by Dani Collins
“You have to use condoms for the first month anyway. And I felt better having things really foolproof. I don’t want to fall into motherhood before I figure out what else I’d rather be doing. That’s what happened to Mom. Which…” She rubbed her forehead. “I kind of think I figured some stuff out. I, um, can’t go to Germany. I’m going to Atlanta.”
“Atlanta.” He folded his arms and leaned on her desk, ankles crossed, brain racing while he reminded himself to keep it together. Even though he felt like a bullet train was headed straight at him. “What’s there?” If she spoke a man’s name…
“A writer’s conference.”
His tension drained away into something like disappointment.
“The money issues with this place are that bad?” He hated himself for wondering if that’s why she’d been sleeping with him, dismissing the thought almost as quickly as it formed because she was obviously trying to do something about it in her own way, but he still wound up feeling put upon. He was going to have to bail out Marvin, one way or another. That was clear to him now.
“It’s not—I’m going for myself. I wrote a book.” She sat on her hands and bit her lip.
“That’s what all the typing and slapping closed of the laptop has been?” Why did that feel like a kind of infidelity? Whatever guilt he’d felt at neglecting her these last few days broke into grit that churned in his gut. He started to feel like there were a lot of things she hadn’t been telling him. While he’d been doing his best to open up, she’d been keeping things to herself. That inequality tasted a lot like betrayal.
“I was worried about Dad and the lodge and whether he would be able to make a go of it so I wrote a book and thought I would publish it under Mom’s name.”
She said it so fast, he hadn’t even absorbed it all when she continued.
“But when I sent it to her editor, she knew right away it wasn’t Mom’s work. She still liked it. Mom used to tell me to write my own books, but I didn’t think I was any good.” Her gaze dropped. “I thought she was biased. And I’ve always been so afraid, you know?” She rubbed her nose, then tucked her hand beneath her again. “Also, who wants to buy a book from a nobody?”
Her chin stayed tucked while her gaze came up, eyes huge and uncertain. Wary. Deeply vulnerable.
“I honestly do not want to hear the comparisons and it’s inevitable. But when I said as much to Barb—she’s the editor—she said I built Mom’s platform so I should damned well harness it for my own titles. She said my tagline should be, ‘Not my mother’s romance.’” She chuckled dryly, but he didn’t get the joke. “She thinks I should talk to an agent. So, I’m going to Atlanta to meet up with her and an agent she knows.”
Wow.
“So the whole time we’ve been here, all this time we’ve been sleeping together, you didn’t once feel you could tell me any of this?”
She shrugged, looking as though she was being eaten from the inside. “You’re not going to say, like, ‘congratulations,’ or something?”
The way she was looking at him had him feeling as though she already knew he hated the idea. He didn’t know what he thought.
“Sure. Congratulations. I still don’t know why you didn’t tell me this. What exactly does this mean for the lodge?”
She turned her head, cheeks tinged with an angry pink. Her mouth was pinched.
“It means I probably won’t be here when you get back from Germany.”
That struck like a kick in the testikel. “Why not? Where will you be?”
“Back in Seattle, probably. I can’t…be here. You know what Dad is like. This is what I want to do and if I’m here, he’ll just suck me back into all of this.”
“You’re leaving.” He said it aloud, but couldn’t grasp it. “Because you want to write books instead of run the lodge.”
“Yes.”
“And this?” He motioned between them.
She cocked her head in a way that was rather patronizing. “You know this was never going to work. Not long term. We—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he cut in. “You kept all of this from me, including the fact that you weren’t even buying in to this relationship? Who’s giving and who’s holding back here? Do you know how angry I am with you right now? What happened to trying?”
“What does that even mean?”
“Opening up! Do you think I’m like this with anyone else?” In the world. “You’re the first woman I gave more than the bare minimum to and you’ve been… What? What has all this been, Glory? I need to know what I’ve just wasted all my time on.”
She gasped and jerked back in her chair, then rose with temper, face flashing to bright red.
“Good for you for having such precious time, Rolf. I’m honored you spent any of it on me. Okay? Is that what you need to hear? Because my time means nothing. It was just here for you to pick and choose how much of it you wanted. I am very much here for your pleasure and what I want doesn’t matter. What a selfish bitch to even think it could.”
“I thought you wanted this.” He pointed at the floor between them.
“What is it? What are we doing? Do you really see this turning into marriage and kids and happily ever after? You see yourself with me for the rest of your life?”
He let his arm drop back to his side, clenching his jaw as he looked toward the window. He hadn’t got that far in his head. “At least I didn’t come into it with an expiry date in mind.”
“Neither did I! But what would you do in my position? What did you do? I waited twenty-six fucking years to find the courage to go after what I really wanted and it turns out it might actually pay off. Damn you, if you got the call today that said, You’re ready. Come ski this race because you have a shot at winning, what the fuck would you do, Rolf? You’d say, ‘Thanks for the sex, Glory. See ya when this ride is over.’ I know you would. That’s why you’re divorced. Because you had something that mattered to you and it needed your attention more than she did.”
Each word was a slap of truth. Now, however, on the other side of that… His chest was on fire, his throat raw with words like, You can write anywhere.
“Please don’t say this isn’t the same. It is to me.” She sniffed and used the back of her hand to swipe at each of her cheekbones. “And this wasn’t wasted time for me.”
He closed his eyes, wanting to eat those words.
“I needed to feel—” She swallowed and took a breath of gathering composure. “I needed to feel something besides sadness. And I needed someone to show me that it’s okay to go after what you want. That trying and failing is better than not trying at all.”
He wasn’t feeling that one right now. He knew what the selfish choice was and wanted to make it. Desperately. But he couldn’t.
“Go, then.”
“What?” The words sounded punched out of her.
“If you want to go write books, go. Don’t draw it out. Make it happen. Trigg can help your dad. They signed that deal. If things fall apart, it’s on them. Go after what you want and quit worrying about what might happen here.”
Her mouth quivered and her brows pulled. “Just like that?”
“That’s how you do it. No distractions.” He pulled all of his hard-earned ability to focus around him now, making the one thing happen that needed to happen.
“You’re not angry? Because I don’t want to part on bad terms. I don’t want to leave you thinking—”
“We’re fine.” He held every single muscle in tight control, breaths deliberate. Even his heartbeats were somehow held to a slow, steady pound like nails into a coffin. “You’re right. I didn’t let anyone get in my way. I’m not going to stand in yours.”
Her eye twitched.
His blood was thin on oxygen, highly acidic, running hot and cold through his arteries. It took everything in him to walk across, cup her hair against her neck, and kiss her crown.
“Good luck.”
“Do you want this room?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?�
�� Only if you’re in it. That’s what he wanted to say. He walked out and slammed the door.
*
Glory cried all night, hypocritically, since it was mostly over the fact he had claimed he would try to make their relationship work, but in the end, he hadn’t fought for them at all. What had she expected, though? It sure as hell wouldn’t have made any of this easier.
Was she making it harder than it needed to be, though? She had agonized all week about whether leaving was the best course. She always came back to how her father would react and when she sat him down after Rolf was gone, she knew she’d been right. This was the only way.
“If this is why you’ve been after me about hiring a manager, fine. Hire one. But you don’t have to leave.”
“I’m telling you to hire one, Dad. This is your lodge. Your dream. I want to pursue my own.”
“You’ve proven you can write around what you do here. Glory, this is our time. I want you here.”
“Dad…”
She was sitting on the petitioner’s side of the desk again. He was in the new chair he’d bought to replace the one Rolf had taken to his office at the base. She lifted her head out of her hands.
“I feel like you’ve been waiting for me to be eight again, so we could do everything we used to do while Mom was busy writing. I know it felt like I was choosing Mom when I went to work for her. I’ve always felt pulled between you two, but that’s not what this is. I’m not choosing Mom. I’m choosing me.”
“Are you?” His bushy brows came together in a pained peak.
Her lungs shrank and the insides of her cheeks hurt where she bit down on them.
“I am, Dad. And it’s time for you to quit acting like there’s something dirty in what your wife did for a living. If your academic friends don’t like what your daughter writes, fuck ’em. Okay? You don’t even see them anymore. Why does it matter?”
“It matters if it’s taking you away from me.”
“The way it took her away?”
“That was different.”
“How?”
He sighed and looked out the window.
You didn’t love each other, did you? That question had smoldered inside her for years. She’d never once had the nerve to ask it aloud. Her parents had stayed together for her, which was why she felt so responsible for their happiness or lack thereof.
It was why she couldn’t stay and fall more in love with Rolf, putting her own needs on a shelf so she could someday blame him for all the things she hadn’t done.
“I’m a grown-up, Dad. It’s time for me to cut the cord and act like one. I have to move out from living with my parents. I have to stop living for them. If you feel like Mom held you back from doing something like this—” she waved at the lodge “—that’s fair. Now you get to do what you’ve always wanted. But she didn’t hold you back from me. I didn’t let you in because I didn’t think you’d support me in what I wanted to do.”
It hurt her a lot to say that. The way his face spasmed told her it hurt him to hear it.
“Well,” he said in a choked voice. “I’m your father. I love you. Of course, I’ll support you.”
He sounded so baffled and sad, she almost fell apart and relented. But there was an element of enabling if she stayed. She wasn’t the only one who had to grow up.
“Thank you,” she said in a thin whisper.
“But what about Rolf? I thought… Well, a grandchild would be nice at some point.”
“Oh my God, Dad.” She could have laugh-cried over that, but only said, “I love you. Thank you for understanding.” She went upstairs to pack.
Chapter Twenty-Two
BLESSED WINTER – Chapter Eight
Page 65, word count = 16,257
Brock didn’t mention trying to continue their relationship again. He did take Pandora to her appointment the next morning and held Nick in the waiting room while she was examined. She and her son were both declared healthy, but she was prescribed some iron and Nick had his heel pricked and was given an injection.
On their way home, Brock ran in for a handful of groceries while she waited in the warm car with Nick.
“Thank you,” she said when they got back and she was sitting to nurse. Nick had begun fussing in the car after a night of broken sleep. She was feeling as frazzled as he sounded. “I don’t know how I would have dragged him through a store then got the steps swept and him in here…”
The nurse had warned her she might become emotional as her milk came in. A baby’s cry is supposed to make you want to do anything to soothe him, the nurse had added with good-natured humor. Then she’d talked about baby blues and had given her a pamphlet for a support group.
Brock only put away the groceries and made her the tea from the shower gift. It was supposed to be good for nursing moms. Then he sat at the kitchen table with his laptop and answered some work emails.
“Do you have to go back?” she asked with dread when she heard him sigh.
“No, I’m booked off until the new year.”
Right. He was supposed to have gone to Mexico with his ex. Instead, he was here, every day and night, changing her son if she happened to be napping, making meals while she nursed, watching Nick while she was in the shower…
“How do single moms do it?” she wailed on day three. “I don’t want to lean on you, but I don’t know how…” She looked to the ceiling, trying to hold back her tears. She had just put Nick into his bassinet, fed and dry and sleeping. Now her arms felt empty. It was all really, really overwhelming.
“Pandora.” Brock shifted next to her, setting his elbow on the back of the sofa and lightly drawing a stray hair from across her damp eyelashes. “I’m trying to make myself indispensable. You need to see that we’re a good team.”
“I can’t even have sex. You’re such a great catch. You can have anyone. I can’t figure out why you would want to be with me.” Her voice thinned as she spoke what was really plaguing her.
“Are you serious? Sweetheart, you’re a great mom and—”
“The family thing again.”
“No. I mean…” He looked past her to the tree that was still up. “I’m here for Nick, too. I told you that I already feel responsible for him. But I’m not playing house. I’m fighting for something a lot bigger than a picture on the back of a cereal box. Yes, I wish we were having sex. I think about that a lot. But maybe it’s a good thing we can’t blindly lose ourselves in that. We both have to look beyond the physical infatuation and I see a lot to love, Pandora. How could you doubt what you have to offer?”
“I have a minimum wage job and a newborn dependent.”
“Yeah, and you know what I know about you? You would make that work. Somehow. Which scares me because that means I don’t have anything to offer you and, damn it, I want this.”
She was drowning in the fiery blue of his eyes, fingers going to his jaw as she searched his expression seeing no doubt, no hesitation. Only tenderness and earnestness.
“I keep thinking I’m falling in love with you, but I know it’s too soon and that scares me so mu—”
He pressed his lips to hers, silencing her while he stole and gave, gentle, but so impactful, her tears welled anew.
“I’m falling, too,” he whispered against her mouth, then kissed her again. And again. He drew her into his arms so along with her own pounding heart, she felt the thump of his against her swollen breast, powerful and sure in the cage of his ribs.
They shifted and angled their heads to kiss more passionately. A moan escaped her and he growled, shifting again to gather her under him. She felt him hard against her thigh and she wished—
Nick started to fuss, making them break apart, foreheads together, panting breaths mingling as light laughter.
“See, even with his lousy timing, I’d rather be here than anywhere else.” He stood and adjusted himself, sighed with rueful disappointment, then went to gather the boy.
They slept together that night, spooned like an old married
couple, sleepily taking turns tending to Nick and waking to stare at each other.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered. “Why can’t you sleep?”
“I’m worrying about your parents.” He was having his belated Christmas with them tomorrow. She was going along to meet them, but it felt like a test. “What if I don’t mesh? The way your ex didn’t. You didn’t, like, make it sound like we’re…”
“They’re going to love you. Can you please trust me on that?”
She wanted to, but she braced herself for disappointment. All she had ever wanted was to be part of a ‘real’ family, but Brock’s was too perfect. Too nuclear and ideal. How could there be room for someone as flawed as she was?
But when he ran out that morning for a couple of hours, replacing all the Christmas presents he’d given to her, she not only felt guilty, she felt scared, too. Lonely. Nick was being a peach, not fussing. She got the kitchen cleaned and a few jars of jam wrapped as a hostess gift for his mom along with dabbing on a smidge of makeup and straightening her hair. She still wound up fretting at Brock’s absence. Sure she could cope as a single mom, but her heart couldn’t survive without him.
He returned and they quickly wrapped up the replacement gifts, almost got themselves out to the car, then had to run back in and change Nick.
Finally, they pulled into the driveway of a really nice house. Somehow, Pandora had pictured his parents in a bungalow, since this was a vacation cottage. Nope. It was probably thirty years old, but it had been a mansion when it was built and they’d kept it up. It was decorated with red and white Christmas lights and there was a huge tree sparkling in their front room window.
The door opened before they’d climbed the stairs. Pandora hung back, shy, but wound up warmly hugged in the foyer by his mother. It was New Year’s Eve, his family was all tanned and smelling like coconut oil, but Christmas carols were playing and the place smelled like candy canes and nutmeg.
Brock’s mom stole Nick while Amber, who looked fantastic for having had a baby three months ago, dragged Pandora into the kitchen because she was busy preparing appetizers to snack on while they opened presents.
