by Helm, Nicole
Except for the first time the pain was a living, breathing thing. He didn’t know what to do with that, so he got in his car and tried to drive away from it. It occurred to him he could keep driving. Out of New Benton, back to St. Louis and that apartment he’d only stepped foot in to get things.
The apartment he’d been thinking of letting his lease run out on because...
“Because you’re an idiot,” he muttered to himself, feeling like even more of one when muscle memory or something took over and instead of taking the highway back to the city he turned onto the road that led to the Wainwright Farm.
He didn’t want to be here. Around people. He kept telling himself that, even as he parked next to Dell’s cabin and walked up the walkway. He didn’t want to be around people. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He wanted to be alone.
He knocked on the door.
Mia answered, more color in her cheeks than she’d had for weeks. “Hi, Charlie. Come on in. Though try to be quiet. Lainey’s napping.”
Charlie managed a thin smile and stepped inside.
“So, you had the appointment this morning, yes?” Mia prodded, grinning from ear to ear as she walked toward the kitchen.
“Yes. Everything looked good.”
“Perfect.”
He stopped in the middle of the living room. His grandparents had lived here for a time, but he always thought of it as Mia and Dell’s. They’d spent the past few years building their family here, and suddenly he couldn’t be here and be normal. He couldn’t be around them and not feel something.
Though hell if he knew what that something was. “You know, I don’t know why I came here. I...I think I should head back to my apartment.”
Mia turned around to face him just as Dell entered from the kitchen. They both stared expectantly at him, and it hurt. He didn’t want to think why it hurt.
Because you want this.
No. He didn’t... He had to...
“What’s wrong?” Mia asked, taking a step toward him, a mix of compassion and worry in her eyes.
He noticed that he wasn’t the only one staring openmouthed at her question, Dell had the same expression on his face, but Mia just rolled her eyes.
“I may have taken the Wainwright name, but it doesn’t mean I have to play the weird let’s pretend everything is fine when someone is hurting game all you Wainwright men employ. When someone looks like they’ve been emotionally stabbed, you ask what’s wrong.”
“I have not been emotionally stabbed,” he said indignantly, even though that was exactly what it felt like.
“Oh, of course. You’re a big strong man and totally fine and it’s nothing to do with the fact you and Meg had the ultrasound this morning and now you’re here, alone, growling like a lion with a thorn in its paw.”
“Know a lot of lions?”
Mia merely raised an eyebrow.
He didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t... “We had a fight, I guess. Meg and I.” Fight seemed the wrong word, but it tumbled out. What was he doing? He didn’t unload his problems on other people. He didn’t hope for advice.
He handled things on his own. He always had. “About what?” Mia asked gently.
Why was she asking him these things? People did not ask if he was all right.
“I couldn’t even tell you. Not really. Everything was fine, and then...” He’d been firmly put back in that place she’d put him in at the diner. The condescending likes of you.
He could have gotten over it, he could even have accepted it as something she didn’t mean, but he didn’t know her any better than she seemed to know him, and at the center of that was that she wouldn’t let him into this family history of hers, which made her run to the bathroom, which made the color drain from her face.
So what the hell was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to put that in words for Mia and Dell? Without falling apart?
He fished the ultrasound picture out of his pocket. Because this was what really mattered. “You know, it isn’t so important. This is the important thing.”
“Can I?” Mia asked, holding out her hand.
Charlie handed it to her and she looked at it, eyes immediately going misty. “Oh, isn’t it just amazing?” she asked in a watery voice.
“Why are you crying?” Dell asked helplessly.
“Oh, shut up,” Mia muttered without any heat, wiping her eyes. A cry sounded from the hall and Mia handed the picture back to Charlie. “I’ll go get her. You,” she said, pointing at Dell. “Do something.”
“Like what?”
“Support him, jackass.” Mia disappeared down the hall.
“She seems to be feeling better,” Charlie offered tonelessly.
“Yeah, the medicine really helped.”
They stared at each other in silence before turning away. Charlie shoved a hand into his pocket, still holding the picture with his other hand. “I’m fine.”
“Hey, let’s not straight-out lie.”
He stared at the ultrasound. “No, I really am. Because the important thing is the baby is healthy. Anything else is...” He blew out a breath. “I’ve never felt like this,” he muttered. Angry and hurt all over again. “I don’t get her at all. I don’t get myself.”
“By her I assume you mean Meg?”
“Yes, Meg. She’s so bright and funny and she gets...” Me. She gets me. I thought she got me. He didn’t know how to say that out loud, so he paced the small living room. “I don’t know what to do with this.”
“And by this I assume you mean feelings.”
He stopped pacing, let out a painful breath. “Yes, I suppose that is what I mean.”
“Yeah, that’s the kicker.” Dell sighed gustily. “Look, it’s... In my experience, you’re going to be stubbornly miserable until you accept that you’ve got to get over yourself and change a little bit.”
“I’m not the problem.”
Dell laughed then, and Charlie couldn’t help bristling. He was usually laughing when Dell argued with his advice. He was the older brother, the life-together brother. Not anymore.
“I’ll give you the possibility that Meg might also be the problem, but very rarely is it just one person.”
“Are you saying Mia was part of the problem when you two were pushing each other away?”
“No, Mia was perfect.” Dell grinned. “But she’s an exception.”
“You’re addled.”
“Likely, but listen. Love is—” Dell cleared his throat “—hard. It’s complicated. It’s a lot of give-and-take that is really damn uncomfortable—and that’s not even just in the beginning.”
“I didn’t say anything about love. I barely...”
Dell merely raised an eyebrow.
“It’s not about love,” Charlie repeated, and it didn’t escape him that he sounded desperate and panicked.
“You have my sympathy,” Dell said. He glanced at the hallway, where Mia reappeared, a sleepy Lainey curled around her. “But you’ll find that if you can get over yourself, nothing could possibly be more worth it.”
Charlie couldn’t argue with that if he wanted to, not in the presence of it. Love and family and support and appreciation.
But he didn’t know how to get over himself. He didn’t know how to deal with the word love echoing around in his head. “This was not the plan.”
Dell’s echoing laughter in response to that would stick in his head for a very long time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MORNING SICKNESS WAS HELL. Everything she ate sounded good one minute but then was rushing up the next. Every smell that usually soothed her turned her stomach. She could barely walk into the barn.
She wanted so badly to text Charlie this morning and tell him not to bother to come help. She didn’t n
eed his help. But, unfortunately, today she did.
If Elsie had been a little bit stronger, Meg would have asked her, but the woman was still recovering from chemo—for all her clean bills of health, she couldn’t wrestle goats and carry heavy cans of milk.
So, no, Meg had to suck it up and let the man who didn’t know her help, because she legitimately could not take the smell of the goats this morning. Every time she tried to step inside, each cell in her being revolted.
“So much for pregnancy being magical,” she muttered, stomping around and pouting because she didn’t know what to do with herself. She had herbs to process and soaps to mold and package and all she wanted to do was lie on the bathroom floor hugging the toilet miserably.
“You’re worth it, Seedling,” she murmured, putting her hand over her belly on the offhanded thought the baby could sense her irritation, her restlessness. “You are, don’t get me wrong, but, boy, does this suck right now!”
Maybe she could move the entire milking apparatus outside. It would be a pain, and she’d have to hold her breath to make it happen, but...
The sound of a car on gravel had her head swiveling to the front. To Charlie. Her shoulders relaxed because thank God help was here, even as her heart tensed because, oh, what the heck was she going to do with him? Just looking at him hurt.
But she didn’t know how not to look at him. How not to follow his every move, because he was like some kind of sun she revolved around. A force she desperately wanted to be near, next to, with, but something always kept her away. Something like the universe and her own stupid head.
When he approached, she steeled herself to stand there and face him and not run away crying like part of her wanted to do.
“Hello,” he offered, his tone flat in a complete failure at geniality.
“Hi. I...I’m glad you’re here.”
“Are you?”
“I’m having some morning sickness issues and I need your help.”
His eyes studied hers, that penetrating gaze that made her feel like slime. Not because he thought she was slime, but because he didn’t. Because he could look at her and want something from her other than...bad things.
She closed her eyes.
“Meg, no matter what happens between us, I am always here to do whatever it is you need so that you can take care of the baby, yourself and your business.”
“Why?” She wished she could keep her eyes closed, but she wasn’t that much a coward. “Why? Why, why, why?”
His eyebrows drew together, all barely restrained frustration, and she wanted to push him for no reason she could make sense of.
“Why would I help you?”
“Yes. Why would you help me? Why would you want to? Why are you here?” Why are you wonderful and gorgeous and something I want that will inevitably find out I’m not worth it?
“It’s simple.”
“It isn’t simple!” Oh, she was so angry and she didn’t even know why. Because she wasn’t really angry at him, except he was saying it was simple. Simple? Simple to feel so mixed-up and out of her depth and like she used to. When was the last time she’d felt so worthless and so insecure? It had been a long time.
So, no, this wasn’t simple, and as much as she wanted to keep those thoughts to herself, they seemed to have a life of their own, needing air, needing to be voiced. “It isn’t simple at all! Because I don’t understand! I don’t understand why you left, why you think you don’t know me, why you came back. I don’t understand anything and it isn’t damn simple.”
“You think I understand?”
“You just said it was simple!”
“Me helping you is simple. Me being here is simple. Feeling like I don’t know you? Wanting to be here? Listening to you talk the way you do sometimes when there’s terror in your eyes, no, that isn’t simple and hell if I know what to do with it.”
Only when he mentioned seeing her terror did she realize they’d been yelling, that things were getting all kinds of out of hand. She tried to breathe, but it was hard to do evenly, smoothly. She placed a hand over her stomach, that center of calm and sanity. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bull. Shit, Meg.”
She blinked at him.
He took her by the shoulders, somehow both gentle and firm at the same time. His dark eyes bored into hers, desperate and determined and all sorts of formidable words and scary feelings.
Scary because they were feelings she wanted, she recognized. Scary because she didn’t know how to have those things.
“You know what I’m talking about. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Sometimes you go somewhere in your head and you look petrified and anytime I’m a little extra nice you look a little horrified before you settle into it. You know exactly what I mean when I say the blood simply drains from your face anytime I mention anything that has to do with your parents—even if I don’t know it has to do with your parents.”
His grip tightened and he didn’t so much shake her as give her a little jerk. “What is it that goes through your head?”
This was even worse than yesterday. Yesterday had hurt. He didn’t know her and he walked away and it hurt like hell, but she knew what to do with that. With hurt. She didn’t know what to do with someone...wanting something more from her. Because he cared instead of wanted to mold her into something else entirely.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered, because couldn’t he see she didn’t have the words? Couldn’t he understand she didn’t know why she felt this way, that it was only that she did?
“Because I think I’m in love with you and I don’t know what to do with that!”
It was like a bomb had exploded, taking out everything around them. She couldn’t hear a thing. She couldn’t move. She wasn’t even sure she could breathe.
Love. He’d said...love. In regards to her. “B-but you said you didn’t even know me,” she managed, her voice nothing more than a high-pitched whisper.
“I don’t! I don’t know the whole you because there are all these things you keep hidden, all these secrets you refuse to let me in on, and it drives me insane. But I know you remind me of sunshine when you smile, and I want to touch you always. I like being here and it should be the last place I’d ever want to be, but you’re here, and you make anything and anywhere the place I want to be. I don’t know how or why, I only know that is how I feel and it’s insane.”
Oh God. Oh God, oh God. “Charlie.”
Suddenly he let her go, so suddenly she all but tripped.
“I have to go,” he muttered, shoving his hands through his hair, taking determined strides back toward his car.
“What?” she nearly screeched, scurrying after him.
“I have to go figure this out. I can’t do it here with you looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
He whirled on her. “Like it’s possible, Meg. Like anything...” He shook his head, turning back to his car and jerking the driver’s-side door open. “No.”
“Charlie, you can’t just drop that bomb on me and leave.”
“Fine.” Before she knew how to prepare for it, his mouth was on hers. His arms banded around her and held her so close to the uncompromising hardness of his chest she could barely breathe.
But he was kissing her, holding her, apparently loving her, and she didn’t want to breathe. She wanted to sink, to melt. So she did. She leaned into him, pliant and willing, meeting the soft glide of his tongue, sliding her palms up his back as his fingers got lost in her hair.
She didn’t know how long they stayed like that, how long they let one kiss lead to another, touch after touch. Exploring and soft, but not demanding.
Because he thought he might love her. Her.
He pulled back a fraction of an inch, his eyes blin
king open in time with hers. He gave a sigh, something sad contained in it. “Meg.” His fingers traced her hairline, his eyes searched hers.
“Don’t stop.” Stopping would mean talking, and she’d rather explore and feel and show.
She didn’t have words. She didn’t have a way to verbalize all the fear and insecurity inside her, but she could show something in the way she touched him, the way she gave herself to him.
A few insistent bleats filled the air and she had to sigh against the unfairness of goat schedules. “Except we have to stop. They have to be milked. I haven’t been able to stomach it.”
“I’ll do it.” His thumb grazed her jaw, back and forth, soft and sweet. “And then we’ll talk, okay? Really talk?”
She knew what that meant, what he wanted, and more, she knew that if she had any hope of this really being love. Love love, she would have to be willing to talk. To put to words her fears, and the things that had shaped her.
She would have to give him things she’d wanted buried. It was the only option with love on the table, because as much as she didn’t want to lose that, she knew if she kept this from him, she didn’t have love at all.
“Okay,” she said, more than a little terrified. “We can talk.”
He brushed a brief, gentle kiss across her mouth before stalking to the goat barn like a man on a very unpleasant mission.
But he was milking her goats, and telling her he might love her, and she had to do something. Grab on to it. Not just for the baby, but for herself.
Which was scarier than everything else in her life put together.
* * *
WHAT WAS HE DOING? What are you doing? “What am I doing?” It was a constant three-part refrain as he went through the process of milking Meg’s goats.
It was oddly relaxing. There was a repetitiveness to the system that gave the thoughts in his head a certain kind of lulling rhythm. What am I doing? Pull—squirt. What are you doing? Pull—squirt.
He’d kept himself distracted as he worked through the entire herd of milkable goats, and then he went through the process of sanitizing and storing the milk. But once he was done with the heavy basics of Meg’s usual chores, he could no longer deny the simple truth.
