by Jenni Wilder
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Lincoln. You... you just... you just deserve better than me,” I finally stammered sadly into the phone. It wasn’t everything I should have said to him, but I hoped he would understand.
There was silence over the phone for a moment before Lincoln replied. “Jillian… how can you say that? You deserve so much more than I could ever give you.”
“There are things you don’t know, Lincoln. I can’t be everything you want.”
“Jillian, I don’t understand. I don’t understand, baby.”
I knew he wanted to fix this, but he didn’t know how, and neither did I.
“Please let me come over, baby. I need to see you.” He paused and waited for my answer, but all I could do was weep into the phone. “Princess… I can’t stand you crying and not being able to do anything about it.”
Rebecca grabbed the phone from my hand, and I looked up at her with surprise. “Lincoln, it’s Rebecca. Listen to me. If you were EVER worthy of my sister, you will get your ass here NOW.” She paused as Lincoln replied to her. “I know that’s what she told you, but now I’m telling you—you need to be here.” She paused again. “Good. See you soon.”
She hung up and set the phone down. She rounded the table and pulled me into her arms and held me while I let out my pain and confusion and cried against her shoulder again.
After a moment, Rebecca pulled back and looked me in the eye and wiped my tears away. “I’m just going to say two things. First—I think you are right. You need to talk to Dr. Raussman. Second—You need to realize you are not being fair to Lincoln.”
“I know I’m not being fair to Lincoln, Rebecca. That’s why I feel so guilty. I feel like I’m lying to him every time he tells me I’m beautiful,” I admitted to her.
“Jillian. For such a smart girl, you can be fairly stupid sometimes,” Rebecca said with a small laugh. “You ARE beautiful. But you are not being fair to Lincoln if you think he wants to be with you simply for your looks. You need to give him a chance.” That’s what Lincoln had said to me too. I wanted to, but I was sure of the inevitable outcome. “Now, go wash your face. He’ll be here soon.”
Rebecca had taken Tabitha for some frozen yogurt so Lincoln and I could have some privacy. I was pacing in the front entryway when I heard a car door slam. I peeked out the window and saw Lincoln jogging to the house. I opened the door before he had a chance to knock on it. His face was etched with anxiety and the familiar feeling of guilt bubbled up inside me. I didn’t feel like I deserved his worry.
As he entered the house, his arms came out and he pulled me into a big hug. He breathed my name as I wrapped my arms around him and returned the hug. I inhaled his delicious scent and tightened my arms. I had to tell him the truth. I couldn’t stand to hurt him any longer. He pulled back from me slightly and hooked one arm behind my knees. He carried me to the couch and sat down on one end, holding me in his lap.
I rested against his chest, dreading our inevitable conversation. “Can you tell me what’s going through that beautiful head of yours?” Lincoln asked quietly into my ear, his arms still around me. I sniffled. I really did not want to start crying again. “Can you tell me why you would think I deserve better than you? ’Cause from what I can see, it doesn’t get any better than you.” His choice of words made me chuckle cynically.
I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry I freaked out on your last night on the couch, Lincoln. That wasn’t fair to you, and I should have been honest with you when you asked what was wrong.”
“No, Jillian. That was my fault. I shouldn’t have pushed you,” he argued.
“No, Lincoln. You didn’t do anything wrong.” I brought my hand up to his cheek. “You’re such a wonderful man. I really don’t deserve you.”
“Jillian, if you do not stop saying that, I’m going to get mad.”
I sighed and really looked him in the eye for the first time tonight. He had worry lines around his eyes, and his forehead was wrinkled with stress. “I’m not used to having someone other than my family worry about me. I still find it hard to believe that you do.”
Lincoln exhaled sharply and looked like he was going to say something, but I moved my hand over his mouth. “Please let me talk. No interrupting.”
He nodded, and I removed my hand. “I’m going to tell you the truth, and I need to you let me say it all before you say anything.” Lincoln nodded again, encouraging me to open up to him. “Okay. You know my dad died in a fire, right?” He nodded again. “What I should have told you…” I swallowed hard. God, this was difficult.
He rubbed my back trying to comfort me. “Lincoln, you have to understand. What I’m about to tell you I’ve never talked about with anyone outside my family other than my doctors.”
His eyebrows flew up in surprise. He apparently didn’t realize the extent of my issues. And that in itself was part of the problem.
I swallowed again and looked down at my hands and wringed my fingers with worry. “What I should have told you is that my dad wasn’t the only one home during the fire.” Lincoln froze. “My dad worked overnights in a factory. He would sleep during the day in the basement because it was dark and quiet. That day, my mom was at work, and my brothers and sisters were at school. I had stayed home sick and was asleep in my bed upstairs.” I paused and wiped my silent tears away. “I remember waking up confused and staring at my pink bed sheets. I remember wondering why the smoke detector was going off, and I remember looking around my room and wondering why it was filled with smoke.”
Lincoln’s grip on me tightened, and he whispered my name but I continued with my story. “The doctors told me later that I was probably confused from smoke inhalation. Otherwise I would have known better than to try to leave my bedroom. The fire had started in the basement. They said my dad probably had a space heater running, and it overheated causing the fire. By the time I woke up, he was probably already dead.” I paused to collect myself.
“Oh God, baby,” Lincoln whispered. He rested his forehead on my shoulder and moved his hand in circles on my back.
“Let me finish,” I said, and Lincoln stopped and brought his head back up to look at me. It was hard remembering my father; I missed him every day. But Lincoln needed to hear the rest. “I remember looking down the hallway and just seeing smoke and an orange glow. I didn’t even think about my dad being downstairs. I just wanted to get out. I started trying to crawl toward the back door, and the last thing I remember was feeling a burning pain.” As difficult as it was to relive this story, the hardest part was coming up. “The doctors told my mom when the firefighters found me I was covered in plastic from the kitchen countertop that had melted and fallen on me. They saved me, but my dad never had a chance.”
Lincoln pulled me into a hug and repeated my name over and over. “Were you… burned?”
I pulled back from his hug and nodded, looking down. “The worst part is if I’d had the sense to stay in my bedroom, I probably wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“Tell me, Jillian,” he insisted.
I took several deep breaths and exhaled slowly. “I had third-degree burns on twenty-five percent of my body. I spent five months in the hospital. I had three skin graft procedures before I turned eighteen, but they couldn’t fix all the scars.”
“Where?” he asked.
I splayed my left hand over my left hip and my right clutched at my stomach. He covered my hands with his.
“Here?” he asked, tipping his head to the side to look at my face. I nodded while looking down with shame. He brought a hand up while still grasping my hip with the other. Tilting my face up with a finger under my chin, he looked me in the eye. “This is why you think I deserve better than you?”
I wrenched my chin away from him and struggled out of his lap. Standing, I went to the opposite corner of the room and hugged myself. Lincoln came up behind me. He grabbed my elbow and turned me to face him. He rubbed the tears off my cheeks with this thumb and looked down at me with compassion.
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br /> “I can’t be what you deserve, Lincoln. You deserve someone who is beautiful and sexy and strong, and I’m none of those things, and you deserve better,” I rambled.
Lincoln cupped my face with his hands. “You are all those things, Jillian.” He paused and my tears fell faster.
I shook my head. “I’m not. I’m not,” I whispered. “I can’t stand thinking about the look on your face if you knew how revolting my scars are. You would have eventually left me anyway, I was just trying to spare some heartache.”
“Jillian, there’s no sparing my heartache. If you leave me now, I promise you my heart will be broken. I don’t want to be apart from you. And someday you’ll believe me when I tell you how beautiful you are. Because you are, Princess.”
He pulled me into a hug, and we stood like that for a while. His words didn’t make me feel any better now that I had shared my deepest secret. I was still uneasy about our future. I knew eventually he would be disgusted by me and he would leave me. “Will you come home with me? Please?” I didn’t answer and Lincoln rushed to reassure me. “It won’t be like last night. I’ll keep my hands to myself. I just don’t want to leave you here like this tonight and not see you until Monday.”
I sniffed and pulled away from him. My emotions were all over the place. I wanted to be happy with Lincoln, but I was afraid of rejection and being humiliated.
Taking a few deep breaths, I tried to collect my thoughts. He knew I was scarred now. He just didn’t know the extent of how scarred I was—both physically and emotionally.
“Lincoln, you’re not listening. I am not good enough for you. I will never be good enough.” I walked away from him again. He didn’t understand. “It’s not just my scars, Lincoln. I try to be a good, happy person, but it never seems like it’s enough. I’m not good with relationships. I don’t have any friends. People don’t want to be around me. I do not understand why you are pushing this so hard. You will eventually get sick of me and leave me like everyone else has. It’s not worth it.”
“Stop it. Stop it, Jillian. You’ve been through so much, but that doesn’t mean you are allowed to speak about yourself that way. If I could take all your pain away, baby, I would. But then you wouldn’t be this strong, amazing, beautiful woman standing in front of me.”
“I’m so afraid of the moment when you figure out how disgusting I am,” I finally admitted to him.
Lincoln walked up behind me and spun me around to face him. He gently pushed me against the wall and softly pinned me there with his body. He cupped my cheek with his hand. “If you don’t stop talking about my girlfriend that way, I’m going to get extremely upset.” A small smile played on his lips. “Jillian, I will never hurt you. I can’t tell you what the future will bring but I know you will always be beautiful to me. I will never hurt you or humiliate you and the only thing about you that I will get sick of is this attitude you have about yourself. You are amazing, Princess.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall behind me. His words were so hard to hear.
Lincoln continued, “I wish I could show you how much you mean to me, how precious you are. You don’t seem to realize how rare it is to find someone like you. You see the good in everyone but yourself. You’re smart, and funny, and kind. You’re like a priceless jewel, Jillian. You make me want to be a better person so I might almost have a chance at being good enough for you. I’m so lucky to have found you.”
I absorbed his words and let them soak in. I knew how difficult it was to find someone who was truly good and kind in this world. I wrapped my arms around Lincoln’s waist and laid my head against his hard chest. “I feel the same way about you,” I admitted as I held him tight.
Lincoln breathed a sigh of relief and enveloped me in his arms. He held me tight and kissed the top of my head. “I’m so relieved to hear you say that.”
We stood like that for a long moment. “Will you come home with me? I promise to bring you back here at any time,” he asked.
I thought for a moment and then nodded against his chest. “Thank God,” Lincoln said quietly and rubbed my back, comforting me.
Chapter Fourteen
“It’s so beautiful.” I stood in front of Lincoln’s glass wall, looking out, admiring Mother Nature’s beauty. The setting sun reflected off the icy lake, and the cloudless blue sky was a blaze of orange and yellow.
“With you standing here, it is.” Lincoln wrapped his arms around me from behind. I shook my head, rolled my eyes, and leaned back against him, but I didn’t argue with him. “Will you do something with me?” he asked quietly into my ear.
I turned around to look at him. “What do you want to do?” I asked, curiously.
“Come on,” he said and took my hand, pulling me to the attached garage. This part of his house hadn’t been included in the tour he gave me the first time I was here. The garage was neat and orderly. It wasn’t the type of garage where men fixed broken-down cars; this was a garage for storing Lincoln’s toys. Two snowmobile machines sat close to one of the garage doors. A fancy silver sports car sat parked near the other one. I didn’t know what type of car it was, except expensive. There was also a four-wheeler, a small fishing boat, and two personal wave runners resting on a trailer in the back.
“Wow. Nice… stuff.” I didn’t know what else to call this collection.
Lincoln smirked and hit a button that opened the overhead door where the snowmobiles were parked. “Wanna go for a ride?” he asked with a look of excitement on his face.
“The snowmobiles? I’ve never been on a snowmobile,” I admitted. I thought my brother, Elliott, owned one, but he had never taken me out.
“It’s okay. I’ll go slow.” He looked so hopeful. I nodded and Lincoln’s face erupted with a smile.
~~~~~~~~
“Okay, put your feet here,” he said, pointing to a ledge on the side of the snowmobile. The machine seemed so much larger now that I was on it. “I’m going to pull the cord to start it, and once I climb on, hold on to me, okay?” From under my helmet, I nodded up at him. “And don’t fall off the back, baby,” he joked.
Lincoln had lent me some proper winter clothes, including boots, snow pants, and a heavy coat. I was drowning in his clothing, but at least I would be warm.
“I don’t even have words for how great you look sitting there wearing my clothes,” he had told me after I climbed on, causing me to blush.
Lincoln pushed some buttons, flipped a lever, and yanked the cord with a mighty pull. The machine underneath me roared to life, and Lincoln crawled on in front of me. I grabbed his shoulders and clenched his coat tight. Lincoln shifted and reached back for one of my hands. He moved it so my arm wrapped around his chest. I smiled and moved my other arm and squeezed him tight.
“Ready?” Lincoln hollered back to me. I nodded, and Lincoln flipped his helmet visor down and turned back to the front. He revved the engine a few times and eventually eased slowly out of the garage.
We took off down his property toward the lake. I bounced on the back of the sled and squeezed my arms and legs tighter around him. Lincoln drove next to the lake for a while, and I looked out over the water. By this point in the evening, the moon had risen and stars were coming out and were reflecting off the icy lake. It was eerily beautiful.
I felt the snowmobile speed up underneath us, and the distance between us and the lake decreased. Lincoln was steering the sled closer to the ice. I gripped him tighter and squeezed my thighs against his hips as we crossed onto the frozen surface. He drove out on the ice for a short while until Lincoln abruptly wrenched the handlebars to the right causing the back end to skid around and slide on the ice. I squealed and clutched Lincoln tighter as we did a 360-degree spin.
A laugh erupted from Lincoln as the sled stopped. “Again?” he shouted over the noise from the engine. I squeezed my arms against his chest in reply, and he revved the engine and the machine took off over the ice once again.
This time Lincoln cranked the handlebar
s to the left, and we spun in a circle in the opposite direction. He didn’t let up on the gas at the end of the spin like before, and he alternated between spinning and driving straight to gain speed. It was fun and invigorating, and being this close to Lincoln, listening to his deep laugh, made my blood pump fast.
When I had lost count of how many circles we made on the ice, Lincoln steered us back toward the shore. But instead of turning to go to his house like I thought, Lincoln directed the snowmobile toward a small trail that was cut through the thick woods.
The earlier snowmobiling was a cakewalk compared to this. This trail was full of bumps and twists and drifts of snow on the trail that caused us to be pulled in every direction. Eventually we made it into a clearing overlooking the lake.
Lincoln killed the engine and pulled himself out of my grasp by standing and getting off the sled. He removed his helmet and offered a hand to help me off the machine.
The clearing was elevated slightly over the lake, and I looked out over the massive body of water in front of us as I pulled my helmet off, hoping my hair wasn’t a hideous mess. I could see a few lights from other houses between the tall pine tress dotting the shore of the lake. The stars and moon reflected off the ice, and I felt as if we were standing in a pool of deep blue sky with twinkling lights above and below us.
“This is amazing, Lincoln,” I said, turning to look at him and finding him already staring at me.
He stepped closer to me and removed his gloves. He moved my hair back behind my ear and ran a finger down my jaw line.
“I wish you could see yourself how I see you, Princess. You would not call this amazing when compared to you.” His eyes burned into mine, and I had to look away.
“When you say things like that, it makes me feel totally unworthy of you,” I admitted to him.
“No, baby. Please don’t feel that way. I just want you to know how precious you are to me,” he said and cupped my cheek with his hand.