by Helm, Nicole
But even if he didn’t get why or how, she would give everything to their child. She was determined on that point, and slowly, painstakingly over the course of her adult life, she’d learned that if she was determined enough and worked hard enough, she could do what she set out to accomplish.
“I know you’ll make a wonderful father,” she said, because aside from it just being true, she couldn’t take all this scrutiny of her—even if it was the positive kind. At some point he’ll see the truth.
No. There was no truth to see. This was her truth. She wasn’t perfect, but she was damn well good enough.
“Do you know that?” he asked, with just enough uncertainty she didn’t hesitate to lean into him, to hold on to his hands as tightly as he was holding on to hers.
“You’re so good at taking care. At stepping in and doing the right thing.” That he would ever think otherwise, that he could have any insecurity, was baffling to her.
“Maybe the former more than the latter.” He looked over her shoulder when he said it, a self-deprecating tone to his voice, as though he were trying to make a joke, and failing, because he felt it to be too true.
“You’ve taken such good care of me.” Over and over again, he’d been here. He’d offered himself, his family. Heck, he’d offered his name. From the very beginning he had stepped up to be a part of this. She couldn’t believe it wasn’t just natural.
The corner of his mouth quirked. “I guess I’m learning.” His thumbs brushed over the insides of her wrists. “You’re the first person I’ve ever wanted to learn for.”
She had to breathe carefully, or she thought she might cry or launch herself into his arms and never let go. Something. She wanted to have the same calm acceptance he had. “That’s all we can do, I think. Try and learn. Get back up again when you fail.”
“And what do you do when you succeed?”
His thumbs kept moving back and forth against the skin of her wrists, making goose bumps travel up her arms. The touch was constant, and wonderful, like he couldn’t just hold her, he had to touch.
“I don’t know, I guess. Keep going?”
“You’ve built a lot. I assume your parents didn’t help.”
“My grandmother did. Financially, in the beginning. I’m no rags-to-riches story. More like riches to other riches. I one hundred percent couldn’t have built this without her money, or her belief in me.”
“Maybe not. But that doesn’t take away the hard work it took to get to a place where you could support yourself and your child on a business you made and love. That’s a special thing.”
“I’m not fragile, you don’t have to constantly be pumping my ego.”
“You asked me how I could love you. You don’t get to back out when I tell you exactly how and why.”
“Touché,” she grumbled, burrowing her head a little farther into the crook of his neck. She liked being here. She liked...him. More than that. It really was more than that. The big thing he seemed so sure of. She wanted that. That certainty, that belief in something big and wonderful.
The only way to have that, truly, was to take it. To be brave and take it. “I love you too.” She breathed in sharply. “Holy shit, that’s scary to say.”
He laughed, dropping her hands and wrapping his arms around her. “Well, at least we’re in the holy shit scary together.”
She slowly wound her arms around him, holding on tight. In it together. Yeah. “Yeah.”
“And that’s it?” he asked, his voice a serious whisper in her ear. “That’s all the things you’ve hedged from telling me?”
She stilled and tensed.
“There’s more,” he murmured into her ear. “It won’t change anything, Meg. I promise you that. I love you. Whatever you’ve done, it’s resulted in this woman I love. Nothing changes that.”
She wanted to believe him. Wanted those words to be stronger than years’ worth of her mother’s put-downs. She wanted to believe in Charlie, and he was here, wasn’t he? Telling her it didn’t matter.
“I...used.” She swallowed, knowing a half-truth wouldn’t work here. “Drugs. Alcohol. I used anything that might numb the pain, the constant sense of failure.”
He shifted, something in his body changing, but he didn’t push her away. He held her. She waited for him to pull away, to step back, to demand specifics.
But he held her and stroked her hair, and clearly he didn’t understand what she was saying if he wasn’t recoiling at least a little.
“I was an addict. For years. I’ve been clean for eight, well, clean of drugs. Alcohol was six, until Grandma’s funeral, but only that one night. But all that time, all those years, I used. I drowned myself in pot and pills and hard liquor and—”
Finally he began to pull away and Meg couldn’t begin to get a handle on the mixture of relief and fear that he finally got it.
He was going to walk away, and she knew what to do with that, even if she was afraid of what would happen in the aftermath. Someone withdrawing made so much more sense than someone sticking by her.
But he didn’t step away. His hands came to her shoulders. His brown gaze held hers, and she couldn’t read his expression, not beyond the terrifying realization he wasn’t walking away.
“I can’t say I know much of anything about substance abuse.”
She wanted to laugh. Oh, Charlie wouldn’t say something like addiction. No, he’d call it substance abuse.
“But I know you.” His eyebrows drew together, much like when he’d been trying to work through words of love. Like he didn’t quite understand his feelings, but he was working through them. Finding a truth he hadn’t expected. “I know you, and I love you, and... Did you think that would change how I felt?”
“Yes.”
“But you’ve been clean for eight years. That’s...a long time, Meg. Adulthood. Why shouldn’t I trust that?”
“Because you’re you! Because you sneered at my tattoos when we first met. Because your family is perfect and loving. Because you’ve never, ever done anything wrong except manipulate a few people in a business setting.”
“Maybe I didn’t ever harm myself. With substances or otherwise, but in a very complex way I understand the need to...drown things. Feelings. I just did it with denial instead of alcohol.”
She stared at him, realizing after a few seconds her mouth was hanging open. “This isn’t what I expected.”
He laughed then, trailing his fingers over her hair, her cheek. “None of this is what I expected.” He stepped closer so their legs were touching. He cupped her face and looked at her as though he could see inside, as if he could pour all those words of love inside her. “I’ve never done the unexpected. Not in my whole life. I never wanted to.”
“Why would you want to now? With me? I’m a giant—what would you call it? Capital risk? Volatile investment?”
“You’re neither of those,” he said gently. “Not a mistake or a stain.” His voice was like a balm, but it stripped away the last pieces of her strength.
“What am I, then?” she asked, too exhausted to care that tears had escaped.
He sighed, his thumbs dragging gently across her jaw. “I guess...that’s something we both need to figure out. Who and what we are. But I’d like to do that together. How about you?”
Together. Even after he knew the worst of her. She couldn’t help thinking it might be too good to be true. Together. Figuring out who they were. It was a dream. A fantasy.
But once upon a time, getting clean had been a dream. Then finding a place she belonged had been a fantasy. And now she had both. So...why shouldn’t they figure it out together?
For Seedling. For themselves. For a future. “I like the sound of together,” she managed, leaning into him. The fear didn’t disappear, but it was muted with hope.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I’M TELLING YOU, I have a bump.”
“Sweetheart, I have been sharing that bed with you for a month.” Charlie grinned at her from where he was changing out of his goat milking clothes and into ones that could be smelled in public. “I would know if you had a bump.”
She scowled from where she sat at the edge of the bed. They’d never really discussed it. Not specifically. It had just been, week after week, since they’d said those first terrifying I love yous, he spent more and more time exactly here.
He’d let the lease run out on his apartment. He’d sold off all his furniture and appliances and moved half of his things here, and the other half to his parents’ house.
No one discussed it, and he never said out loud that he didn’t have the apartment in the city anymore. It was just a thing that happened. Which was how everything in the past month had been. Things just happened. He didn’t try to plan them; they didn’t discuss. They just lived.
He couldn’t remember ever feeling this happy. There was a freedom in having no plan, a lightness in not knowing what tomorrow might look like. A comfort not to have to dissect every little choice or decision.
Or he’d gone insane, but it was a happy insane, so he wouldn’t question it.
“Look!”
He glanced over at Meg, realizing he’d been lost in his own thoughts when she had a different pair of pants on. She was lying on her back on the bed, her legs hanging off the edge.
“I cannot button my pants. I have a bump.” She pointed to the waistband of her jeans, unbuttoned, unzipped, so he walked over to indulge her.
He liked indulging her. He liked making her smile, and smiling in return. He’d never found that kind of easy belonging anywhere.
“Charlie, look.” She demonstrated the true inability to button the pants once the zipper was up. “I have a bump!”
She seemed so utterly pleased with herself, and it was an amazing thing. They had the pictures—one on the fridge, one in a frame on her nightstand, and then they each kept one on their person—but something about a bump did make it feel a little bit more real.
He rested his palm on the slightest of curves of her stomach. Just enough to keep her from buttoning her pants comfortably, but a sign of the little thing growing inside.
“Amazing,” he said, without an ounce of indulging in his tone, because it was amazing. Amazing to see, to feel. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to the center of the bump. “Amazing.”
She grazed her palm over his hair, and he moved up farther to plant the same soft, reverent kiss on her mouth.
She sighed against his lips, trailing her fingers over the short growth of hair on his chin. “You have a meeting.”
He grunted, because the meeting with Cara and Wes was about the last thing he wanted to do with his time at the moment.
“Don’t act grumpy. I don’t think you have any idea how happy you are when you get back from those.”
“From what?”
“Meetings with all of them. You’re always so energetic. I think you may have found your passion.”
“My passion is telling other people what to do?”
“Yes, mostly,” she replied deadpan, making him laugh against his will. “Although I believe you call it ‘small business consulting’ when you’re trying to sound important.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s true. Think about it. You might have found the answer to your perpetual unemployment, aside from being my goat milk boy. The farmers’ market is rife with small businesses, and while they couldn’t all need you or afford you, it wouldn’t hurt to expand your client base.”
He pushed himself off the bed. It was a weird thought. He wasn’t sure it was a bad one, or even unwelcome, and he hadn’t been trying at all to get another sales job. He’d been so busy helping everyone it had become a thing he’d do tomorrow or the next day or some weekend when he had time, and no time had popped up.
“You’re quite the little businesswoman, aren’t you?”
“Or I’m trying to keep you in my pocket.”
“Lucky for you,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose before returning to the closet so he could finish dressing for his meeting, “I like being in your pocket.”
“Then you should think about it, a little more seriously.” She fiddled with her button again. “Now, what on earth am I going to wear?”
“Those things you claim are pants that I claim are devices sent to torture me with an uninterrupted view of your ass?”
She laughed, such a light, tinkling sound. “Now, there’s an idea.” But she didn’t move, she lay there staring at the ceiling, swinging her legs, a smile on her face as she rubbed her hand over her bump.
“How about I pick up dinner on my way home?” he offered. He’d been purposefully careful about that word—made sure to avoid it. Home. This was where he wanted his home to be, but he hadn’t exactly been invited. They hadn’t discussed it. So...
But she smiled, that soft, dreamy smile that made his chest tight because she seemed happy. It was rare he saw that wide-eyed somewhere-else look on her face these days. Things had changed.
They had no secrets. They had love. This life he hadn’t been planning or organizing or worrying over was dreamlike in its perfection. Who knew mistakes could give you everything you ever needed?
“Text me right before you leave and I’ll let you know what I want,” Meg said from her place on the bed.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She sighed. “Oh, that is my favorite.”
“And you think I enjoy telling people what to do.” He finished dressing, then crossed over to her and gave her a quick kiss—because anything more and he most definitely would be late. “I’ll be back later.”
Meg let her fingers trail down his arm as he stepped away. “We will be waiting. Me, Seedling, goats.”
“Thank you for putting Seedling ahead of goats.”
He left the cottage to the sounds of Meg laughing and said goats bleating and he couldn’t stop smiling. He drove across town, barely paying attention to his surroundings. He didn’t think he’d ever driven through New Benton feeling like he might belong here.
It was a heady feeling to think he’d found his place in the hometown he’d been sure didn’t suit him. It was oddly exhilarating to think he wasn’t so stiff and unrelenting that he couldn’t be a part of these things. Things he’d always sneered at because...
Because he didn’t know how to be a part of them. He’d wanted to please his father, and that had meant not even trying to love farming. But more, it had never been natural for him. Few things had been. He didn’t have Dell’s touch with the land, Kenzie’s infinite patience with animals. He’d had a head for numbers, and the rest hadn’t been easy.
So he’d shied away and convinced himself he was better. Better than farming and New Benton and his brother.
But it had been a way to cope with feeling alone, and misunderstood. And damn, that was quite the realization.
He pulled his car to a stop at Wes’s cabin, barely knowing how he’d gotten there. Muscle memory and habit, he supposed. Because that sort of life and self-realization rang in his head like a gong.
He shook his head in an attempt to clarify his thinking as he walked across the expansive yard to the cabin Wes and Cara called home and business. There were a variety of animals roaming about the yard and they barely bothered to acknowledge Charlie’s presence. When he knocked on the front door, a gruff voice on the other side called, “Come in.”
Charlie stepped inside a large kitchen, where he’d met Cara and Wes for a lot of their business consultant meetings. Wes was hunched over his work making dog treats, his German shepherd at his feet.
“How’s it going?”
“Good,” Wes replied. “Cara an
d Mia are in the office. I’ll be in when I’m done.”
“Take your time. I’ve mostly got stuff for Cara today.”
Wes nodded and Charlie walked through the kitchen back to the office. He stepped into the room to find Cara and Mia bent over a book.
“Oh, I recognize that tale of horrors,” he muttered. “I hid it from Meg so she would stop obsessing about all the possible pregnancy complications, and I’m not afraid to hide it from you two, as well.”
They smiled up at him, two women he wouldn’t have given the time of day to ten years ago. And now they were his family. Friends. They trusted his opinion when it came to their businesses, their kids would play with his kid and it made that heart-expanding feeling in his chest even bigger.
In his entire life, he’d never been as happy as he was on this day. Waking up with Meg, seeing the evidence of their baby growing, being a part of his family as wholly and fully as he ever had.
Plus, he had amazing news for Cara’s ideas about expansion. “Well, Paul Collier and I talked for two hours yesterday.” His grocery contacts had definitely come in handy for Cara’s business.
Cara immediately threw the book on the other side of the couch. “And? Don’t toy with me, Charlie!”
He handed her the file folder he’d put together on Collier’s offer to carry Cara’s Pies. She grasped it greedily and made high-pitched squeaking noises as she read through the papers.
“Oh my...” Cara trailed off as she flipped through the papers. “This is amazing.” She looked up at him, her eyes suspiciously shiny. “Charlie, this is huge.”
“It definitely has the potential to be that. If you cry, I’m taking the papers back and leaving immediately.”
She rolled her eyes, giving a little sniff. “But this is such a big deal. A grocery store wants my pies. Mine! This is... I can’t believe we conned you into doing this consulting out of pity,” Cara said, shaking her head as her eyes perused the papers again. “You’ve just at least doubled my income.”