If You Believe in Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

hair—again, different from Kale’s short, dark waves.
    Before she’d even finished the comparison, Danny had tugged her closer, bent, and laid his mouth over hers.
    Cold immediately turned to warmth. Amber hadn’t been kissed in three years, and part of her clung to the simple joy of human touch. But that was all she felt. There was no cascade of goosebumps when his tongue stroked her lips. No burn of desire down deep, or craving to be closer, to have more of him. He smelled good, and they were obviously compatible. But Amber knew if ever she allowed a relationship between them, it would be comfortable and sweet and nothing like what she knew she and Kale would have.
    Amber took one step back, breaking the circle of his arms. He let them fall. The cold rushed between them, and Danny didn’t speak but was clearly waiting to hear her reaction.
    “Everyone keeps telling me to move on.” She cleared her throat. “They point out that if I did, you’d be there, waiting.”
    “I am.” His expression was still hopeful, but held a new reserve that made Amber’s heart ache. She didn’t want to hurt him, but it would be better to do it now, definitively, than to let him keep hoping when there was no reason to.
    She had to take a moment to fight a sense of futility that had nothing to do with Danny. No notification, no body, no twenty-one-gun salute , she reminded herself.
    “You can’t,” she said simply, and he nodded. But what he said wasn’t what she expected.
    “Your loneliness kills me.”
    Amber’s eyes stung with sudden tears. She hadn’t even noticed how lonely she really was until a few minutes ago—or hadn’t been honest with herself about it—and it had clearly been obvious to Danny all along.
    She still tried to deny it. “I have a very rich life full of friends.”
    “I know. But none of them gives you what Kale did, and you deserve it. Love, a partner, a family. I can do that, Amber.” He held up a hand. “I know you’re not ready to consider it. I just wanted you to know that I am here. I care about you more than you realize. And I didn’t want you to dismiss us as a possibility.”
    Because she was pining for a dead man. That was what he meant.
    “Is that why you kissed me?” She sniffed and swept her glove across her cheek. “To make me think about possibilities?”
    He nodded. “Did it work?”
    There was only one thing to say. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “No.”
    After Danny gave her a sad, resigned goodbye kiss on the cheek, after Amber wrapped Kale’s new leather bag and put it under the tree for him, she lay alone in her bed, in the dark, and wondered.
    Had Kale’s kisses really made her feel so very different from Danny’s? Or was that just how she remembered they felt? Maybe her memories weren’t real. Maybe she’d enhanced them over time. Maybe, even if they were real, Kale didn’t share her feelings.
    What if his had faded while she’d turned hers into some impossible ideal he could never live up to?
    Was holding on to him noble and loyal? Or foolish and cowardly because she didn’t want to risk getting hurt again?

 
    Chapter Four
    Fever dreams, they were called. And they sucked ass. Unlike the dream-memories of his best Amber moments, these were full of anxiety and desperation. Worse, they made it impossible to convince the doctors he was well enough to be shipped stateside.
    He did everything the nurses told him to, despite the instincts that urged him to get out of bed and run a few miles to prove he was fine. He took his antibiotics, drank gallons of whatever they gave him, forced down food he had no appetite for—every bite making him miss Amber’s cooking even more—and slept as much he could.
    And dreamed.
    His father loved to tell stories. “Frank was so mad at the guy just standing around, he asked how much he made a week. The guy said about three hundred dollars, so Frank peeled that out of his money clip, shoved it in his hand, and said, ‘take