The Family You Make (Sunrise Cove #1)(6)

Jane risked another look out the window and was startled to realize she couldn’t see an inch past the glass, nothing beyond a swirling, vast void that seemed all encompassing. She swallowed hard. She’d done a lot of things in her lifetime that would be considered dangerous. The locales of some of the places she’d been sent to deliver health care, for instance. Or when she’d been mugged on a train in Europe. And then there’d been the time she and a group of other medical workers had been flown to a remote village in the Philippines that had caught on fire while they were there.

But this. Hanging by a thread, facing a fall that she knew neither of them could possibly survive . . .

Levi reached for her hand, his big and warm. “We’re going to be okay.”

She stared down at his long fingers gripping hers. “That would be more believable if you weren’t gripping me hard enough to make the muscles in my fingers cramp. Tell me the truth: you think we’re going to die, don’t you.”

“We don’t actually have any muscles in our fingers,” he said. “Their function is controlled by the muscles in our palms and arms.”

That was actually true. She knew it from nursing school. He was trying to distract her the way she always distracted her patients when she had a needle coming for them. “You can’t distract me. I’m indistractable.”

He managed a small smile. “I’d like to prove you wrong, but right now I’m all talk. How about we don’t put it out there into the universe that we’re going to die, okay? Let’s put it out there that we’re going to make it, that there’s no alternative.”

Looking into his eyes, she almost believed him. Then he flashed a small smile. “Besides, you haven’t thanked me for saving your life yet. Can’t die before that.” He held out his phone.

She stared at it. “What do you want me to do with that?”

“Call your family,” he said quietly.

To say goodbye, he meant, and suddenly her heart was in her throat again.





Chapter 3


Jane stared down at the cell phone, then glanced to the windows again. Snow blowing sideways, still zero visibility, still absolute chaos, but in here it was oddly quiet, insulated, almost . . . intimate. It felt odd to look out into the wilderness, so close that without the glass, she could’ve reached out and touched one of the towering heavily snow-draped Norway spruces. She felt like she was inside a snow globe in an enchanted winter wonderland scene.

Still lying down, Levi was patiently waiting for her to make a call, even though he was the one in pain and injured, and yeah, okay, they were both in an impossible situation, but his was most definitely worse than hers.

And he’d offered her his phone first. “My cat can’t answer a phone,” she said. “It’s an opposable thumbs thing.”

His lips quirked. She hadn’t been trying to be funny, but rather distract from the truth—she had no family to call.

“Your parents?” he asked.

Her mom and dad had been troubled teens when she’d come along and disrupted their lives. By the time she’d been born, her dad had peaced out and had never been a part of her life. Her mom hadn’t stuck around much longer, leaving Jane with her grandparents. Eventually her mom had grown up, settled down, and gotten herself a new family. Deeply embarrassed by her wild youth, her mom hadn’t spoken to her in years, and Jane had no intention of wasting her last few moments on earth trying to get her on the phone. “They’re not in my life.”

His eyes softened, but since she couldn’t handle sympathy, she cut him off before he could speak, handing him back the phone. “You should hurry, your battery’s nearly dead.”

Not moving anything but his finger, he activated a call on speaker, presumably so he didn’t have to exert the energy to lift the thing to his ear. A female voice answered with a soft, joyous-sounding “Levi!”

He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Hey, Mom. Listen—”

“Oh, honey, I’m so glad you called! You left so quickly I didn’t get a chance to ask what you’d like for dinner. I mean, it’s so rare you get up here from San Francisco— Hold on a second. Jasper!” she yelled. “Stop that! Oh, for God’s sakes, he’s digging in the yard. We’ve got gophers in the grass again. They’re making holes all over the place, and Jasper fell into one and nearly broke his leg.”

Jane looked at Levi in concern.

Levi put a thumb over the microphone. “Jasper’s her dog. Also known as ‘Stop that!’ and ‘Drop it!’ He’s a huge goofus goldendoodle she rescued. Trust me, he’s indestructible.” He pulled his thumb from the microphone.

His mom was still talking.

“I mean, those holes . . . one of these days they’re going to be the death of someone,” she was saying. “Yesterday at my yoga class there was a woman whose son created a system with a camera that lets her know if there’s a gopher in her yard. He’s going to sell it and get rich.”

Levi looked pained. “Mom, anyone can buy a security camera—”

“Sure, but you could make something like the gopher camera and get rich.”

“I’ll get right on that,” he said on a barely-there sigh that made Jane smile. “But about why I’m calling—”