by Ava Miles
“I won’t tell you not to be angry or hurt,” she told him, knowing the light in the tree house was bright enough for his eyes to see the mark on her skin. His eyes had only to find it.
When they did, his whole face seemed to crumple, and his jaw visibly tightened. His eyes were burning coals now. “You went to see him.” It was an accusation.
Her heart tore at the bitter sound of his voice, usually so loving, so patient. “Yes. Will you let me tell you why?”
The snap of his neck nodding could have broken it, and she sank onto the cot, her legs trembling from something other than passion.
He remained silent as she told her story. When she came to the part about Sterling threatening to remind her of what she’d forgotten, her voice broke, but she continued after a few cleansing breaths. He sat beside her and reached for her hand, holding it as she finished her account of the rest of the day.
Her last words finally stood between them, and since he hadn’t moved, hadn’t looked at her, she stroked his back. His muscles tensed, as if in agony from her touch, and it was then her heart broke.
“I’m sorry this hurt you,” she finally said, “but I’m not sorry I did what I did. I won’t apologize for needing to face down my past or Sterling.”
She’d decided on the flight that she wasn’t going to apologize for any of her actions—she’d done exactly what she’d needed to do.
“When I think about how he hurt you,” he finally said, “what he would have done to you if your mama hadn’t shown up…Jesus.”
For a man she’d never heard swear, it was telling. “I beat myself up about that for a while today, and I won’t lie and say it wasn’t scary as hell. It just never occurred to me he would do something like that in his own law office with his secretary outside. I thought I’d be safe.”
“Dammit, Tammy,” he cried, shooting off the cot, “how in the world could you ever be safe around that monster?”
“But I am safe from him now, don’t you see?” she said gently. “Finally, completely, and totally. I faced him down, and I told him what I needed to say. What I’d been afraid to say for all those years.”
“And what did that prove, huh?” he almost yelled. “Was sharing your feelings with him worth dying for? You could have been killed!”
The slap of his voice penetrated the inner sanctum of her heart, and it hurt. “How can you understand? You’ve never allowed yourself to be beaten down. You’ve never experienced the shame of putting your own children in a home with a man like that. I had to prove to myself I could stand up to him. For me! Just like I had to do with Mama. I don’t expect you to get it, but I did hope you would listen to me and then hold me…because…well, dammit…it was the hardest thing I have ever done.”
Her raw words rippled through the air, and he took a deep breath. And another. Finally he sat beside her and lifted a hesitant hand to her collarbone.
“Do you have any idea what it does to me to see you hurt like this? To know I wasn’t there to protect you from him?”
Her lips trembled before she spoke. “I don’t want you to protect me, John Parker. I want to take care of myself.”
How many times would they go through this same conflict about him wanting to protect her when all she wanted was to stand on her own?
“You make it hard for there to be any space for me to love you sometimes.”
It was the most devastating thing he’d ever said to her in all of the quiet nights after they’d made love in the tree house.
“Protection isn’t love, John Parker,” she whispered. “Not to me.”
“Well, it is to me! A man is supposed to take care of the woman he loves, look out for her, and in your case, her children too.”
“I appreciate you wanting to do that,” she made herself say, “but you don’t need to protect us.” It was time to tell him what she’d decided on her way home. “We need to be on equal footing if we’re going to be together in the long run. And I need to show the kids how to stand on their own, too, so they won’t grow up being afraid. I’m going to start looking for houses for us to rent. Given the way my business is growing, I can afford something modest.”
His head jerked back. “You’re what?”
The beat of her heart was so loud she could barely hear the cicadas now. “We’ve loved being here with you, and I am so grateful to you for opening your home to us, but it would be best for us to find our own place now.”
He dropped his head. “So just because you have some overblown need for independence you’re going to take the kids away from here, from the chocolate garden, when you darn well know it’s helped them finally feel safe again?”
She rose then, standing with him. “Feeling safe cannot come from a physical place. It has to be in here.” Her fist pounded her chest over her heart.
His jaw was ticking. “So you’re going to make those little kids figure out now something it took you nearly thirty years to realize?”
Her voice almost failed her. “What do you want me to do? Stay here forever? Put chocolate under their pillows forever?”
“Yes!” he said, “I was hoping you loved me enough to do just that. Rory told me while you were gone that he and Annabelle pray every night that I’ll become their daddy. Every night. And that’s what I want. For us to be a family. For you to stay here forever with me.”
As the shock of his words rolled over her, Tammy realized they’d lost the magic they had always found in the tree house.
Chapter 41
Tammy’s face didn’t contain any of the joy he’d hoped would be evident when he finally told her about his vision for them.
Instead, she said nothing.
Nothing.
The crushing pressure in his chest made it hard to breathe in the muggy night.
“John Parker,” she finally choked out. “I don’t know what to say.”
Now he had to close the distance between them, even if it was only physical. Right now, their hearts were so far apart, he wasn’t sure they could reach each other.
“I won’t pretend I wasn’t hoping you’d be on board with the idea,” he said, joining her where she stood.
The image of them living at his house as a happy family was dying in the back of his mind like the garden would wither come fall.
She cleared her throat like it was clogged with something. “Today…tonight has been difficult,” she said softly. “You caught me off guard.”
Off guard? How could she be this surprised after all of the nights they’d spent loving each other here in the quiet light, after all of the days they’d spent learning each other’s rhythms?
“That surprises me some to hear. Didn’t you think that was where we were heading?” he asked, searching her face.
Her fingers touched the swollen red bruise on her collarbone. “John Parker, I just got divorced.”
Reaching deep for patience, he took her hand in his. It was cold now. “It’s been a year, Tammy. There’s no time limit on love, is there?”
Like Eve finally realizing she was naked in the garden, Tammy pulled the sheet off the cot and covered herself, something she’d never done before, not even after they’d first made love on that long ago night.
“I was rather enjoying the way things were,” she said. “I don’t know why you want to change them.”
Okay, so her talk of moving out had put him into a panic and his timing might be the absolute worst, but he had to be honest with her. “We don’t have to right away, and heaven knows when the time is right, I want to give you a more romantic proposal, but I need to know we’re on the same page, Tammy. I love you and the kids. I want to live with you all the time, be with you day in and day out. And yes, I want to take care of you. That’s what happens when people get married. They take care of each other.”
Untangling her hand from his, she clutched the sheet to her, pulling at it so hard he had to step aside to give her the rest of its length.
“I love you, John Parker, I truly do, but
I don’t want anyone to take care of me. I had a belly full of that. I like making my own decisions, being my own woman. I finally like myself, and I don’t want to get married again and lose that.”
After the day she’d had, he knew making his case was like trying to win an argument with a rigged jury. “Look at me. Marriage to me won’t be like it was to him. I’d never hurt you or try to control you.”
“I know you won’t hurt me, but you keep talking about protecting me. That’s another way of controlling.”
“No, it’s not,” he said quietly.
“How do you know? You’re a man. You don’t know what it’s like.” She walked over to the door, her back to him.
After all this time, they’d reached another wall he’d have to breach. “Don’t talk to me like I’m him.”
She whirled around, her mouth tight. “You think I’m comparing the two of you?”
His hands fisted by his sides. “What else am I supposed to conclude after hearing that?”
“You’re not listening. I’m saying I don’t want to be married—to you or anyone. That may well change, but right now I don’t want to fall back into a role of letting someone take care of me when I can do it myself.”
Her words were like a glacier between them. “So you think you’re going to just lie down and become some doormat again if you become my wife?”
Her gasp had his belly twitching. He’d gone below the belt, and he knew it.
She finally nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s what I’m saying, and thank you so much for pointing it out.”
The door to the tree house was open before he could blink, and then out she went into the night.
He grabbed the flashlight and jogged after her. “Wait, Tammy. Will you wait?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said, heading to the house, following the beam of light he shone for her.
Part of him wanted to shake her, seeing her run away from him, from them like that. “Will you please stop for a moment?”
With the sheet trailing behind her on the grass, she turned, a pissed-off Aphrodite, ready to call lava forth from the volcanoes in Pompeii.
“What?”
“Listen to me. I don’t want to control you, Tammy. I want you to have your own mind and make your own decisions. You can depend on that.”
She shook her head. “But you’ve already told me that you want to take care of me.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is from where I’m standing. You might be a good man, John Parker, but you’re still too much of a Southern gentleman not to take care of a woman.”
“What’s wrong with me taking care of you and the kids?” he asked in complete exasperation. “I love you!”
“I don’t want to depend on you. I’ve already struggled with how much I do already. I don’t want to start thinking I can’t do without you, can’t live without you. It would be like running into another trap when I’ve only just escaped one.”
He took a few more steps toward her. Clearly her visit to Meade had re-opened all of the wounds he’d thought were healed.
“Needing each other doesn’t take away our choices, Tammy. Love doesn’t work that way.”
“You say that now, but…I just don’t want to remarry yet. Why isn’t that okay? Why can’t we keep things as they’ve been? Haven’t you been happy?”
“You know I’ve been happy. Happier than I’ve ever imagined. But Tammy, the tree house can’t be our private place forever. I want the kids to see us together, to see me holding your head in my lap as they play on the floor before supper.”
“That’s not all there is to marriage, John Parker.”
“That was your old marriage. A marriage between us would be as different as the first time you came apart in my arms.”
Her face scrunched up then, and he thought she was going to cry. “You don’t understand.”
“I’m trying to. I’m right here, sweetheart. I’m listening.”
“And you’ll want children, right?”
He couldn’t lie to her. “I would cherish any children you and I made together in addition to Rory and Annabelle.”
She fitted the sheet more securely around her when it slipped. “I haven’t thought about having any more children, to be honest. You see how much work it is with just Rory and Annabelle.”
“But I’d be there to help, and I’m pretty good at that. Haven’t you seen how much easier it is with two people? Tammy, I’ll be a good father.”
Her hand on his arm was her only concession. “I know you will be, but if marriage is what you want, perhaps we should call things off between us before they get any deeper,” she said, looking at a place over his shoulder so she didn’t have to meet his eyes. “I don’t want to get married now, John Parker, and I can’t promise that will change. It wouldn’t be fair to you to pretend otherwise, especially when you want a family.”
The finality of her words chilled him to the core. “Have I not been different enough from him to help you see our marriage would be different too? That what we have together is different in every way from what you had with Sterling?”
“Marriage is marriage. You can’t change the structure, John Parker, and that’s what I can’t abide.”
“Marriage isn’t the problem, honey.”
When she lifted her face to look at him, the defeat in her eyes broke his heart. “It was for me, and I don’t plan to make the same mistakes over again. I’d best be going inside.”
The timing of this conversation had totally and unequivocally sucked. “Tammy, as you said, it’s been a difficult day. Let’s not make any final decisions tonight.”
“No, I think it’s only shown us both a hard truth we needed to face.”
Her body was stiff as she walked away from him. He stood there, feeling rooted to the ground by his own powerlessness. He couldn’t fight her shadows for her.
Yet he couldn’t let her bumble her way to the house in the dark alone either, and if she thought that was taking care of her, then that was too damn bad.
“Let me shine the light for you,” he said, catching up to her, realizing his words held a greater meaning.
“Thank you, John Parker,” she managed to say when she reached the back door. “For everything.”
He couldn’t muster a reply as she left him all alone.
Chapter 42
Clayton’s interference in securing Amelia Ann time off from her job turned out to be a blessing. After hearing about Tammy and Mama’s tenuous reconciliation from Rye, she hadn’t been able to get out of bed the next day.
Mama had denied being the leak.
Even worse, Tammy believed her.
She was doomed.
Of course, Rye remained skeptical, thank God, but she’d had to sit and listen while he told her about his decision not to call off the woman he’d hired to date Gunner Nolan. If the leak was Mama, Rye had said, well, they’d have their proof, and Tammy would need it after the convincing job Mama had done on her. Not that everyone wasn’t grateful for the way she’d stopped Sterling from hurting Tammy.
Just the thought of it turned Amelia Ann’s blood cold.
What in the world was she going to do?
Of course, Gunner Nolan knew her name. The reporter had insisted she identify herself to him, saying he couldn’t publish anything so scandalous without knowing the name of his source, even if she chose to remain anonymous. If the information had been inaccurate, he would have risked being sued.
Now the hunt was going to continue, and Amelia Ann felt a noose tightening around her neck.
She prayed Gunner wouldn’t divulge her name. Could she warn him about the woman? No, she realized, not without turning Gunner onto Rye. She might as well throw a stick of dynamite into a nitroglycerin plant, and it would be yet another betrayal of her family, worse even than the first.
She had to keep her cool. No one would suspect it was her. If anything, she reasoned, they might come to thin
k the woman Rye had hired had misunderstood Gunner. How long could one woman continue doing such dirty work anyway?
As she stared at the ceiling, every bone aching, one thought raced through her mind again and again.
She had to make amends for what she’d done.
Chapter 43
Every delight Tammy had come to savor at John Parker’s home seemed to dry up like dirt without water. They both did their best to keep things normal between them for Annabelle and Rory the next day, but it didn’t fool her son, who asked her if she was mad at John Parker. Of course, she denied it, but his brow knit up like he didn’t believe her. Her response had been to run off to make dinner.
After kissing the kids goodnight, she headed to her bedroom. He gave her a last look in the hall, as if entreating her to choose a different course, one that didn’t involve shutting her door to him. But she just couldn’t.
What good would it do?
Still, she couldn’t sleep. For hours she stared at the ceiling, wide awake, missing their time in the tree house, wishing they could have had more of it. What was she going to do with all of this newly discovered love and passion inside of her?
There were no answers. There were only a few more days left until Rye and Tory were coming home for a break, and she was hoping to convince the kids to stay at their old house for their visit. A festive party would sweeten the prospect for them, she hoped.
And then Rye had called with the news that the police had finally apprehended Billy Ray Ferry and recovered Rye’s award. Billy Ray had begged them to let him keep it, saying Rye would want him to have it since he was going through such a hard time, just like Rye’s music spoke about. The man clearly had mental issues, but everyone in the family was breathing a little easier now that he was behind bars.
The kids seemed visibly relieved when she told them about the man’s arrest, and she prayed it would make it easier for them to return to Rye’s home until she could find a rental. Deciding to let the news about the “bad man” settle in for a few days, she kept quiet about her intention to move them.