by Sey, Susan
“Christmas,” James breathed. “That’s, like, six weeks from now.”
“More like seven. You ready for the rest? The promise?”
“Anything.”
“While she’s away? Leave her alone.”
He flinched like he’d taken a punch. “She said that?”
“No, Bob said that but I don’t think she disagrees.” He took a seat on the edge of the coffee table facing James. “You’ve just got to wait this one out, bro. She’s calling the shots now.” His mouth was grim, flat. “On all of us.”
“For God’s sake, listen to yourselves!” Audrey shot to her feet, fists on her hips. “All Bel’s asking for is your patience and your trust. Maybe enough time to come to terms with the fact that she didn’t have either of them last night.” She gave James an accusing look. He held it bravely. Girl had a point. “If she’s your family now—”
“She is.”
“—then for the love of Pete, act like it. Earn her.”
“That’s what I said!” Drew slapped his knee, delighted. “Just before you guys came in, I was like Dude, Bel’s a peach. You’ve got to earn her. And James was all Dude, how? And I was all hell if I know but it sounds like Bel’s delivered the step-by-steps.” He sighed happily. “I love that girl. I had dibs, you know.”
Audrey rolled her eyes and went on. “And in case you were unclear, earning her means abiding by her wishes in this, James. So stop mucking around and just let it unfold.”
“It’s just like you said to Ford the ex-fiancé,” Drew said. “Remember? Right before he ran off with the ex-assistant? Something about not forcing shit, just letting it sing?”
“Flow,” Will supplied bitterly. “He said love should flow.”
“There you go.” Drew sat back, satisfied. “You got to let this one flow, son.”
“Flow.” James clenched his jaw so tightly he feared for his molars. Everything in him howled in protest. He wasn’t built to sit and wait. “Sing.” He shifted his eyes to Will for a long moment. “Christmas. You’re sure?”
He lifted his shoulders. “That’s what Bob said.”
James thought about his still, quiet kitchen. He thought about six—no, seven—endless weeks of cold silence from the other half of his heart. He thought about what kind of guy Bel could love, and wondered how long it would take to make himself that guy.
“Guess I’ve got my work cut out for me, don’t I?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Three weeks later
Bel loved autumn. Really loved it. Oh, there were plenty of people who loved fall, she knew. Who enjoyed the smell of wood smoke on the crisp night air, who appreciated the way brilliantly colored leaves turned up their noses at gravity to dance across breezes gone all swirly and quixotic. But her love went beyond these simple pleasures. She loved autumn the way other people loved newborn babies or baseball season—with a deep, primal, possessive devotion.
Because autumn, to Bel, was harvest season. It was that most wonderful time of year when the earth reveled in its own fertility and the bounty at the farmers’ market made her want to weep with joy. When she descended into her kitchen for weeks on end, indulging in a frenzy of glorious, exhausting labor that ended only with Thanksgiving dinner, Bel’s own personal high holiday.
Which was why normally today would have sent her into a tailspin of giddy delight. Not only had it dawned sharp and bright, bringing to life a sky so perfectly blue it looked like a movie set, but it was also the Monday before Thanksgiving. It was a day custom designed to meet or exceed Bel’s personal specifications for perfection.
But just now, standing on the massive front porch of the Annex with a bag of groceries in her arms and her heart lodged in her throat, she couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for it.
Ring the damn bell, she told herself. There’s no time for nerves.
Which was true, she thought, a wave of grief breaking inside her. There was hardly time for anything anymore.
She sucked in a deep breath and punched the doorbell. “And I Will Always Love You.” The Dolly Parton version, she had to assume. God. Hope-laced terror rose inside her, crested then crashed into disappointment when Audrey rather than James answered the door.
“Bel!” The young woman stared, then launched herself over the threshold. She threw her arms around Bel, groceries and all, squeezing her with a joyful strength that had Bel blinking back tears. “Oh my God, you’re back!” Audrey drew back to beam into Bel’s face, and what she saw there had the welcome fading into caution. “Are you back?”
“I don’t know,” Bel said honestly. She glanced beyond Audrey’s shoulder into the house. “Is James here?”
“No.” Audrey pulled her inside and closed the door behind them, as if afraid Bel might escape. “The Statesmen are done for the season, but the US Team starts World Cup training camp in January. He’s been doing two-a-days these past couple weeks. Wants to make sure the whippersnappers respect their elders, or something like that.”
Bel tried to smile but it trembled around the edges. Audrey had the courtesy to ignore that small fact. She nudged Bel toward the kitchen. “I’ll go make up your room, just in case,” she said. “Why don’t you park your butter and eggs?”
James tramped into the house and dumped his disgusting practice bag in the corner. Every muscle in his body ached. Every ligament, every tendon, and every twenty-eight-year-old joint made a point of expressing its displeasure at James’ callous treatment as he headed toward the kitchen.
So, okay, two-a-days weren’t exactly fun but if that was what it took to fall into an instant, dreamless sleep the minute his head hit a pillow, he’d deal with the physical pain, and happily. Because thrashing around alone in his bed, torturing himself with wondering what the hell Bel had found out there that was better than coming home to him? Yeah, he’d had about enough of that.
Fuel, he thought, shaking off the melancholy that dogged him whenever he stood still more than a minute or two at a time. He needed fuel. And about a gallon of orange juice. Because after three hours of hard-core drills and another half an hour in a steamy hot shower, he felt about ready to dry up and blow away. Which meant he needed to zip through the kitchen.
That was how he’d trained himself to think of the kitchen lately. A pit stop. He’d taken to making himself plates of food and taking them upstairs to eat on the couch in front of the TV with Drew rather than try to endure the cold, empty kitchen Bel had left behind. Audrey tried, God bless her, grilling the occasional cheese sandwich, slapping together an adequate meatloaf every now and then. But she wasn’t Bel.
He shoved through the swinging doors, allowing himself to think of nothing more than the ham sandwich he was about to create, then froze. Just stopped dead, like he’d been shot or stunned. Because unless countless fantasies had suddenly obliged him by taking corporeal form, she was here. Bel was here, moving around his kitchen with that efficient grace and serene purpose, tucking those fancy little packages of unidentifiable foodstuffs into his refrigerator as if she’d never left.
A wild joy exploded inside him, sang through his veins and electrified muscles that, two minutes ago, would have sworn they couldn’t move one more inch. The urge to go to her geysered up within him, hard and strong. He wanted to gobble her up, gorge himself on the smells, the textures, the sweet small pleasures of her that he’d missed like he might miss air or sunshine. The smell of her hair. The sound of her laughter. The taste of her kiss. God, he’d been starving for so long.
But no. He forced himself to stop, to take a minute. To wait. To watch. To think. He needed to think. This was Bel, and he’d already screwed up so many times. He needed to get this right.
“You’re thinner,” he said, surprising himself with a perfectly normal tone of voice. Then he closed his eyes and cursed himself for an idiot. Way to think before you talk, James.
She spun, a stick of butter clapped to her chest, her beautiful mouth a soft oh of surprise. “James!”
“H
ey, Bel.” He drank in the sight of her with hungry eyes. “Putting up your perishables?”
She dropped her eyes to the butter. “This looks bad, doesn’t it? Presumptuous.” She set it aside, then came to the island counter. She braced the flats of her palms on the granite as if preparing to make a stand.
“Your room is just like you left it,” he said. “I hope you’ll stay.” He forced his shaking hands to unknot, forced his feet to stay planted, tried to blank the naked hope and need out of his face. “I’ve missed you.”
She stared at him. “Are you kidding?” she asked, and James’ heart dropped into his stomach. He’d screwed up. Again. How, he hadn’t the faintest, but there was no mistaking the disbelief in her eyes. Exhaustion chased the hope out of his heart and he didn’t have to work so hard to stand still anymore.
Okay, so maybe this wasn’t exactly the fantasy he’d hoped for. But she was here, and that meant something. He’d be damned if he’d let her disappear again before he had a chance to tell her how he felt.
Bel stared at him across the island counter. He looked...different. He’d honed his body down to the absolute essence of speed and strength, and though every line spoke of weariness and wear, his eyes glowed with determination and something else. Something warm and forgiving and utterly foreign.
Welcome, she realized with a dull shock and a hefty side of confusion. It was unconditional welcome. How could that be?
“Listen, James,” she said, nerves and fear putting an unfamiliar edge on her voice. “I bolted three weeks ago with a pretty firm leave me alone. Now I turn up out of the blue without even a phone call and you’re all there’s the fridge, here’s your room? Aren’t you angry with me? Don’t you want an explanation?”
He shook his head, a small smile kicking up one corner of that beautiful mouth. “You’re home, Bel. For now, that’s plenty.”
Home. She backed away from the counter, the confusion in her gut twisting into something she didn’t recognize. Something with wings of hope and streaks of joy and a black shadow that said it’s a trick, there’s a price, there’s always something.
“My mother—” she began, then broke off, something ugly and choking in her throat. She shook herself, cleared it away and forced herself forward. Maybe she was going to look like a fool when this was over but she’d be damned if she’d shirk the work of loving him. Maybe Vivi was in her, but Vivi wasn’t her.
“I know about your mother,” James said, taking a step forward, then stopping abruptly, as if catching himself. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t—”
Bel shook her head. “No, please. I need to say this. I need to understand what this is, this thing you’re doing.”
“Okay,” he said, his eyes so kind and patient that Bel had to clear her throat again.
“My mother was—is—dramatic,” she said finally. “She needs high drama, big emotions, constant chaos. She can’t function any other way.”
“Yeah,” James said. “I got that.”
“She wasn’t really suited to raising a kid like me.”
“A kid like you?”
“Serious. Steady. A perfectionist.”
He smiled at that. “No. You?”
“I know. Hard to believe.”
“I’m agog. Go on.”
“She didn’t ignore me or abuse me,” Bel said, searching desperately for the right words, “if that’s what you’re thinking. I just wasn’t enough.”
“Enough?”
“Enough to keep her entertained on a daily basis. But every now and then—between boyfriends or blow-outs with her friends at the yacht club or whatever—she turned to me to fill in the gaps. She lavished all that energy and love and attention on me. She loved me with this ferocious focus until I loved her back.” She smiled wryly. “It never took very long.”
“And then she fell in love with somebody else,” James said quietly. “And she broke your heart over and over.”
Bel lifted her shoulders. “By the time I was ten I’d figured things out. Or so I thought. Love didn’t exist. It was just an excuse to do what you wanted to do and damn the consequences. A socially acceptable get-out-of-jail-free card she could play every time she forgot to come home. Every time she wandered in at dawn while I was fixing myself breakfast and getting myself ready for school. Every time she hopped up on the counter, reeking of cigar smoke and whiskey, all bright-eyed and breathless, telling me she was in love again and she’d be speaking to my principal about transferring my records to a new school. Again.”
Bitterness welled up inside her at the memory but she pushed it aside. That wasn’t her point.
“She didn’t like that, I’ll bet,” James said, encouragement quiet in his voice. “Your cottoning on to her game. Refusing to play.”
“No.” Bel tried a smile. “No, she didn’t. Maybe I hadn’t been enough to hold her attention in the long term, but she sure liked having an adoring audience handy when she needed one. And once the adoring part dropped out of the equation, well. Vivi does need her scenes, regardless of whether they’re positive or negative.”
“How negative?” James asked, concern darkening his eyes to the ominous green-gray of an unsettled sea.
“Let’s just say that if I’d ever pulled anything on her remotely like what I just pulled on you, there would be no way on God’s green earth I’d have gotten an invitation to put away my groceries and go visit my old room. There would’ve been endless tears, hours of recriminations, days of deliberating over whether to accept my apology and take me back, at least conditionally. So this whole thing?” She twirled a finger in the air to sum up everything that had happened between them in the past twenty minutes, the forgiveness, the mercy, the incomprehensible, radical welcome. “This is foreign to me and I don’t know what it means.”
“What do you think it means, Bel?”
“I don’t know!” She fisted her hands beside her ears, as if she could reach inside her head and pull out the tangled thoughts and emotions and straighten them out. “I know I love you, and that makes me totally unreliable when it comes to figuring out what you’re talking about.” She drew in a shuddering breath and forced what was inside her out. Forced herself to form the words that would push her over the edge into complete, bald vulnerability.
“I want so badly for this to be what it looks like, James.” He moved toward her, but she shot out a hand, stopped him there. She needed to say it or it would never come out. It would lie between them always, unresolved, a question she needed to ask now before the price of honesty skyrocketed. “I want that, more than I can tell you. But I also know I’ve done nothing to deserve it and nothing in my experience says I should expect it, so if there’s something else going on here, if there’s a price I need to pay, if you need your pound of flesh or whatever before you take me back, will you please just tell me? I’ll pay it, I’ll do anything you want, but please don’t make me guess what it is.”
He stared at her in silence, but she forced herself not to run. Not to hide. Her heart beat wildly inside her, but she stood before him, raw and naked, his to take or leave, to punish or forgive.
For an endless moment, they stood frozen in the shadow of that tense, brave question. Then time shot off the mark like a world-class sprinter, and before Bel could think or blink or breathe, James was there, his arms locked around her, the good, dear strength of them filling something aching and needy in her soul, the clean, freshly-showered scent of him making her lightheaded and giddy.
“Bel.” He breathed it into her hair, like it was a prayer or a song. Like she was something sacred and valuable and treasured. It sparked a small, quiet flame inside her, a flame that both destroyed and healed. “Bel. My God.”
“I love you, James.” It was her own prayer, a song of thanksgiving and gratitude, of humbled astonishment. “I do. It’s real and I know now how to tell the difference. I thought love only existed the way Vivi did it, but now I know—”
He made a noise, anguished a
nd deep, then slipped from her arms onto his knees on the hard tile floor. She gazed down in astonishment at his bent, golden head pressed to her belly. She touched a tentative hand to those unruly curls. “James?”
He jerked back and gazed up at her with wild green eyes. He seized her hands in his with a fierceness that both startled and thrilled her. “I thought you’d left me, Bel. God. I thought I’d finally done it. Driven you off with my stupid temper and my stupid mouth. I thought I’d lost you.”
“Oh, James,” she whispered. “Never. Things just got—”
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Not where you’ve been, not my being a judgmental ass about Vivi. All that matters is that you’re here now. We’re here now, together. All that matters is that I love you more than my heart can stand, and that I’ll do anything, anything, to keep you here with me.” He dropped his forehead to her hands. “You’re my family now, Bel. You’re my heart. Without you, I’m as empty as this damn house. And I hate this house without you in it. Stay with me. Please.”
Bel’s knees went watery, and she didn’t fight them. She simply joined him on the floor and threw her arms about his neck, her heart singing inside her like a wild bird, simply for the joy of the song.
“You’re my home,” she said. “My family. I don’t want to be anywhere but with you. I’ll never leave you, James. Never again. I hated being away from you. I didn’t want that, never wanted it. I hadn’t been gone two hours before I wanted to come back but things got—”
She broke off, a surge of familiar grief tempering the incandescent joy. He pulled back, searched her face with serious eyes. “Got what?” he asked gently.
“Complicated.” She hesitated, bit her lip. “I know you said you don’t need to know where I’ve been but I need to tell you about it. It’s...important.” She took his hands in hers, those dear, warm hands. God, she’d missed him. She didn’t know if she’d ever get enough of touching him just because she could, because he was there. “But before I do, I need you to understand something. I need you to believe that, had it been up to me, I’d have been back here practically before I left. I would never—will never—leave you like that.” Tears swam into her eyes and she blinked them back. “I spent every minute of these past weeks hating what I was doing, hating that you might think I would be so brutal, so vindictive as to make you pay like this for some stupid argument. It was—” She shook her head. “It was awful and it wasn’t me. I would never—”
