by Holly Jacobs
“So you stayed and sat rocking the baby?” Sebastian couldn’t imagine Lily sitting still too long.
He couldn’t really see her eyes clearly, but he knew they crinkled in just the right places as she admitted, “Okay, maybe I did a few dishes and dusted. He was happy as long as he was held. I’ll confess I got a touch of what you go through trying to figure out how to do various tasks one-handed.”
“Bet you didn’t throw a hissy fit. You studied the problem until you found a solution.” When she didn’t say anything, he added, “Pollyanna.”
“Stop making me seem like a saint,” Lily said with a hint of anger. “I work at—”
“You work at being upbeat,” he finished for her. “Yeah, I know you paint on your sunshiny-rainbow exterior to hide your deep, dark interior.”
She laughed, which Sebastian didn’t inform her was not the least bit in keeping with a hidden dark side. Even in the murky twilight, he could see her looking at his injured arm. He stopped massaging it.
She moved across the glider and sat next to him. “Let me see if we can get those muscles to relax.”
“I thought that touching outside the bedroom was frowned upon in this weird little relationship—oops, wrong word, right?”
She took his arm and started to gently treat the knotted muscles. “Wow, someone’s a bit snarky. Do you feel better?”
“No.” He hated her friends-with-benefits rules. And he hated that she thought so little of him that she seriously believed he would leave Valley Ridge and Hank.
“I need to say, to tell you...” He paused and pulled away from her. He wasn’t sure which topic to broach first, but he didn’t think he’d be able to do either justice while she was touching him.
“So go ahead and vent at me, but while you do it, give me your arm again.” She reached for him.
He shifted from her grasp. “Stop touching me. I need to talk to you.”
She sighed long and loud and said, “Fine. Talk.”
Something was different. It took him a minute to determine what. “You didn’t react this time.”
“What?”
“When I’ve gotten frustrated and yelled, you always step back. And after that instinctual step back, I’ve watched as you force yourself to step forward again. To stand your ground. Am I close?”
She shrugged. “Maybe I know that you’re all bluster. Maybe I understand that you came home expecting everything to be the same as when you left—that you’d be the person you were when you left. It’s been hard finding out that things continued to move and change while you were gone. I’ve noticed that you haven’t vented at anyone else. Not Hank, not your friends. Only me. So maybe I’ve decided to take it as a compliment that you trust me enough to voice your frustrations at me.”
“There you go, all sunshiny rainbows on me.”
This time she didn’t laugh but seemed to consider his words. “Maybe. But, Sebastian, I know that coming home after being in the service is hard—you’re not the same. Coming home injured is harder. Coming home and finding that things have changed for your family—and changed for the worse—is even harder yet.”
“And knowing there’s nothing I can do to make it better...the hardest. Hank always took care of me, but I can’t stop this disease. I can’t make things better for him. My whole life I’ve had Hank in my corner. He needs me now, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to help him.” Perfect segue into telling her he wasn’t leaving. Part of him was afraid that when she heard that she’d pull back on their relationship.
Before he could say anything, Lily spoke. “When I was little, my mom took me on a walk almost every afternoon after work. We had a favorite route that went by this big white house with a garden next to it. There was this statue of Mary they kept in the center of it. I was still real little and I begged to be allowed to walk around that block myself. It was two or three times bigger than most. I begged and whined and wheedled, and eventually she said yes and gave me a lecture about not crossing or even setting foot on the street. So I took off. I was so little and most of my memories are blurry, but this one is so clear. I was on top of the world. But I came to a driveway that had these very high curbs, like a street...”
“And because you were a Goody Two-shoes, you didn’t cross.” He realized that Lily was sharing something from her past with him. And he wished he could apologize for what he’d said earlier, but he didn’t want to ruin her mood.
“No, I didn’t. I’m sure you would have.”
He nodded. “Probably.”
“Well, I didn’t. I turned around and went back to look for Mom, who’d waited for me at the garden, but when I didn’t come, she started back around the block—in the direction I should have been coming from—and when I backtracked and got to the statue, she wasn’t there.”
“Did you freak out?” he asked, though he was fairly sure he knew the answer. Lily wouldn’t freak out over being lost because in her sunshiny world, she knew she’d be found.
“No, I didn’t freak out. I simply sat down and waited. I was sure she’d come find me, and she did. She picked me up and snuggled me in her arms and held me. I think I remember that moment because I felt so safe, so protected. So loved.”
“And the point is?” he asked. He figured Lily didn’t get along with her mother because of whatever was there in her past, but that was not the picture she’d painted.
“The point is, Hank’s lost,” Lily told him. “He’s a little more lost every day. He’s standing by the statue and trusting that we’re going to find him. We can’t take this disease away. We can’t make it better. We can be there, though. We can hold on to him and make him feel safe.”
She said we. The impact of that stuck with him. Maybe it had occurred to her that he was staying.
“We can meet him by the statue, Seb,” she said softly. “You can hold him and make him feel safe. And once you’re gone, you’ll call. And I’ll be here.”
She still thought he was leaving. The warm glow that he’d felt when he realized she was talking as if they were a team didn’t fade—it disappeared in a flash. Replaced by anger. “Lily, I’m not—”
A phone rang and interrupted him. Lily pulled it out of her pocket and said, “I have to take this.”
He got up and left her to the glider and walked back toward the house. The kitchen light was on. It illuminated the back stoop.
That was the door he’d used when he came to Hank’s with his mom. His mom had stayed in the back apartment because she didn’t like to feel that Hank was watching her every move, and he’d stayed with Hank. He’d walk between the two places.
When he left the apartment to come into Hank’s well-lit kitchen, he’d felt safe. Just like Lily felt when her mom came to find her when she’d been lost.
When his mother did have him with her, they moved from place to place. Living on a friend’s couch, or occasionally she’d have enough money for a dive of their own. But without fail, they always ended up back at Hank’s. And when they did, Sebastian had felt safe—he’d felt as if he was genuinely coming home.
How could Lily think he’d leave Hank? He owed his grandfather that same kind of safety net.
He headed back to the glider. It was time he had this out with Lily once and for all.
She was still talking on the phone. “No, Mom, I can’t send you any money.”
There was a pause and she said, “I did have some put aside, but I’ve spent it. I don’t have anything to send. But, Mom, even if I did, I wouldn’t. We’ve talked about this.”
Okay, he needed to go. He wanted to know more about Lily, but not like this. “Mom, I was talking to a friend about when we used to go for walks when I was little and that first time you let me walk around a block by myself. He asked if I was scared when I couldn’t cross the street to meet you, and I said no. I went to the statue and waited, sure you’d find me. When you did, when you hugged me, I felt loved and I felt safe. Mom, I can’t find you, but I’m here. I’m waiting. When you
’re ready, I’ll still be waiting. Until then, I’ll call every week.”
Lily set her cell phone down next to her on the swing.
There was no point trying to give her privacy now. “Lily, are you okay?” he asked as he sat on the glider.
She sniffled.
“You heard?” she asked, her voice full of sorrow.
“A bit. I didn’t mean to.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. When I told you that all you could do was be here for Hank, I said that because that’s all I can do. I won’t send my mother any money. It doesn’t do any good. But I can’t cut her off. I love her. So I call, I offer options. And I wait.”
He knew that story she’d told him meant more than he’d originally thought. “You’re still waiting at the statue, aren’t you? But this time, you want to be the one to hold your mother and make her feel safe.”
She nodded and he knew without a doubt that her mother was in a bad relationship.
“Is it your father?”
When she stepped back, she was putting herself out of harm’s way. It was a response she’d learned as a child.
She nodded again to confirm his thoughts, but she didn’t offer anything else. “Tell me why it is you tend to come out here to make your calls. The swing here and at Colton’s. What is it about swings?”
That garnered a small smile. “You noticed that?”
He smiled back. He didn’t want to tell her how much he’d noticed and how much more he would like to learn.
He wasn’t sure she was going to answer, but finally she said, “When my father came home you could tell if he’d been drinking simply by how he came into the house. If he stumbled or was loud, if he couldn’t get his key in the door, we knew. And Mom would say, ‘Why don’t you go outside and swing for a while, Lily Claire? You love the swings.’”
She rocked the glider a little harder. “Mom never said he drank. She’d say, ‘Your dad had a hard day.’ I could hear them. I’d be out on the swing, and I could hear him yelling. I saw that he hit her.”
“Oh, Lily.” Sebastian didn’t know what to do. Should he comfort her? He reached across the glider, but she resisted, as if she was caught up in the past and had forgotten the present. She’d forgotten that Sebastian would rather cut off his arm than hurt her.
“She loved me,” she said. He wondered if she was attempting to convince him or herself. It wasn’t the kind of love she’d wanted, but her mother did love her. “Once, he hit me. I was little. I don’t know how old and the memory is hazy, but I remember my mom telling him she’d leave if he ever touched me again. I knew she meant it. So did he, I guess, because he always left me alone after that. But she didn’t love herself enough to get out, to understand she deserved better. She tells me now that he doesn’t drink as much and that he doesn’t hit her. But I hear him sometimes when I call, and I don’t believe her.”
“I could go with you,” he offered.
She shook her head. “I wish she’d leave—but I can’t make her, and neither can you. She has to be the one to decide. I wish she’d left when I was little. I wish we had a different relationship. I see Mattie with her mother, and I feel so jealous. That is definitely not a sunshiny-rainbow sort of thing.”
It was an attempt to lighten the mood, but it didn’t work. She reached across the glider and affectionately patted his hand.
“I remind myself I can’t control my mother. I can’t force her actions. But I can be here for her. I can call every week and make sure the lines of communication are open. And I can love her. I don’t have the best relationship with her, but I do have a relationship. That’s enough.”
He had a sudden blast of insight. “Your parents are why you don’t do long-term relationships?”
“It sounds rather pathetic when you say it like that. I don’t know if that’s precisely the right answer. I have a lot of the psycho-jargon memorized. It boils down to the fact that I can’t control anyone else’s actions. My father’s drinking wasn’t my fault. My mother’s willingness to continue living with a man who abuses her isn’t my fault.”
She paused. “I thought I could trust someone enough to marry them once. I was engaged, you know.”
He didn’t know and felt an unexpected surge of jealousy. He didn’t try to sugarcoat it. He was jealous of this unnamed, unknown man Lily had obviously been in love with. However, he didn’t say any of that. “What happened?”
“He took me to meet his family. They lived in Connecticut and were so nice. The house was beautiful and sat on a pond. They had a dog named Ted. A small, scruffy thing. He was ugly, actually. When I saw them all together, laughing and having a great time, I wanted to belong to them so badly. Then, the second day we were there, we were outside and Justin’s father pushed his mother off the small pier into the pond as they were goofing around. It was August and more than warm enough for a swim. But when I saw his hand come up to push her, I screamed no and started running. They were still joking and playing as I charged him and pushed him into the pond, too.
“I stood on the end of that pier and cried. All three of them stared at me. Justin came over to calm me, but I ran away.
“Maybe if I’d told him. Maybe if I did something else. But I ran away from his embrace, and within weeks I broke off the engagement.”
“God, Lily.”
“I heard he got married a few years later. I’m glad. He was a very nice man.”
“Just because you were upset and ran away, you convinced yourself you’d never marry?”
“I realized I’d never trust anyone enough to marry,” she corrected.
A million things flitted through Sebastian’s mind. So many things that he could hardly pin any of them down. “You trust me.”
“Pardon?” she asked in that cute way of hers.
“You know that I’d rather cut off my arm—my good arm,” he added with a grin, which made her smile in return, “rather than ever harm you.”
She stopped and faced him, looking deeply into his eyes, as if to his soul. “You’re right. I do know that.”
“And you told me about your past,” he added. She hadn’t told this Justin she’d thought she could marry.
That was enough for now. Sebastian wasn’t going to push her. But he’d realized so many things. Lily thought she wore her sunshiny exterior as a cover for her dark past. That wasn’t the case. She hurt for her mother, but in fact, she’d overcome her past. Not forgotten it, but moved on and made a good life for herself. She was the most amazing, caring woman he’d ever met.
He also knew that Hank represented to her exactly what he’d always represented to Sebastian. Safety. Family. A home.
When he’d first come to town, he’d thought she’d wormed her way into Hank’s life in order to get something. Instead, she’d found somewhere she belonged. Not only with Hank, but here in Valley Ridge. That was why she’d stayed. She’d found sisters in Sophie and Mattie. A father figure in Hank. She’d found a community, and everything she’d done had been to carve out a space for herself here.
He’d never do anything to take that from her.
Hell, he’d fight to see to it she kept it all.
So no, he wasn’t telling her right away he was staying.
Because he wanted her to realize that there was more here than she thought. More than family, friends and a community.
He was here.
And he...
He had feelings for her.
Feelings that grew stronger every day.
“Come to bed,” he said. “Just for tonight, let me hold you. Be with me, this once.”
She nodded.
And that was when the million swirling things coalesced in his mind. He was going to woo Lily Paul. Slowly. He was going to convince her that he’d never hurt her, that she could trust him. Lily had said that knowing and feeling were two different things.
She’d trusted him with her story...with her past. That said something.
He slipped an arm around her sho
ulders and they went inside the house, up the stairs and, after they both checked on Hank, into his room and bed.
One night at a time. That was how he would win over Lily Paul.
One night at a time.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LILY SMILED AS SEBASTIAN came into the kitchen. She marveled that it had only been a little over a week since she’d told him about her parents. For so many years she hadn’t been able to talk about it. She hadn’t been able to tell her fiancé. She’d never even thought about telling her friends.
But she’d told Sebastian.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to feel, which was good because she didn’t know what she felt.
But she did know that being with Sebastian was easy. He didn’t push her for more revelations. He didn’t ask her probing questions. And he no longer was shooting her piercing looks.
It was bright and early on a Monday morning and he greeted her with a simple smile.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she quipped.
“Good morning, rainbow,” he responded. “’Morning, Hank.”
Hank grunted from behind the sports section.
It was a stupid ritual. Schmarmy even. But over the past week, it had become their standard greeting.
She’d heard the shower kick on and had poured his coffee so that it was waiting for him next to the national news section of the paper. As Sebastian sat down, she knew that he’d become a comfortable part of her and Hank’s morning routine.
They sat in silence, reading the paper, sipping coffee. Lily grinned behind her sheets of newsprint.
Sebastian pulled down a corner and peeked at her. “What are you smiling about?”
Lily folded back the corner of her paper. “How did you know I was smiling?”
“I could hear it as I read.” He picked up his mug in his left hand, and while it wasn’t quite steady, he managed to bring it to his lips without spilling. He took a sip and put the mug down with a small clunk.
Lily wanted to say something about how much stronger his hand was getting, but she opted to carry on their morning banter. “You could not hear me smile.”
