He’d hold her up forever if she’d let him.
As the song came to a lullaby end and their movements stilled, Trevor loosened his hold on Phoebe, but she didn’t let go of him. She didn’t lift her head, she didn’t unwrap her arms from around his waist.
They stood there, the room filling with potent silence, and Trevor lowered his head to rest his cheek against her forehead. He could feel the warmth of her breath through the knit fabric of his shirt, the brush of her eyelashes against his neck.
Phoebe began to tremble, her shoulders curving forward, every muscle in her body tensing up against him as the dam broke loose and she began to weep. She clung to him, turning her face into his chest, her hands gripping the back of his shirt like it was her lifeline, sobbing almost soundlessly as she greedily took the comfort he offered.
Trevor held her up until she was ready to hold herself up again, and even then, he didn’t let go of her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Your shirt.” She waved a hand at his chest.
“Don’t be sorry,” he insisted. “It’s just a shirt.”
“I need to wash my face,” Phoebe said, and then pulled her hands free and headed for the stairs at the other end of the room. “I’ll be right back. If you need the bathroom, there’s one just down that short hall.” She pointed him in the right direction.
Trevor finished cleaning up after their meal while he waited for Phoebe to come back down, washed his hands, and then walked around the huge room. It seemed to be divided into four vague quadrants, each one a space with a dedicated use. The kitchenette with its bistro-like dining area, and the cluster of mismatched furniture demarcating the living room took up the front half of the room. Then there was what looked like a photography studio, complete with background options, lighting banks, and umbrella reflectors. A door leading off the quadrant stood open and he peeked inside, marveling at the mass of costumes and fabrics, and the vanity loaded with more makeup than he’d ever seen in one place before.
And the last section of the room was clearly the art studio. From the looks of it, Phoebe’s preferred creative outlet was painting. Stacks of canvases leaned against the walls, some in oils, others in acrylics, and several watercolors, too. There were canvases with rough sketches penciled on in scratching bold lines, others stood empty, stark with anticipation. There was a canvas mounted on an easel facing the wall. Just as Trevor took a step toward it, curious to know what it was that hid its face from him, Phoebe came down the stairs and stopped him.
“She’s not finished yet. Wait, okay?” It wasn’t a demand, but a request, so he didn’t argue, even though he really wanted to see it just the way it was. He was curious about her creative process, about the way she saw things, her interpretation of her own artistic gifting.
If he hadn’t borne witness to it, Trevor wouldn’t have even known she’d been crying only a short while ago. He watched her descend the rest of the stairs and cross the room toward him, her feet making hardly any noise on the floor, the sight of her red-tipped toes making him smile. She seemed almost childlike in her girlie dress and sparse makeup, her bare feet, and he liked her this way. Brave and vulnerable at the same time, he recognized the girl she’d been in the woman coming toward him.
How had he not known her the moment he laid eyes on her?
“Do you want to hear the rest of my sordid tale now? Or are you ready to call it a night?” She smiled sweetly at him, letting him know in her own way that it was up to him, but he thought she might prefer to get it all out tonight. She seemed to have recovered her composure, so there didn’t seem to be any reason for him to make her put it off any longer.
“Do you have coffee? If not, I can go get some. I noticed a coffee shop about a mile down the road.”
“Oh no. I have coffee. I have the best coffee, you’ll see.” She reached for his hand and pulled him toward the stairs. “Do you want to come upstairs and see my loft suite?”
“Whoa!” He stopped in his tracks, making her stop short, too. “Remember my rule? I’m already playing with matches here.” He nodded his head toward the loft. “I don’t think that is a good idea.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to throw you on my bed and ravage you, Trevor. I just wanted to show you the rest of the house. I designed this restoration and the loft is the icing on the cake. I just thought you’d like to see it.”
“As much as I actually would like to see it, I think I’d better pass.”
“Really? You can trust me to behave. Remember what I said? Your virtue is safe with me.” She tugged on his arm again.
“Maybe,” he retorted, covering her hand with his free one and attempting to steer her away from the stairs. “But yours may be in jeopardy with me.”
“Oh, come on. I trust you.” She pulled the opposite direction, toward the stairs.
“Well, you shouldn’t. I don’t even trust myself!” He laughed to take the edge off his words, but he stood his ground. She stopped, too, her arm still twined through his. He was glad she didn’t pull away; he liked having her close. But no, he would not go up to her bedroom, with or without her. As blasé as Phoebe was about inviting a man—him—up to her bedroom to show off the architecture, he still couldn’t treat the action lightly. Did she not realize what a man—he—might imagine, might hope for, might expect from a woman who led him to her room?
It wasn’t that he couldn’t control himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust himself. Or her, for that matter. It wasn’t that he thought of nothing by sex and underwear. No, it was simply that he didn’t want to have to put himself in the position of having to test his boundaries even more than he already was. It was that simple.
“Well, the coffee press is upstairs, so if you’re not coming up with me, you’ll just have to wait. Down here.” She glanced up at him from the corner of her eyes. “All alone.” Then she winked. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
He pointed to a coffee-maker on the counter near her kitchen sink. “Can’t we just make coffee in that?”
She stopped on the bottom stair and shook her head, quirking her mouth up in an expression that told him he was being rather silly. “This is your first cup of coffee in my home, Trevor. I’m going to serve you the real thing. Don’t worry. You’ll be glad you waited.”
She disappeared up into the loft but he could hear her rummaging around, opening and closing cupboards and drawers. “Don’t you be looking at my painting!” she hollered.
He chuckled—he’d been considering doing just that. “I can’t look at it knowing it’s not finished?” He looked up to see her standing at the rail above him.
“No.” She shook her head. “Be patient. You can wait until she’s finished, just like everyone else.”
“Does that mean you’ll be having me back again?” The question escaped unchecked, but now that it was out there, he really, really wanted her to say ‘yes.’
She grinned down at him. “I’m thinking about it.” Then she twirled away and out of sight.
A roller coaster. He was on a roller coaster named Phoebe Gustafson. One minute she spoke of the details of her assault as though reciting a recipe, the next she wanted to dance. One moment she clung to him, weeping inconsolably, the next minute she was trying to drag him upstairs to her bedroom.
He was going to have his work cut out for him if he wanted to keep up with her.
And he did. Oh, did he ever.
Trevor made another circuit of the room, studying more closely the eclectic art that adorned her walls. It didn’t take him long to realize that most of it wasn’t actually Phoebe’s, but a collection as vibrant and textured and counterintuitive as she was.
He was standing in front of an antique mirror in a colorful mosaic frame when Phoebe came back downstairs. He watched her approach in the slightly warped glass; in each hand she held a steaming mug. He took the one she offered him, his eyes never leaving her reflection as she stepped to h
is side.
She stood so close their shoulders brushed, but neither of them moved apart.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Phoebe murmured.
Trevor agreed, but he thought the woman beside him even more beautiful than the mosaic tiles that framed their reflections. He liked the way they looked standing together, like they belonged to each other. Her ethereal beauty complemented his slightly rough and tumble image, and although he stood a couple of inches under six feet, he still was at least half a foot taller than she was without her shoes. He wondered what she saw when she looked at them.
Their eyes met in the mirror and she smiled and took a sip of her coffee. He followed suit and then sighed with satisfaction. “Wow.”
“Worth the wait?” she asked, clearly enjoying the sight of his pleasure.
“Worth the wait,” he agreed. “This is amazing. Thank you.”
“I know. And you’re welcome.” She turned to look up at him. “Shall we sit?” she asked, slipping her arm through his again and steering him toward a diminutive sofa so soft and squishy he couldn’t help but think of Goldilocks fighting her way out of the too-soft cushions of Mama Bear’s chair.
They sat side by side, and although there wasn’t a whole lot of room between them, she drew her legs up under her and turned so she was facing him. She rested one arm on the back of the couch and poked his shoulder. “So you ready to hear about Lily Grace Rogers?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
In the sanctuary of her loft room, with the smoky aroma of her favorite coffee swirling around her, she’d been certain she could do this. And now, sitting on her favorite sofa—the soft one that made her think of clouds and sweet dreams—her cup held close to her face, she breathed in the heady scent again, trying to bolster her courage.
“I’m ready to hear about Lily if you’re ready to tell me about her,” he answered. Then he smiled at her with that lopsided mouth of his, and she closed her eyes so she wouldn’t be distracted by it, by him. But closing her eyes was worse—she needed to see his face as she told him her story.
Trevor sipped his coffee as he listened, his attention never wandering, his gaze remaining fixed on her as she talked. Every once in a while, he’d murmur something consoling, or reach out to offer the comfort of his touch. In some ways, his attentiveness to her made it easier to unload, to open up the locked places in her heart and air them out. But his very nearness, the way his fingers brushed her arm, the tears that overflowed from his eyes as she told him about the last time she’d seen her daughter…. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry—hadn’t she cried herself out in his arms already?—but his empathy, his readiness to grieve with her without offering platitudes or empty words had her feeling vulnerable, but in a safe place.
And when the tears came again, this time slowly, falling gently like a summer’s night rain, he drew her up against his side. She curled into him, resting her head on his shoulder, and described her abysmal attempt to return to life as a normal teenager.
“The thing is, Trevor, I know if you asked Theresa and Jeff, and maybe even Lily, if I did the right thing, they’d all vehemently give a thumbs up to my decision. But I don’t really know if it was the right thing to do. Even after all this time, I still wonder what might have happened had I not gone away that summer. What if I’d told my grandparents? I know they would have helped me, they would have loved Lily, and all these years…well, they’d be so different, you know?” Phoebe sniffed. “But then I remember the circumstances under which I conceived and how it would have felt to Renata who probably wouldn’t have believed the truth of what happened. I remind myself to think about what another court case for my grandparents would do to them, this time about my rape and my role in it. They would have had to listen to the sordid details of my lifestyle, and even though I know—I knew back then, too—that they loved me, it would have hurt them so terribly and I just couldn’t do that to them, to any of my already so broken family.”
Trevor reached around her and picked up a box of tissue from the coffee table and offered it to her. She turned slightly so that her back was to him, blew her nose, but didn’t pull away. Instead, she drew his arm tighter around her and leaned her cheek against his bicep.
“She turned thirteen on July 10th.” It came out a whisper, but she knew he’d heard her.
“Happy belated birthday, Lily Grace Rogers,” he said. Phoebe smiled to herself, pleased he’d made the effort to remember her daughter’s full name.
“Do you want to know what I did to celebrate? We Gustafson Girls all went with Renata to her ultrasound appointment and watched Baby Charise perform her gymnastics routine in utero.” Phoebe’s breath caught, but she swallowed the lump in her throat that was trying to choke her, and forged on. “It just about killed me, Trevor. And I’ve kinda been in a bad way ever since.”
“So when Renata called you to come help her….” His voice trailed off as he acknowledged the difficult situation.
“Yep. I shoved my little bleeding nub of a heart back in its locked chamber, and I went to help her. It all came back to me like I’d given birth just yesterday; the breathing, the counting, the different stages. Even the things that helped to ease my discomfort and pain—it was all right there at my fingertips.”
“The mind is an amazing thing, isn’t it?”
“Mm-hm,” she agreed. She toyed with the rolled hem of her dress, smoothing it across her thighs, pleating it, then smoothing it again and again. “There were a few times when Renata looked at me with this odd expression…and I knew she was wondering how I knew what to do, what to expect. It scared me, Trevor. Not just because I didn’t want to tell her—I don’t know that I’ll ever have the courage to do so—but because I sensed the two births merging together in my mind, and I didn’t want my grief and regret over Lily to cast shadows on the miracle that I was witnessing in Charise’s birth.”
Trevor lifted his free hand and smoothed her hair away from her face, a touch meant to comfort rather than caress. Oh, how glad she was that he had insisted on coming to see her today, that he’d insisted on staying. That he’d broken his own rules to be here with her tonight.
“It happened anyway,” she whispered. “And when they laid that tiny ba—baby girl…on Ren’s sto—stomach…” She swallowed hard, but nothing she did helped, and she had to get the words out. “When they han—handed her to T—Tim.” Stupid tears. Stupid, stupid tears. When would the reservoir run dry so she could get on with her life? “All I saw was the nurse handing my—my baby girl—to someone else.” She pulled another tissue from the box she’d tucked against her side and pressed it to her eyes. “I kept it together long enough to congratulate them, and then I—I ran.” A wrenching sob surged up from inside her. “I always run.” The words came out jagged and rasping, grating over the sharp edges in her throat. “I’m so…tired…of running.”
Trevor said nothing. Once again, just as he’d done earlier when the music had ended and she’d come undone, he simply held her. His kindness, his patience as he listened without giving her advice or trying to fix this irreparable broken part of her, his gentleness as he stroked her arm in a comforting gesture, the peace he seemed to embody; all those things about him that made him…well, who he was now. Phoebe knew he was a changed man.
And she was still that frightened, wounded girl, ready to run, ready to fly, ready to abandon, rather than be abandoned.
But Trevor, unlike her parents, unlike her high school friends, unlike the other men who had come in and out of her life—primarily because she made sure to leave them before they could leave her—unlike the Rogers who had stopped writing, stopped sending pictures of Lily after the first few years, unlike all of them, Trevor had come back. And refused to leave. Was it only because he needed to exonerate himself? Or had he come back for her, for this? To help ease her burden by sharing it, by standing with her? Was it too much to hope for in a man she barely knew?
And yet—and the thou
ght stunned her momentarily—the man who held her, whose eyes told her he saw both her outward beauty and her internal scars, the man who had come back for her and was still here even knowing what he did…. Trevor knew more about her than anyone else in her life.
“Trevor?” She didn’t turn toward him.
“Hm?”
“I forgive you.”
“I’m glad. Thank you.” He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Phoebe?”
“Hm?”
“What will it take for you to forgive yourself?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
He sensed her withdrawal almost the moment the words left his mouth. Even before she straightened up and slid out from under his arm, he knew it.
Too soon. Too fragile. Too prone to run, by her own admission.
Trevor wanted to suck the question back inside, swipe it from the air where it hovered between them. And yet, as he’d listened to her story—similar to so many he’d heard from women who listened to his music, to his songs about loving unconditionally, who heard him tell the story about the prophet Hosea and his recalcitrant bride, Gomer, from women who had suffered at the hands of others as well as themselves, who had wrestled with the shackles of unforgiveness in their lives—he knew it was the key that would unlock her chains.
But he also knew that without God, forgiveness of herself may never come. Until she believed that God wanted her brokenness, that he wanted her to come to him the way she was now—without her masks, without her running shoes, with the tears of her pain marking the exquisite beauty made in the Creator’s image—she would never see herself the way God did. God saw her through the eyes of unconditional love, and he wanted to dress her in radiant white, to see her lit up from the inside. His bride.
His only condition? Acknowledge her need for him and accept his gift of sacrificial and unerring love. The changed life would follow the changed heart, Trevor knew that for a fact. She didn’t need to get cleaned up or fix the broken places first; those things were God’s specialties.
Phoebe and the Rock of Ages Page 21