there a chance you could be called back to active duty?” she asked.
She had a lot more questions, but having come in here and nudged him out of his melancholy she wasn’t ready to stop. She needed to know more before she just said yes to Jason. And it wasn’t like she had tons of other offers or men waiting for her. There was just Jason and a part of her acknowledged there would probably only ever be him. She realized he made her feel alive and in love. And she didn’t want to take a chance on ruining that feeling by letting herself believe he also loved her when he just needed a distraction from his life.
“Okay,” he said, moving over to sit next to her on the bed. He propped a pillow behind his back and leaned against it.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you what the doctor said. The change in bone density, while positive, is small. I mean, if I only make progress at the same rate over the next six weeks...” He trailed off and she realized that before this he’d believed he could easily lick this bone-density problem, but now he wasn’t sure.
He’d taken a hit to his confidence.
“Okay, well, I don’t know much about your recovery, medically, but I do know that you sound like a man who’s given up and that’s not the Jason—Ace—McCoy I know,” she said.
“You’re right. No one knows for sure—even Dennis said he wouldn’t decide until the initial three months were up. He was hoping that Doctor Tomlin would find something concrete and she’d be able to give me a green light early. But seeing how little things had improved was a wake-up call,” he said. “No matter how hard I work or how well I eat I might not be able to fix this.”
“What kind of wake-up call?” she asked.
“The kind that makes a man take stock of his life. If I’m not going to be on the Cronus missions, then I need to make a life for myself here on Earth.”
“With me?” she asked.
“That’s what I want, but I get that you aren’t ready to commit to me until we know for sure.”
“That’s not it. Life doesn’t work like that, does it? We can’t predict what’s going to happen next. If we could, I’d have been prepared for Dad’s death and for you coming back here. And you would have known you were going to have health problems,” she said. She was trying to guard her heart. That was why she’d thought they shouldn’t commit to each other, but the truth was she already had fallen for him and he wanted her.
“I was scared. Trying to keep myself from getting hurt if you went back to Houston and started to go on long missions again, but the truth is no matter what we do after tonight it will still hurt if you leave.”
THE NEXT MONTH flew by as the facility on the eastern part of their property went up quickly. They got a lot of local interest, and Rina’s brother’s construction company was hired to redo the bunkhouses and make most of them into astronaut quarters. Lynn flew back and forth but mostly left overseeing the project to Jason and Molly.
He wasn’t himself, but then he was still dealing with the possible loss of his dream and trying to adjust to the idea of a new role in NASA.
Molly wanted to believe the way Jason smiled at her and talked about the facility’s future every night before dinner, but she saw past it. He wasn’t the kind of man who could spend the rest of his life so close to what he keenly wanted but couldn’t have.
But on mornings like this when she was riding next to him checking fences, it was easy to delude herself that they would be together for a long time. That the love growing inside of her was really growing between them.
“Sunrise is always my favorite time of day,” she said, handing him the thermos of coffee that she’d brought in one of her saddlebags.
“Really?” he asked. “I like sunset.”
“I knew that,” she said. That was when the stars and planets were prominent and Jason’s dreams of being up there were stronger.
“Just like I know that you like to get out of the house first thing to beat the heat of the day.”
“Well, it is Texas, and it does get hot in July.”
“Yeah, it does. What’s on the schedule for today?” he asked.
“Nothing. The construction crews are done. Rowdy, Rina’s brother, said that once NASA signs off on everything we’ll be ready for the interior fitting. Which isn’t his thing. So today everyone has the day off.”
“Everyone?”
“Well, Jeb has a skeletal crew doing the chores, but then we’re going to have a barbecue by the pond. Good food, swimming and celebrating.”
“Sounds good,” he said. “Is Lynn here?”
“She is, along with a few of the other experts that have been hired,” Molly said. “I was pretty excited that Jessie Odell agreed to do the survival training.”
Jason smiled over at her. “I forgot you two knew each other. She’s one of your oldest friends.”
“She is,” Molly said. She’d been worried about Jessie for the last year. Her longtime lover, Alexi Volkov, had died in his third attempt on Everest. Jessie had been climbing with him when conditions had turned hazardous and he’d fallen into a ravine. Molly had taken a few days to fly to her friend. Later, Molly’s dad had died and Jessie had come back to the ranch for a few weeks to keep her company. When the ranch was approved for the NASA facility, Molly had approached Jessie to see if she was interested in being involved in some way. Her friend had decided that she needed something new in her life, and this was it.
“She is. I’m so glad she got this gig. She hasn’t been herself since Alexi’s death.”
Jason turned to look at her, his hands resting on the saddle horn and a straw cowboy hat on his head. “What about you?”
“What about me? I haven’t lost my lover, have I?” she asked.
He shook his head. “But your dad died. How are you feeling now?”
She thought about it. She was so different now from the woman she’d been six months ago when Dad had died or even since the beginning of May when Jason had come back to the Bar T Ranch. She thought she’d evolved. “I think I might be Molly 2.0. A new version of myself.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “I guess that makes me Jason 4.0.”
“I guess so. Are you happy?” she asked. “Sometimes I think you are, but other times...it feels like you’re trying too hard.”
“I am trying,” he said. “That’s all I can do.”
“I wish I could make this easier for you. Find a way to fix this.”
“You can’t. All I can do is continue to work out and hope for the best,” he said.
He pushed
