The next evening, Zeke took Cecily out on the boat.

The boat belonged to Balm in Gilead, but as far as he knew, Cecily had never been out on it. He took it out sometimes when he wanted to get away from it all and feel completely alone. And occasionally he let a guest use it—only the guests he really trusted.

But he’d never seen Cecily use it, so he wasn’t sure she would say yes when she asked him.

He was really glad when she did.

It was just a small motorboat. Certainly nothing special. But he loved being out on the water, and Cecily looked beautiful and flushed and happy with her hair blowing around her face as he took them out far enough to not be in sight of anyone else.

“I wasn’t sure if you liked boats,” he said when he turned off the motor. The waves weren’t very strong today so the rocking was pleasant rather than bothersome.

“I’ve never really thought about them one way or the other,” she admitted, giving him that fond little look that proved she liked being with him, the one that always made his heart flutter in that embarrassing way.

“I like them,” he admitted.

“Yeah. I kind of figured.”

He moved over so he could sit beside her on the bench, putting his arm around her and letting her lean against him. She seemed to like the position as much as he did, and as always, he reined in his mind from dwelling too much on the soft curves of her small body against him.

He wanted her a lot. All the time. And it was just too torturous to let himself indulge the desire to touch her too much.

“You used to go out in the boat all the time, but you haven’t been as much recently.”

“No.” He thought about what she’d said and added, “I didn’t know you even noticed what I did.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know. I’d’ve thought you wouldn’t pay much attention to me.”

“You’re hard not to pay attention to.”

They sat for a while, and he just enjoyed the feel of her body against him, the knowledge that she wanted to be with him like this.

No matter how brilliant and beautiful and successful she was.

No matter who he’d been for the past nine years.

“I was really surprised earlier this year when you let someone else use the boat,” she murmured casually, as if she were just following the path of her thoughts.

“It’s not really mine.”

“I know. But that doesn’t stop you from scaring people away from things you don’t want them to have.”

He chuckled at the lilt to her voice. “Yeah. I guess I wouldn’t have offered it, but John Davenport asked me if there was a boat he could use. There was one, and he’s a decent guy. So I just said yes.”

She nodded as if she’d already known that was true. “That reminds me, I should send Betsy a note to see how she and John are doing.”

“They married yet?”

“Not until December, I think.”

He nodded.

“You let Jeff and Vivian use the boat too, if I recall,” Cecily added.

“He wanted something romantic.”

She turned her head to look at him in obvious surprise. “You mean you suggested it to him?”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Why?”

“I don’t know. It just surprised me. I guess you were already softening a little—even this summer.” She turned back to gaze at the water, but she was still smiling. “Who knew Zeke Ward could secretly be a romantic.”

He liked the affection in her face, the way her expression reflected real feeling for him. But the words made him a little uncomfortable. “Don’t get your hopes up too far.”

She giggled and leaned up to press a kiss on his beard. “I wouldn’t dare. Grumpy and stoic and doing his own thing and wearing ugly clothes. That’s the Zeke I know and…” She seemed to catch herself and cut off the words, even as Zeke’s heart did a ridiculous leap. “That’s the Zeke I like,” she concluded.

He looked at her closely and wondered if she’d been about to say what he’d thought she was going to say.

He wondered if it was wise or safe that he wanted it so much.

“The day you show up in a suit and carrying roses is the day I know you’ve finally given up and gone back into battle.” She was teasing now, and it was a relief.

And also just a little disappointing.

“I’m not the kind of man to do that sort of thing.”

“I know you’re not.” She gave him another little kiss. “I like you just the way you are.”

He couldn’t believe it was true, but she seemed to really mean it.

He had no idea how such a miracle had happened, but he didn’t want to let it go.

He readjusted to pull her even closer to him. “You really think my clothes are ugly?”

She gave a little burst of laughter, clearly surprised by the question. “Well, some of them are. A little. I have to wonder where you find some of them, like this shirt.” She reached out and took a fold of his shirt in her slim hand.

“I got it from Goodwill,” he admitted. The shirt was an unusual argyle pattern in bright red and blue that had caught his attention a few months ago.

She giggled. “That makes sense.”

“Is it that bad?”

“No. Of course not. I mean, it is kind of loud and… unusual, but it seems to suit you. I don’t care the littlest bit about what you wear.”

She seemed to mean that too, no matter how prettily and stylishly she dressed herself.

“I do sometimes wonder…” she began, trailing off before she finished the sentence.

“You wonder what?”

“You didn’t dress like this before. As far as I remember, you wore fairly neutral clothes back in seminary. Why did you… start to dress differently?”

He shrugged, thinking back, wondering himself how it had happened.

Everything had changed for him after his wife died, and he’d never really sorted through the specific decisions.

“I’m not really sure,” he told her, trying to be as honest as he could. “Lara used to buy my clothes. Then after the first couple of months after she died, when I was trying to start life up again… I just woke up one morning and told myself I wasn’t going to do things just because people expected them or chose them for me. I wasn’t going to be the person everyone seemed to want me to be. I’d tried that. All my life I’d tried that. I’d gone to the college my parents wanted. I went to seminary because Lara wanted me to. I shaved every morning because everyone expected me to. And I wore the clothes she bought me, whether I liked them or not.”

He took a deep breath, understanding coming to him as he kept talking. “I think I finally realized I was fighting all these battles that I didn’t even care about, just because other people thought I should do it. So I…”

“Retreated.”

“Yes. Exactly.” He nodded, almost awed by how well she seemed to understand him. “I pulled back, found a new strategy, took my stand somewhere entirely different. This was who I was, and I wasn’t going to care whether or not other people liked it.”

She nodded, her eyes gentle on his face.

He cleared his throat self-consciously. “And it worked. I did my own thing for almost nine years and pushed everyone away in the process.”

“Everyone but me.”

He couldn’t help but smile as he pressed a kiss into her hair. “I’m still not sure how you managed to get past my defenses.”

“I must be tactically brilliant,” she teased.

“Maybe that’s it.” It was an easy agreement, and it sustained the pleasant, intimate mood between them.

But the truth was he’d let down his defenses. She hadn’t snuck her way around them. He’d lowered them on purpose because he was tired of making a stand on his own.

He had changed, matured, grown from who he’d been before. And now he wanted Cecily to stand beside him.

“Do you even own a suit anymore?” she asked with a delicious tilt of her head.

“No.” He slanted her a look. “That’s never going to happen. I mean it. I’m not being something for other people anymore. It’s… just too hard.”

She nodded as if she understood, but he wondered if she really did.

 

***

They stayed out on the boat for a couple of hours, but he took them back to the shore before the sun had gone down.

He felt excited and a little nervous as he helped her back onto the dock. Her knees were a little wobbly, and she had to cling to him for a few seconds before she got her balance.

He took that opportunity to pull her into a soft hug.

She was flushed and a little flustered when she pulled away. She looked almost nervous, like she wasn’t sure what was going to happen next but it was something she wanted.

Gazing down at her, he caught himself before he said what had first come into his mind to say.

They hadn’t even been together a month. It was too early for him to say something like that.

He’d known her for years. It didn’t feel soon to him.

But he didn’t want to scare her away just when things were getting good.

So he didn’t say anything. Just looked at her and hoped she’d say something to move him past this moment.

“Thank you for this evening,” she said, lowering her eyelashes in a lovely, almost shy expression. “I had a great time.”

“Me too.”

She smiled at him.

He cleared his throat, finally thinking of something else he could say. “Are you going to that concert next weekend?”

She lowered her eyebrows thoughtfully. “The Fall Festival concert, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“I might go. I usually do. I really hadn’t thought of it.”

“You want to go with me?”

Her lips parted slightly.

She would know the invitation wasn’t casual. She’d know it was significant. They hadn’t yet done anything together where people they knew would see them.

“Y-yeah,” she said after a moment. “I’d love to. Thank you.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’m just surprised. Everyone from church will see us.”

“I know.” He was searching her face, looking for any signs of reluctance or concern. He couldn’t see anything. “You okay with that?”

“I’m fine with that. I’d be very happy to go.”

“Good.” He nodded, wondering if she could see on his face how pleased he was about her agreement.

It meant something. Both of them knew it.

That she wasn’t holding back.

***

The following Friday, Zeke took Cecily to the gospel concert that always concluded the Fall Festival. They’d both worked the booths in the morning until midafternoon, but they’d returned home afterward so they could get ready to go out for the evening.

Zeke showered and put on something decent—a gray shirt with a collar and army-green trousers—and he sat restlessly for twenty minutes until it was time to go pick Cecily up.

He felt stiff and ridiculously nervous as he knocked on her door. She opened it up with a smile, looking gorgeous in an old-fashioned, dusty-pink belted dress. She wore her hair loose, the top half pulled back with a clip, and she wore her glasses.

His heart was racing so fast he couldn’t speak.

She looked a little self-conscious under his intense gaze. “You ready?” she asked at last.

“Yeah.” He cursed himself for his stupidity. He’d been able to talk to Cecily without any trouble for almost a month now. He’d talked to her more than he’d talked to anyone since Lara died. And if he was honest with himself, he had to admit he’d opened up to Cecily more than he’d usually done with his wife, since he’d been young and sometimes insensitive back then.

There was absolutely no reason for him to be so tongue-tied tonight.

But he didn’t say anything as they walked to his truck together. She looked too pretty, too expensive, too perfectly polished to be climbing into the passenger seat of his old truck. And she was watching him as if she were trying to read his mind.

“Did everything go all right today?” she asked. “With helping out at the festival, I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said, too terse, too abruptly. “Why wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I was just asking. You hadn’t done anything like that with the church before. I was just wondering how it went.”

“It was fine.”

“Okay. Good.” Her expression looked a little strained, and he knew his tone hadn’t been right.

She thought he was annoyed, but he wasn’t.

He was just paralyzed by a kind of pressure he hadn’t felt for years.

For so many years.

She evidently understood he wasn’t in the mood for talking, so she didn’t pursue a conversation. They sat together in silence a lot, all the time, and it was usually comfortable, as if it was by mutual understanding.

It didn’t feel that way as he drove them to the church.

It felt stretched, awkward. He kept telling himself to say something, to break the tension, to make it clear he wanted to be here with her.

But he wasn’t even sure he did.

He wanted to be with her—but not like this. Maybe he’d made a mistake in asking her.

Maybe he wasn’t ready for this.

He’d liked his old life, working and being alone and having only Cecily—never feeling any pressure to be someone different, to change to suit someone else’s expectations.

When he parked the car, she smiled at him and unbuckled the seat belt. “Ready?”

He wondered if she’d somehow read his mind, if she was disappointed in him for not being better at this, for being so isolated, so out of practice, that he couldn’t even manage to take her to a concert.

“Yeah,” he muttered, getting out and yelling at himself to get it together.

His internal lecture made absolutely no difference. They walked in silence into the church and then down the aisle to the side of the sanctuary where they normally sat.

He knew people were watching them. It was one thing for him to sit beside her in a pew. That could mean anything. But people would know this meant something different. They were walking in together. His hand was on her back as he guided her into an empty row.

Cecily’s cheeks were flushed, and she seemed to be breathing a little quickly. She could feel the stares from other people too.

Maybe she was starting to wonder what she was even doing with him. He couldn’t possibly be the kind of man she’d always imagined herself with.

She said she liked him the way he was, but he wasn’t sure she was thinking so now when everyone she knew was seeing her with him and looking so shocked about it.

She should be with some well-dressed, successful businessman—like that guy from Wilmington she’d dated two years ago.

She shouldn’t be with Zeke. They didn’t seem to fit.

“Is it just me or is everyone staring at us,” she murmured as they sat down.

“It’s not just you.”

“I can almost hear them whispering.”

“I know.”

She let out a breath that seemed purposeful, like she was calming herself down. “Oh well. They’ll get over it eventually.”

He should have found her words comforting, but he didn’t. It seemed to bother her that people were reacting the way they were.

Of course it would bother her.

She’d always been one thing in their eyes, and now she was something else, someone who would date someone like Zeke.

He told himself anyone would be bothered by it, but it still made his stomach twist uncomfortably.

He was wishing more and more that he’d never asked her to come with him tonight. He should have just stayed home like he normally did.

It felt as if life had become a battle again, and he’d retreated from battle a long time ago.

***

They made it through the concert. It seemed to go on forever, but at least they were saved from the pressure of talking since the music was too loud to have any sort of conversation.

Zeke was relieved when it was over, and he was hoping for a quick escape.

He tried to ease Cecily out of the row quickly when the lights came on, before anyone tried to talk to them, but it was a hopeless cause.

They were surrounded almost immediately with Cecily’s friends and some acquaintances who were obviously just curious. Cecily was both friendly and discreet, responding to their questions—some subtle and some very much not—in a way that didn’t offer very much information about what she was doing with Zeke.

Zeke stood beside her. He didn’t say anything. It was taking a significant exertion of his will not to just up and leave.

He didn’t like being surrounded by people like this. He didn’t like them prying into what was only his business and Cecily’s.

He’d lived a long time making sure he was never trapped in situations like this.

Cecily finally managed to get away without offending anyone. She took his arm as they left the church, as if she was looking for support.

For the first time since they’d arrived, her expression was strained and her smile faded.

She didn’t say anything until they got into the car.

“Oh, thank God, that’s over,” she murmured.

“Yeah.”

She looked at him quickly. “Would it have killed you to say something?”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes widened. “You could have tried to help out a little instead of leaving all the talking to me.” She was being honest, as she always was, and it was clear she was a little disappointed in him.

The knowledge made his stomach sink a little bit more, making him feel rather sick.

“I don’t do that.”

“You don’t talk?”

“I don’t… small talk.”

She took a few breaths. Then murmured, “Right.”

She wasn’t happy. She was still disappointed in him.

And Zeke knew for sure then. No matter what she’d told him, she’d been expecting him to be something else, something other than who he was.

She’d said she liked him for who he was, but she didn’t really mean it.

She wanted something other than who he was.

He’d always known she would.

He’d known it from the beginning—for all those years when he’d believed it was impossible for him to ever be with Cecily this way.

He hadn’t been wrong.

It was impossible.

Maybe the lingering thought he’d had for the past month—the one that suspected she’d been feeling lonely and so had sought out his company, rather than seeking him out for who he really was—was more correct than he’d wanted to admit to himself.

Maybe he was a fool for hoping this could last beyond the month.

They drove back home in silence, and it felt worse and worse as they neared Balm in Gilead, as if they were both brooding about things neither one of them wanted to say.

He walked her back to her door like normal, and he saw her square her shoulders.

Cecily would always be Cecily. If there was something that needed to be said, she wouldn’t let too much time pass before she said it. “Well, that was kind of awkward, I guess.”

He grunted, almost relieved she’d brought the topic up.

She gave him a little smile. “It will get easier,” she said. “It’s just that it’s new to us—being out with people we know. It won’t always be like that.”

She was obviously looking for affirmation, so he muttered, “Yeah.”

Her eyes still searched his face, and he was afraid of what she might see there.

“I can’t believe I have to leave for Willow Park tomorrow. This month has just flown by.”

“Yeah.” He wondered if that was a hint—her mentioning that their month was almost over. Maybe she wanted him to say something, make it clear what he was thinking.

He didn’t want to tell her what he was thinking.

He didn’t even want to be thinking it.

“Maybe a few days apart will be good for us. We can get over the weirdness of this evening and start fresh again.”

He nodded although he didn’t believe what she’d said at all.

She cleared her throat. “Okay. Well, good night.”

“G’night.”

He leaned over to brush her lips with a kiss, but he didn’t deepen it. There was too much whirling in his mind. He couldn’t let himself go enough to kiss her for real even though she was just as beautiful and desirable to him as she’d always been.

She evidently noticed the difference, but she didn’t mention it as he drew back. She said she’d see him tomorrow, and then she went into her apartment and closed the door.

Zeke stood there for a minute without moving.

He’d messed things up. He knew he had. Tonight could have been a lot better if he’d acted differently.

But maybe it was just as well.

If Cecily were holding on to hopes that he’d turn into a different person at some point, then he would disappoint her eventually.

Better for it to happen earlier, when both of them were still holding something of their hearts back.

He’d tried to hold his heart back.

He wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped to be.

He loved her already.

But he was a grown-up now and he knew how the world worked. Loving her didn’t mean he could ever be with her for real.