Maybe I just care. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing… for me to care about her. She’s a sweet girl. She’s kind to others. She’s intelligent. She’s comically stubborn. She does that cute tuck-her-hair-behind-her-ear thing when she’s nervous. She’s beautiful… unbelievably beautiful. Anyone with any sense would care about her…spending all this time around her, I guess it was inevitable. But this is more than just caring. If I wasn’t bleeding all over myself I would have grabbed her and…I don’t know. What am I thinking? She can’t know about me. Maybe that’s what I’m angry about. Maybe I want her to know I’m protecting her. I think a part of me wants her to know. She’s walking around her house and has no idea that I saved her life today. And that should bother me WHY? She shouldn’t know. She shouldn’t know that I protect her or that I care about her or that I think she’s beautiful. Wouldn’t that be ridiculous if I had feelings for her? But maybe that’s what it is. Maybe it’s more than that. I think it’s more than that.

I think I’m in love with her.

I looked up from the pages of Jared’s journal to see that he was watching for my reaction. I pulled myself up quickly and scrambled to kiss him. His mouth turned up into a smile as I pressed my lips against his, so I pulled back to look into his eyes. His expression was triumphant.

I took in a deep breath to speak, but Jared’s face twisted into a frown. “Don’t say ‘aw’.”

I shook my head quickly. “I wasn’t! I was most certainly not going to say ‘aw’. That was amazing, thank you.”

“You should read the night of your sixteenth birthday. Or the day you graduated from high school. Or the night you went out with Philip Jacobs.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t think I want to relive my sixteenth birthday. And I know I don’t want to relive the three hours with Philip Jacobs. Yech.”

Jared smiled. “I could read it to you. And I’ll leave out the parts you don’t want to hear.”

I leaned back against him, settling in to hear my life through Jared’s eyes.

I was amazed at how much he loved me for so long, and how he fought the sometimes insufferable longing to speak to me. There were parts that were difficult to listen to, and parts that—if I had wanted to interrupt him, which I didn’t—I wanted him to go back and read again.