A Season to Love

by Nicole Deese

  “And what if that’s not enough?” His fractured question matched my fractured heart.

  Silence stretched between us until his arms slackened and his feet stilled. Everything around us dulled into a soundless, colorless haze. His eyes were my only anchor as I conjured up the last of my courage and said the words we needed to hear most. “It has to be.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The familiar ping of my phone triggered a familiar pang in my chest. Three nights of midnight texting in a row had turned into something of a habit. Yet unlike my peppermint addiction, Patrick was a habit I didn’t want to break.

  I hadn’t seen him since the reception, but we hadn’t lacked for words. While he’d been buried under paperwork at the clinic, I’d been buried under the application requirements for renewing my teaching license. Another chime and I pushed out my chair, closed my laptop, and then reached for my phone on the back of the couch.

  PATRICK: Are you still awake?

  The same question that started each late-night edition of text threads.

  ME: Lucky guess. How many cups tonight?

  Patrick had been steadily increasing the number of cups of coffee he drank before the midnight hour.

  PATRICK: . . .

  I laughed at his attempt at a virtual drumroll.

  ME: Don’t leave me in suspense. I’ve been staring at a computer screen since Savannah left for her sleepover.

  PATRICK: I need to see you.

  My phone slipped from my hand and bounced off the couch cushion onto the floor. I leaned over my knees and reread the tiny screen, making no attempt to pick it up. What does he mean?

  There was safety in texting—a clear boundary line I couldn’t cross. No matter how severely I swooned over his written words, I couldn’t do anything too rash. I couldn’t do anything too reckless. Not that I hadn’t fantasized about linking my arms around his neck and kissing him breathless. Not that I hadn’t imagined locking him up so he missed his flight. Not that I hadn’t researched the application process for a rushed passport and temporary work visa . . . because I had. I’d thought and cried and prayed a hundred times since Patrick last held me, but the burden of regret would always outweigh the pain of good-bye.

  And I loved him too much to compromise the call on his life . . . or the call on mine. I might not ever understand God’s timing, but faith wasn’t a calculation. It was a trust fall.

  PATRICK: Willa? I need to see you.

  My fingertips tingled as I touched the text box and typed in a single word.

  ME: Tonight?

  PATRICK: I hope so. I’m at your front door.

  His knock ricocheted through my nervous system.

  Eyes wide and pulse like a jackhammer, I padded across the carpet in my bare feet.

  I fumbled with the deadbolt, twisted the knob, and then opened the door.

  Patrick stood on my doorstep: sexy rumpled hair, breath-catching smile, and the clearest set of blue eyes I’d ever seen. A hint of surprise lit his gaze as he took in my shower-damp head, my oversized T-shirt, and my favorite snowflake sleep shorts. A far cry from the bridesmaid dress I’d worn when I danced with him three nights ago.

  Wind howled past him like a cold razor to my exposed skin.

  “So I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately.” Patrick reached inside his pocket and pulled out a stash of crinkly pink . . . Post-it Notes?

  My pink Post-it Notes.

  The pink Post-it Notes that I’d stuck all throughout Rex’s journal.

  “Oh!” I slapped my hand to my mouth. “I’m sorry, I should have checked it before I—”

  Patrick stepped inside my house, tapped the door closed with his foot, and then moved toward me. “Twenty-seven. That’s how many Post-it Notes you pressed between the folds of that old journal—and I’ve read them all at least three times today. Your thoughts, your reflections . . . a piece of your heart was written on every single one.” His eyes stilled on my face. “And all I could think about as I read them was how lonely my life would be without you in it.”

  I’d backed up and up and up until there was no place left to go. My back was flush against the wall, and though he didn’t touch me, his body was so close that my skin prickled with anticipation.

  “Which made my decision very, very easy.”

  “What decision?” I asked on a single breath.

  “My decision to partner with my father at the clinic.”

  “What?” I shook my head back and forth. “No, Patrick, you can’t do that—”

  “‘We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.’” There was a radiance to his smile that I recognized as he recited the verse I’d copied from the last page of Rex’s journal. It was the same look he’d captured in the picture I now kept on my nightstand. “Falling in love with you was never in my plans, Willa Hart. But it happened. One brave step at a time.” Pink Post-it Notes spiraled to the ground and scattered at my feet. He framed my face with his hands, his thumb wiping fresh tears from my cheeks. “I want to be here for your first day back in the classroom, and for Savannah’s eighth birthday party, and for every single trek up Cougar Mountain. I don’t want to be a man who’s full of adventure and stories and not have you.”

  Achingly slow, Patrick leaned in, his warm breath on my face sending a chill up my spine. He kissed my bottom lip. And then my top lip. And then each corner after that, claiming my mouth the same way he had claimed my heart. With conviction and surrender.

  “I love you,” I whispered into his kiss. “I love you so much.”

  Patrick wrapped his arms around the small of my back and pressed me into his chest. We kissed until my lips felt swollen and hot and fully loved, and then he slid his hands down my bare arms and intertwined our fingers.

  “I’d planned on getting a lot more talking in before that happened,” he said, leading me to the sofa.

  “I’m pretty happy with the order of events so far.” I licked my lips instinctively and sat down on the middle cushion, angling my body for conversation—one I hoped would last all night with the amount of questions brewing in my mind.

  Patrick laughed and pulled an afghan off the back of the side chair, draped it over my legs, and sank down beside me.

  As if trying to remember the best parts of a good dream, I tried to replay the words he’d spoken to me when he first walked through my front door. And then I gave up. “Explain. Everything.”

  “Bossy.” He tugged on a strand of my hair and then curled it around his finger. “My father has asked me every year since med school to consider taking over his practice when he was of retiring age, only that was the very last thing I thought I ever wanted to do.” His lips quirked upward as he unwound the golden strand. “In fact, when I agreed to come here for the last few months so he could go back to Scotland with my mum, I made sure he understood that this arrangement was only temporary.”

  “But if you were so opposed to it before, aren’t you worried that you’re gonna make this decision and then regret it? Lenox is—”

  “Where you are.” He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed it. “And no, I’m not worried. I just had the best trial run I could have asked for during the last three and a half months. Plus, partnering with my father for the next few years will give us plenty of time to travel in the summers.” He leveled me with a stunning smile. “Us meaning—you, me, and Savannah. While you’re both on summer break from school.”

  “Me, you, and Savannah?” Like an unforgettable song lyric, the words hummed through my entire being.

  “I’m a part of several nonprofit organizations that need medical and nonmedical volunteers alike. We can find something that works for all of us.”

  The laugh that left my throat was a mix of shock and delight. “How long have you been considering this?”

  “I’d say I’ve been fighting it since the night you made it to the top of Cougar Mountain, and then after the reception, I stayed up the entire night talking with my father. Between him, y
ou, Rex, and God . . . I pretty much didn’t have a chance.”

  As elated as his decision made me, it was still so hard for me to grasp. “And you’re sure? You’re really, really sure?”

  “Maybe I need to help you understand.”

  In two swift movements, Patrick lifted me onto his lap. With the flat of his palm, he smoothed the blanket over my legs and lit a fire under my skin so hot that I wanted nothing more than to kick the afghan to the floor. But then Patrick’s breath was on my neck, followed by a soft feathering of kisses. His lips inched their way along my jawline, my cheek, my chin—each tender kiss the equivalent of ten shots of espresso. My adrenaline went to war with my mind and if we didn’t slow down soon . . .

  I pushed against his chest.

  “Patrick.” But my voice was lost in our next kiss. I tried again. “Patrick.”

  A drugged-sounding “hmm” was his only reply.

  I laughed and pulled back just enough to press two fingers to his lips. “So what does this mean for your assignment in the Pacific Islands?”

  He kissed my fingertips and then shifted to tuck me into his side. “I still have to leave next week. I’ve already signed a contract with my agency.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, trusting it would be exactly that. “I wouldn’t want you to break your commitment.”

  “Four months. Four months and then I’ll be here again. With you.” He tipped his forehead to mine, and my heart lingered in the space between our breaths. “You can’t even imagine how much I’m going to miss you.”

  “I think I have a pretty good idea.”

  “I love you.” He spoke with such conviction that tears pooled in my eyes again.

  “I love you, too.”

  I snuggled into the hollow of his side, pressing my head to his chest as his arm draped over my shoulder. For several quiet minutes, I listened to the calming beat of his heart, a sound as satisfying as an answer to prayer. Which was exactly what Patrick McCade had been to me.

  “Patrick?”

  “Hmm.”

  “What if you get bored—living in a small town most of the year? Doing normal stuff like grocery shopping and picking up dry cleaning and taking Savannah to the park on Saturday afternoons and—”

  He kissed the side of my head. “I can think of plenty of nonboring activities for us to engage in.”

  His tone sent a fiery flush into my cheeks.

  “I will never grow bored of you, Willa.”

  “Says the man who lives for his next big adventure.”

  “No, says the man who just found his best adventure yet.”

  Heart tumbling over itself, I nestled into my new favorite pillow. “How should we spend the next five days?”

  “Together.”

  The only answer I needed.

  Chapter Forty

  When Christmas landed on day two of the five days I had left to spend with Patrick, time seemed to evaporate quicker than a snowflake caught in the center of a warm palm.

  We’d spent every waking moment of those last five days together—cutting down a tree with Savannah, attending a special candlelight service at church, playing board games with both sets of parents, and laughing at my daughter’s consumption of Scottish Christmas pudding in twenty-three seconds.

  But with today being day five, and Patrick set to head to the airport in less than four hours, I was determined to make every minute count.

  With my fingers laced with Patrick’s, Savannah tugged on the hem of my coat, just ten steps outside the McCade home.

  “Is Alex coming?” Her whisper-yell might as well have been nationally broadcast.

  I shot her another reminder look and stealthily tapped my finger to my lips.

  “Oh.” She nodded and gave me a giant thumbs-up.

  So much for secret keeping with a seven-year-old party addict.

  Either Patrick was an Oscar-worthy actor or he was lost in a preflight oblivion again and had actually missed all two million of Savannah’s verbal—and nonverbal—slips as to what was happening on the other side of his parents’ front door.

  His concern over leaving Savannah and me for the next four months felt bittersweet in a way that made my heart trip over itself.

  “Hey.” I squeezed his hand as we neared the massive entry. “I love you.”

  These were the only words with the power to snap him out of his distracted stupor.

  He faced me. “I love you, too.”

  “You guys gonna kiss again?” Savannah asked before pumping the doorbell a half-dozen times in a row.

  Patrick laughed. “That okay with you?”

  Since the day we told Savannah about our relationship, Patrick had made it a point to answer every single one of her questions with patience. Whenever she asked and whatever she asked, much to my chagrin.

  “Yep, you just might wanna do it fast since we’re at the par—”

  I rushed to cover her mouth.

  The front door opened and Patrick’s mom led us inside the darkened foyer. The back of my neck prickled with anticipation as she led us into the kitchen, to her son’s fake good-bye dinner.

  Only the second she flipped on the light, an overwhelming chorus of voices greeted us.

  “Surprise!” Savannah threw up her arms and twirled in a circle.

  Patrick’s jaw slackened as he scanned the room full of townspeople—every one having been influenced by Patrick in some capacity over the last four months.

  Everyone was there: from the staff at the clinic, to the families he’d seen and treated, to the guys he’d played basketball with in the wee hours of the morning at the fitness center.

  “What is this?”

  Before this moment, I’d believed it utterly impossible to surprise a man who thrived on fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants scenarios. Yet his face said otherwise.

  And me, the I-hate-surprises hypocrite that I was . . . I loved every single second of it.

  “This is your going-away-slash-welcome-to-Lenox party,” I announced.

  Ivar slapped his son’s shoulder. “And a congratulations-on-your-new-job party, too. I always knew you’d come to your senses. You just needed a nice long visit.” He winked at me. “And the acquaintance of a sweet lass.”

  “I’m . . . wow. Thank you.” Patrick placed a hand on top of Savannah’s head. “Thank you all for coming.”

  I stepped away from Patrick’s side to make room for the guests and to help his mom with the extravagant refreshments on the kitchen island. An island I’d become well acquainted with.

  Alex swiped a second cupcake from the platter in front of me. “I knew he’d decide to stay.” She peeled the wrapper off in one swift tug and then took a bite that was pure frosting.

  “You did, huh?”

  She rolled her eyes and spoke through the sugary mass. “It was so obvious.”

  She tossed the bottom half of the cupcake in the trash can at the end of the counter.

  “As obvious as you eating only the top halves of these cupcakes?”

  “Life’s too short to eat plain cake.” She dusted the crumbs off her hands. “Anyway, I knew he would stay because that’s, like, your thing.”

  “My thing? Are you going to personality-type me again—label me a Classic Bore?” My use of air quotes made her chuckle.

  “No . . . I . . . uh . . . I may have been wrong about that.”

  My eyebrows shot up to my hairline. “I think I should get that on record.”

  “Never gonna happen.” Her focus returned. “What I’m trying to say is that you have a way with people—something that makes them feel . . . like they belong. Just by knowing you.” She shrugged and jerked her chin toward Patrick. “And even with all the crazy cool humanitarian stuff he does . . . I could still see it.”

  “See what?”

  “That you gave him something he didn’t have out there across the oceans. Somewhere to really belong.”

  Before she could push me away, I pulled her in for a two-second hug. “Are you sure
you’re only seventeen?”

  At the sound of the front door opening, we broke apart.

  “We didn’t miss him, did we?”

  It was Weston, hand in hand with his new bride.

  I pushed forward to greet them. I hadn’t been sure they’d get my message in time, or that even if they did, their plane would land in time to make Patrick’s send-off.

  A perfectly sun-kissed Georgia threw her arms around me. “I’m so glad you called us. We came straight from the airport.” She pulled back slightly and arched a brow. “Looks like we have a lot to catch up on.”

  My smile said I agreed with her wholeheartedly. “Yes, we do.”

  Weston hugged Patrick, his back slap slightly harder than necessary. “I hear you’ve taken your groomsman duties pretty seriously.” Weston’s ability to be discreet was as effective as Savannah’s ability to keep a secret.

  Patrick reached for my hand and pulled me to his side, kissing me on the temple. “What can I say? I’m an overachiever.”

  For the next three hours, Patrick kept me close. The guests stayed until the punch had run out and all the cupcake tops had been eaten. Then, when Weston was busy giving Savannah her Hawaiian souvenirs, Patrick stole me away to a shadowed alcove under the stairs.

  The sudden intimacy was my reality check. We no longer had days or hours. We had minutes. Minutes until his father would start up the car to drive him to the airport and drop him off for a flight that would take him thousands of miles away. For four months.

  Good-bye was happening. Right now.

  Patrick linked his hands around the back of my neck. “I can’t believe you managed to put this together today—and right after Christmas, too.”

  “I wanted to show you how many people care about you here.”