“Tomorrow the sun will come out, and it will just be a memory,” he said, unsure if he was talking completely about the storm.
She yipped as thunder cracked overhead, and jumped closer to him, moving faster.
Jonas stopped suddenly, wrenching her to a stop as well, the flash of light obliterating any of his previous thoughts.
The flash that he saw.
He pointed. “Was that lightning—over there, this direction,” he asked while pointing, his voice urgent.
“I think so,” Tessa said cautiously. “It’s kind of all around us.”
Then it happened again. A dim flash at the corner of his eye, and he whipped his head in that direction.
“There!”
Tessa sucked in a breath, realizing what he was saying.
“Oh, my God, Jonas, you saw it! You saw the lightning!”
She let out a whoop and flew into his arms as the thunder growled even more loudly above, following the lightning strike.
Jonas held her, but lifted his face into the rain, eager, urgently wanting to see another flash, needing more confirmation that he hadn’t imagined it.
Tessa’s arms were tight around his neck, and he wasn’t sure if it was rain or tears he felt on her skin. In his excitement, he’d forgotten how afraid she was of the storm.
“I’m sorry. I just remembered you don’t like storms. I … can’t believe I might have actually seen something.”
“I don’t care about the storm,” she said. “I’m so happy for you.”
Then she was kissing him as the rain came down harder and the wind picked up around them. He gathered her up close, returning the kiss with everything he had, jubilant in the moment.
Tessa’s not Irena, he thought, and neither were his feelings for the two women at all similar.
Irena had been exotic, different and had appealed to him as a younger man who was easily fooled by beauty and charm.
Jonas wasn’t as easy to fool anymore—was he?
He wasn’t so sure he could walk away, in spite of his temporary resolve to do so. They parted, breathing heavily, as the rain came down harder.
Jonas wished more than anything that he could see her. Maybe if he could see her face, her expression, her eyes, he could know if she was being honest with him. If any of this was real.
Soon, he thought, another bright flash showing up in his field of vision.
“We have to go,” he said.
They ran the rest of the way to the address where Kate lived, and Jonas was relieved to finally be under cover as the weather worsened. On the relative shelter of the porch, Tessa searched for her keys.
“Damn, I left Kate’s keys at home,” she blurted in frustration. “How could I have done that?”
Jonas’s attention was split. His body felt electric, as if the storm was surging through him. He’d seen several more flashes on the way to the house, enough to cement his certainty that his vision had started to return.
One of the flashes had even been very bright, from a relatively close lightning strike that had scared the death out of Tessa, but thrilled him—both because he saw it and because it sent her into his arms.
He couldn’t find any way around his dilemma. There was no way to counter the damage that Senator Rose could do to his family, but he would take every chance he had to taste, touch and experience Tessa while he could.
“Kate will love meeting you, but I warn you, she’s a real pistol,” Tessa said, pressing the doorbell.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said, nipping at her earlobe. “You’re delicious, you know,” he added.
“Behave,” Tessa warned playfully as they stood outside Kate’s door, and she pushed the buzzer one more time.
There was no answer.
“It’s me, Kate. Tessa. I have your medicine,” Tessa called through the door, knocking again as they saw someone pull back a curtain near the window.
“Who? I don’t know you. Go away,” the woman yelled through the door, sounding frightened.
“Kate, it’s me, Tessa,” Tessa said again. “I have your medicine.” She tried to turn the doorknob, but it was no use.
“I don’t take any medicine. You are here to rob me,” the older woman claimed in a high-pitched voice.
“She must have miscalculated for her next dose,” Tessa said worriedly. “Confusion and paranoia can be part of ketoacidosis. We have to get in there.”
“Call 911,” Jonas instructed. “Do you have anything small, like a bobby pin?”
“No—wait,” Tessa said, clearly shaken. “I do, here,” she said, shoving something into his hands, dialing her cell phone to call paramedics.
Jonas focused, finding the door lock. He hadn’t done this in a number of years, and he’d never been great at it, but urgency fueled his movements.
He found that not being able to see actually increased his awareness of the mechanism of the lock. Not using his eyes, he could focus instead on the sense of movement or resistance offered by the pins, and almost as soon as Tessa hung up her call, he had the lock open.
“You are amazing,” Tessa said, opening the door, only to find the chain and a chair propped up against it. Kate really did think they were there to rob her.
“Time for a little brute force, huh?” he guessed.
“I think so,” she agreed, and they both put their shoulders to the door and shoved, breaking the chain and pushing the door inward.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a voice bellowed behind them. “I have called 911!”
Tessa turned to see an older woman on the porch holding a broom up in the air as if to swat at them. She calmed as she squinted, focusing in.
“Tessa, is that you?”
“It is me, Betty. I’m so sorry to worry you, we have to get inside to help Kate—she’s out of insulin.”
“Oh, no,” Betty said, dropping the broom and joining them, sizing up Jonas in the process.
“And you are …?” the older woman asked him.
“Friend of Tessa’s.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Jonas, ma’am.”
“Do you knock doors in often?”
“Only for beautiful sounding women,” he said with a smile, and Betty smiled back.
“Emergency is en route, but we have to keep her calm and give her an injection right away, if we can, the 911 operator instructed,” Tessa said.
Jonas nodded. “I can try to hold her still if need be, while you do that.”
“I’ll help keep her calm. She might recognize me,” Betty offered, and came in with them.
Kate was resistant but weak, and still very confused. Jonas felt terrible having to restrain her, even gently, but he spoke quietly in her ear, saying small, nonsensical things until Tessa had administered the shot of insulin. Kate seemed to relax against him moments later.
“She passed out,” Tessa said, sounding panicked just as the sound of the EMT sirens could be heard out on the street.
“The EMTs will take good care of her,” Jonas said just as patiently. “She’ll