Lessons in Love: A Western Romance Novel (Long Valley Book 8)

by Erin Wright

  Please God, please God, please God.

  Nurse Knutsen looked up when Hannah came tearing through the front door, weary and tired from her overnight shift. “Hey, Hannah,” she said, doing her best to be friendly despite her exhaustion. “Elijah is back through the doors and to the right.”

  Hannah nodded her thanks as she sprinted past. The janitorial staff were probably going to wonder why there was poop and mud everywhere when they cleaned, but Hannah just couldn’t find it in herself to care at that moment. Nothing mattered but Elijah and Brooklyn.

  When she saw Elijah, pacing back and forth like a caged animal, she ran straight at him, not giving a good gosh darn about who saw or what they said.

  “Elijah!” she cried as she threw her arms around him. He stiffened up in shock. “I can’t believe…how is she?”

  Elijah’s arms came down around her slowly as he stared down at her, his mouth gaping open. “How did you…why are you here?” he sputtered.

  “Aaron called me and told me what happened. Is Brooklyn still in surgery?” she demanded impatiently. Forget why she was there – she needed some answers, and she needed them yesterday.

  “Yeah. No one’s come out yet to tell me what’s goin’ on, so I’m guessin’ they’re still workin’ on her. Why are you here?!” he repeated, still stiff with shock.

  She laughed a little, tears of relief from being in his arms starting to roll down her cheeks. Even with Brooklyn in surgery, the world felt a little more…right just standing there, Elijah as her rock. “Brooklyn was in a car wreck,” she said in her best ‘duh’ voice. “Do you really think I’d stay away?”

  The corners of Elijah’s mouth quirked up a little at that. “You’re a sight better momma than Sarah ever could be,” he whispered, brushing the tendrils back from her face that had escaped from her braid. “If she had half the love for Brooksy that you did…well, we wouldn’t be here in this hospital right now, would we?”

  Hannah shook her head. “Sarah’s loss,” she told him bluntly. “I hate to question your taste in women, since you seem to like me all right, but Sarah is one heck of a mess. She needs…well, a lot of things, but mostly she needs to not be drinking every night.” And morning and afternoon.

  She took a deep breath. It was easy to point out everything that Sarah needed to fix, but quite another to acknowledge her own mistakes. She was slowly – ever so slowly – learning how to pull on her big girl panties every morning, and it was time for her to do it again.

  “Elijah, I’ve been thinking,” she announced firmly, looking him in the eye as she said it. He looked startled by her forcefulness.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You need to go to school to become an electrician.”

  If he looked startled before, he looked dumbfounded now. “A…a…an electrician? Are you bein’ serious right now?”

  “Of course I’m being serious. And if you tell me that you’re too stupid to be an electrician, I just might hit you over the head and you’d deserve it, too.”

  His mouth snapped closed.

  “You have skills with these hands of yours, and I don’t just mean…you know.” She felt the blood rush into her cheeks as she waved her hands in the general direction of her body. She glanced around the hospital waiting room guiltily, hoping no one could overhear her, but the only other person in the room had his earbuds in and was playing on his phone, so she figured they were safe. “You fixed my ballast when I didn’t even know what a ballast was. And then you rewired the light for Mrs. Croft when it kept blowing every light bulb she put into it. And you switched the wires around in the cafeteria so that the light switch on the wall actually flips up to turn on, and flips down to turn off. Mr. Zeller heard it from almost everyone at the school when he fired you – one teacher said she didn’t care if you howled under the full moon buck-naked every month, you were actually doing your job and she wanted you back. But you shouldn’t go back. You need to go to school, just not the Cleveland Elementary School.”

  She finally ran out of words and so she shut up and waited to hear all of his excuses – maybe about his parents telling him that he was too stupid to do it, or how he—

  “I can’t afford to,” he said simply. “College students go to school and live in dorm rooms and eat ramen noodle and drink lots of cheap beer and their parents lend ‘em $20 when they need to do laundry. That ain’t an option for me. I got a kid who needs me, especially now that her momma is in jail and is probably gonna stay there—”

  Which was when Hannah did the bravest thing she ever did in her whole life, pulling her big girl panties up so high, they were threatening to end up around her ears.

  “Elijah Morland, will you marry me?”

  Chapter 37

  Elijah

  Elijah was gonna need dental insurance, after how hard his jaw hit the floor at that one.

  “You…you wanna marry me?” he asked, wantin’ to make sure he was understandin’ her. Maybe he got in the car wreck along with Brooksy and now he were havin’ delusions or somethin’.

  “More than anything.” She was staring straight at him, not blinkin’, not hemmin’ or hawin’ around. His mind flashed back to high school, when he’d been a freshman and she’d been a senior. She’d been so quiet then, he weren’t sure if he’d even heard her talk that whole year.

  And now? His chest filled with pride at how much she’d changed and growed over the past year. She weren’t nothin’ like the Hannah she used to be, and he were damn proud of her for that.

  That didn’t make what she were sayin’ a good idea, though. No matter how much he wanted it, it just weren’t fair to stick someone as smart and talented as Hannah with a dumbo like him. It were best if he just shut this idea down, right here, right now.

  “Hannah, we ain’t…we shouldn’t…I mean…”

  He shut his mouth and rubbed at his jaw, before he stuck his boot so far down his throat, it came out his asshole. Truth time: No matter what he was supposed to do, it was killin’ him to say the words, and he were afraid she’d actually listen to what was comin’ outta his mouth and not wanna marry him after all.

  “Darlin’, I wanna marry you,” he tried again. “I’ve been wantin’ to for months now. But you seem to think that marryin’ you will solve the problem of me not havin’ the money to go to school, and that just plain ain’t true. You’re a teacher, for God’s sakes. You ain’t exactly rollin’ in the dough yourself.”

  “No, I’m not,” she agreed with a laugh, strokin’ light fingers down his face, starin’ up at him. Her big blue eyes were all distorted behind her thick glasses, but he realized in that moment that she were more beautiful to him than ever before. Her soul was what made her beautiful, and Hannah had the prettiest soul of ‘em all.

  “But, I told you before – we’re better together. I don’t have a house payment or rent or anything. I only owe property taxes on my home; otherwise, it’s mine. Plus, we’re both paying utility bills right now – if we’re married and are living together, then we have half the utility bills that we had before. Also, and I doubt you’ve thought this far ahead yet, but I sincerely doubt you’ll be paying child support payments any longer. Sarah is going to be cooling her heels in jail for a good long while. Even our illustrious judge of Long Valley County will have a hard time overlooking the fact that she came this close,” she held up her thumb and forefinger, “to killing Brooklyn.”

  They stopped and stared at each other, the reality of that last statement makin’ Elijah want to puke in the nearest trash can.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound flip about that,” Hannah said, looking a little green around the gills herself. “That came out all wrong. You know how much I love Brooklyn. I just can’t imagine that even Judge Schmidt would be able to ignore what a terrible mother Sarah is, you know?”

  “God, I hope not,” Elijah said, pulling Hannah against his chest and running his hands down her back. “You’re right – I hadn’t thought about that. My brain just keeps g
oin’ ‘round and ‘round – what if she ain’t okay? Surgery is a scary thing, and anything at all could go wrong. But the other thing I can’t believe is how you knew…” He trailed off, the lump in his throat makin’ it hard for him to talk.

  “Knew what?” she asked, pulling back to look up at him.

  “Knew that I wanted to be an electrician,” he whispered, pullin’ her back against his chest. Havin’ her in his arms just felt right, and he didn’t want to let her go, not even so she could look up at him. “All my life, I wanted to. When I was gonna go to get some schoolin’ after high school, that’s what I was gonna become. And then Sarah…well anyway, I didn’t tell you that because I thought I was being stupid to want it. That I ain’t good enough or smart enough. I just can’t believe you figured out my dream when I was too much of a scaredy cat to tell you what it was.”

  She tilted just her head back, staying snuggled against him as she ran her fingers through his hair. “It just seems right. It’s what you’re meant to be. Elijah the Electrician. It has a real nice ring to it.” She went up on her toes and pressed her mouth to his. “You’ll be the best electrician this town has ever seen, I’m sure of it.”

  “What about the school district?” Elijah asked skeptically. “What’s Mr. Zeller gonna say about you and I gettin’ hitched?”

  Her face went a little white, but she stood firm. “They’re not going to be happy in the district office, I’m sure of it. They’re probably going to see this as me thumbing my nose at them, and maybe I am. But a lot of their worry about us dating was the blowback from Sarah, and the lawsuits she was going to file over it. With Sarah driving drunk and putting Brooklyn’s life in danger like she did, I don’t think she’ll want to go looking for another fight. And even if the school district is angry with me for marrying you, well…I don’t give a good gosh darn. Even Mr. Zeller told me that they can’t tell me who I can date outside of school. I dare them to take me on. I’ll fight them tooth and nail.”

  Elijah laughed disbelievingly. “I don’t know where this Hannah came from, but I ain’t gonna question it. I’m so damn proud of you. I couldn’t—”

  “Mr. Morland?”

  They both turned to see the doctor in the doorway, a tired but pleased smile on his face.

  “Your daughter is coming out of surgery now,” Dr. Torgeson said, “but I wanted to let you know how it went. Terrific, honestly. It couldn’t have gone better. I only had to take a small portion of her spleen – less than 10%, and as young as she is, she’s gonna heal up right quick. We found nothing else while we were in there. You want to go see her?”

  Wanna go see her? Elijah felt like someone had just asked him if he wanted to win a million dollars. Of course he wanted to go see her. “Yes, sir!” he said, grabbing Hannah’s hand and draggin’ her down the hallway after him.

  She’s okay. She’s okay. She’s gonna be just fine. She’s okay.

  The 1-ton bull that’d been sitting on his chest finally moved a little, lettin’ Elijah breathe just a bit better.

  Dr. Torgeson pulled the curtain back and let ‘em in to see Brooksy layin’ there, sleepin’ like an angel – well, an angel with tubes goin’ every which way.

  Together, they hurried to her side, Hannah askin’ as they went about hot water and wash rags to clean her up.

  “Of course,” the doctor said, nodding towards the teenage gal in the candy striper outfit in the corner. “We were so focused on stopping the internal bleeding, we didn’t pay attention to anything else.”

  As the teen hurried off to get the stuff, Hannah and Elijah stepped to either side of the bed, not even needin’ to talk at all but just movin’ as a team.

  “Brooksy, you awake?” Elijah whispered, takin’ her limp hand and squeezin’ it. She were so little and pale, like she didn’t have a drop of blood left in her, and even as the doctor went over what to expect and how well the surgery went, Eli couldn’t help but think that the doctor got it all wrong. Just lookin’ at his daughter, usually so full of energy that she pert near vibrated with it, and now she was just lyin’ still as a stone, not movin’ a bit…that weren’t right. That weren’t his Brooksy.

  Finally, some movement – Brooksy moaned as she tossed her head on the pillow. Elijah wanted to drop to his knees to thank God for it.

  “Hey, darling, how are you feeling?” Hannah asked quietly, wiping some of the dried mud from Brooksy’s face. “I bet your side is really hurting, isn’t it?”

  Brooksy nodded, her eyes still closed, and squeezed Hannah’s hand a little. “Thirsty,” she whispered.

  Hannah looked up at the candy striper who’d come on back with the wash clothes and water. “Water in a cup with a straw, please,” she said crisply, like she was used to takin’ care of people in hospital beds. She had it a lot more together than Elijah did, that was for damn sure. He was so happy that Brooksy was alive and speakin’, all he wanted to do was let some tears out from sheer relief.

  Brooksy struggled to open her eyes. “You came to see me,” she whispered, lookin’ up at Hannah. “I thought you didn’t like me no more.”

  “Oh, Brooklyn,” Hannah said, her voice quiverin’, “your mom was just so upset with me and how I helped you get ready in the morning…it was causing a lot of problems at the school. But I love you so very much, and being away from you was making my heart hurt.” She picked up Brooksy’s hand and held it against her chest. “I’m sorry I couldn’t see you.”

  Before Elijah could talk himself out of it, before he could tell himself not to do it, he opened up his mouth. “I know somethin’ that’s gonna make you feel better,” he said, keeping his eyes glued to Brooksy even as he felt, more than saw, Hannah stiffen up beside him. “Miss Lambert and I are gonna get married.”

  Hannah let out a little startled gasp, and Brooksy, strugglin’ to concentrate through the medicine, looked dazedly between them.

  “For realsies?” she whispered, her voice all scratchy. “You’re not teasin’ me, right Daddy?”

  “I’d never tease you about somethin’ this important,” Elijah said, squeezin’ her hand. He looked across the hospital bed to Hannah, who had her hand up over her mouth, her eyes wellin’ with tears. She reached her hand out to him, holdin’ onto Brooksy’ with her other hand. They made a daisy chain, the three of them.

  “I was thinking,” Hannah said, lookin’ back down at Brooksy, “that you better heal pretty quick, because I need a flower girl who knows what she’s doing, and I figured you were just the person to ask.”

  “Flower girl? Really?” Brooksy grinned a grin as big as the moon. “I’ll be the best flower girl ever,” she promised as her eyes started flutterin’ shut. “Can my dress be pink?”

  “The biggest, floofiest, pinkest dress you ever did see,” Hannah promised her. “You go to sleep so you can wake up better, okay?”

  “Okay,” Brooksy whispered, and then she was gone again, driftin’ on a cloud of painkillers.

  “She didn’t ask about Sarah,” Hannah said, looking at him, worryin’ her bottom lip with her teeth. “Not even to know if she had been hurt or killed or anything.”

  Elijah pulled her hand up to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “She was pretty far under with all of the drugs and everythin’. She’ll probably be awake enough next time to think to ask. But she already told you – you are her momma. I know my baby girl – that won’t never change.”

  The tears that had been threatenin’ took a spill down her cheeks, and Hannah swiped at them, embarrassed. “I didn’t even put my contacts in this morning,” she said with a little laugh. “Are you sure you want to marry a bug-eyed girl like me?”

  “I ain’t never been more sure of anythin’ in my whole life,” he said seriously. “I don’t deserve you, but I know that, and I’ll do my best not to screw this up. If I ever stick my foot so far down my throat that you can find it comin’ out my rear, you just tell me. I’ll try. I’ll try real hard, but I ain’t perfect.”

  “That’s good,�
�� Hannah said, teasin’ him. The glint in her eye said it all. “If you were, you wouldn’t want me anyway.”

  “Hush your crazy talk and come on over and kiss me. I’ve missed you somethin’ fierce.”

  As she hurried around the end of the bed and settled down on his lap to give him a kiss he was sure he’d never forget, he swore to himself that he’d never go without his Hannah again. Life just weren’t worth livin’ without her, and if she were happy with him, who was he to talk her outta lovin’ him? Some things, a man just shouldn’t question.

  Epilogue

  Hannah

  December, 2019

  Michelle and Carla grinned at her in matching bright purple dresses, the halter-neck style making both of them look like a million bucks.

  “Thanks for everything, you guys,” Hannah said tearfully, dabbing carefully at the corners of her eyes. After all of the hard work that Carla had done on her makeup, she couldn’t cry it all away. “I can’t believe that I’m the first one to leave our little club. Who’s going to be the secretary of the Early Spinster’s Club now?”

  “It’s your wedding day,” Michelle said bluntly. “You got better things to worry about. Like how handsome that man of yours is lookin’, out in the chapel, waiting for you up at the altar.”

  Hannah carefully hugged Michelle, and then Carla. “You’re right, but…this never would’ve happened without you two. Thank you both for forcing me to be braver than I ever thought I could be.”

  “Momma,” Brooklyn whispered, sticking her head around the door, “Dad is waiting for you up at the altar and he looks nervous. You better hurry up the aisle before he pukes.” She disappeared, her seventy yards of brilliant sparkling pink fabric taking a lot longer to exit the room.

  “That dress,” Michelle whispered, horrified.

  “I know, right?!” Carla exclaimed, clearly jealous. “I bet she feels like a fairy princess in it.”