Chapter 29

What he wasn’t expecting was a kitchen stuffed full of people making drinks and putting out food. Apparently, butchering a deer in your backyard was reason for a party around here. And when he walked in, conversations halted and they all turned to look at him.

“You Ryan’s husband?” a woman wearing a Flyers hockey sweater and carrying a casserole dish filled with what looked like Tater Tots and bacon asked.

“I am. You know where she is?”

“I’m here,” came her voice from behind him, and he turned to see her at the table. “You’re a mess.”

He spread his arms out as best he could so she could really get a good look.

“If my mother could see me now?” he joked. Across the room, Nora threw him a kitchen towel and he used it to wipe the water off his face and hands. The shirt was a lost cause, but he refused to take it as a sign of his own chances in this kitchen.

“Maybe we should go out front,” Ryan said, standing up.

“Truth in private, lies in public?” he said, and she stilled. “That hasn’t worked so well for us, has it?”

She looked at him point-blank with sad, worried eyes. “What are you doing, Harrison?” she breathed.

“Figuring it out, I guess.”

“By butchering a deer?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“Your world—”

“Fuck that, Ryan. Your world. My world. I don’t give a shit anymore. It’s us. You and me. The baby. It’s our world and it looks like whatever we want it to look like.”

The crowd in the kitchen had gotten larger, people gathering from the dining room, and their audience watched like a good audience should, avidly, eyes wide. Food and drink forgotten.

He was embarrassed, slightly mortified, but at this point he would strip naked for her.

She still seemed dubious and he thought of how badly he’d botched it between them. After the election and then upstairs in her room. She deserved better, so with both hands he tore open the box where he kept everything he felt. All those things he’d tried to make go away because no one in his life ever valued them.

“I’ve been far from happy for so long. But you made me feel good and whole for the first time in my life. You made me feel like I was worth more than I’d ever thought I was. I want that back.”

“You made me feel that way too,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I saw the person I could be with you, and that was exciting. And I wanted that. The food bank and going back to school and being a part of your team. But I can be that person without you, too.”

“Damn straight,” some audience member called out.

“That’s true,” he said, cleaved in half with pride and dread. “Is that what you want?”

She shrugged. “Maybe we should just be grateful that we’ve shown each other what’s possible and leave it at that.”

“I can’t leave it at that because I love you,” he said. “I love you. I love you more than …”

“Butchering deer?” someone asked.

He ignored the peanut gallery. “I can’t even finish that thought. Because there’s nothing in my life that comes close to you. Everything is a distant second to you.”

She was silent and dry-eyed and as the silence stretched on, their audience began to share sideways glances. He was losing her. The walls she’d retreated behind were too high.

“Why?” It was a voice from deep in the corner, by the sink. The crowd shifted and Nora appeared, holding a Yuengling bottle braced against her hip. A small blond pit bull in an apron.

“Why … what?” he asked.

“Why do you love her?” Nora said, tilting her head toward Ryan. “What’s so special about my sister?”

“Everything,” he said, caught off guard.

Nora made a buzzing sound. “Lame answer, asshole.”

The crowd laughed.

“Stop,” Ryan said, coming forward, her hands out as if she were going to send both of them back to their corners. Nora shot him an “are you really this dumb” look over Ryan’s shoulder and his muddy brain finally caught on.

Nora was giving him a boost over Ryan’s high walls.

He reached for Ryan, cupping her face in his clean but cold hands. Her eyes were wide and filling with tears that she systematically blinked away.

“You don’t have to do this,” she whispered, but he could see that deep down, she wanted it.

“I love you because I’ve never had anyone by my side before. Because you inspire me to look at things differently. Because for the first time in my life I want someone to be proud of me. I love you because you make me better. You make my life better.”

“Yeah, that’s nice and all, but that’s all the shit she does for you.” It was Nora again, right over Ryan’s shoulder, like the declaration of love police. “What about her?”

“Your sister is tougher than Maynard,” he whispered to Ryan, who didn’t smile. Right. She just kept blinking away those tears, too tough to let them fall.

“You’re fierce,” he said. “Loyal. Smart. So … so smart, Ryan. Smarter, I think, than you even know. You’re a fighter who leads with her heart no matter how many times it’s been beaten up. And you’re kind, too. And that seems minor, but in my world …” He cleared his throat, but the ball of emotion didn’t go anywhere. It got worse, in fact, and he felt tears building in his own eyes. “I haven’t known a lot of kindness. You changed my life at that bar, showed me what was possible between two people when someone is brave. When someone is kind. I want to return that favor every day. For you. For our baby. Our family. I want to wake up every morning and make you happy. As happy as you’ve made me.”

“You gonna say something about how hot she is?” Nora asked.

Ryan flinched in his hands and he shook his head, looking into those brown eyes with the dark edges. “I’ve doubted my worth,” he whispered to her. “I’ve felt alone, just like you have, and if you let me in, Ryan. If you let me love you, I promise you’ll never feel that way again.”

He dropped his hands from her face and stepped back. He couldn’t force her to trust him. He couldn’t force her to do anything. A guy in the doorway to the living room clapped, and Harrison did a little bow before he shot Ryan a half-smile, trying to hide his doubt and his fear and his worry.

“I’m … I’m going to take another shower,” he said, and then headed up the stairs, leaving the kitchen behind.

She would come to him on her own, or she wouldn’t.

Once Harrison was gone, the kitchen exploded around Ryan but she barely heard it.

“How come you never say that kind of shit to me?” Janet Baker asked her husband, who’d been the guy clapping in the doorway.

“Bring me another beer and I will,” he shot back.

Something got thrown. Someone swore. A bunch of people laughed.

“That was freaking awesome,” Grace Kerns said in a hushed and reverent voice, and other women agreed.

Ryan agreed. Harrison’s speech was awesome. It was like something out of a movie. But still, somehow, she couldn’t move.

“What are you going to do?” Nora asked, coming to stand beside her, staring at the stairs with her like it was a crime scene.

“That person he described, is that really me?” she whispered.

“It’s how he sees you.”

Ryan laughed. “I’m not brave. I’m … scared to death.”

Letting Harrison in, all the way in and trusting him not to hurt her. And letting him trust her not to hurt him—that would be the bravest thing she’d ever done.

“Why’d you make him say all that?” she asked her sister.

“Because that’s the shit you deserve, Ryan,” Nora said. When Ryan looked down at her, she saw the sister of her childhood, returned to her somehow. And her gratitude was overwhelming.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

“You’re welcome, but I really don’t understand what you’re still doing down here.” Nora swatted her butt with the towel over her shoulder and then retreated into the high-fives of the rest of the women in the kitchen.

Ryan remembered that first press conference, and how putting her hand in his and following him out of the car had been so surprisingly easy. She just did it. She just changed her life.

And taking the back steps to the second floor one by one was the same way.

Easy.

While at the same time impossibly difficult.

She was brave and cowardly all at once. Relieved and terrified. Excited and worried. Laughing and crying.

As if she’d been living with every emotion on mute for years and now she felt it all at full volume. Love amplified everything. It amplified her. She was suddenly capable of thousands of things she’d never dreamed of before. Things she wouldn’t have had the ability to even see.

She skipped the second step, her hand at her stomach over the growing baby. She nearly ran down the hallway to the bathroom. She eased open the door and then shut it quickly behind her so the cool air didn’t get in. She could see the shadow of him through the shower curtain, the solid shape and size that somehow managed to fill all the empty spots in her life.

Silently, she shed her clothes, her heart leaping around her rib cage like it wanted out, and then she eased back the edge of the shower curtain.

“What—” he cried, turning to face her, a long, soapy trail of shampoo falling over his eye. He smiled when he saw her, swiped the shampoo away, and quickly rinsed the rest of it out of his hair. “It’s you.”

“It’s me.” Goose bumps covered her body and she wrapped her arms around herself.

She was naked and cold and he sidestepped slightly so the hot water reached her.

Such a stupid thing to make her cry, but it did. A sob broke out of her.

“Hey,” he breathed, reaching for her, wiping the tears away with his thumbs as fast as they fell. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I’m happy.”

A slow smile spread across his face. “This is you happy?”

She nodded and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed kisses to his face. His cheek, the corner of his eye. And she felt his big, wide hands sweep around her, sliding up and down her back as if he couldn’t touch enough of her.

“I love you,” she said.

He rested his head against her shoulder and she cupped his neck with her hands and they stood holding each other up, the warm water running over their faces, into their mouths and eyes, but neither moved.

It was a strange moment of relief. Of homecoming.

“Thank you,” he said.

She stepped closer and pressed her hips against his, suddenly hungry for him. For the tenderness she’d known in his arms. She wanted to erase what had happened between them in her bedroom, that cold and angry act that bore no resemblance to the beautiful sex they were capable of.

And then the hot water, suddenly, viciously, turned cold.

They both screamed and scrambled out of the shower, dripping onto the pink tiled floor.

She swept back her wet hair. “Welcome to my world,” she laughed.

Harrison sobered. He grabbed a towel and bundled her up and then wrapped the old Snoopy one around his waist before picking her up in his arms.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers squeezing water from the tips of his hair.

The walk to her bedroom was brief but drafty, and then he closed the door behind them and dried her off before settling her under the covers. Shivering, she watched him dry off and then join her.

“It’s our world,” he told her. “It’s what we make it. Parts of you. Parts of me. The baby. It’s what we want.”

He was propped up on his elbow over her and she slipped closer into the crack between his chest and the mattress, filling every space available to her. His erection was warm and hard against her belly and she reached between them to touch him.

“You know what I want?” she asked, her fingers circling the head, tracing the veins along the side.

He smiled, rakish and handsome, and leaned down to kiss her breast, making his way to her nipple. His hand slipped up her thigh and she spread her legs so she was open to his touch.

Love and lust collided between them and she was ready, unbelievably ready for him, and he shifted over her and slid into her perfectly. There was no doubt. No acceptance she wasn’t sure she wanted to give.

“You,” she breathed into his mouth as they began to move. “All I want is you.”