Let It Be Me by Becky Wade (top young adult novels .TXT) 📕

“Too early,” he said stubbornly.

“In that case, let’s at least talk more about fields of study and possible career paths.”

“Yawn. C’mon. Feed me the ball one last time, then I’m gonna go.”

“And do what?”

His face said, duh. “Check my phone.”

“Yes, because why would you want to experience this lake in Maine when you can stare at your phone?”

“I’ve experienced this lake in Maine enough. C’mon.”

They volleyed the ball.

They’d stay here another two nights, then point the Airstream south and begin the three-day journey home. She was simultaneously sorry that their trip was drawing to a close and ready to return to a space larger than twenty-three by eight feet, her shower, her home’s valley views, the cinnamon rolls at Sugar Maple Kitchen. And, of course, in Misty River, she’d be closer to Sebastian—

Confound it.

Look where she was! New England! With the person who was closest to her in the world. Who cared about proximity to Sebastian Grant?

Oddly . . . she did.

“I’m done,” Dylan declared when she once again failed to control the trajectory of her strike. He handed her his paddle and headed to their trailer.

Leah drifted to the lake’s edge and sat. Placing the paddles and ball to the side, she leaned against her wrists. Large rocks the color of pewter descended to the mirror-like surface of the lake, which reflected the clouds. Trees crowded the shoreline. Someone rowed a distant boat in her direction.

She imagined that it was Sebastian rowing. He’d moor the boat, then stride toward her. . . .

She’d have been more successful at avoiding daydreams of Sebastian while on this trip had she not had so many night dreams of him.

Sleeping in the bedroom of the Airstream that smelled of barbecue smoke and orange-scented Pledge, her customary anxiety dreams about Dylan had given way to dreams about Sebastian. Burnished, marvelous dreams, rippling with sensations. In them, Sebastian had slow danced with her. He’d sat next to her and looked across his shoulder into her eyes, laughing. He’d run a fingertip down the inside of her arm.

She’d entirely forgotten how wonderful dreams could be. So wonderful that the instant her conscious mind interrupted one of her dreams of him—even before she was fully awake—she started regretting the dream’s end.

Physical attraction was, it turned out, quite a delightful thing to undergo. Like eating an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Or calculating partitions of a number.

Physical attraction was also a perplexing thing to undergo, seeing as how she had informed Sebastian that she was missing the attraction gene.

It wasn’t that she’d never experienced tugs of interest toward men. She’d experienced tugs of interest in the past and even gone on a few dates in her early twenties. However, it had been clear to her that none of those flickers of chemistry had the potential to convert into an actual relationship, because the flickers had been so extraordinarily temporary in nature.

She’d certainly never felt a fraction as strongly about any man as her friends felt for their boyfriends and husbands. She’d concluded that she was wired differently than other women . . . much less prone to the type of deep and long-lasting attraction and love that led to marriage.

Leah was already unusual in several ways. Her brain was unusual. The fact that she’d begun raising a child at the age of eighteen—unusual. The fact that she’d been working as a teacher and pursuing a master’s degree when her peers had been graduating from high school—unusual. It hadn’t been a stretch to accept that she was unusual when it came to romance, too.

She’d decided to place the idea of a boyfriend on the shelf and simply go without. She was proud of that choice in the same way that she was proud of herself for going without the type of luxuries that had the power to destroy her monthly budget.

She wasn’t fated to fall in love. She’d made peace with that.

And yet, here she was: sitting on this lakeshore during her vacation, envisioning Sebastian Grant rowing a boat toward her.

She’d been very aware of her powerful responses to him the times they’d met at Magnolia Avenue Hospital and at the Colemans’ barbecue. Her reactions to him had been different than anything she’d experienced before. Even so, she’d expected them to prove fleeting.

Instead, a peculiar thing had occurred. An unprecedented thing. It had been more than two weeks since she’d seen him, yet her conscious and unconscious mind returned to him often. If anything, her draw toward him was intensifying.

Had she reached a hasty conclusion when she’d determined that she wasn’t capable of feeling the way other women felt?

No self-respecting mathematician ever trusted a hasty conclusion. So, if that’s what had happened here, she’d made an error.

Admittedly, her data set of romantic interactions was small. In order to test her conclusion about her wiring, she’d need to enlarge that data set. To do that, she’d need to see Sebastian again.

She had no expectation of acquiring Sebastian as a boyfriend. For one thing, he’d given her no reason to think he liked her in that way. For another, Ben was romantically interested in her, and Sebastian was his best friend. So even if Sebastian did like her in that way, nothing could come of it.

Which was actually . . . freeing.

She could talk with Sebastian, measure her responses, and indulge her curiosity without worrying that he might get the wrong idea.

The following night before leaving the hospital, Sebastian drew to a halt at Isabella Ackerman’s bedside.

He’d told Isabella’s parents that he expected their daughter to make it through surgery, and she had.

Isabella occupied the same room Josiah Douglas had occupied weeks ago. Before and after Josiah, numerous other babies had been treated in this room. As soon as they discharged one, others always arrived.

Josiah had been a full-term newborn. Tiny Isabella weighed less than six pounds. A cap covered her bald head. Long eyelashes rested against the ivory skin of her face.

Outwardly, she looked like a perfectly formed preemie. Her exterior didn’t reveal her life-threatening interior