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“Then that’s all you have to say. I know you enough to know if you say bad, it’s horrific. Anyway. We want you two to come to dinner Friday night. Gabe is coming, too.”
“We’ll be there.”
“Good. With the ring on her hand. Safe travels. Tell Carrie I said hi.” She disconnects and I sit there a moment.
Carrie’s hand comes down on my leg. “Reid?”
I look at her. “She helped me pick the ring and I didn’t call her after I gave it to you. I’m a real ass.”
“No,” she says. “You conditioned yourself to shut people out to protect them from you. It was how you coped. Maybe though, just maybe, tell her everything. Think about it.”
I should reject the idea. I do reject the idea, but I open my mind a moment later because Carrie has changed me. I will never fully heal with Cat if I don’t tell her the truth. If I don’t dare to tell her about that tragic night in a convenience store that made me decide everyone was safer if they didn’t have me in their lives.
Carrie laces her fingers with mine and old demons flare, threatening to carve me up, but I don’t react by pulling away from Carrie. I simply can’t live without her. But I will not let her be hurt because of me either. I will not let anyone hurt her, not even my father.
Chapter seventy-nine
Carrie
Once Reid hangs up with his sister, his mood is noticeably somber, but I don’t push him to talk. He holds onto my hand. He’s not withdrawing as he has in the past from me and everyone else for that matter. I know how big the bombshell is about his past, and I’m not sure he has to tell his sister. I think it’s enough that he’s admitted to her that it exists, at least for partial healing. The problem is, I think, as the plane takes off and we head back to the States, he really was an ass to Cat. She’s human and wounded and I fear it would take his bombshell to truly have her understand why he pushed everyone away. I won’t push him to bare his soul to her, but I will gently suggest it when it feels appropriate. Anything more feels as if it would be a betrayal of his trust in me. Once we level off, we both decline drinks and ease our seats back, turning to face each other.
Reid reaches across the divider and caresses my cheek, so much tenderness in the action, in his eyes, that I’d once thought him incapable of feeling, let alone sharing. He doesn’t speak, but there are a million words in his eyes: I don’t want to tell her. I have to tell her. Do you think I have to tell her?
I catch his hand and kiss it. “You’ll know,” I say as if he’s asked all those silent questions. “When, and if, the time is right.”
He doesn’t reply but he draws in a deep breath as if he’s drawing in my words. There is much before us when we return home, but as we lay there staring at each other there is more than his torment or his father between us. There is our first Christmas together. There is our wedding. There is our dog and our cat, who I can’t wait to meet. Those things pass between us and I can almost feel Reid’s tension slide away as his lashes lower. My heart squeezes with just how close we’ve become and just how well I know and understand this man, as he does me. I close my eyes and flashback to the day I let him read the email I sent my father. After work, Reid and I had gone to dinner and later, while in bed, sipping wine and talking about our work project I’d sent him the email.
I have no idea why I’m nervous as Reid reads my email. Or then again, maybe I do. My father blackmailed him and threatened to connect him to a murder charge. It’s got to be hard for him to read my pleas for the man who did that to him to accept us. God, I call him a hero.
I rotate and sit on my knees facing Reid, my hand on his knee. “I know what he’s done to you, Reid. That email was not to condone his actions. He was my hero. He’s not now. You are. I do think those abandonment issues I have showed in that email but I wrote it for us.”
He looks up at me and sets the computer down. “Come here,” he says, his voice a low, rough timbre. A moment later I’m flat on the bed and he’s leaning over me, his leg between my legs.
“All those things you said about me. God, woman, you affect me in a way you can’t even understand.”
“You’re not upset?”
“Upset? Baby, I’m floored by your capacity to forgive and love. You make me better. You don’t go easy on me either and thank God for it. I will find a way to make peace with your father for you. And I believe he will for you. Now, will you marry me?”
I laugh. “I’m pretty sure the ring on my finger says I already said yes.”
“I just want to you to know that every day I’m with you, I’d ask you again.”
The plane hits a bump and I come back to the present to stare at Reid, his lashes lowered, his breathing steady. I reach up and trace his cheek and my lips curve when he doesn’t move. He trusts me and I don’t believe Reid Maxwell has trusted much in his life.
Reid
I wake halfway through the flight and decide I need to get the bad behind me and Carrie. I need nothing but good left. I need that with my sister, too. I’m going to tell her everything when the time is right, just as Carrie said. But right now, I need to make sure Gabe knows the real threat that my father and even Carrie’s father represent.
I message him from the plane and setup a meet. “I don’t want you to go,” I tell Carrie. “You don’t know what I told you. Denial, denial, denial. You understand me?”
“Yes. I do. When you’re back, we’ll go get a tree.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. It will be afternoon when we land. We need to stay up to get used to the time change anyway and we’re not letting my father or yours screw up our Christmas.”
“You’re right, baby,” I say, leaning in to kiss her. “We’re not.”
