CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
LANE WANTED BEREAVEMENT LEAVE. Or at least for someone to bring her bereavement food. She had made three casseroles, and she didn’t even want to eat them. And now, she was manning the counter at her store knowing that she looked like a wraith and not particularly wanting to do anything about it.
By the time the third little old lady had told her she would be prettier if she smiled, she considered trying. But she only gave it the barest bit of consideration.
She was moping halfway through the day when Alison came in with a box of pie in her arms. “Cassie told me that you looked like you needed butter when she walked by earlier today.” Alison frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Lane reached down and grabbed a couple of receipts that were stacked on the counter. She threw them up in the air and made an explosion noise.
“Yeah,” Alison said, “I don’t speak sound effects. Words would be good.”
Lane rested her elbows on the counter, and her cheeks in her hands. She knew that she looked pathetic, as pathetic as she felt. She didn’t even care. In fact, she was somewhat satisfied by it. That her exterior so fully matched her interior.
“I have no words,” she told her friend.
“That is deeply concerning,” Alison said, setting down the pie. “You always have words. An excess of words. I have never, not once, seen you without them.”
Lane lifted her head and spread her hands. “None.”
“Okay, drama queen. Find some.”
Lane opened her mouth to say what was wrong, she really did, but then her throat got tight, and her eyes filled with tears. She really didn’t want to cry in the store, because a real customer could come in at any moment and she didn’t want to be some cliché weeping woman, blubbering at work over a guy.
But, she really felt like blubbering at work over a guy.
“Okay,” Alison said. “Now you’re really scaring me.”
“It’s Finn. He...he doesn’t love me.”
Alison’s arms were around her before she could say anything else. “I will cut him,” she said, “right in the junk.”
“Thanks,” Lane said, her voice muffled.
“I probably won’t actually do that,” Alison said. “I’ve worked hard to build a life for myself. I really don’t need to end up in prison. Although, I bet if I talked to Sheriff Garrett he would make me a really good deal.” She pulled away from Lane. “He would probably attest to my psychological issues and general rage at the male species.”
“I really appreciate your willingness to go on psychiatric lockdown over my emotional trauma. But you don’t need to do that. It’s my fault.” She sucked in a shaking breath. “We both said what we wanted... Or, what we didn’t want at the beginning. I’m the one that changed. I decided that I wanted more. Because I decided to do this stupid emotional healing thing, where I let down all my walls and demanded to be loved. What a stupid idea. I should have stayed dysfunctional. Then I would have my friend, and I would have sex.”
Alison nodded. “I see the appeal.”
“What was I thinking?”
“Well, I imagine you were thinking that you couldn’t limit yourself for a man. For anyone. Trust me, if you try to shrink yourself down for a relationship you’ll end up disappearing. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.”
“Yeah,” Lane said. “But Finn isn’t like Jared. He would never... He would never hurt me on purpose.” Except, last night had felt both pointed and purposeful. “Physically,” she amended.
“I feel like I’m the wrong person to have walked in on this crisis,” Alison said. “I have nothing but a dim view of romantic relationships.”
“I know.”
“But I don’t like to see you sad.” She lifted a shoulder. “I also would be a little sad to be the last single one in the group, so I suppose there’s a silver lining for me.”
Lane snorted. “Good. I’m glad that your needs are being met.”
“Hey,” Alison said, popping the lid on the pie box, “I am seeing to your needs too.”
“Thank you,” she said, meaning it. “But I can’t afford to go full food coma until after I close up shop.”
Alison stood there for a moment. “I have to get back soon.”
“Sure,” Lane said.
“I’m training Violet. She’s kind of delightful. I mean, if you can see past the snark. But I actually don’t have to see past the snark to enjoy her. I kind of like it.”
“Well, at least one of us has a working relationship.”
Alison frowned. “This sucks,” she said. “I wish it were me. You know, that I could take your place. Because I wouldn’t care.”
That made Lane laugh with sincerity. “Well, in that case, I wish you could be me too.”
“What are you going to do?”
She took a deep breath. “What I was doing. I’m going to get the subscription boxes working. I’m going to use products from the Laughing Irish. I’m going to grow my business, just like I wanted to do. Honestly, if I learned anything from dealing with the reappearance of Cord McCaffrey in my life—even if it was just a virtual reappearance—it’s that I can’t afford to let pain from the past dictate my future. Even if it’s really serious pain. Although, in this instance, I suppose I am letting pain from my past motivate me, but, that I think might be okay.”
“You’re a badass,” Alison said, “and not nearly as pathetic as I was when I went through my divorce. You’re going to rebound nicely.”
Lane tried to smile. “Thank you. I’ll try to cling to the rebound hope.”
“I’ll check in with you later. You want Rebecca to come over in about an hour? Then Cassie can come after her.”
“You don’t have to take tragedy shifts. I’m fine.” She wasn’t fine, but she kind of preferred to do her weeping in private.
“All right. But if you do, just let me know.”
“I will.”
She watched her friend exit the store, and then she looked over at the box of pie. She was... So profoundly grateful to have people to lean on if she needed it. People who knew the whole story. Of Finn, of everything that had come before him. She hadn’t realized what she had been missing before.
That’s why all of this was worth it. All of the pain. Telling him no. Telling him that she wanted everything.
Because Alison was right. She couldn’t allow herself to stagnate. To stay back where he was. She had to move forward. Even if it sucked.
She made a moaning sound and laid her head down on the counter, resting her cheek on her forearms. Then she popped back up. She had to finish the day out. If she could just do that, then maybe she would survive tomorrow too.
Okay, that was thinking too far ahead.
She would just focus on breathing through the next hour. Then, maybe someday, she would breathe through two hours. Then six. Then twelve. Then maybe she would stretch it out to a whole day.
She heard a scraping sound, and turned just in time to see a little brown fluff ball scurry across the floor. She jumped back. “Hey,” she scolded, “Robert, you have to stop scaring people.”
She laughed helplessly. And a tear slipped down her cheek. “Also,” she added, “you are officially my best friend. So do something about how creepy and gross you are.”
She was talking to a mouse. A mouse she had named Robert. And there was only one person on earth she wanted to tell that story to. But she couldn’t call him. She couldn’t text him with her ridiculousness.
Suddenly, she felt isolated in a way that was terrifying. A way that transcended anything she had experienced before.
There was no way to fully understand the gaping hole losing Finn was going to leave in her life. Not immediately. Because he had filled so much of her existence for so long.
But it could never be the same again. No matter what, it could never be the same.
She took a breath. She just needed to keep breathing for an hour.
* * *
MOST MEN WOULD show up with a bouquet of flowers. Most men who had screwed up beyond reason would bring jewelry. Maybe chocolate.
Finn Donnelly had a big ass box of dairy products.
But the woman he loved owned a specialty food store and loved him almost as much for his cheese as she did for his body—if she still loved him at all.
He parked his truck against the curb and got out, grabbing hold of the box of hastily assembled items and heading toward the door, his heart pounding hard.
He had never done this before. He had never gone after somebody once they had left.
When he got to the front door, Lane was standing up against it, turning the lock. She stopped, her eyes meeting his through the window, round and filled with horror. Her expression would have almost been comical if not for the fact that he could see she was in pain, and it was a pain that matched his own.
He wanted to punch his own face in. For doing this to them.
“Let me in,” he said.
“I reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,” she said, leaning on the door. “I refuse.”
“Dammit, Lane,” he said. “Let me in.”
“I have to wash my hair. I have to scrub my feet with my pumice stone.”
“Lane,” he said, “this box is heavy.”
“I’m hanging out with Robert. We don’t want you here.”
“I don’t care what the mouse wants,” he said. “I care about what I want. And I want you, so let me in the damn door before I break it down.”
Well, there went his romantic speech.
“You want... Me?” she asked, her voice muffled by the door.
“I’m not shouting at you on Main Street. People are staring.”
“That,” she said, “is no less than you deserve. But I’m going to let you in.” He heard the lock jiggling, and then she tugged it open. “Don’t make me sorry. Don’t make me cry again.”
He walked inside before she could change her mind. “I can’t make any guarantees about that.” He shifted his hold on the box. “I brought you some stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Samples. Of the kind of thing you can put in your subscription boxes. And some things you can stock here in the store. I worked all day on this stuff, so if you hate it, don’t tell me. At least, don’t tell me today. Or maybe do tell me today, because you probably owe me.”
She put her hand on his, her expression unspeakably sad. “If you came here to try to pick up our friendship where it left off, you can’t. And you need to go. The hardest thing for me to deal with over the past couple of days—even before you told me you didn’t love me—was realizing that I couldn’t be your friend. I mean, it’s complicated. But I want something more. Friends and lovers aren’t the same. I want a romance. I want you to be... Everything. And friendship is certainly included in that, but there’s something else too. And that’s what I need. That’s scary. It’s terrifying. I don’t like it really. Except, I also found it exciting. To realize that we were on the verge of making something new. Something that was just us. We both have friends. But you’re my only Finn. And I want to be your only Lane. And I want our relationship to be fully unique. Fully ours. So if you came here to banter with me about dairy, I need you to go.”
He shook his head. “That’s not why I came.” He set the box down on the floor, his heart hammering. He hated this. Feeling nervous. He didn’t do that. Ever. He wasn’t afraid of much of anything. Except, apparently, his tiny little friend whom he loved with all of his heart and soul. “That’s not why I spent all day on this. On low pasteurized milk and a list of cheeses and different soaps.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Soap?”
“Soap,” he confirmed. “Don’t think for one second I did all that because I wanted to be your friend. Because I wanted to pretend that nothing happened.”
“Then stop talking about dairy and say the thing you came here to say.”
“I’m a miserable bastard,” he said, reaching out and taking her hands. “I’m a miserable bastard who expects everybody to walk away from me eventually, and so I try to push them. I do it to everyone. Not to you. Not at first. I met you at your brother’s house, and you were so bright and beautiful, and so obviously sad. And I wanted to take all of that onto myself. I wanted to be everything for you. And I wanted you to be everything for me. For the first time since my mother left I wanted... I wanted more. But I thought if I could put you in a particular place, and tell myself I was protecting you, I wouldn’t have to drive you away. Of course, when my grandfather died and my brothers showed up, everything started breaking apart. And that was when I started pushing. Because I couldn’t control myself around you anymore. So I figured I would either have my way...”
“Or I would walk away. Which is exactly what you did to me last night, isn’t it?”
The betrayal on her face cut him deep. “Yes,” he said, his voice rough. “Not that I realized it then. It took my older brother to knock some sense into me. It turns out maybe I do need family. Which was a distressing revelation, Lane, make no mistake.”
“Wow. I bet. Though not half as distressing as having the man you love look you in the eye and say he can’t love you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so damned sorry. I held back all this time from letting myself have you because I knew I’d hurt you. But the ridiculous thing about that is it was just a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Damn right it is, Finn Donnelly. You couldn’t hear that from me? You had to go brood your way to a revelation?”
“I had to get my head out of my ass. And I had to... I had to deal with all my shit.” He shook his head. “I’ve never been able to figure out the magic combination. The thing that makes people finally decide I’m not worth the effort. It scares me. It might seem silly to you, but I can’t shake this feeling that one day I could wake up, and you would be gone.”
Lane shook her head, her eyes filling with tears, then she closed the space between them, pressing her palm against his cheek. “I’ve walked away from enough. I’m done. I can’t lose anyone else. And you know that’s why I suppressed all of my feelings for you. Because I needed you. But I didn’t want to do the work to become what you needed.” She laughed suddenly. “You know how they put people in medically induced comas when they’re really badly injured?”
He blinked, not quite sure where she was going with this. But then, with Lane it was almost impossible to know. That was part of what he loved about her. The endless vibrancy, the constant surprises. The rambling. Lord, but he loved that woman’s rambling.
“Yeah,” he said slowly.
“That was us. All of our feelings were in a medically induced coma. Or maybe a trauma induced coma? Until we could heal enough to handle it.”
He laughed, taking her hands, holding both of them and sliding his thumbs over her palms. “Unfortunately, you healed a little faster than I did.”
“I did. I’m not even going to give you a pass on that.”
He looked at her, and a sensation filled his chest until he could barely breathe around it. He thought it might take him over completely. And he wasn’t sure if he minded. “I haven’t said this...” He cleared his throat. “When I came home from school and found that my mom was gone. That she’d left me, for real. That she chose her deadbeat boyfriend over me... I never wanted to feel that way again.” He paused for a moment, trying to collect his emotions, to keep them from spilling out.
“She left all the pictures of us,” he continued, “on the walls, in the photo albums. I broke the picture frames. And then I burned everything. So that I wouldn’t be tempted to ever look back at it.”
“Finn... Oh Finn.” She wrapped her arms around him, held him close. He braced his hands on her hips, rested his face in the crook of her neck.
“I never wanted to feel like that again,” he repeated. “I never wanted to be blindsided. I never wanted to need somebody that much. I wanted... I wanted something I could tame. Something I could control. That’s why the ranch has been everything to me for so long. It made me feel like I could reach down and grab hold of the earth. And with you...it’s not about control. The last thing I ever wanted was for you to become everything, Lane Jensen. I could only just barely handle you as a friend. I knew that losing you even if I never touched you would devastate me. That’s scary. To give you this. To want you like this.”
“You’re kind of preaching to the choir,” she said softly. “I’ve been dealing with a pretty significant amount of fear myself.”
“I’m out of practice saying this,” he said, drawing the moment out longer.
“That’s okay.”
“I love you,” he said. “As a friend. As a lover. As everything in between. And I want... I do want you to be everything. I want to give you everything. I want you to know me, like nobody else does. I want exactly what you said we could be. That whole picture you painted. I want that.”
“I love you too,” she whispered.
“I love you,” he said again. “I love you. I love you. I’m already feeling less out of practice.”
Every time the words came out of his mouth they felt a little bit lighter, and so did he. And it helped that Lane held even tighter to him each and every time.
That with every press of her body she made a vow not to let him go.
“I never wanted to get married. And I never wanted to have children. But you’re right. That was when I put a generic, faceless person in that place as my wife. As the mother of my kids. A woman who would only end up leaving me. But when I imagine you there? I want it all. And I know you’ll stay. I know you will. Because I know you.” He stared at her for a heartbeat, watched as a variety of emotions played across her face.
“I didn’t think...” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t think I would ever want that life. Mostly, I didn’t think I deserved it, so I trained myself not to want it. But I think we both do. I think we deserve all of it. I think we deserve everything. But you’re the only person I could have everything with, Finn.” She clung to him more tightly still, pressing her cheek against his, and he felt a tear fall onto his face, dropping from her eye. “It’s always been you. It really has been.”
“For me too,” he said, wrapping his arms around her, holding nothing back, pulling her against him completely, with nothing between them.
He held her like that for a long time, just listening to her breathe. Feeling the softness of her body, of her hair, inhaling that scent that was so uniquely Lane.
“So,” he said. “Since I love you, do you think you might want to marry me? You were talking about that thing that was like a lover, and like a friend, but was more. And I think the word you might have been looking for was wife.”
She tilted her head back, tears trailing down her cheeks. “Yes,” she said. “I would really, really like that.”
“Me too,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.
“Maybe Robert can be our best man.”
“No,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist. He was going to have a hard time letting go of her. Now that he had her back, he wanted to hang on forever. Wanted to touch her forever. “I draw a hard line at a best mouse.”
He slid his thumb over her cheekbone. “You know my brothers will have to be in our wedding.”
She laughed. “Oh really? You think they’ll put on tuxes?”
“Wait. You think I will?”
“Hmm. I think you would if I asked you to, Finn. But I have to say there’s some appeal in having you marry me in a white T-shirt and jeans. And your hat and boots, of course.”
“Doesn’t matter to me, as long as you marry me.”
“Try and stop me. Hey, maybe Violet can be the flower girl.”
“She’d probably want to wear black and throw dead flowers.”
“That’s super metal, but possibly not what I want for a wedding.”
“Your brother has to be the best man,” Finn said. “Since he did kind of introduce us.”
“Wow. We get to tell Mark.”
“Something tells me he’ll be okay with it. Since all he’s ever really wanted was for you to be happy.”
“What a coincidence, that’s what I want for me too.” She kissed him. “That’s what I want for us.”
“I think we stand a pretty good chance at being happy.”
“For how long?” she asked, a smile curving her lips.
“Forever.”
It was funny to think that just a few weeks ago having his house full, having his brothers there, sharing the ranch, sharing his life had seemed like the end of everything he’d worked for.
Now it seemed like a beginning.
With Lane by his side, with his family around him, his life was full for the first time.
“Do you want another casserole?” Lane asked.
That snapped him out of his thoughts. “I thought that was sadness food.”
“It is,” she said. “I mean, usually. And I made it because I was sad. But now I’m happy and I have casserole. So, maybe we make a new tradition.”
“I’m going to have anniversary casserole for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”
She laughed. “Probably.”
And he did.