Home with You

by Shirlee McCoy

  The back door opened, a cold breeze wafting from the hall that led into the kitchen. The door shut again, the quiet click fading into silence.

  He should have let her be. She had a right to her time, and he had the obligation to give it to her. He’d been trying to give it to her all week—keeping his distance, letting their relationship be the professional one she seemed to want.

  And, then today had happened and it had all flown out the window—every good intention, every vow that he’d respect the no-trespassing sign she wore on her heart. Gone. Just as quickly as sunlight at dusk. He didn’t want to try to recapture it. The truth was, there’d been a dozen times during the week when he’d wanted to walk outside with her, sit on the old swing, ask her about her day. There’d been more than a dozen times when he’d heard her voice or her laughter and thought about how easy it would be to love her.

  Love?

  That was a new one. It sure as heck wasn’t something he’d ever wanted or needed in his life, but he could feel it there. Just on the other side of where he stood, and if he let himself, he knew he could reach out and grab hold of it.

  “Geez,” he whispered, walking to the window and staring out into the yard. His life had become a colossal mess of emotional crap that he had absolutely no experience dealing with, and he could only blame one person for that.

  “Thanks a hell of a lot, Matt,” he whispered, and he could swear he heard his brother laugh.

  The landing creaked again, and he whirled around not sure what he expected to see—maybe Matthias’s ghost drifting toward him.

  Heavenly stood at the bottom of the stairs, bare toes peeking out from a too-long nightgown, the medallion around her neck.

  “Rumer’s outside,” she said as if that explained her presence.

  “I know.”

  “So, why are you inside?”

  “I’m giving her space?”

  “To decide she’s going to leave us?” she asked, sitting on the bottom step and tapping her toes on the wood floor.

  “She always leaves on Saturday,” he reminded her, taking a seat beside her.

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Want to explain what you do mean?”

  “The kids have already lost a lot of things. They lost Matt. They lost Sunday.”

  “Sunday isn’t lost.”

  “Yeah. She is. Who knows if she’ll ever find her way back?” She picked at a thread on her sleeve and didn’t meet his eyes. “So, that’s the thing. She’s lost, and the kids don’t need to lose someone else. They like Rumer, and if she suddenly decides not to work here anymore, they’re going to be really upset.”

  The kids? Or you? he almost asked.

  “Okay,” he said instead, and she finally looked up, her face a pale oval in the moonlight that seeped through the window.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that I understand what you’re saying to me.”

  “I’d rather you understand that Rumer can’t walk off and leave and not come back. The kids would be heartbroken.”

  “I know, but I can’t control what other people do. I can only control what I do. I can’t make promises that someone else will stick around, but I can promise that I will.”

  “Right,” she snorted, pulling her knees up to her chest, and resting her chin on them. “In all my life, I’ve never known one person who hasn’t left. I’ve never known one person who’s kept a promise, either.”

  “You’ve only been alive for thirteen years, so maybe your experience is limited.”

  “From where I’m sitting, thirteen years seems like a very long time.” She sighed. “I wish you’d go out and talk to her.”

  “Rumer?”

  “Who else?”

  “I think she wants to be alone.”

  “That’s the problem with the world. People think they know things when they don’t, and they act stupid because of it. Like today when I thought I knew how to get to the rehab center. I could have died out there all because I thought I knew something that I didn’t.”

  “I’m glad you learned from the experience, but I doubt I’m going to die if I don’t walk outside and talk to Rumer,” he said wryly.

  “Do you really want to take the chance?” she responded, and he laughed.

  “No. I guess I don’t. So, how about you go up to bed, and I’ll go outside?” Because, why not? He’d been thinking about following Rumer anyway. Thinking about walking through the field with her as the moon set, thinking about the way the darkness would cast shadows on her curly hair, cut deep grooves beneath her cheekbones, contour the angle of her jaw and highlight the softness of her lips.

  “Go outside? Or go outside and talk to Rumer?”

  “Both.”

  “Humph,” she responded.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I think you’re a chicken, and that you’ll probably go outside and stand there hoping something wonderful will happen.”

  “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a chicken.” He pulled her to her feet. “Go on to bed before the other kids wake up. It’ll be a heck of a lot harder to talk to Rumer if they’re all running around in the yard.”

  She retreated up the stairs, and he walked into the kitchen, grabbing his jacket from the hook near the back door.

  He slid into it as he stepped outside, then stood on the back stoop and scanned the yard, the field, the gravel driveway. He didn’t see Rumer, and he wasn’t going to call for her and risk waking the other kids.

  He also wasn’t going to stand there waiting for something wonderful to happen. Life didn’t work like that. It didn’t plop success and happiness in a person’s lap. You went after things or you didn’t. You waited for opportunities or you created them. He lectured his students about that all the time, because they were artists with big dreams and, often, not a lot of follow-through.

  He was an artist, too. A dreamer.

  And, a realist.

  Waiting around had never been in his nature.

  He stepped into the yard and was walking toward the back field when he heard the quiet groan of old metal and the dry rustle of dead leaves. He knew the sound. He heard it every day when the boys played on the old tree swing.

  He switched directions, rounding the side of the house, the old elm tree coming into view.

  Rumer was there, sitting on the swing, her face hidden by the shadows of the tree. She looked lonely, dwarfed by the ancient elm, sitting in the darkness with filtered moonlight dappling the ground near her feet.

  She must have seen him coming, because she stood, took a step toward him, and stopped. As if she were afraid to move any closer and just as afraid to move away.

  “Sullivan,” she said. Just that. Just his name, but he heard fear and worry and hope in her voice. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I guess the same thing as you. Thinking.”

  “About?”

  “Us.” He moved closer, and he could see the details of her face—the sharp angle of her jaw, the soft curve of her ear, the dark sweep of her lashes as she blinked.

  “I didn’t realize there was an us.”

  “Liar.” He touched her cheek, traced a line from there to the corner of her mouth, his blood heating, everything in him wanting to pull her into his arms.

  “Maybe,” she admitted.

  “What are you afraid will happen if there is?” he asked, sitting down on the old wood swing, letting cold air cool the fire that was racing through his blood.

  “The same thing that has happened to every relationship I’ve ever been in. It will end.”

  “It could end,” he responded honestly, because he’d never let himself get this deep. He’d never allowed himself to feel what he felt when he was with her. “But, maybe it won’t.”

  “I’m not big into maybes,” she said.

  “And, I’m not big into farms and kids and teenage angst, but here I am.”

  “You didn’t have a choice.”
>
  “Of course I did. There were people who would have taken the kids while Sunday recovered. This is that kind of town, and they’re those kinds of people. But, the kids would have been parceled out in groups of two, living apart for however long things stretched on. That’s not what my brother or Sunday would have wanted, so I made my choice. I guess you’ll have to make yours.”

  “Make it? I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

  “What I know is that yesterday was a long day. Today will be too. I need to get some sleep.”

  “You weren’t worrying about that while you were sitting on this swing looking like the woman from that song Heavenly sang.”

  “A woman singing under a tree?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “If I’d been doing that, you’d have thought a cat was yowling at the moon. My singing voice is that good.”

  “Not a woman singing,” he responded, ignoring the joke. “A woman waiting for her dreams to come true.”

  “What dreams?” she scoffed. “That my knight in shining armor will come running to my rescue? That he’ll slay the beasts and kill the monsters and protect me from the wicked queen?”

  “You don’t need a knight in shining armor. You know damn well how to rescue yourself from the monster and the beasts and wicked queens.”

  “What else is there to dream about, Sullivan?” she asked wearily, crossing the space between them and settling on the swing’s bench seat. It was small, but she managed not to touch him.

  Not a brush of the arm or shoulder or thigh, the distance as purposeful as the stiff, tense way she held herself.

  “Quiet walks through yellow fields of wheatgrass?” he suggested. “Dances in the moonlight when no one is watching? A million moments of silence and a million more of laughter?”

  “Just stop, okay?” she whispered, and he could hear the brokenness in her voice.

  “I didn’t want this, either,” he replied. “I wasn’t looking for it, but it’s here, and I’m not going to walk away from it. Not unless you ask me to.”

  She didn’t respond to that, didn’t tell him to go and didn’t ask him to stay. He thought that was it. The end before they’d even had a beginning.

  And, then she sagged toward him, her shoulder bumping his as she swiped a hand across her face.

  He saw the tears then, silvery lines on her pale skin.

  “Don’t cry,” he murmured, sliding his arm around her waist, pulling her into his side, sitting there with her as a gentle breeze rustled the dead leaves and whistled under the eaves of the old farmhouse.

  Chapter Fourteen

  She didn’t know how long she sat there sniffing back tears.

  Maybe a minute. Maybe twenty.

  She only knew that Sullivan was beside her.

  Not a knight in shining armor. Not a hero from olden days. Not a guy who thought she needed him beside her. A man who wanted to dance in the moonlight and sit on swings and walk in fields of grass. One who wanted silence and laughter and a million moments of time.

  And, God!

  Those were all the dreams she’d ever had, all the things she’d wanted that she’d never found. She didn’t know what to do with that or with him, because she could already feel her heart breaking, but she couldn’t make herself walk away.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, shifting so that he could look into her face.

  “Nothing,” she answered honestly, her throat raw, her chest tight.

  “Then, why the tears?” He touched her cheek, his fingers skimming across the damp flesh.

  “I just . . .” She shook her head.

  “Don’t want to be hurt again?”

  “Don’t want to miss out because I’m too afraid to try,” she replied.

  He smiled that easy, sweet smile that made her heart stop. Only this time, it didn’t stop. This time it leaped, and she could swear it was leaping right toward him.

  “Then, how about you try and I try, and we see what happens?”

  “How about we do?” she said, her throat tight, her pulse thrumming.

  And when he stood, when he offered his hand, she took it, because what else could she do? Where else would she go but into his arms as he swayed beneath a blue-black sky dusted with silvery stars?

  “You are so damn addicting,” he murmured, his lips brushing hers so tenderly she could have cried with the beauty of it. “I could spend every minute of every day with you and it would never be enough.”

  “Sullivan,” she began, because she wanted to tell him all the things she’d never said to another man: that she found her best self when she looked into his eyes. That when she was with him, she was finally home. But, her throat was too tight, and the tears were falling again, slipping down her cheeks and splattering onto the grass.

  “Did I upset you?” he asked, and she shook her head, because he hadn’t, and because she finally knew the truth: This was the real deal, the happy-forever. This was the thing everyone wanted and few people ever found.

  She wasn’t going to screw it up.

  She wasn’t going to turn it away.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  Her hands rested on his shoulders, the cool breeze wrapping them in its velvety embrace, the grass brushing her calves as they swayed to a rhythm only he could hear. She kissed the hollow of his throat, felt his quick, sharp breath, let her lips skim up the side of his neck. When she kissed him, it felt like the first time and the last and every damn time in between.

  She could swear the heavens opened, light shone down from above, and angels sang, their voices faint but beautiful.

  “What the hell?” Sullivan asked, his voice gruff as he pulled back, bright light splashing across his cheeks.

  And, Rumer realized she really was seeing light and hearing angels.

  No. Not angels. One voice. Pure and high and haunting. One song, drifting through the quiet morning.

  She turned, Sullivan’s arms still around her, saw Heavenly standing near the house, her face lifted toward the heavens, her eyes closed. Light spilled out of the kitchen window and the open back door.

  “Heavenly, what are you doing out here?” Sullivan asked, and the teen opened her eyes.

  “The dweebs are up. All of them. But, I didn’t want to disturb you, so I told them they had to wait.”

  “You didn’t want to disturb us so you turned on the lights and sang until we noticed you?” Sullivan asked dryly, and she grinned.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you, but I didn’t want to deal with the dweebs, either.”

  “Are they in their rooms?” Rumer asked, imagining all the trouble unsupervised kids could get into.

  “No, they’re waiting in the mudroom, because Moisey wants to go for a walk.”

  “It isn’t even dawn, yet,” Sullivan muttered, his arms still around Rumer.

  “You don’t have to tell me that. She’s the one who’s all desperate and crying.”

  “I’m not crying,” Moisey called from somewhere inside the house.

  “You are, too!” Heavenly yelled back.

  “She thinks starlight can straighten hair, and she wants her hair to be like mine,” she continued more quietly. “I told her I’d trade her. I love her curls.”

  “I love you!” Moisey shouted, and then the horde spilled out of the house, four pint-sized bodies running down the back stairs and into the yard.

  “I told them not to come out,” Twila gasped as she carted Oya across the yard. “But, no one would listen to me.”

  “Because you’re an old fuddy-duddy,” Maddox said, but then he took her hand as they continued across the yard, and the light from the house spilled out onto blond heads and dark ones, curly hair and straight, smiles and scowls and chubby cheeks, and Rumer knew she’d never seen anything as beautiful as that wild, crazy bunch.

  “Guess that’s it. Our moonlit dance is over,” Sullivan muttered.

  “The moon set before I came out
here.”

  “Then, I guess we’ll have to try again another night. We might have to try for that silence thing, too, because I don’t think I’m going to get much of that anytime soon,” Sullivan responded, his breath tickling her temple, his hands still warm on her waist.

  “If you can’t beat them, join them. That’s what Lu always says. Or, make them join you. How about we take that walk in the field? They can burn off some energy,” she suggested.

  “And, we can hold hands and watch the sun rise while they run around like little lunatics exhausting themselves before the day has even begun? Sounds like the perfect recipe for some of the silent moments I was talking about.”

  “Exactly,” she said, and he smiled.

  “Great minds.”

  “You know, Sullivan,” she replied, leaning in to kiss him again. Because he was there and she was, and these moments were the things all her dreams were made of. “I think we’re getting pretty good at this co-parenting thing.”

  He laughed and took her hand, calling for the kids.

  “Yes!” Moisey squealed when she heard they were going for a walk. “The stars are even still out!”

  “Are they?” Sullivan frowned, stripping off his jacket and tossing it around her shoulders.

  “I’m not cold, Sully,” she claimed as he pulled the hood over her hair.

  “I don’t care about the cold. I care about those darn stars shining on your beautiful hair.” He touched one of the curls that had escaped the hood, tucking it beneath the fabric.

  “What do you mean?” Moisey asked, scowling up at him.

  “You said the stars will straighten your curls.”

  “They will. Just like the moon woke Mom up.”

  “I like your hair, Moisey, the same way I like you—just the way it is.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. That’s why I want you to keep it covered. I mean, if you really want straight hair, that’s fine, but I think you need to know that every time I see your curls, I smile.”