by Maisey Yates
“I didn’t think I was supposed to see you until the wedding?” It was a stupid thing to say, but it was about the only thing he could think of.
“Yes. I know. I was here getting ready, and I was going to hide until everything started. Stay in the dressing room.” She shook her head. “I need to talk to you, though. And I was already wearing this dress, and all of the layers of underwear that you have to wear underneath it to make it do this.” She kicked her foot out, causing the skirt to flare.
“To make it do what?”
“You need a crinoline. Otherwise your skirt is like a wilted tulip. That’s something I learned when the wedding store lady came this morning to help me get ready. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He wasn’t sure if her clarification was a relief or not. He wasn’t an expert on the subject of crinolines, but it seemed like an innocuous subject. Anything else that had drawn her out of hiding before the ceremony probably wasn’t.
“Then talk.”
She took a deep breath, wringing her hands around the stem of her bouquet. “Okay. I will talk. I’m going to. In just a second.”
He shook his head. “Danielle Kelly, you stormed into my house with a baby and pretty much refused to leave until I agreed to give you what you wanted—don’t act like you’re afraid of me now.”
“That was different. I wasn’t afraid of losing you then.” She looked up at him, her dark eyes liquid. “I’m afraid right now.”
“You?” He couldn’t imagine this brave, wonderfully strong woman being afraid of anything.
“I’ve never had anything that I wanted to keep. Or I guess, I never did before Riley. Once I had him, the thought of losing him was one of the things that scared me. It was the first time I’d ever felt anything like it. And now...it’s the same with you. Do you know what you have in common with Riley?”
“The occasional tantrum?” His chest was tight. He knew that was the wrong thing to say, knew it was wrong to make light of the situation when she was so obviously serious and trembling.
“Fair enough,” she said. Then she took a deep breath. “I love you. That’s what you have in common with Riley. That’s why I’m afraid of losing you. Because you matter. Because you more than matter. You’re...everything.”
Her words were like a sucker punch straight to the gut. “Danielle...”
He was such an ass. Of course she thought she was in love with him. He was her first lover, the first man to ever give her an orgasm. He had offered her a place to live and he was promising a certain amount of financial security, the kind she’d never had before.
Of course such a vulnerable, lonely woman would confuse those feelings of gratitude with love.
She frowned. “Don’t use that tone with me. I know you’re about to act like you’re the older and wiser of the two of us. You’re about to explain why I don’t understand what I’m talking about. Remember when you told me about your penis?”
He looked over his shoulder, then back at Danielle. “Okay, I’m not usually a prude, but we are in a church.”
She let out an exasperated sound. “Sorry. But the thing is, remember when you told me that because you had been indiscriminate you knew the difference between common, garden-variety sex—”
“Danielle, Pastor John is around here somewhere.”
She straightened her arms at her sides, the flowers in her hand trembling with her unsuppressed irritation. “Who cares? This is our life. Anyway, what little I’ve read in the Bible was pretty honest about people. Everything I’m talking about—it’s all part of being a person. I’m not embarrassed about any of it.” She tilted her chin up, looking defiant. “My point is, I don’t need you telling me what you think I feel. I have spent so much time alone, so much time without love, that I’ve had a lot of time to think about what it might feel like. About what it might mean.”
He lowered his voice and took a step toward her. “Danielle, feeling cared for isn’t the same as love. Pleasure isn’t the same as love.”
“I know that!” Her words echoed in the empty sanctuary. “Trust me. If I thought being taken care of was the same thing as love, I probably would have repeated my mother’s pattern for my entire life. But I didn’t. I waited. I waited until I found a man who was worth being an idiot over. Here I am in a wedding dress yelling at the man I’m supposed to marry in an hour, wanting him to understand that I love him. You can’t be much more of an idiot than that, Joshua.”
“It’s okay if you love me,” he said, even though it made his stomach feel tight. Even though it wasn’t okay at all. “But I don’t know what you expect me to do with that.”
She stamped her foot, the sound ricocheting around them. “Love me back, dammit.”
He felt like someone had grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed it hard. “Danielle, I can’t do that. I can’t. And honestly, it’s better if you don’t feel that way about me. I think we can have a partnership. I’m good with those. I’m good with making agreements, shaking hands, holding up my end of the deal. But feelings, all that stuff in between... I would tell you to call Shannon and ask her about that, but I don’t think she has a phone right now, because I’m pretty sure she’s homeless.”
“You can’t take the blame for that. You can’t take the blame for her mistakes. I mean, I guess you can, you’ve been doing a great job of it for the past five years. And I get that. You lost a child. And then you lost your fiancée, the woman you loved. And you’re holding on to that pain to try to insulate yourself from more.”
He shook his head. “That’s not it. It would be damned irresponsible of me not to pay attention to what I did to her. To what being with me can do to a woman.” He cleared his throat. “She needed something that I couldn’t give. I did love her—you’re right. But it wasn’t enough.”
“You’re wrong about that too,” she said. “You loved her enough. But sometimes, Joshua, you can love somebody and love somebody, but unless they do something with that love it goes fallow. You can sow the seeds all you want, but if they don’t water them, if they don’t nurture them, you can’t fix it for them.”
“I didn’t do enough,” he said, tightening his jaw, hardening his heart.
“Maybe you were difficult. Maybe you did some wrong things. But at some point, she needed to reach out and tell you that. But she didn’t. She shut down. Love can be everything, but it can’t all be coming from one direction. The other person has to accept it. You can’t love someone into being whole. They have to love themselves enough to want to be whole. And they have to love you enough to lay down their pain, to lay down their selfishness, and change—even when it’s hard.”
“I can’t say she was selfish,” he said, his voice rough. “I can’t say she did anything wrong.”
“What about my mother? God knows she had it hard, Joshua. I can’t imagine having a baby at fourteen. It’s hard enough having one at twenty-two. She has a lot of excuses. And they’re valid. She went through hell, but the fact of the matter is she’s choosing to go through it at this point. She has spent her whole life searching for the kind of love that either one of her children would have given her for nothing. I couldn’t have loved her more. Riley is a baby, completely and totally dependent on whoever might take care of him. Could we have loved her more? Could we have made her stay?”
“That’s different.”
She stamped her foot again. “It is fucking not!”
He didn’t bother to yell at her about them being in a church again. “I understand that all of this is new to you,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “And honestly? It feels good, selfishly good, to know you see all this in me. It’s tempting to lie to you, Danielle. But I can’t do that. What I offered you is the beginning and end of what I have. Either you accept our partnership or you walk away.”
She wouldn’t.
She needed him too m
uch. That was the part that made him a monster.
He knew he had all the power here, and he knew she would ultimately see things his way. She would have to.
And then what? Would she wither away living with him? Wanting something that he refused to give her?
The situation looked too familiar.
He tightened his jaw, steeling himself for her response.
What he didn’t expect was to find a bouquet of flowers tossed at him. He caught them, and her petite shoulders lifted up, then lowered as she let out a shuddering breath. “I guess you’re the next one to get married, then. Congratulations. You caught the flowers.”
“Of course I damn well am,” he said, tightening his fist around the roses, ignoring the thorn that bit into his palm. “Our wedding is in an hour.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head. Then she turned and ran out of the room, pausing only to kick her shoes off and leave them lying on the floor like she was Cinderella.
And he just stood there, holding on to the flowers, a trickle of blood from the thorn dripping down his wrist as he watched the first ray of light, the first bit of hope he’d had in years, disappear from his life.
Of course, her exit didn’t stop him from standing at the altar and waiting. Didn’t stop him from acting like the wedding would continue without a hitch.
He knew she hadn’t gone far, mostly because Janine was still at the church with Riley, and while Danielle’s actions were painful and mystifying at the moment, he knew her well enough to know she wasn’t going to leave without Riley.
But the music began to play and no bride materialized.
There he was, a giant dick in a suit, waiting for a woman who wasn’t going to come.
His family looked at each other, trading expressions filled with a mix of pity and anger. But it was his father who spoke up. “What in hell did you do, boy?”
A damned good question.
Unfortunately, he knew the answer to it.
“Why are you blaming him?” Faith asked, his younger sister defending him to the bitter end, even when he didn’t deserve it.
“Because that girl loves him,” his father said, his tone full of confidence, “and she wouldn’t have left him standing there if he hadn’t done something.”
Pastor John raised his hands, the gesture clearly meant to placate. “If there are any doubts about a marriage, it’s definitely best to stop and consider those doubts, as it is a union meant for life.”
“And she was certain,” Joshua’s father said. “Which means he messed it up.”
“When two people love each other...” The rest of Pastor John’s words were swallowed up by Joshua’s family, but those first six hit Joshua and pierced him right in the chest.
When two people love each other.
Two people. Loving each other.
Love going both ways. Giving and taking.
And he understood then. He really understood.
Why she couldn’t submit to living in a relationship that she thought might be one-sided. Because she had already endured it once. Because she’d already lived it with her mother.
Danielle was willing to walk away from everything he’d offered her. From the house, from the money, from the security. Even from his family. Because for some reason his love meant that much to her.
That realization nearly brought him to his knees.
He had thought his love insufficient. Had thought it destructive. And as she had stood there, pleading with him to love her back, he had thought his love unimportant.
But to her, it was everything.
How dare he question her feelings for him? Love, to Danielle, was more than a ranch and good sex. And she had proved it, because she was clearly willing to sacrifice the ranch and the sex to have him return her love.
“It was my fault,” he said, his voice sounding like a stranger’s as it echoed through the room. “She said she loved me. And I told her I couldn’t love her back.”
“Well,” Faith said, “not even I can defend you now, dumbass.”
His mother looked stricken, his father angry. His brothers seemed completely unsurprised.
“You do love her, though,” his father said, his tone steady. “So why did you tell her you didn’t?”
Of course, Joshua realized right then something else she’d been right about. He was afraid.
Afraid of wanting this life he really had always dreamed of but had written off because he messed up his first attempt so badly. Afraid because the first time had been so painful, had gone so horribly wrong.
“Because I’m a coward,” he said. “But I’m not going to be one anymore.”
He walked down off the stage and to the front pew, picking up the bouquet. “I’m going to go find her,” he said. “I know she’s not far, since Riley is here.”
Suddenly, he knew exactly where she was.
“Do you have any other weddings today, Pastor?”
Pastor John shook his head. “No. This is the only thing I have on my schedule today. Not many people get married on a Thursday.”
“Hopefully, if I don’t mess this up, we’ll need you.”
Eleven
It was cold. And Danielle’s bare feet were starting to ache. But there had been no way in hell she could run in those high heels. She would have broken her neck.
Of course, if she had broken her neck, she might have fully severed her spinal cord and then not been able to feel anything. A broken heart sadly didn’t work that way. She felt everything. Pain, deep and unending. Pain that spread from her chest out to the tips of her fingers and toes.
She wiggled her toes. In fairness, they might just be frostbitten.
She knew she was being pathetic. Lying down on that Pendleton blanket in the loft. The place where Joshua had first made love to her. Hiding.
Facing everyone—facing Joshua again—was inevitable. She was going to have to get Riley. Pack up her things.
Figure out life without Joshua’s money. Go back to working a cash register at a grocery store somewhere. Wrestling with childcare problems.
She expected terror to clutch her at the thought. Expected to feel deep sadness about her impending poverty. But those feelings didn’t come.
She really didn’t care about any of that.
Well, she probably would care once she was neck deep in it again, but right now all she cared about was that she wouldn’t have Joshua.
If he had no money, if he was struggling just like her, she would have wanted to struggle right along with him.
But money or no money, struggle or no struggle, she needed him to love her. Otherwise...
She closed her eyes and took in a breath of sharp, cold air.
She had been bound and determined to ignore all of the little warnings she’d felt in her soul when she’d thought about their relationship. But in the end, she couldn’t.
She knew far too well what it was like to pour love out and never get it back. And for a while it had been easy to pretend. That his support, and the sex, was the same as getting something back.
But they were temporary.
The kinds of things that would fade over the years.
If none of his choices were rooted in love, if none of it was founded in love, then what they had couldn’t last.
She was saving herself hideous heartbreak down the road by stabbing herself in the chest now.
She snorted. Right now, she kind of wondered what the point was.
Pride?
“Screw pride,” she croaked.
She heard the barn door open, heard footsteps down below, and she curled up into a ball, the crinoline under her dress scratching her legs. She buried her face in her arm, like a child. As if whoever had just walked into the barn wouldn’t be able to see her as long as she couldn’t see him.
“I thought I might find you here.”
She didn’t look up when she heard his voice. Instead, she curled into a tighter, even more resolute ball.
She felt him getting closer, which was ridiculous. She knew she couldn’t actually feel the heat radiating from his body.
“I got you that Pop-Tart cake,” he said. “I mean, I had Alison from Pie in the Sky make one. And I have to tell you, it looks disgusting. I mean, she did a great job, but I can’t imagine that it’s edible.”
She uncurled as a sudden spout of rage flooded through her and she pushed herself into a sitting position. “Fuck your Pop-Tart cake, Joshua.”
“I thought we both liked Pop-Tarts.”
“Yes. But I don’t like lies. And your Pop-Tarts would taste like lies.”
“Actually,” he said slowly, “I think the Pop-Tart cake is closer to the truth than anything I said to you back in the church. You said a lot of things that were true. I’m a coward, Danielle. And guilt is a hell of a lot easier than grief.”
“What the hell does that mean?” She drew her arm underneath her nose, wiping snot and tears away, tempted to ask him where his elfin princess was now. “Don’t tease me. Don’t talk in riddles. I’m ready to walk away from you if I need to, but I don’t want to do it. So please, don’t tempt me to hurt myself like that if you aren’t...”
“I love you,” he said, his voice rough. “And my saying so now isn’t because I was afraid you were a gold digger and you proved you weren’t by walking away. I realize what I’m about to say could be confused for that, but don’t be confused. Because loving you has nothing to do with that. If you need my money... I’ve never blamed you for going after it. I’ve never blamed you for wanting to make your and Riley’s lives easier. But the fact that you were willing to walk away from everything over three words... How can I pretend they aren’t important? How can I pretend that I don’t need your love when you demonstrated that you need my love more than financial security. More than sex. How can I doubt you and the strength of your feelings? How can I excuse my unwillingness to open myself up to you? My unwillingness to make myself bleed for you?”
