Christmas Bride

by Noelle Adams

  “I know he is.” Ruth stared at the empty fireplace, trying to restrain the trembling inside her. “I know he’s as good as they come. I know it.”

  They were both silent for a couple of minutes. Ruth expected Lincoln to get up and leave, but he didn’t.

  Eventually he asked in a different tone, “What was your family like?”

  She wasn’t sure where the question had come from, but she was glad for the change in topic. “It was just me and Mom for most of my life. My dad took off when I was six. For a while I kept hoping he’d come back, but he never did. And now I think it’s just as well.”

  “What was your mom like?”

  The memories hit Ruth hard, as they always did. “She was great. Just a regular person for the most part. She worked in the school cafeteria. It wasn’t a great job, and she didn’t much like it, but the hours were good. She could spend afternoons with me, which was what she really wanted.” Smiling wistfully, she added, “We’d watch decorating shows together for hours and talk about what we’d do differently.”

  “Is that why you went into interior design?”

  “Yeah. I think so. I loved it so much I wanted to do it for a living. And I wasn’t really good at anything else. I did good at school, but nothing special.”

  “She got married when you were a teenager? And that’s why you moved to Green Valley? Isn’t that what Carter told me?”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “What was your stepfather like?”

  She shrugged. “He was okay. He basically left me alone. I’m not sure... My mom was happy enough with him, but it couldn’t have been easy to get four stepkids all at once. And she was the one who had to take care of all of them. I sometimes wonder if... if she would have been happier if she hadn’t married him.”

  “But you have a stepsister now that you love. Right?” Lincoln appeared to be genuinely listening.

  “Yes. I do. Kayla. I wouldn’t have missed having her in my life for anything. So I can’t regret my mom’s decision. But I think it had to be hard for her. I did what I could to help. I always did. But I’m not sure I helped as much as I should have.”

  “You were just a kid. How much could you have done?”

  “I don’t know.” Ruth was surprised to realize a tear had streamed out of one eye. She brushed it away quickly. “At least I learned from her how to take care of myself. That’s definitely come in handy.”

  Lincoln’s dark brows pulled together. She wasn’t sure what he would have said, but he didn’t get the chance.

  Someone cleared his throat from the doorway to the room.

  Both of them turned to look. Carter. Leaning against the doorframe. Frowning.

  “Hey,” Ruth said with a smile, brushing away another tear. “Were you wondering where we were?”

  “Yeah. What’s going on?” Carter came into the room.

  “Nothing. We were just hanging out.” Lincoln stood up and gave his brother a couple of pounds on the back as he left the room. “Talking about you, of course.”

  Carter’s frown intensified as he took the seat beside Ruth.

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “We weren’t talking about you. He’s just being Lincoln.”

  “Then what were you talking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You were crying.”

  “I wasn’t really crying. I was just...” She had no idea what to say.

  “So you can tell Lincoln what’s wrong with you, but you won’t tell me?” Carter’s voice was soft but rough. Hurt.

  “No! It’s not like that. Please don’t be that way. I wasn’t telling him anything. I was just... He was asking about my mom.” Another tear slipped out of Ruth’s eye. It was starting to get annoying.

  Carter’s tension relaxed immediately. “Okay. Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to act like an ass.”

  “You didn’t really think I’d be in here confiding all my deepest feelings to Lincoln, did you?”

  “Well, no. I guess not. Honestly, I think I have a touch of PTSD when it comes to Lincoln. We’re in a really good place now, but I still half expect him to swoop in and take everything I...” Carter shook his head wryly. His eyes were focused the floor. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I get it. I really do.” She sighed and slouched farther down in her chair. “I’m sorry about everything.”

  “What are you sorry about? Are you going to do something to me that you need to be sorry for?” Carter had gotten tense again.

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m just...” She wasn’t good at keeping secrets, and she simply couldn’t hold the truth back anymore. “I’m just feeling bad. About everything.”

  “About us you mean?” Carter leaned forward. Sounded urgent. “Because if you’re feeling crowded, if I’m being too pushy or something, just tell me. Please. I can take a step back. I promise I can.”

  “No, no. It’s not that. It’s not you. You’re... perfect.” She shook her head. “It’s me. I feel...”

  She almost, almost said it.

  But some sliver of self-preservation insisted she temper the word with only part of the truth.

  “I feel guilty,” she concluded.

  Carter pulled back slightly. “About what?”

  “About this whole thing. It’s all fake, but your mom is so happy. And Lincoln and Summer are so happy. They’re all treating me like I’m family. And I’ve been so lonely lately that I like the feeling. I like feeling as if I’m part of a family. So that makes it really hard. Knowing that it... it’s not real.”

  “Oh.”

  She couldn’t read the resonance of the one word. Her eyes flew up, but she couldn’t read his face either.

  She babbled on, “I know it’s not real. I’m not that stupid. But it feels... it makes me feel awkward and guilty and overwhelmed.”

  “I see.”

  She tried again. “It’s not real, but sometimes it feels real. And that makes me feel... bad.”

  “I get it.” Carter was barely moving now. He wasn’t meeting her eyes. He continued slowly, “We could... If you wanted, we could... make it real.”

  She froze. Her eyes blurred over. It was so close—so incredibly close—to what she wanted to hear. But it wasn’t it. She knew it wasn’t it.

  Because Carter was being who he’d always been. Kind and generous and wanting to take care of others. Trying to be good by taking the path laid out for him. And this was the path he thought was being laid out. Making their relationship real because he liked her and liked having sex with her and it would ease over all the awkwardness and conflict.

  And maybe they could be happy enough that way. He’d be a good husband. A faithful one. She knew it for sure.

  But she’d spent too long taking what was offered from men and convincing herself it was enough.

  It wasn’t enough.

  It wasn’t what she really wanted.

  And so she said what might have been the hardest thing she’d ever said in her life. “I don’t think so.” Her voice was wobbly but clear. “It would never work.”

  He hesitated for no more than a few seconds. “Okay.”

  She checked his face for any sign of hurt or disappointment. She couldn’t see much of anything, but she assumed that was a good sign.

  She hadn’t hurt him. He might feel awkward, but he wasn’t brokenhearted.

  Not like she was.

  “I’m going to...” She cleared her throat as she stood up. “If it’s all right, I’m going to take the rest of the day off. Just to be by myself. Is that all right?”

  “Of course it is. Anything you need.” He made a gesture like he would touch her, but he pulled his hand back instead.

  And there was nothing left for Ruth to do after that.

  She said her goodbyes and left.

  RUTH WAS UPSET ON HER way home, but she wasn’t distracted. At least she didn’t think she was.

  Most of the time she drove automatically, keeping track of speed limits, resp
onding to traffic lights, and watching for the cars around her. She never kept her phone accessible while she drove since it was a temptation even for good drivers and she wanted to set a good example for Kayla.

  So she was upset, but she was still driving well and following the rules of the road.

  It wasn’t her fault that, a couple of miles before she reached her apartment, a pickup truck on a perpendicular street failed to stop at the light soon enough.

  The driver did try to stop eventually, after he realized he was running a red light. He slammed on his brakes and tried to veer out of the way of Ruth’s little sedan. And fortunately Ruth had started off at the green light slower than she normally would have. Those two things were what saved her.

  The truck still hit her car but not at forty-five miles an hour. And it didn’t hit her driver’s side door where it would have done the most damage. It connected instead with the front corner, knocking Ruth’s car in the opposite direction with a violent jerk and doing some real damage to that section of the car but not seriously injuring Ruth herself.

  The whole thing happened so quickly—so unpredictably—she had no idea what was happening. She didn’t see the car coming, and so she had no idea why her world was suddenly thrown sickeningly in the wrong direction.

  The airbag came out with a whoosh. It scratched up the skin of her face. She was gasping as it deflated, and then she could breathe.

  She blinked and sat and felt the stinging from the scratches on her cheeks and forehead. She turned her head to look around and figure out what the hell had happened. Her head hurt the way it always did when she fell down hard and her body was jarred.

  She finally saw the pickup truck, stopped askew in the middle of the intersection. The driver was getting out.

  That seemed like a good idea. She didn’t want to be in the car anymore. She reached for the door handle and bit back a little cry at the pain in her wrist.

  What the hell?

  How had she hurt her wrist?

  She was still fumbling for the door handle when the man from the pickup truck was right there. And another man. She didn’t know who he was or where he’d come from.

  She managed to pull the latch. One of the men opened the door from the outside.

  “Are you okay, miss? Are you hurt? Please say you’re not hurt.” That was the man who had run the light and hit her in his pickup truck.

  “I’m okay,” she gasped. “I think I’m okay. I want to get out.”

  One or the other of the men helped her. She was too fuzzy to figure out which one was which.

  Then other things happened. A lot of things. And all of it was loud and confusing and uncomfortable. The police came. Then an EMT. They made her get in the ambulance to go to the hospital even though she tried to explain that she wasn’t very hurt.

  No one was listening to her.

  Her car was messed up. It would have to be fixed. She needed a working vehicle, or she couldn’t work.

  She was confused and upset, and various parts of her body hurt, and she wanted everything that was happening to stop for a few minutes.

  She wanted Carter, and he wasn’t there.

  TWO HOURS LATER, IN the emergency department at the local hospital, Ruth was herself again. Her disorientation was either from the jarring of the accident or from the bump on the head she’d received, but it didn’t last. They made her lie down and checked her out and sent her for a couple of X-rays. The conclusions were that she’d sprained her wrist (it had probably gotten yanked too hard by the motion of the steering wheel), and she had a mild concussion.

  That was good. That was nothing. She wasn’t worried about either of those injuries. The problem was that they wouldn’t let her go home unless there was someone to take her. She told them she could just get a ride share, but they didn’t think that was good enough. If they were going to send her home, she had to have someone to stay with her to make sure there weren’t any complications from the concussion.

  Otherwise, she’d have to stay at the hospital, and she wasn’t about to do that.

  The argument she had with the doctor on this topic was the last straw in a very hard day. She was almost in tears as she tried to explain that, yes, that was an engagement ring on her finger, but her fiancé wasn’t available.

  She finally told him she had someone to call who would come to get her, and that satisfied him enough to leave her in her curtained-off room alone.

  She looked at Carter’s number for a minute, but she didn’t call it. She called Brent instead.

  Naturally, he didn’t pick up. He hardly ever answered his phone. So Ruth tried Kayla, who picked up on the second ring.

  “Hey! What’s going on? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you this early in the day.” There was a smile in Kayla’s voice, like the girl was happy to hear from her.

  Ruth was tired of lying on the uncomfortable bed, so she sat up on the side of it. “Hey, Kayla. Is your dad around?”

  “He’s out right now. He and the boys went to a cookout or something. They said I could come, but it sounded terrible, so I said no. Did you need him for something?”

  “Yeah. I guess I do. I... I was in a little car accident.” At the squeaking sound she heard from Kayla, Ruth hurried on, “I’m fine. I’m totally fine.”

  “Oh my God, Ruth! What happened? Did you get hurt?”

  “Not really. Just a little. I sprained my wrist, which is annoying but no big deal. And I bumped my head. Not bad, but they’re kind of worried about it. So I need someone to drive me home. And then I was hoping maybe you could spend the night with me. They said I needed to have someone with me, just in case the concussion is worse than they think.”

  “Oh. Okay. I can definitely spend the night. But Dad and the boys won’t be home for another hour or so, I think.”

  “That’s okay. I can wait. If maybe one of them can come to the hospital to pick me up, you could ride along, and they could drop us at my place. I really think it’s no big deal. They just want to be careful.”

  “Okay.” Kayla was speaking slowly, like she was thinking. “Why don’t you just ask Carter? He’d do it no problem. Then you wouldn’t have to wait for Dad. I could still come over tonight if you wanted, although Carter would probably—”

  “No, no. I don’t want Carter.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “No reason. Just that he doesn’t need to deal with this hassle.” She knew it was irrational—even as she said the words, she knew they didn’t make sense—but it felt very important to her right now that Carter not get dragged into this mess.

  “I don’t think he’d mind. Did you ask him?”

  “No, I said I didn’t—”

  “Have you even called to tell him?” Kayla sounded aghast, which made Ruth feel even worse.

  “No. I’ll talk to him later. Kayla, it’s really fine. I’d just be more comfortable if your dad or one of your brothers could do it. If you don’t mind staying with me.”

  “Of course I don’t mind. I’d do anything in the world for you. You know I would.”

  It was a sign of Ruth’s shattered state of mind that her eyes pooled with tears at her stepsister’s sober words. “Thank you.” Her voice broke, but she mostly held it together. “If you can just keep me updated and let me know when your dad gets home. The nurse said it would probably be at least an hour before I can get signed out of here anyway.”

  She hung up the phone after Kayla had agreed and they’d said goodbye. She patted the brace on her wrist. It was kind of hot and itchy, but it was small and didn’t obstruct her motion very much. As far as injuries went, it could have been a lot worse.

  She still had a pounding headache. The nurse said she’d be bringing her some Tylenol, but so far there was no sign of it.

  Ruth stood up. Her whole body felt sore. She wasn’t sure why. It didn’t make much sense that a little car accident would make her entire body hurt that way. It wasn’t like she was bruised up or anything.

  Sh
e walked around the small room, trying to stretch her legs. Looking down at her phone, she brought up Carter’s number again but still didn’t connect a call.

  He would have come right over. She knew he would. He would have done the same thing for anyone. He was that kind of person.

  Carter would have helped her. He’d have taken her to pick up Kayla and then taken them both home. Or else he would have convinced her to stay over at the Wilson house where she would have been treated like a queen and had the best of care.

  He would probably be annoyed at her for not calling. For not letting him help.

  She couldn’t even explain to herself why everything inside her rose up in rebellion at the thought of asking Carter for help.

  Kayla and Brent were her family. The only family she had left. Carter wasn’t her family. This wasn’t his job.

  She wanted him though. She wanted him so much. She wanted him to put his arms around her and tell her that everything would be okay. That she wasn’t alone. That she wasn’t going to have to spend the rest of her life dealing with hard situations like this entirely on her own.

  It was all she could see. Day after day. Year after year. Dealing with her own problems and also the problems of the people around her. Exactly as her mother had her whole life.

  Her mother had always carried everyone. So would Ruth.

  And, like her mother, she’d never have anyone to carry her.

  When she realized she was shaking helplessly, she leaned against an empty space on the wall, using the stability of the wall to control her trembling. Then her legs couldn’t seem to hold her any longer. She started to slide down until she was sitting in a heap on the floor.

  The floor of a hospital was the last place she normally would have wanted to be sitting, but it fit her mood at the moment. She bent her legs up and leaned her head forward to rest on her knees.

  She tried to stop herself. She always did. But this time she couldn’t control it. She was as lonely as she’d ever been in her life.