Riding the Pause by Evelyn Adams

that hard. She could totally do this. She’d sit still for hours and then he’d have no reason to treat her like a crazy control freak or call her princess. All she had to do was sit still. Piece of cake. Except her nose started to itch. Beside her, Ian had gone so still it was like he’d become part of the tree. He wasn’t moving so she couldn’t scratch. As a compromise, she flared her nostrils, hoping the little movement would give her some relief.
    It didn’t, and the more she thought about staying still, the more she needed to move. Her foot felt funny and her leg started to cramp. On the inside she was a twitchy, crampy, itchy mess, but she was pretty sure Ian couldn’t tell. So far she’d stayed remarkably still. She could totally do this.
    How in the world did people manage to meditate? She was five minutes in, and she was already starting to fall apart.
    It would be easier if she could find a way to make the waiting productive. She could use the time to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Maybe if she thought about where she wanted to work, she could stop thinking about how itchy her nose was and how much she wanted to wiggle her foot. After all those years away from home, she didn’t really want to go back to Charlottesville. She’d loved it there, but she really loved being closer to her siblings, especially now that they were getting married and having babies. Jude and Autumn’s little girl was precious. Marion Rose, they’d called her after Autumn’s Gran. They’d gone home the day before and both mother and baby were doing beautifully.
    Holding her new niece made Rachel ache for all the parts of her life that were missing. She’d never been sure she wanted kids. She’d loved growing up in a big family – most of the time anyway – but she knew if she did have kids, she wouldn’t want more than one or two. She’d been too focused on her career to think about giving up the time it took to have a family, and she’d have to get married first anyway. Lord knew there hadn’t been anyone interesting on that front, well ever.
    Clenching her jaw to keep from moving her head, she slanted her eyes to Ian. He looked completely relaxed and perfectly still. There was absolutely no reason for her to be thinking about Ian while she thought about getting married. He was handsome, and there was definitely something about him that made her heart race. She was attracted to him, but they were practically opposites. As much as people said opposites attract, she was pretty sure it would make for an exhausting partnership.
    Except it hadn’t been like that at the hospital. There he’d seen what needed to be done and did it without being asked.
    Shifting her hand forward the slightest bit, just enough to let the face of her watch peek out from underneath her glove, she glanced down. Ten minutes. Her whole crazy thought circle from work to babies to Ian had taken her ten minutes. If she kept staying still, her brain was going to spin out into space like a hamster on a wheel and she’d collapse from the effort of holding it all in. At least the harness would hold her so she wouldn’t plummet to her death.
    Imagine Jude getting the call that she’d fallen out of a tree stand. The house he and Autumn bought was beautiful. She liked the house Summer had inherited from her grandmother that she lived in with Travis and Abby. At least she’d gotten an offer on her condo almost as soon as she put it on the market. She knew it meant she’d probably priced it too low, but this whole situation would be so much worse if she’d had a mortgage to deal with.
    Still, she’d have to find a place to live soon. She was a grown woman. It had made sense to come home to her parents when she lost her job, but it was time for her to figure out what came next and find a place of her own. She liked Ian’s place. She hadn’t seen inside, but the cabin suited him. It sat so far back into the woods she wasn’t