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“I’ve been so tired, it’s been so...hard. With the baby, coming in and trying to get settled, and rearranging all the plans I had for when I hit the ground here in Sweet Water. I haven’t had a chance to thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me.” Was that all he wanted? She didn’t need a big production. She was here because...he was a friend and she...loved him.
“Maybe I just wanted to.”
“Okay. You’re welcome.” She shrugged her shoulders, thinking it wasn’t that big of a deal.
He took a look at Alice, as though to make sure she’d not woken up after being set down, then he closed the distance between them.
“No. You deserve more than that. You deserve...everything.” His words were slow, as though he were struggling to find them, but her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth and she couldn’t have helped him if she wanted to as he stepped closer, putting a hand on her shoulder.
She forgot to breathe.
She couldn’t swallow. Her throat was too dry. She waited.
A soft feeling. Light touch. Dark look, hooded but sincere. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. Had trouble remembering her name, and without realizing it, her hand came up and touched his waist.
“Ellen,” he murmured.
Because she touched him? Because he wanted to talk to her? She wasn’t sure. Just knew that the way he said her name made her feel like he cherished her, which was crazy. It was just a name. A sound in the air. He hadn’t done anything.
Their breath mingled, the only sound in the room, as they stood like that, his hand on her shoulder, hers at his waist, and stared into one another’s eyes.
“Do you remember that night?” he finally murmured.
She tried to swallow so she could talk, but her throat wouldn’t work. She nodded her head. She knew exactly what he was talking about. The night he left.
“I wanted to kiss you so bad. Wanted to stay.” His hand came up and touched her cheek, running the backs of his fingers softly down her skin, his breath shallow and ragged. “I never wanted anything so much in my life before.”
She, as young as she was, had wanted it too.
“The best thing for you was for me to leave. I know, I know I could have gotten in trouble. That really wasn’t the heaviest thing on my mind. It was you. You needed more years.”
It was true. She had been too young. He had made the right decision by walking away, but that had been ten years ago. Why had he stayed away? That was what she didn’t understand. That was what made her feel like he’d changed his mind.
There were a thousand, a million ways he could have let her know he wanted her. But he didn’t and he hadn’t, and she set her heart on being friends. The best friend she could be.
“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything harder than walking away from you that night.”
“I didn’t want you to.”
“That was part of what made it so hard. I knew that.”
Maybe she should be embarrassed of that. She hadn’t realized her feelings were so transparent.
“It doesn’t feel like the right time to tell you this now. It wasn’t the right time then, then there was more for me to learn, then Ford wanted me to go to Brazil. There just never seemed to be the perfect time for me to tell you how I feel.” His eyes dropped to her lips, and his finger traced across the skin just beneath them, and she resisted the urge to pull them in and bite them.
“So I decided I was going to make the time.” A small smile lifted his lips but didn’t show his teeth. “Last night, Alice was crying, screaming, and I was thinking about my mother. How much I would have loved to have had a tender word from her, a soft touch, some kind of sign that I was more to her than just a strange kid who happened to hang out at her house a lot.”
“That hurts my heart to hear that.”
“This is not about that.” He shook his head, like he wanted to get past that, didn’t want her dwelling on that. “But I thought about how short life is. How many opportunities she had, but maybe it didn’t feel like the right time to her. Maybe she really wasn’t thinking of me, or maybe... I don’t know. But I didn’t want to let another day go by without me telling you how much you mean to me. I didn’t want...things happen. You could be gone tomorrow. I could be gone tomorrow—”
“Don’t say that!”
“It’s true. One day we’re here, the next day we’re not. Our life is a vapor. And I didn’t want to live my life or to have you live yours, to lose you without ever telling you that I love you. I’ve loved you since you were a skinny teen, hauling your cow around everywhere, with your dog as your best friend.”
“I was fat.”
