Married for Christmas (Willow Park)

by Noelle Adams

  “Jessica—”

  “I’ve always believed that, and I thought you believed it too. My mother is dying—”

  She broke off, her shoulders shaking, the emotion almost overwhelming.

  Daniel reached out for her again, but she shook him away.

  “She’s dying, little by little, and there’s nothing good about that. And I couldn’t get up on Christmas morning—on any morning—if I thought her deterioration is the last thing, the only thing. If there wasn’t real hope that her mind and her body and my heart will be made whole again. You know all this. You know it. You know that what God does is make us whole when we’re nothing but broken. But you’re not acting like you believe it.”

  She was crying so hard she could barely see Daniel in front of her. She could hear the congregation singing the last stanza of “Silent Night.”

  “And, if you don’t believe it, then what are we doing here?” She gestured between them to indicate their marriage.

  Then she gestured toward the sanctuary. “And, if you don’t believe it, what are you doing there?”

  Her eyes cleared enough for her to see his face. He was just staring at her, evidently paralyzed. Trapped. Unable to take the final step.

  And she couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand that he simply wouldn’t love her.

  She whirled around and stumbled away from him, out of the church, down the sidewalk in the cold and blowing snow, and to her car.

  She drove home, half-blinded by tears.

  Christmas Eve was supposed to be about hope. That had always been the whole point.

  So it was ironic—in the bitterest of ways—that this was the night when her hope for her marriage finally died.

  Twelve

  Jessica was still sobbing as she opened the front door and stepped in.

  She loved this old house. Even though she’d lived here less than a month, it already felt like home. Like she belonged.

  But it also felt like Daniel, so just walking through the entryway made her chest hurt even more. Responding to the pain, without even thinking through the gesture, she grabbed her wedding ring and engagement ring and pulled them off her finger, setting them down on the entry table where she left her keys.

  She couldn’t wear them anymore.

  She crouched down to greet Bear, who nuzzled at her face in concern. When she could summon enough energy, she stood up and trudged upstairs.

  Her sobs faded to blurred stupor, she got out a suitcase from the spare bedroom and started to throw clothes into it.

  She wasn’t even sure why.

  It just felt like she needed to get away—get out of here—as soon as she possibly could.

  But she had nowhere to go.

  She’d given up the little rental house in Charlotte she’d had before. She had no family except her mother. She couldn’t stay with anyone in Willow Park—there would be no possible way to explain why she’d left Daniel.

  She could go to Kim’s in Asheville. Or she could go to a hotel.

  Those were the only choices she could come up with.

  She sat down on the bed and leaned over, shaking so helplessly she literally couldn’t breathe for a minute.

  She didn’t want to leave.

  She loved it here—in Willow Park. Her hometown. Where she wanted to be.

  She loved the life she’d started to build here and the way she was starting to connect with other people. It could keep getting better. She could be part of his community.

  She loved Daniel, and she couldn’t stand the thought of life without him. Other than her mother, he’d been the most important person in her life for long before they’d gotten married.

  But now, because she’d wanted too much, she would lose everything.

  Bear was lying in a pitiful heap at her feet, completely overwhelmed by Jessica’s obvious distress. She stood up just then and poked her nose toward Jessica’s face.

  She was still leaning forward, her head almost to her knees, so she reached over and stroked the dog’s soft fur.

  “I know,” she said, her voice so hoarse it was almost unrecognizable. “I don’t know what to do. I know you love him too, but I think we may need to leave. I don’t know what to do.”

  Bear gazed up at her adoringly, as if hopeful that Jessica’s mood was improving.

  Or maybe she was just hoping for food.

  “But I guess I should wait to talk to him first. Maybe…”

  She didn’t know if there was a maybe. It didn’t feel like there was any hope.

  Before Jessica could think through the situation more rationally, before she could even move, the front door to the house opened and then banged shut.

  Then she heard loud, fast footsteps on the stairs.

  Jessica was too dazed to do anything except look toward the bedroom door.

  Daniel burst in, flushed, sweating under his dress shirt, and gasping for air.

  Jessica straightened up with a jerk at the sight of him. Her mouth opened in a question she couldn’t voice.

  His eyes took in Jessica and then the suitcase on the bed. They were strangely wild. She’d never seen that expression before. “Don’t leave,” he rasped through his panting. “Please, honey…don’t leave me.”

  Baffled and disoriented and flooded with a crashing wave of hope, she gaped at him. “Why are you panting?” she asked stupidly.

  “I…ran…home.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why did you run all the way home?”

  “You took…” He was gasping so much now he had to bend over, sucking in loud, urgent breaths. “Took the car.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t even realized she’d stranded Daniel at church without a car, since his truck was in the shop.

  He looked like he’d run a marathon with his shirt sticking damply to his chest and perspiration dripping from his face, despite how cold it was out.

  She glanced at the bedside clock and gasped. “How did you get here so quickly?”

  “I ran…fast.”

  He must have sprinted home at a dead run to cover the distance so quickly. She stared at him in awe, trying not to assume this meant what she was hoping it meant. She’d been disappointed before.

  “Please don’t leave me, Jessica,” he gasped, straightening up again. “I know I haven’t—”

  He had to stop and bend over again to try to breathe.

  “Catch your breath first,” she interrupted in concern. “I don’t want you to have a heart attack.”

  He nodded and braced himself on the dresser, clearly trying to even out his breathing. Then he threw a quick glance over his shoulder. “Please don’t leave…until I can talk.”

  “I won’t leave.”

  This seemed to satisfy him, and he took a minute to catch his breath, wipe the sweat from his face, and pull himself together.

  Jessica tried to be patient. Tried not to shake whatever he wanted to tell her out of him.

  She kept imagining her handsome pastor of a husband leaving the Christmas Eve service before it was over and racing through their little town to get home to her.

  When he’d managed to recover enough, he turned around and came toward her, sinking onto his knees in front of her.

  “Jessica, honey, please don’t leave me. I know I haven’t treated you right. I know I don’t deserve for you to give me a second chance. I know I haven’t been the kind of husband I should have been to you. But please don’t leave me.”

  He glanced over at the suitcase again, and Jessica suddenly felt guilty about how her first instinct had been to run away, before they’d even talked about it more. She started to say, “I—”

  “I love you so much, honey.” He took both of her hands in his and gazed up at her with an utterly naked expression of adoration. “I’ve been an ass…a jerk about everything—trying to hold back my feelings—because I’m so out-of-my-mind crazy about you that it threw my whole world out of alignment. If I admitted it to myself, if I let myself love you for real, then I’d have to
admit that all of the anger and resentment I was holding onto was futile, was utterly wrong.”

  Jessica’s lips parted, and the roomed spun around her as she tried to process what he was saying.

  “You were right,” he went on, his voice hoarse and broken. “You were absolutely right about what you said back at the church. I’ve been stupid and selfish and arrogant, and I’ve clung to control so much that I pushed away everything I want. I didn’t want to give him the chance to take you away from me too. But you’re a gift. A gift to me from God. And I’ve been throwing it back in his face.”

  She’d been crying just a minute before, so she had no way to control the emotion now. Tears poured down her cheeks.

  “Oh, honey, please don’t cry. I know I’ve hurt you. I know I’ve let you down. But I want to be the husband that you need, that you deserve. I was in love with you long before we ever got married. Did you know that? I’ve been fighting the feelings for so long, but it’s always been a losing battle.”

  She was shaking now, her hands trembling in his grip.

  Daniel wasn’t finished yet. “But it was the wrong battle, and I surrender completely. Please give me the chance to show you how much I love you, how much I know what a blessing you are. I want to wake up every Christmas morning and know—and know for sure, absolutely—that everything broken in this world will one day, finally be made whole. I want to know it for sure, because you’re in my arms.”

  This was evidently the end of his outpouring of passionate feeling because he stopped talking and squeezed her hands, but she still couldn’t respond. She was so overwhelmed she couldn’t stop crying. Not gentle tears but loud, ugly sobbing like before.

  “Jessica?” Daniel said, after he’d been silent for a moment and she’d done nothing but cry. “Are you all right?”

  She tried to answer but couldn’t, so she just nodded her head urgently.

  His face twisted as he reached up to cup her face with one hand. “Honey, can you please try to say something? I’m dying here, and I don’t know if your crying is a good thing or a bad thing.”

  “It’s a good thing,” she managed to choke out. “It’s a good thing.”

  She watched through tears as his face transformed with a relief so visceral she could almost feel it too.

  “So you’re not going to leave me?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No. No. No. No.” She sniffed and gasped and tried to pull herself together.

  “So you’ll wear your rings again?” he asked, reaching down for her left hand.

  She discovered then that he’d seen her rings on the table and picked them up. He’d had them clenched in his hand all this time.

  A new wave of emotion overtook her as he slid the rings back on her finger. She nodded like an idiot. Still couldn’t say much of anything.

  “Do you think you could maybe stop crying?” Despite the deep emotion evident in his expression, a little glint of wry amusement appeared in his eyes.

  “I’m trying!” she wailed.

  He laughed then and stood up from his knees—but only to sit down on the edge of the bed beside her and pull her into his arms.

  She choked some more against his chest, adoring the feel of his arms around her, even though they clutched her so tightly it was almost uncomfortable.

  When her sobs finally subsided, she shifted until he released her.

  “I love you so much!” she burst out, pleased she’d managed to get something coherent said.

  He took her face in both of his hands. “You said that before, but I can’t quite believe it. Do you really?”

  “Yes, I love you. I love you so much. I’ve loved you for a really long time.”

  With a groan, he pulled her into his arms again, but this time the hug only lasted a minute because he pulled away enough to kiss her.

  They kissed urgently, clumsily, rather wetly. She clawed at his shoulders and clutched at his hair and couldn’t seem to get him close enough, deep enough.

  They fell backward onto the bed, with her sprawled on top of him, as their tongues tangled and his hands slid down to her bottom.

  Then a thought suddenly sliced through her emotion-fogged brain. She jerked her mouth away with a gasp. “The church! The service wasn’t even over. Did you just run out without telling anyone?”

  He’d obviously gotten into the embrace too much for his brain to work with its normal alacrity. He stared up at her, looking rather dazed, and his pelvis rocked up slightly against her weight in a way that was impossible to misinterpret.

  “You can’t just run out on a Christmas Eve service. You’re the pastor!”

  “I told Micah,” Daniel said at last, the question finally penetrating to his brain. “He was going to give the final benediction.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said ‘finally.’” Daniel looked slightly sheepish. “He’s been telling me for months that I need to get it together or I’ll lose you. I can’t believe I almost proved him right.”

  For some reason, this made Jessica even giddier—like it was tangible proof that Daniel’s feelings for her were real, if Micah knew about them too.

  “But what will everyone at church think about you running out on the service that way?”

  “They’ll think I had urgent business to take care of with my wife.” He smiled up at her, with a hot, teasing expression she loved. “Which I do.”

  “Okay. That sounds reasonable.”

  He grabbed her and pulled her back into a kiss and then rolled them both over. He kissed and stroked and undressed her until she was deeply aroused, and then he settled between her legs and entered her slowly.

  She let her breath out with a silly whine of pleasure when he’d sunk fully inside of her. She clung to him, all of him, in every way she could.

  He’d lowered his face onto her shoulder, breathing heavily, not moving, simply sheathed inside her. She’d never felt so close to another person in her life.

  She stroked his back and his shoulders. Slid her hands up into his hair. Felt like she was shuddering inside with more than she could possibly hold.

  He finally raised his head, kissed her, and whispered, “You have no idea how much I love you.”

  Jessica burst into tears again.

  Mortified, she wept in frantic little sobs as Daniel held himself tensely above her, staring at her in bewilderment.

  “Jessica?” he said at last. “You have to tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she choked, trying desperately to control herself. “Everything’s good.” Her body was shaking as she cried, and she could feel Daniel’s hard length moving inside her with each quivering vibration.

  His face strained, Daniel started kissing away her tears and shifted his forearms until his hands were holding the back of her head, tangled in her hair—it was as close as he could get to an embrace in their present position. “If everything was good you wouldn’t be crying.”

  She shook her head, finally managing to stop the sobs, although the tears were still streaming down into her hair. “I’m happy,” she said foolishly, wishing she could better explain how she was feeling. How having everything she’d wanted for so long had simply flooded over in this torrent of emotion.

  Apparently, he understood enough. He met her gaze deeply, his eyes reflecting a matching blaze of joy and love. But then he managed to say with impressive irony, “Honey, if we don’t get it together soon, you’ll really have something to cry about. I’d like to last for more than one thrust.”

  She started to laugh and pulled him down into another wet kiss. Then he started to move. The first few thrusts were slow and deep, and they made her shudder with pleasure. But he couldn’t maintain that leisurely pace for long, and he soon accelerated his motion, driving into her faster and harder. After only a minute, he was sweating again beneath his clothes, and something wild had entered his eyes.

  She drew up her legs, bending them more at the knee. She clung to his back and roc
ked her hips up toward him, trying to match his frantic motion.

  “It’s good,” she gasped, as she felt jolts of pleasure shoot through her with each stroke inside her. “Daniel, it’s so good.”

  “Yeah,” he panted, too far gone to say anything very coherent. He was still cupping her head in his hands, his fingers occasionally fisting in her hair. “Good, Jessica, good.”

  She had waited so long for this. For this intimacy to be whole, complete, to unquestionably mean love.

  She started shaking beneath him more frantically, trying to claim the orgasm that was mounting too slowly. “Daniel,” she choked, reaching up in an attempt to hold his face in her hands. “Love this. Love you.”

  He was moving urgently now, with so much momentum that the bed was knocking against the wall. He muttered a series of words, in rhythm with his thrusting. It was mostly under his breath, but she occasionally caught the sound of her name and the word “love.”

  And it was his love as much as his body that pushed her into climax. She arched in a sudden wave of pleasure, her mouth falling open in a silent cry.

  He was right behind her, and he met her eyes as he came inside her, filling her with all that he had.

  Jessica, coming down from her own release, almost had to look away from what she saw in his eyes. It was so raw, so naked, so completely vulnerable. So rich, so loving, so close to pure joy.

  She couldn’t stop herself from crying again. He collapsed on top of her but manage to wrap his arms around her tightly. She sobbed noisily into his shoulder, feeling overwhelmed and blissfully satisfied and absolutely idiotic.

  Finally, he muttered into her ear dryly, “You keep that up, you’re going to give me a complex.”

  She made a burst of sound that was half laugh and half sob. “I love you, Daniel.”

  “I love you too.” He gave her a teasing grin. “Should I be flattered that my extraordinary talent at sex has reduced you to tears again?”

  She laughed again, this time without any crying. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize how arrogant you were before we got married. Just remember that you didn’t have that amazing sex all by yourself. You didn’t do it alone.”