Jax collected her courage and said, “Can I hold you?” She waited and waited in the agonizing silence. Just when she figured Gretchen really was asleep, she heard the quietest yes. Eagerly but slowly, she moved closer to Gretchen and wrapped her arm around her waist. The feeling of coming home blossomed in her heart. She smiled. “I want to try again,” she said, needing Gretchen to know her desires before the sun rose on a new day. She didn’t want to waste another moment. “I want to move back in, and I want us to be a family.”

Gretchen covered Jax’s hand with hers and laced their fingers together. “I’m scared.”

“So am I, which means we’ll have to work together to beat our fears.”

“You’re going to leave again.”

“No, I’m not.”

“What about Meredith?”

“We broke up last night.” Jax burrowed her nose into Gretchen’s hair just to inhale her scent. “I realized I could never love anyone the way I love you.”

Gretchen turned around. “You still love me?”

“I do,” she said with such conviction that she felt the words through and through.

“Say it again.”

“I love you.”

Gretchen blinked slowly. “You never said it last time.”

She couldn’t believe that in any version of her life she wouldn’t tell Gretchen she loved her. She touched Gretchen’s cheek delicately. “Maybe that’s why we got this second chance, to get it right.” A tear fell down the side of Gretchen’s face.

“I want to believe that, I want to believe you so badly, but what happens tomorrow? What if you leave again? What if everything goes black, and I wake up in the same place, and what if I have to do this again and again?”

She could feel Gretchen shake, so she pulled her against her chest and held her tightly. “Shh…” She rubbed circles over the plane of Gretchen’s back, the material of her thermal sleep shirt warming beneath her touch. Gretchen’s concerns sounded so much like her own. She turned again to the advice she’d never forget and always need. “Don’t think about what if—focus on what is happening right now. I’m not going anywhere. I love you and Caleb, and the only thing happening tomorrow is another day of the same old same old, but now we’ll be together for it.”

“Do you promise?”

“I do,” she said with certainty. “You should get some sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“Everything will be fine tomorrow, but you will be really tired if you don’t sleep.”

“I’m not tired right now, and since I can’t stop the inevitable, I might as well enjoy it.” Gretchen dipped her hand beneath the hem of Jax’s thin T-shirt.