“You’re sure you’re all right?” Rachel twisted around in her seat as Brian pulled into my driveway later that night. “Because you don’t look all right.”
“I just endured a Wheat Princess reunion nightmare and chased away two decent men.” I shot her a tight smile as I swung the back door open. “Leaves a girl looking a little worse for wear.”
Rachel rolled down her window when I climbed out. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” Her gaze wandered to the same apartment mine were studying. His truck wasn’t there, and neither was he.
“You two have done more than enough already. I’ll be fine. I swear.” I worked a real smile into place, waving at them as I backed toward the house. “Thanks for the ride. And the moral support. “
“You’ll call if you need anything?” Rachel shouted as Brian started to back away.
“Promise,” I called, waiting until they’d made it onto the road to give one final wave before they drove off.
Alone. Finally.
This was the first moment I’d had to myself to reflect on the disaster that was today. Now that I had that quiet moment, I wasn’t so sure I wanted it.
I was turning to head into the house when I stopped short. I’d left one of the paintings I’d been working on at Canaan’s the other night, and I figured this was as good a time as any to retrieve it. With him being gone, it would be easy to get in and get out.
As I headed toward the apartment, I realized I had to confront him sometime soon. I couldn’t leave the way I had last time, without an explanation. I owed him one this time; I owed myself the same. We’d hurt each other. Him with what he’d said. Me with what I hadn’t. We were really damn good at hurting each other, and while one part of me knew that those hurts only stung so badly because we cared about each other so much, another part of me questioned why love would be so painful.
I didn’t knock when I reached the top of the stairs. Canaan didn’t keep his door locked—probably had something to do with people knowing he could kick anyone’s ass if they tried breaking in—so I opened the door and stepped inside. The apartment was dark, the faint scent of his soap lingering in the air from the shower he’d taken earlier. The bed was still unmade from the night before, the nightgown I’d been wearing kicked to the end of the bed. Everything was neat and tidy except for the bed, almost like he didn’t want to mess with that memory.
As I moved toward where I’d stationed my easel, the half-finished portrait still resting on it, I couldn’t help noticing those empty spaces on the walls where hangers had been hammered in. At some time, he’d had something in those places.
After folding up my easel and resting it and the painting on the dining table, I moved toward the bathroom to retrieve the brushes I’d cleaned out and left drying in there. As I passed the closet in the hallway, I noticed something behind the cracked open door.
Coming to a stop, I pulled the door open, confusion breaking over me. They were paintings. My paintings. Some of the very first ones I’d ever completed and put up for sale in Chicago. I knew that.
What I didn’t know was how they’d wound up in Canaan’s hall closet. Although those blank spaces on the walls made more sense now. They’d been hanging up, but he’d taken them down. Realizations rained down on me, one after the other, until I couldn’t stay still any longer.
Rushing out of the apartment, I’d already fished my car keys out of my purse before I’d made it down the stairs. I couldn’t think here. There were too many memories blocking new thoughts from forming.
As soon as I was in the car, I whipped out of the driveway and turned down road after road. I had no idea where I was going, just that I needed to get there. It wasn’t until I’d turned into the parking area that I realized where I was.
The pond.
When I stepped out of the car, the cool air coated my skin like a healing salve. I was able to breathe again, my mind able to function. I took the same path down to the pond I’d taken with Canaan when he’d brought me here. The same trail we’d taken as kids. Probably the same trail Asher had taken that winter he’d visited and never left.
Tonight, everything felt different than it had when I’d been with Canaan. There was more moonlight, so the pond didn’t look black, but more dark blue with stripes of silver cutting through it. It didn’t look still and sinister as bugs touched down and fish kissed the surface, forming ripples.
Before, this place had felt dead. Tonight, it felt alive.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, in the same place I’d been with Canaan when I’d learned the truth of Asher’s death. It was the perfect thinking spot, the one place on the planet I’d been searching for. All the answers had been waiting for me here all along.
It could have been hours before I noticed the sound of brush moving behind me, the thud of footsteps breaking over soft earth. I didn’t spin around to see who’d happened upon my sanctuary—I already knew.
“Leaving you . . .” Canaan’s voice stirred the stillness as he came to a stop. “I can’t do it. You can leave me as many times as you want, but I won’t ever leave you, Maggie. It’s not in me to do the leaving when it comes to you.”
My face pinched when I saw his. Reed hadn’t held back, and Canaan hadn’t backed down. “That looks painful.”
He moved a step off the trail toward me, stopping like he wasn’t sure if he should come any closer. “It not my face that hurts.”
He was holding something, but I couldn’t see what. He still had on the same blood-stained shirt from earlier, one of his eyes totally sealed shut. The cuts on his face had stopped bleeding, but the scabs that sealed them didn’t appear any less gruesome.
“I’m sorry for what I said back there. When I saw him looking at you the way he was, knowing he was the one you’d been with the past couple years . . .” Canaan’s good eye narrowed as he stared at the water. “I let my anger take control. I let it come between us again.”
My sandal toed the earth in front of me. “You weren’t the only one.”
“I know you’re not something to own or possess or an item that can transfer ownership. God, I know that.” When he rolled his neck, it cracked. “But that doesn’t change that some sick part of me still wants to be able to look at you and call you mine.”
Scooting over, I patted the patch of ground I’d packed down over the past couple of hours. “That doesn’t sound that sick to me.”
“Sad then?”
I inhaled. “Honest. It sounds honest.”
Canaan moved closer, one hesitant step at a time. He stood beside me for a moment, like he was testing that his proximity was okay, before he kneeled beside me. Once he was next to me, the night seemed to grow a tad bit brighter. Less impenetrable.
“I found the paintings.”
He didn’t look surprised. He just nodded as though he’d been expecting it. “Guess I could have saved myself the time of taking them down then.”
My head turned toward him. His face looked so much worse up close, but still, not half as bad as I’d seen it before. “Why do you have them?”
His throat cleared. “Because I bought them.”
“Those were the very first paintings I ever sold.”
His mouth moved. “Those were the very first paintings I ever bought.”
“Selling those, they were the only thing that made it possible for me to stay in Chicago—” Whatever I was going to say next stopped short when I finally realized why he’d purchased those paintings. “Canaan . . .”
He shrugged, able to hear my unspoken question. “I’d put you through hell, Maggie, and you’d gone in search of a new life. It was my way of helping make that new life you deserved a reality.”
I could have cried, but instead, I smiled. Here I’d been under the belief he’d been doing everything in his power to manipulate me and wield me to his whims, when in fact, he’d done the opposite. He’d set me free. He’d paid the price for it.
“Those paintings weren’t cheap. Where did you come up with that kind of money?”
The cut on his lip started to pull open when he smiled. “I had nothing to spend my money on, and I had a whole hell of a lot of time to fill with work. So I kept my head down and worked.”
“And purchased every piece a starving artist living in an expensive city put out?”
Canaan’s gold eyes met mine. “I became an art investor. By the way, I’ve been told those pieces have more than tripled in value since I acquired them.”
I picked at a few pieces of wild grass, pursing my lips. “Aren’t you just a regular art connoisseur?”
Canaan’s chest moved when he grunted. “Plus, in a weird way, it was my way of surrounding myself with you. Your paintings. Work you’d invested yourself in. In so doing, carving a new life for yourself.” His arm nudged against mine. “Best money I ever spent.”
My head dropped to his shoulder, finding its home. “Thank you.”
His head nodded in acknowledgement against mine. A minute of quiet passed, the first true peace I’d felt at his side since coming back.
“That son of a bitch ex-boyfriend of yours was wrong, you know?”
My brows drew together. “About what?”
“About you not being worth the effort.” His head adjusted so his mouth was outside my ear. “You’re worth every effort. Every last goddamn one.”
I had no idea what a person should or could say in response to that, so I stayed quiet, letting his words settle into the night.
His throat cleared as he held out what he’d been clutching. I recognized the papers immediately.
“I signed them.” His knuckles were white from holding them as tightly as he was. “I’m not holding two days or some ultimatum over your head. I’m setting you free, Maggie Church.”
I took the papers and held them between my hands. He’d filled in all the highlighted, flagged lines. He’d given me exactly what I wanted. He always had. He always would.
Staring at the papers, I realized I’d gotten exactly what I wanted. Precisely what I’d needed.
Curling my fingers around the heavy stack of papers, I finally realized why our story had never ended. Because we weren’t finished—we never would be. There was no ending where Canaan and I were concerned.
‘Til death do us part . . . and beyond.
“Ford,” I said, tearing the pile of papers in half. “It’s Maggie Ford. And I am free.” My head returned to his shoulder as my hand found his. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”