Laurel was pushing away from him and tucking her hair behind her ears. Both hands. Both ears. Obviously nervous.
She wasn’t the only one.
He shoved his hands into his front pockets. Both hands. Both pockets.
“You said you’re not married,” she said quickly. “I s’pose you have a girlfriend, though. N-not that I’m suggesting—”
“I don’t,” he interrupted. “But I still can’t take you with me to Rambling Rose.” He’d deliberately avoided saying the town’s name. But now it was too late and he braced himself for some reaction.
But none came. Her lush lips had merely rounded into a silent “Oh.”
“Laurel—” He broke off, because he was damned if he knew how to handle this. Damned if he said nothing. Damned if he said too much.
Then she tucked her hair again even though it was still tucked. “I’m sorry. Don’t pay any attention to that. I know it’s a wild idea. I can’t help it. I feel more than a little bit out of control, I guess.”
He bit off an oath. “You’re not.”
“Easy for you to say. You can remember what happened BA.” She caught his look. “Before Accident.” Then she wiped her cheeks and turned away.
She walked over to pick up the cup she’d knocked off the table. She carried it to one of the garbage bins and dumped it inside. Then she dusted her hands together and when she turned back toward him, her shoulders were visibly firmed. “I’m ready to go back to Fresh Pine.” She walked past him, her feet kicking through the overgrown grass.
God help him. He really was not strong enough for this.
He lobbed his own cup into the trash. “I hate avocados,” he said abruptly. “And bananas.”
She stopped. Looked back at him.
“You love ’em,” he continued. “Almost as much as you love peanut butter. Always kept trying to convince me I ought to love them, too. But I don’t. Tasteless mush, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’re insane. Guacamole? Banana pudding? Not together, obviously. But still. Double nirvana!”
“Not the first time I’ve heard you say that. I still hate them both.”
She rocked on the heels of her smiley-faced tennis shoes. “What else?”
“I broke my arm when I was seven, trying to rig up a pulley system between my second-floor bedroom and the house next door so my best friend and I could get across to see each other without going downstairs past our parents.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Inventive.”
“Not really. Didn’t dawn on me that a steel cable would be pretty noticeable as soon as someone looked up.”
“I broke my arm, too.” She held up her right arm. “So they told me when they brought me out of the coma, anyway. What else?”
And her left leg, he thought grimly.
“I have four brothers and one sister. All younger than me.” He held up his hand. “And before you ask, no, you don’t have any siblings.”
“I know.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know how or why I know, but I know.”
“And you’re going to have to trust me when I say that you can’t come home with me to Rambling Rose.”
Her lashes dipped. She kicked the toe of her shoe through the grass. “I told you to forget I asked. It’s too much of an imposition. I get it—”
“—not without knowing what you’ll be facing when you get there.”
Her lashes flew up. Her lips were rounded again. Silently. “I don’t understand,” she finally said.
“I know you don’t.” He held out his hand, sending a silent apology to Dr. Granger. “Come here. Sit down again.”
Her forehead knit. “You’re making me worried.”
“I’m sorry.” He should drop it now. Dr. Granger was the expert when it came to Laurel’s health. He wasn’t an expert in anything when it came to her. Except being the one she always walked away from.
But it was too late because she was already retracing her steps back to the picnic table.
This time when she sat down on the bench it was with her back to the table. As if she knew instinctively that there was no way he could sit. Not when he had to say what he had to say.
And how the hell was he supposed to say any of it?
Kane was the one with the gift of words. Adam was just the logical one.
And where was that logic now? Out the window, the way it always was where Laurel was concerned.
He pulled his phone out again.
“Who’re you calling?”
“Nobody.” He swiped the screen again. The image of Larkin Square disappeared, to be replaced with two tiny ones. Of him. Of Eric. The only reason their story had ended up in the media at all was because a news station out of Houston had been doing a public service series on organ and blood donation. Learning that an entire town had conducted a donor drive on behalf of one little baby had dovetailed right into their series.
It had been a small annoyance during the week before the transplant. A news crew followed Adam for a few hours at Provisions and poked around town. At the time, Callum had said it would be good publicity for the town as a whole. How it portrayed Rambling Rose as a community where people should want to live. Rambling Rose people cared. Just Like Adam and Kane, newcomers themselves, had joined the people lining up at a wellness spa called Paz two months ago to have their cheeks swabbed.
The three-minute news story had aired the night of Linus’s transplant. Adam hadn’t even seen it at the time because he’d been in a hospital room himself, mired in the dregs of anesthesia and nightmares of Laurel being dead.
In fact, he hadn’t even watched the piece on the internet until Dr. Granger had contacted him three days later.
He stepped over to Laurel and handed her the phone as the video began playing on the screen.
And now, in Constance Silberman’s continuing series, Doing Good Helping Others, she heads to
