by Nicole Helm
She rolled her eyes. “Look, if you’re going to start the Tess-can’t-take-care-of-herself bullshit again, I’m out of here.”
“I’ve never thought you couldn’t take care of yourself.”
She shook her head and made a move for the door. “My ass.”
“Wanting you to be safe is not the same as thinking you can’t take care of yourself. How many times did I step back and let you take care of something?”
She whirled around. “But you didn’t want to!”
“So what? There are a lot of things I don’t fucking want to do and I do them anyway because that is what you do when you love someone! You make sacrifices and mistakes and all sorts of dumb shit.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re an expert on love now?”
“No, no, I’m not an expert. I’m a mess. An idiot. I have no idea what I’m doing. I only know I do love you and I don’t want this to be over because we disagree about how to handle your father.”
“But he is my father. He’s always going to be. We can’t ignore it or pretend it isn’t this big thing we don’t agree on.”
She was right, but he had to believe that if she was here, if she was willing to talk about them, it didn’t have to be that black-and-white. As black-and-white as he’d been looking at it, as black-and-white as he’d viewed his whole life.
There was such a thing as compromise, and that didn’t have to mean sacrificing everything he felt. Or her sacrificing everything she did.
He pulled out the books he’d bought, much to the weeping of his budget. “I got you some books.”
“Books?”
“I know you said you’d read a lot about this topic. But—”
“I don’t want the twelve-step books, Marc. What’s that supposed to do? It doesn’t matter because when I went there and visited him I told him I wasn’t coming back unless he got treatment. Because, whether you want to believe it about me or not, I’m not some pathetic little girl under his thumb who can’t understand reason or...whatever.”
“I never thought you were pathetic. Never.”
“Well—”
“What made you think I thought you were pathetic? What did I ever say or do that would make you think that?” And now he was yelling. Why were they getting angry? That wasn’t the point of this.
She frowned at him, her eyebrows all scrunched together. “I was not the one who went all I can’t do this. That was you.”
“And I was wrong and confused and didn’t know how to deal, okay? I’m glad you went and told him that. I wish you’d—”
“Wished I’d what?”
“Told me! Involved me! Let me in. That is what I’m trying to get at. I want to be a part of your life. I don’t want to swallow my disagreements but I also don’t want one thing we disagree on to be the end of us.”
“You said you couldn’t deal with me letting him in my life because he’s such a monster. Well, he’s not a monster. I believe a lot of shitty things about my dad, but I’ll never agree with that.”
“Okay.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “What do you mean, okay?”
“I mean, okay. That’s fair. These books I bought are about managing relationships with abusers and alcoholics. It’s not about...I know you want to fix him, and I’m not sure I’ll ever think that’s possible. But I do want to be by your side while you try to make it the best relationship it can be.”
She stared at him, openmouthed, but didn’t say a word. Just stared.
So he pressed on, because that had to mean something good. God, he hoped.
“I want to be your partner. I think that’s what I was missing or didn’t understand with my parents and my sister. I was never an active participant in helping. I did what everyone wanted me to do. I let her sickness and her running away run my life, even though I never needed to let it do that. Yes, I was there. I was a foundation, but nothing else. I never spoke up. I never told anyone what I felt or that I didn’t want to do it. When you do that you lose sight of yourself and your wants, or at least that’s what I did.
“That’s not what I want with us. I want to work together. That means talking through things. Not shutting down or getting angry.
“I want you. I want us. I’m telling you what I want, honestly. So...there. That’s it. That’s why I asked you to come in here.”
He didn’t know what else to say or do. So he waited.
* * *
TESS DIDN’T KNOW what to say. She couldn’t move. Sweat kept dripping down her temples and her neck and her back and...
He wanted her. Them. He wanted to be partners. Suddenly she wanted to cry. She blinked hard because otherwise the tears would leak out like the sweat running down her back.
Jeez, she was a mess.
“Tess?”
“I...I need to take a shower.”
“What?”
She awkwardly gestured to her shirt, backing toward the door. “I can’t do this all sweaty and gross.”
Marc stepped toward her and she felt the need to run even more acutely.
“Do what, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Think, or...Marc.” She pushed her fingers through her disgusting hair, making it fall out of its band and make her even hotter. “I don’t know,” she choked out.
“Okay.” He nodded. “Okay. Maybe you want to take some time to think about it.”
She swallowed and nodded and reached for the door. But when she turned the knob she remembered she’d locked it and that made her want to cry all over again.
What was she doing? This sweet, supportive mess of a man wanted to be her partner in fucking life and she needed to take a shower? She needed time and thinking and...no.
No, she didn’t need any of that. What she needed was someone to be there, to care, to want to try even when things got hard. To come back even after they’d both walked away.
She needed someone in her life who didn’t blame her or hurt her, even if he did disagree with her about important things. Because disagreements could be talked through, worked out, moved through.
She dropped her hand from the knob. She wanted him. Them. Just like he’d said, and there was no point in showering or trying to talk herself out of it. Like sleeping with him, like falling in love with him, she wanted something for her.
Because she deserved it. Because they deserved it. Because...because it was good. Even when it was hard, it was still better than being apart.
She forced a step, then another and then, what the hell, she launched herself at him. He managed to catch her without toppling over, and his arms wound around her just as tight as hers wound around him.
“I want that. I want all of that,” she said, holding on hard. “A partner. I’ve never—”
“Yeah, me, neither.” He cleared his throat. “I think we’ve both made a habit out of doing things on our own, because we had to or because we didn’t want to get hurt or whatever, and I think that’s why we walked away over something that didn’t really need to be walked away over.”
He was right. So much of not knowing what to do had been the very fact that fighting for something that could continually hurt her was too much. Too much like the things that beat her down.
But even though Marc would always be capable of hurting her—that was kind of the nature of love—she knew he wouldn’t try to. He wanted her to be happy. Regardless of the fact that she couldn’t ever hate her father or think he was a monster.
“You are really, really sweaty,” Marc said on a laugh. But he didn’t let her go. Maybe he didn’t, like, tear off her clothes, but he did hold on. And holding on was exactly what she needed.
“I love you,” she said, as emphatically as she could force the words out.
His grip tightened. “I love y
ou, too.”
It wasn’t exactly a fairy tale, but it was better than that. Because it was real. Real sweat and tears and love.
And that was good.
EPILOGUE
“CHRIST, THIS THING weighs a ton,” Marc grumbled.
“You’re the one who didn’t think we could take it apart and move it,” Jacob grunted as he, Marc, Kyle and Henry maneuvered Leah’s work shed into the backyard of the house Jacob had renovated. Between a truck, a few dollies and sheer muscle, they’d managed to get it to the back corner of the yard.
“Okay, right here,” Jacob instructed.
Though they’d taken everything out of the shed, moving it had been no easy feat.
But now they were done.
“Who wants to help me put all the crap back in?” Jacob asked cheerfully.
“You are on your own,” Kyle replied. “I have to get back. I promised your mother I’d be there to help load up all the presents Grace gets.”
“Marc, Henry?”
“I’ve got to go pick up our cat from the vet.”
Jacob groaned. “Marc, you’re my only hope. And she is your sister.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
The other two men said their goodbyes and Marc helped Jacob put all of Leah’s tools and whatnot back into her work shed.
“She’ll like it, right? Even though I touched her stuff?”
“You’re asking me?”
Jacob linked his hands on the top of his head, looking around the inside of the shed. “She’ll say yes.” He nodded, sounding anything but sure.
Marc shook his head. “You’re really nervous? You two have been drawing this out forever. Mom has her own special sigh for when she’s thinking about you two living in sin, not getting engaged.”
“Yes, well, tell that to your sister.”
“Eh.”
Jacob dropped his hands. “Thanks for your help, man. Don’t think we’d have gotten it back here without you.”
“Anytime.”
Jacob started walking him back to the front. “I’ll drop you back at your place. Grace should be able to keep Leah busy until then.”
“I texted Tess to come pick me up. Don’t want to ruin your grand fall into matrimony.”
“Thoughtful of you. Of Tess. Speaking of drawing things out, wedding bells do tend to breed more wedding bells.”
“I don’t think my mom’s heart can take more than one wedding at a time.”
“Which means you’ve thought about wedding bells.” Jacob slapped him on the back and Tess’s car pulled up with just about perfect timing. Because while he and Jacob had built a kind of friendship in the nine months since he’d moved to Bluff City, he wasn’t interested in anyone teasing him about marriage and Tess.
It was too important.
“Heya, hot stuff,” Tess called out of her unrolled window. She was in a dress and makeup after Grace’s bridal shower this afternoon, and Marc could not wait to get her home and out of it.
“Now, Tess, I’m happily taken,” Jacob responded, pretending to tsk. “Marc will have to do.”
She grinned. “The beard blinded me for a second. You’ll have to forgive me.”
Jacob rubbed a palm over his chin, his grin only dying when Tess offered him a “Good luck.” Yeah, the guy was scared shitless.
“You really don’t have to be nervous,” Marc said with a shrug. “She’ll love it.”
He patted Jacob’s shoulder before climbing into Tess’s car.
“That was sweet,” she said, waving at Jacob before pulling out onto the street. “Both of you. Very sweet.”
“How was the party?”
“Really fun,” she said brightly. Almost too brightly. She chewed on her lip. “Dad called.”
Marc rested his hands over hers. “Everything okay?”
She shrugged. “He wants out of the treatment center. I said I didn’t approve of that. He yelled. I hung up on him. The usual.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. But, you know, I got to go back into the party and see how happy Grace was and it went a long way in putting it into perspective. There are a lot of things to be happy about, even when that’s not.”
She smiled, and even though there was a hint of sadness behind it, it wasn’t a fake smile. “I have you and a job I love and some really great friends. So I’m happy.”
“Good.” He was glad she could be. She’d been so excited when her father had agreed to go into a treatment center last month, but it wasn’t as easy now as either of them had thought it might be.
But she had him, and they’d approached it like a team, and he liked to think that made it at least a tiny bit better for her.
Life wasn’t perfect, but they were happy.
Wedding bells do tend to breed more wedding bells.
The truth was he had been thinking about wedding bells. Jacob dropping the bomb he thought Leah was finally ready to be proposed to hadn’t started that thinking. In fact, it had almost put it on the back burner. Because he didn’t want to steal Leah’s thunder.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t start getting the wheels rolling in the right direction. “You know, I think...I’m going to put my two weeks’ in tomorrow.”
Tess hit the brakes a little hard at the stop sign. “Your two weeks’?” She looked at him, wide-eyed.
Marc nodded. “Yeah. See what Franks has to say about maybe transferring me to the jail. If it would be a conflict. If so, I’ll figure something else out.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “A conflict? What are you talking about?”
Marc rested his arm across her shoulders, grinned. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and be surprised.”
She blinked at him, then back at the road, then at him again. “Well,” she finally managed, eyes looking suspiciously teary. “Well.” Then she cleared her throat as she finally started driving again. “You should probably give Leah a little time to enjoy...things first.”
“I will. But, you know, Jacob’s not exactly waiting for his sister to be married to pop the question to Leah.”
Tess blinked even harder. “Oh, hell,” she muttered, pulling to the side of the street.
“What are you—”
She flung her arms around his neck and then pressed his mouth to his. “I love you,” she said against his mouth before pulling back and grinning at him.
“I love you, too.”
She was smiling. She was happy. They were happy, and it’d go a long way in dealing with anything that wasn’t.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from A RECIPE FOR REUNION by Vicki Essex.
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CHAPTER ONE
Two months ago...
NO ONE WAS eating her goodies.
Stephanie racked her brain trying to figure out why. She’d baked all the treats herself, tailoring each recipe to meet her friends’ varied preferences and dietary restrictions: gluten-free chocolate cupcakes and dairy-free carrot muffins; nut-free cookies, a plate of soy-free bite-size brownies and three different p
ies because Lilian didn’t like lemon meringue, Susan loathed pecan and Karen thought apple was “boring.”
The last time she’d seen all her high school girlfriends together had been Christmas four years ago. Yet, instead of being excited, a weird sense of disappointment had dogged her all evening. While everyone else was busy chatting, talking over each other like a gaggle of geese, she got the feeling that if she waded into the fray, she’d be nibbled and pecked to death.
But she had volunteered to host this holiday shindig, so she couldn’t hide behind the food forever. Steph brightened her smile and picked up a plate of sugar cookies, painstakingly frosted in B. H. Everett High’s blue and gold. Brandishing the treats and armed with good cheer, she circulated. She might not be the best convocation...conservation...talker, but she was a damned good baker.
“Well, it’s not like I don’t want to come back to Everville,” she heard Janny say wistfully. “But Mark’s job is in Cleveland, and my business is flourishing. I wouldn’t have clients here.”
“Yes, nice as it is to come home, I’d never move back,” Cristina proclaimed. “Rumor is the property values in town are taking a dive. I’m not sure about the new mayor, either—I mean, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Bob Fordingham, but at least we knew what to expect from him.”
“Cookie?” Steph thrust the plate out. Janny and Cristina each politely took one.
“Steph, we were just talking about the new mayor,” Cristina said. “Cheyenne Welks, right? What’s she like?”
She shrugged. “What’s to tell? She comes to Georgette’s every day at eight for a large black coffee and usually gets a plain croissant.”
“But I mean what are her policies like?” Cristina clarified. “I’ve heard that she’s been spending a lot on infrastructure—like that big water main project.”
“Oh, I don’t really follow politics,” she said. She’d noticed all the construction in town, of course, but she didn’t have to drive through it on her way to work so she didn’t pay it much attention. “But she’s really nice.”
Cristina touched her arm. “Thanks for hosting, by the way. It’s nice of your parents to let us hang out here, considering all the times we’ve trashed their home.”
