The Sweetness of Honey (A Hope Springs Novel Book 3)

by Alison Kent

  “You’re not intruding,” she said, grabbing his shirtsleeve and nearly dragging him into the cottage’s front room. “You need to meet Dakota properly. And I need to thank you properly for the best gift I’ve ever received.”

  His promise to Will weighed heavily, but it was a promise. “We’ll talk about that gift later. And as much as I want to get to know your brother, you need this time with him, and with Ten,” he added, hearing the voice he recognized above the unfamiliar one. And then, because he obviously wasn’t thinking straight, and he didn’t want to mess up the thing that had brought him here, he said, “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”

  “Oliver. You’re not making sense. Why come here if you’re just going to leave?” She was frowning, her arms crossed in that way she had of showing her displeasure. “You look like crap, to be honest, and I don’t just mean the hair and the clothes and the bags under your eyes. Are you okay?”

  The fact that he knew that about her stance and that she recognized that about him made him smile. “It’ll keep,” he said, though really it wouldn’t. The things he needed to say . . . He took a deep breath, blew it out, took another, and shoved his fists in his pockets. “Or you could come outside with me. Just for a few.”

  This time she considered him with a wary regard, and really, he couldn’t blame her. The last few months he’d hardly been himself, and yet . . . That wasn’t true. He’d been his real self. His true, artistic self. And he had this woman to thank for giving him his life.

  “Fine,” she said. She called toward the kitchen, “Be right back,” then followed him onto the tiny porch, her boots scuffing across the surface. The screen door creaked and latched behind her, and she led him down the steps to the swing she’d set up on a frame in the yard. It wouldn’t fit on the porch.

  Nothing would fit on the porch, save for the small potted rubber tree he’d kept from Oscar’s funeral, one sent by the staff of the Caffey-Gatlin Academy and that he’d left without mentioning when visiting her on Valentine’s Day.

  Why it had seemed to fit here instead of at home . . . Then again, the house he’d lived in all these years hadn’t felt like home in ages. He’d stayed because he needed to be where Oscar couldn’t be. For his mother. To a lesser extent his father. Mostly for himself.

  But this tiny little nearly uninhabitable cottage where Indiana spent most of her time, yeah. It felt like a home. And when he was here, no, when he was with her, he felt like he was exactly where he belonged.

  She dropped to sit on the swing, and kicked it into motion. As always, she wore the only pair of cowboy boots he’d ever seen on her feet. Except for Kaylie’s wedding, and the various holiday functions they’d both attended the last few months, they were all he’d ever seen on her feet.

  He wanted to ask her about them, how long had she had them, did they have a special meaning, but realized all his questions were just a distraction when the whole of his future was on the line.

  “Oliver?”

  He shook his head, dropped it back on his shoulders, flexed his hands in his pockets as if he could grab the right moment and squeeze it into submission, because this wasn’t going the way he’d planned.

  “Hey. You.” She stopped the swing, nudged his ankle with the toe of her boot. “What’s going on?”

  “I want very much . . . I would like very much . . .” He stopped and cleared his throat, hoping the words he was looking for would fall into the space that was no longer clogged, because they weren’t coming. They just weren’t coming—

  “Oliver. What is it?” she asked, planting her boots on the ground.

  “Indiana Jane Keller, will you marry me?”

  She held his gaze, a long, lingering moment of his willing her to say yes, of her saying nothing, of her eyes tearing up so that he didn’t want her to say anything at all.

  He should’ve known better. He’d met her when he was someone else, before he’d grown into his skin. He couldn’t blame her for refusing him, for wanting what she thought she’d signed up for rather than the truth.

  “I can’t.”

  “Because of Will?” he asked, not sure why he would use the other man as an excuse.

  “Why would you ask me that?” But she didn’t give him time to answer before adding, “No. This has nothing to do with Will.”

  “My mother, then.”

  “Oliver, please.” She stood, hugged herself, rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “It’s not your mother. It’s just . . . There are some things about me, things I’ve done . . .”

  Funny. He’d never been on the receiving end of the “It’s not you, it’s me” rejection cliché. “What about you? What don’t I know? What don’t you want me to know?”

  Eyes closed, she let her head fall back as she shook it, then turned and gave him a sad smile. “Do you realize we’ve known each other almost seven months?”

  And wasn’t she the one who’d talked about knowing in six if a relationship was going to work? “Look, I know it seems as if I don’t know who I am, what I’m doing with my life. The painting . . . I’d given it up for a long time—”

  “Oh, Oliver, no,” she said, and grabbed for his arm, squeezing his wrist, then his hand, then releasing him. “I love that you’re painting. I’m so far beyond happy about it that I can’t put it into words. When I said it was me, I meant it. You’re right that there are things I don’t want you to know. That I’ve never wanted anyone to know. Things no one does. Not Tennessee or Dakota. Not Kaylie. Not Luna.”

  “Then tell me,” he said, and moved closer.

  She countered by circling around to stand behind the swing. “I can’t—”

  “Yeah. You can,” he said, and moved in, grabbing the chains and rattling them, the noise an echo of the commotion churning in his gut. “I’m not going to let you use some horrible secret you’ve been keeping get in the way of the best thing that’s ever happened in my life. I’m not going to give you up, give us up because you refuse to come clean.”

  “What if I do come clean?” she asked, her voice soft, her head bowed. “And what if it changes everything?”

  “It won’t.”

  “You can’t know that,” she said, looking up again, her eyes wet and glistening in the light from the moon.

  “I can know that. I do know that. Nothing you tell me will change how I feel about you.”

  “You say that now . . .”

  Knowing the next few minutes would define the rest of his life, he responded in the only way he could. “Then prove me wrong.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Indiana had known for months this day would come. That if she wanted a future with this man, she’d have to tell him the story of her sexual assault, not just hint at cryptic bits and pieces. That night in her family’s kitchen with Robby . . . It wasn’t something she liked to think about, much less talk about, but neither was it something she could keep from Oliver any longer. Not with the relationship she wanted. The trust. The openness. The honesty. The truth.

  Circling to the front of the swing, she sat, and waited until he sat, too, close enough to touch but neither of them making a move to do so. She wanted to run her fingers through the hair at his nape where it caught on his collar, dip them beneath the fabric and feel the heat of his skin. His shirt was wrinkled, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, the tails loose, buttons missing. She loved so much the way he looked wearing jeans. She loved seeing him so undone.

  She loved him. The thought nearly brought her to her knees. Her eyes burned, fighting glorious, joyful tears. “Do you remember the morning last year when we ate breakfast at Malina’s? That first time we sat down and actually talked?”

  He was sitting forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands flexing as if he wanted to reach for something, or whale on something. Maybe shake them both until they figured this out. “You told me about Dakota going to prison for d
efending you.”

  Okay. Here we go. “What I didn’t tell you was that he would never have had to defend me if I hadn’t given Robby the idea that I welcomed his advances.”

  He looked over, his expression gentling. Almost paternalistic. Close to condescending. “Indiana—”

  “No,” she said, as she pushed to stand. She would not have him so handily dismiss the guilt she’d carried all these years. “You have to listen. You can’t interrupt. You can’t tell me what Robby did was not my fault. Because it was. I know it was. You weren’t there.”

  “I don’t have to have been there,” he said, and sat straight, stretching his arms across the back of the swing. “You could’ve stripped out of your clothes and invited him into your bed. But the second you said no, that was it. If he did anything but walk away, it was assault.”

  “I didn’t strip out of my clothes. I didn’t invite him into bed. But I flirted with him, and I teased him. I let him touch me. This all before things went wrong.” She thought about the night behind the garage, her efforts to be provocative, Robby’s pants down, his penis thick and hard and pressed to her thigh. “I was so young and so stupid. I couldn’t imagine things would go that wrong,” she said, and buried her face in her hands.

  “Indy. Oh, baby.” Oliver got to his feet and reached for her, but she made herself back away. “You don’t need to tell me any of this. None of it has any bearing on how I feel about you.” He paused, waited until she looked up at him, then added, “I love you.”

  “How can you say that?” How could anyone love her after what she’d done? With the garbage she brought with her? And that had her wanting to laugh. Love was the very thing she’d wanted. But no man had ever given her that gift. She’d made sure of that, pushing them away. Until Oliver, who’d pushed back . . .

  Her fingers were stiff like sticks of ice when she rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms. “I led him on. I’m the reason he spent all that time in the hospital. I’m the reason Dakota went to prison. They were friends for so long, Robby and Dakota and Tennessee—”

  “Stop right there,” he said, and this time when he took hold of her, she let him, reaching out and making fists in the fabric of his shirt. “I don’t have to know this Hunt kid’s history with your family to know he wasn’t a friend. Attempted rapists are not friends.”

  She wanted to believe him. She’d told herself the same thing for years, but her voice was weak and small and without conviction. So all she could do was nod and hope he had more faith than she did.

  “I want you to listen to me. To hear me. And I want you to think about what I’m going to say.”

  She nodded again, desperate for a reason to keep from speaking and further ruining what should’ve been the happiest night of her life. He’d asked her to marry him. Dear God. Oliver Gatlin proposed! And all she could think about was the assault that had messed up her life and Dakota’s life and Tennessee’s life . . .

  He lifted her chin, holding her so she couldn’t look away. “You and I have both lived our lives based on having failed our brothers—”

  “It’s not the s—”

  “Don’t tell me it’s not the same, because it’s exactly the same. And we’ve both been wrong not to realize our brothers were the ones to make their choices. So you flirted with Robby. So you tempted him. You did not put that bat into Dakota’s hands any more than I forced Oscar behind the wheel of his car.”

  No. No. She shook her head. How could he compare their two situations? Dakota would never have picked up that bat if not for her. But Oscar . . . She thought back to what she knew of the younger Gatlin’s accident. Oliver didn’t have anything to do with his brother’s tragic end . . . did he? “Oliver? What aren’t you saying? What haven’t you told me?”

  He closed his eyes then, and set her away, scraping both hands back through his hair before walking to the cottage to sit on the steps. “I knew something was going on with Oscar and Sierra. But then something was always going on with those two, so I didn’t pay any more attention than I usually did, and I should have.”

  When he paused, she joined him, anxiety gnawing at her stomach as if eating her in two.

  “The weekend of Oscar’s accident, I’d come home to go to the Longhorns game. I went to school at Rice, but one of my best friends from high school played for UT. I’d actually been home since late Wednesday night. And I’d heard Oscar complaining more than once about the steering in his car feeling off.”

  Indiana closed her eyes and swallowed the dread rising like bile up her throat. She knew Oscar had lost control of his BMW while driving along the Devil’s Backbone. Knew, too, having heard the story from Luna, that Luna had been following in her car, and had witnessed him going off the edge of the ravine before she herself had crashed.

  “Friday morning he asked if he could use my car,” he said, back to flexing his hands. “He was supposed to attend a music workshop that weekend, but hadn’t had time to get his looked at. If he asked either of our parents, he’d get lectured about car ownership and responsibility and have to stay home. I guess I thought I was teaching him a lesson by giving him the same answer—not to drive without the go-ahead from our mechanic.

  “Plus, I had a lot going on that weekend, and I didn’t want to risk breaking down using his. I mean, he could’ve rented a car. I don’t know why he didn’t rent a car. Or why I thought it was my place to act like a parent instead of a brother.” He shook his head. Back and forth. Back and forth. But Indiana didn’t dare move. Whatever he’d walled up inside had to come out, and she couldn’t do anything but wait.

  Oliver finally went on. “He came to me. My brother. I could’ve helped him out. I should’ve helped him out. He was anxious and all kinds of hyper and worried, obviously about Sierra and getting married and the baby, though I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. But I did know that he wasn’t himself. And I should’ve helped him out. Instead, I did my thing, he did his, and only one of us came home again.”

  He bit off the last words, but she was sure he’d rushed to keep his voice from breaking. His breathing had grown choppy, and even now where he sat beside her, she sensed his tension, as if he were trying not to shake.

  But rather than reach for him, she gave him time, gave him space, and then hoping she wasn’t making things worse, she asked, “Do you know for sure it was his steering that caused the accident? Did accident investigators or mechanics or whoever examine his car?”

  Calmer now, he shrugged. “They may have. Once it was clear Oscar wouldn’t have an easy recovery, I went back to school. I didn’t want to know what my parents found out. I didn’t want to hear from them at all, or talk to them. I put my head down. I did my work. It was the only way I was able to get through. Because if I stopped to think about Oscar asking to use my car . . .” This time when he shuddered, she placed her palm between his shoulder blades and rubbed him there. “Not knowing became easier because knowing wouldn’t bring him back, and the thought that his accident was my fault—”

  “It wasn’t your fault. It was his car. His decision.” She knew so little about the events of that day, or even about the tragedy at all. But this she knew: Oscar Gatlin had deliberately chosen to get behind the wheel of his car.

  Just like Robby Hunt had deliberately chosen to assault her.

  She’d said no, but it hadn’t stopped him. Like Oscar, yet so unlike Oscar, he’d made his decision. Oscar hadn’t heeded his brother’s admonition that he not take his car. And Robby hadn’t listened to her.

  Oliver had done his part. She had done her part. And yet here they were, both weighed down with guilt over decisions others had made. Robby had known better, and as cruel as it seemed, Oscar had known better, too.

  Why was that so hard to accept?

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she repeated, then added, “Any more than what Robby did, even what Dakota did, was mine.”
r />   It took him a minute, but Oliver turned and smiled, if a bit weakly. Then he brought up his hands to cup her face and rested his forehead against hers. “Do you know how good it is to hear you say that?”

  “I wish it felt a little better than it does,” she said, because saying it was the easy part. Believing it completely . . . That was going to take time.

  “You’ll get there,” he said, and she arched a brow.

  “I know you’re not speaking from experience.”

  He laughed at that, moved to wrap his arm around her shoulders and pull her close. She let him, she even helped him; close to Oliver Gatlin was the only place she wanted to be.

  “So how did we get here, to this point, living less than authentic lives?” she asked, because even with all of her career success, she’d always known her past would have to be dealt with.

  “I don’t know about you, but mine feels pretty damn authentic.”

  “Now maybe, but has it always?”

  “Yeah. It has,” he said, his free hand holding both of hers in his lap. “I made the only choices I could at the time. Probably not the best choices, but my choices. That’s as authentic as it gets.”

  He was right. She was who she was because of all that she’d gone through. If she’d made different decisions, there was no telling who she’d be now. “And thank you so much for Dakota.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and cleared his throat. “About that . . .”

  “What about it?”

  He came close to answering, she was certain of it, then said instead, “I’ll tell you next week.”

  “Okay.” And then she remembered the question he’d asked her, not that she’d ever really forgotten, happiness filling her, a buoyant balloon of joy, as she added, “Yes.”

  “Yes?” he asked, his brows creased, a deep vee marring his forehead.

  “Yes, Oliver Gatlin. I will marry you.”