by Becky Wade
He regarded her with heavy-lidded turquoise eyes. “You’re sorry?”
“I was. But now I’m mad. Really mad. You scared me to death.”
“Even though you’re mad, can you put my bread pudding in the refrigerator?”
“Fine. I’ll do it in a minute.”
His eyes sank closed. “You’re making me lose my mind. You know that, right?”
“You’re making me lose mine, too.”
“Will you just shoot me, sweet one? It’d be easier than caring about you as much as I do.”
“You’re absolutely positive that you didn’t take pills from any other bottle today?”
“Positive.”
Time ticked. She ran her gaze over his face and form to reassure herself that he was well. Every inch of him looked like it had been created by a master Renaissance sculptor. He was beautiful. He always had been. And to her, he always would be. Until the end of time.
Her call to the hotline hadn’t comforted her completely. She couldn’t know with a hundred percent certainty that he hadn’t polished off an old bottle first before starting in on the new.
She looked up Vicodin on her phone and scrolled through information. Even a prescribed dose could come with scary side effects. What was she going to do? She didn’t feel right about leaving him alone all night.
“Celia?”
“I’m still here.”
“Will you stay longer?”
“I’ll stay a little bit longer.”
“Thank you. With you here, I can sleep.”
For fifteen straight minutes, she sat at his bedside and berated herself for getting involved with a man so stubbornly unpredictable, bullheaded, and reckless. How was she supposed to learn to trust him when he did things like this? He knew how she felt about Vicodin, and he’d gone and taken it anyway.
He wasn’t the only one at fault, though, was he? She’d all but told him earlier today that she’d never forgive him. Her words had sent him on a Vicodin bender.
Why couldn’t she forgive him? Why? He’d forgiven her.
Silently, she put his bread pudding in his refrigerator, then slipped from his house. Even though she knew Ty wouldn’t like it, she told Meg and Bo about the Vicodin the minute she returned home. Bo volunteered to stay with Ty and keep an eye on him until morning. Reliable Bo.
Late that night, Celia stared at her bedroom ceiling, sleepless and feeling like the Wicked Witch of Unforgiveness. Her memory ran back over everything she could remember from her time with Ty in Las Vegas. Every look, laugh, compliment, kiss. She had not dated him long, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t loved him. How she’d loved him! With every molecule of her body, she’d loved him.
She’d grown up dreaming of a white wedding. Of course she had. A dress and guests and a cake. But she’d loved Ty so much she’d sacrificed all that for the chance to marry him quickly. She’d have given up far more for him, had he asked. As it was, she’d placed her hope, her future, and her body in his hands. And the next morning?
“I’m in love with someone else,” he’d said to her. “I have a girlfriend at home in Holley. We’ve been dating for two years.”
The old betrayal seeped through her like black liquid. See? she demanded of God. She had good, valid reasons not to forgive Ty. Ty had done that to her. She still hadn’t fully recovered. He’d done that!
But that wasn’t, if she were being completely truthful with herself, why she couldn’t forgive him. Underneath her resistance to forgive lay fear, cowering fear, of what might happen to her and Addie if she found a way to forgive Ty fully. She’d already allowed her heart and mind to open to him far more than she’d intended. It flat-out panicked her to consider letting herself care for Ty even one single teardrop more than she already did.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Celia escorted Addie into her kindergarten class the next morning, then drove home, same as always, to get herself ready for work. As she pulled into her driveway, she spotted Ty sitting on her porch steps. Waiting.
Her heart wedged into her throat. She spent longer than necessary pretending to gather her purse so that she could actually gather her composure. She wished she’d taken time to put on something more sightly than a ten-year-old navy sweatshirt and cutoffs.
He tracked her progress as she approached. His hair was damp from a shower, and he wore an army-green USMC T-shirt. Despite that she’d left him sleeping soundly, he appeared the opposite of well rested. His face looked haggard, his eyes bloodshot.
“Hello.” She plopped down on the same step he occupied, leaving space between them. “You look like you had an early morning.”
“I’ve been up since four.” He took his time surveying her. Quiet elongated. “I’m sorry about last night.”
She nodded. “This time, will you promise me that you won’t take any more Vicodin?”
“I promise.”
The magnetism between them pulled Celia in almost tangibly. What she really wanted was to snake her arms around him and hug him fiercely and maybe cry a little with gratitude over the fact that he was fine. “And I promise that I’m going to work on the forgiveness thing,” she said. “I’ll spend time thinking about it, praying about it, and reading verses about it.” She wedged off her flip-flops and rolled her toes underneath her bare feet. “To be honest, I’m not that great at praying and reading verses. But I’m going to give it my best shot. Faith is new and old for me. I’m trying to get used to it again.” Her anklet undulated to a different position, glimmering.
“What do you mean, new and old?”
She explained her childhood of spotty church-going and her adulthood void of belief. “What about you?”
He explained that his parents had taken them to church every Sunday when they were young. He’d been inconsistent about attending through his twenties, but had hung on to prayer.
“Before you went to church with Addie and me, how long had it been since you’d gone?” Celia propped her elbow on her upraised knees and rested her head on her hand to study him.
“Years.”
“Five and a half years, by any chance?”
He moved his attention to the street, frowning.
“Ah. More penance.” It made perfect sense. He was too blunt to suffer hypocrites. It would have chafed him to sit in a house of God while viewing himself as an irredeemable sinner.
“I’ll never get used to that,” he said quietly. “How you know things about me that no one knows.”
“You know things about me, too. The Prius, this house, the tulips you brought me my first day of work. They’re all what I’d have chosen for myself.”
He leaned over to pluck some blades of grass from her lawn. He twined them through his masculine fingers.
“It seems like we’ve both spent a lot of time defining our identity the wrong way,” she said. “I tried to view myself as a good person, to find my worth in Addie. It left me unsettled and empty. You’ve been viewing yourself as a bad person and trying to find your worth in sacrifice and bull riding and in who knows what else.”
The grass kept dipping and twisting between his fingers.
“I think we were both wrong,” Celia continued. “We were measuring our worth by our perceived goodness or sinfulness. But whether we’re good or bad isn’t really the main thing, is it? The thing that matters most is that we’re loved.”
His bright gaze flicked to hers.
“I personally might find forgiveness challenging, but I don’t think God does. Whatever you’ve done in the past, I believe He’s forgiven you, Ty. It’s been paid for. And not by you.”
“If He’s forgiven me, then He’s forgiven you.”
A burning sensation pushed against her eyes. Unshed tears.
“He’s given us a second chance,” he said.
She deliberately shied away from framing that second chance in terms of their relationship. “True. I have a job in a bakery now. You’ll soon have a career raising rodeo stock.” His new direction meant a lot to him, sh
e knew. It gave the retired bull rider in him purpose. “We’re going to do well with our second chances. I know it.”
He dropped the grass and took hold of her hand with his stronger one, lacing their fingers together. She scooted close to him and rested her head on the outside of his upper arm and shoulder. They stayed that way for lovely minutes, the simple comfort of his companionship staggering in its power.
“I’ve got to get to work,” she said at last, regretfully.
“If you’d let me buy you your own bakery, then you could show up for work any time you wanted.”
“Yes, but any other bakery wouldn’t be Cream or Sugar, so I couldn’t love it half as much.” She sat back enough to look at him.
“Are we good?” he asked. “You and me?”
“Last night you wanted me to shoot you to put you out of your misery.”
“And today I want to suffer through another day with you.”
She smiled. “As respectful friends?” The definition she’d touted for so long now seemed a paltry description of their status.
“Fine. Respectful friends.” He cupped the back of her neck and drew her to him. “Who kiss.” Their profiles hovered an inch apart just long enough for her breath to quicken. Then he kissed her, tenderly and firmly, in front of God and Holley.
She scrambled to her feet, scared that if she let it go on she wouldn’t want to end it. “We’re respectful friends who, might I remind you, kiss in secret.”
“Must have slipped my mind.” He stood to his full height, tall and imposing, and pushed his hands into his pockets. “How about I come inside so we can kiss in secret?”
Heart arrhythmia. Near death from heat combustion. “I have to go to work!”
“That must have slipped my mind, too.”
“Go home and get some sleep.” She paused halfway inside her front door. “I mean it. I don’t want to see your face at Cream or Sugar today. Take the day off . . . well, until kindergarten gets out, anyway.”
“You’re bossy, sweet one.”
“You’re maddening, showboat.”
When Celia walked through Cream or Sugar’s back door, she found Donetta waiting for her.
“Have you heard the news?” Donetta asked.
“Good morning.” Celia hung her purse on its hook in the hallway and looped her apron over her head. “Have I heard what news?”
“That Tawny Bettenfield and Vance Amsteeter broke up.”
Celia’s spirits took a nose dive. Her motion stalled, and she had to remind herself to tie the apron around her waist.
“Over the weekend,” Donetta continued. “They broke up. You know what this means, don’t you?”
Celia pulled a hairnet out of the container. From the kitchen, she could hear the rhythmic sound of a wooden spoon against a metal bowl—Jerry stirring cookie dough.
“It means that she’s coming after Ty next,” Donetta stated. “That girl’s been fishing for Ty harder than a bass fisherman in a televised competition.”
What could Celia say? The truth? That Ty might love Tawny back? That the possibility of that turned her blood to ice water?
“Ty has a mighty big soft spot for you, Celia. You better believe that I’ve seen hundreds of girls throw themselves at him over the years but I’ve never seen him take a shine to anyone the way he has to you. And I was around during the years he dated Tawny, remember.” She paused meaningfully, her Texas Ranger earrings trembling with fervor. “I don’t know what’s going on inside that oddball marriage of yours except that you and Ty live in different houses. My advice? Make your marriage into the real thing while you still have the chance.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” said the woman wearing the cowgirl boots Ty had given her.
“That’s what old Edna Sikes said about Wilbur Thompson when she was a young woman. He proposed to her, but she waited too long to sort out her feelings. He married someone else, and he and his new wife went to live the high life in a palace in Boca Raton. Poor Edna has spent every day since in that rickety old house on the hill eating nothing but rhubarb pie and fried okra.”
“I . . . don’t want to end up like that.”
“Of course you don’t! Go claim your man!”
Celia groaned with anguish. “Thanks for you advice, Donetta, but it’s a delicate situation—”
“Rhubarb pie and fried okra, honey. That’s your other option.”
A few hours later Tawny stopped by Cream or Sugar for her chocolate chip cookie. She looked impeccable in a charcoal suit and patent leather heels. She’d parted her dark hair on the side and caught it back in one of those stylishly messy buns—a hairstyle Celia would never be able to achieve with her layered curls, not for as long as she lived.
When Celia informed Tawny that Ty wasn’t in, Tawny did an admirable job of masking her disappointment.
All day long after Tawny’s visit, Celia felt sick to her stomach. For almost eight years, since the time the two had begun dating, Ty had been planning to marry Tawny. And now Tawny was free. “Tawny and I are meant for each other and she knows it,” she remembered him saying. “The next time she kicks a boyfriend to the curb, I’m planning to make my move.”
The agonizing thing was, Ty and Tawny really might be meant for each other. On paper, they added up perfectly. It could be that God had intended them for each other all this time. Celia tried to wrap her mind around that idea while she finished her shift, while she drove home.
Back at the gingerbread house, she exchanged the usual hug and chitchat with Addie, then caught Ty’s eye. “A word, please.”
“Sure.”
She led the way into her bedroom and closed the door.
He glanced at the bed, then back at her, grinning. “Isn’t this a little forward?” he asked, exactly imitating the line he’d given her months ago, when she’d issued him into her bedroom in Corvallis for a private conversation.
So much had changed between then and now. “Very forward,” she agreed.
He looked far better rested than he had earlier. “Did I miss anything good at the shop today?”
“Nope.” Just the revelation of Tawny’s availability. “We were all relieved to have you gone. We didn’t have to beat off women with a stick.”
Laugh lines delved out from his eyes.
She stepped close to him, looping her hands around his neck and tunneling a few fingers into the hair at his nape. She searched the nuances and masculine angles of his face, trying to fathom whether or not he would choose Tawny over her again. Part of her was positive that he would. Part of her dared hope that he wouldn’t. In his eyes, she saw no guarantees either way.
She rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him gently. Then lowered back onto her heels and settled her cheek in the hollow beneath his chin. In answer, he enclosed her tightly in his arms. An overwhelming feeling of heat, of lightning, of crippling affection scorched through her. For right now he was hers. After today? Unknowable.
Closing her eyes, she tried to imprint the moment and tuck it away in her memory.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered.
“Nothing.”
He closed a hand around the back of her head, protectively. “You said this morning that we were good. Are we good?” She could hear a thread of apprehension in his tone.
“We’re good.”
Near dusk the next day, Celia sat beside Addie at the kitchen table while Addie worked on homework. Refreshing October air slid through the window screens. Chicken and vegetables baked in the oven. Celia’s Bible sat on the table in front of her, unopened.
How was it possible that God had deemed her toddler faith strong enough to face the twin tests of forgiveness and Tawny? It wasn’t strong enough. Yet Celia had told Ty she’d study verses and pray, and so she would.
She flipped open her Bible to the concordance. There, she found a tremendous number of scriptures that dealt with forgiveness. She paged to one of them.
Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord,
how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
She lifted her head and frowned at the view of her backyard. Seriously? In real life? God expected people to forgive like that? What about the victim? What about all the wrong done to the victim?
What about, she could almost hear God asking, the wrongs you did to me, Celia?
I know. But—but what about fairness, God?
Instantly, she comprehended the answer. If God had been fair to her, He’d have consigned her to hell.
Unrest stirred within Celia as His voice became louder and clearer. He was asking her to forgive Ty.
She shut the Bible and dashed into the pantry to alphabetize her spices. She couldn’t deal with forgiveness today. Maybe tomorrow.
Turns out, it took six tomorrows before Celia was ready to deal with forgiveness. Near midnight, a week after she and Ty had talked about second chances on her front porch step, Celia pulled the little chain on her bedside lamp. Golden light beamed from it, and through gritty eyes she regarded the swirl of sheets and blankets pooling around her waist.
Ty had continued to show up for work all week. Continued to kiss her each day. Which seemed to indicate that he’d not yet eloped with Tawny. He was still—for the moment—Celia’s secret boyfriend.
Yet God ws not satisfied. Nor was He meek.
She’d kind of been hoping that God would come into her life and fill her with nothing but the sappy pleasure of a Hallmark commercial. Instead, for the past days, He’d been rubbing against her the way a burr that’s stuck to your shirt rubs against skin. At this point, the burr had become so insistent that she couldn’t sleep.
He wanted her to forgive Ty.
She’d spent time earlier today reading more forgiveness verses. “You wicked servant,” she’d read. “I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”
Celia bowed her head and let her eyelids drift closed. The forgiveness God had given her had not come cheap. It had come at a great price, and still He’d had the courage to do it. In light of that, what right did she have to withhold forgiveness from Ty? She, who’d been so undeservedly forgiven? Couldn’t she cobble together just enough bravery to try?