped her trying to order food that was not on her doctor recommended list either.

Not one of the nurses had a nice thing to say about her. I could tell from the scowl on her face she was going to be less than pleasant for me, too.

“My lunch was cold.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said, checking the readout from her monitors. Cold or not, I noticed that her entire tray was cleaned. “I can call down and have warm broth sent up if you’d like.”

“Doesn’t matter. It all tastes terrible,” she huffed.

“Couldn’t have been all that bad,” I said trying to remain positive despite how much she irritated me. “You ate most of it. Just think, only one more day and you can eat at home,” I told her. “I hope your husband is stocking up on heart healthy meals.”

That was not very nice, Georgia.

I don’t know if it was my conversation with my sister or the fact that I had only had a few hours of sleep the past few days, but I was not my usual chipper self. Brett’s words about having more fun kept running through my head. He had a point. I loved my job and school, but after spending time with him, I was starting to understand that I needed to balance my life out a little better.

Luckily, Mrs. Wilson hadn’t heard me. She was too busy rambling on about how cold the room was and how it had been hours since she’d been checked on.