Winning His Heart
“I never met your dad,” Kayla said.
“No. I think he died a year or two before your family moved here. Completely unexpected. He seemed in every way like a big, strong guy. He had a heart attack. It was instant. He was sitting there having his supper, joking around, and he got a surprised look on his face and keeled over.”
“Oh, David.”
“No sympathy, remember?” he said. “But keep that in mind. Bad genetics.”
He said it lightly, but there was something in his eyes that was not light at all. As if she had been considering him as partner material, that should dissuade her.
How could she address that without making it seem as if she were looking at him as partner material?
She didn’t have to address it because he went on, his voice quiet, “In the last little while, I’ve actually felt grateful that he didn’t live to see my mom like this.”
She wanted to say Oh, David, again, but didn’t. She was so aware that he was giving something of himself to her, sharing a deeply private side that she suspected few people, if any, had ever seen.
“My dad,” he went on, “would have been just like that policeman. He knew right from wrong and he taught me that, and he didn’t care if I was happy about it or not. My happiness was secondary to my being a good person.”
“Mine, too,” she said, “now that I think about it.”
“It’s nice to see you looking so happy, Kayla,” David said quietly, as if they had spoken Kevin’s name out loud, as if he knew how desperate she had often felt in her marriage.
She felt as if the tears were going to start again, so she bit the side of her cheek and buried her face in her dog’s fur and said nothing.
“It’s your turn,” he said quietly, as if it were an order. And then, as if she might have dismissed it the first time, he said it again, even more firmly. “Kayla, it’s your turn for happiness.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HER TURN FOR HAPPINESS?
“I feel guilty when I’m happy,” Kayla blurted out.
David nodded. “I remember feeling that way after my dad died. How dare the world hold laughter again?”
She nodded. That was how she felt exactly, but it was layered with even deeper confusion because her feelings about her husband’s death were not all black and white.
“But then I remembered something my dad said to me,” David said thoughtfully. “My dad said you could never be guilty and happy at the same time. Or afraid and happy at the same time. That’s why he was such a stickler for doing the right thing. That’s what he saw as the stepping stones to building true happiness. And that’s what he would have wanted me to do. To choose happiness. And that’s what I want you to do, too.”
She stared at David. He could have said a million things, and yet the thing he had said was so right.
Despite herself, she shared something else.
“David?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m scared of happiness. Remember you said wishes are for children? I’m afraid that the things you wish for just set you up for disappointment. And heartbreak.”
They had arrived in front of her house, and he glanced at his and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, went and sat in his wet clothes on her front step. He patted the place beside him.
“It was awful, wasn’t it?” he asked.
And she was going to say “what?” as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, but she did know, and she could not bear to bring dishonesty between them.
She had known this time was coming when they would have to address the history between them.
And she had expected that exploration would be like there was an unexploded mine buried somewhere in the unexplored ground between them.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Being married to Kevin was awful in so many ways. I mean, there were good things, too, don’t get me wrong.”
“Tell me,” he said.
And she knew he didn’t mean the good things. She ordered herself not to, but she could not disobey the command in his voice.
And so she found herself telling him. Slowly at first, like water that was seeping out a hole in a dam, the steady, small flow making the hole larger until the water was shooting through it with force, faster and faster.
She told him about the late nights waiting for Kevin, not knowing where he was, about the terrible houses they had lived in and the bills not paid. She talked about working as a waitress and a cleaning lady, about babysitting children and raking leaves, trying to hold it all together long after she should have let it fall apart.
And the more she worked at holding it together the more Kevin seemed to sabotage everything she had done, lose interest in her, treat her shabbily, at first in the privacy of their own home, and then in front of other people.
“Sometimes,” she said, finally, “I feel relieved that he died.”
It should have been her biggest secret. But it wasn’t. There was one left, still.
She waited for him to react with horror to this revelation that she had never admitted out loud to anyone.
Instead, they sat silently on the front steps with the sun pouring down hot on their heads, drying their clothes so that the lemon stains and wrinkles would probably never come out. Her dog snoozing in her arms, Kayla was aware she did not feel judged at all.
There. They were out. Her shameful and most closely guarded secrets. It was like a mine exploding, but instead of feeling destructive, it felt like a relief.
Before it exploded she waited. And wondered. And every step was guarded. And every breath was held.
Suddenly it felt as if she could breathe.
And suddenly it felt as if she were free to walk across the field that was her memory without being caught in an explosion.
Instead of rejecting her, David put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into the solidness of his body.
And Kayla, in that moment of shared strength and sunshine, realized it had not been so much Kevin she had withheld forgiveness from.
In fact, she had forgiven Kevin again and again and again.
Except when he had died, taking with him any chance that they would find their way, that the love she still had for him would somehow see them through, would fix things—then she had felt angry and beyond forgiveness.
Betrayed by his carelessness in a way she could no longer fix. But now she could see most of her anger was at her own powerlessness.
She realized that more so than with Kevin, it was herself she had never forgiven. She had never forgiven herself for her own bad choices, for making everything worse instead of better.
But there, with David’s arm around her shoulder, she felt strong and warm, and for the first time in very, very long, optimistic.
And not in a superficial way. Not about starting an ice cream business or saving a house from ruin. She felt changed in a way that went to her soul.
“Why did you marry him?” David asked, his voice hoarse with caring, knowing instinctively somehow there was one last thing she needed to tell.
She shuddered. The last secret. The thing no one had ever known. Not her parents. Or Kevin’s. Not her best girlfriend.
“I was pregnant.”
“Shoot,” he said softly.
“You would have been proud of him,” she said. “He wanted us to get married. He wanted to do the honorable thing.”
But wasn’t this also what she had to forgive herself for? That she had accepted his attempt at honor instead of love? That she had allowed it all to go ahead, when there had been a million signs that maybe it would have been better to let it go, even if there was a baby, maybe especially if there was a baby?
“I miscarried the baby a month after we were married. But I still thought I could save Kevin,” she whispered. “After that summer, when he changed so much, I thought I could save him.”
This was met with silence.
“Love conquers all,” she said with a trace of self-derision. “We’d only been together that way once. After that little girl drowned, he was in so much pain. I was comforting him. One thing led to another.”
There. Of all of it. That was the thing she had never forgiven herself for.
David’s hand found hers, and he squeezed, but then he didn’t let go.
“You knew,” she whispered. “You knew it was going to be a disaster. You knew Kevin was a runaway train that nothing could stop. You told me not to marry him.”
“After that little girl died, it was as if I started seeing Kevin for who he really was,” he said, his voice ragged with regret. “He was in pain after it happened. But it wasn’t about her. It was about how it was affecting him. He begged me not to tell the investigators that he hadn’t been paying attention that day.
“But I had to do what I had to do. And I could never see him the same after that. I didn’t see ‘carefree’ anymore. I saw ‘careless.’ I didn’t see ‘fun-loving.’ I saw ‘irresponsible.’ I didn’t see ‘charming.’ I saw ‘self-centered.’
“And still.” His voice cracked. “If he would have once expressed remorse for that day, I would have loved him all over again.”
His voice firmed and became resolute. “But he didn’t. It was always all about him. It gave birth to this cynicism in me that has never been altered. That people will always act in their own self-interest. Myself included. I’m sorry, Kayla. I’m sorry to talk about your husband that way.”
But despite the things they both had said, they sat there bathed in more than sunlight.
They sat there bathed in truth and the special bond of a burden shared. They had shared the burden of loving someone who was grievously flawed and all the choices that entailed.
For Kayla, hopeful and romantic, this had meant moving closer. For David, pragmatic and guarded, moving away.
She had judged David’s choice, and even hated him for it, but now she wondered if it hadn’t been the right one after all. He had saved himself.
And she had lost herself. She had become something she had never been before: cynical and hard and a survivor.
But had she really?
Because sitting here with the warmth of the sun and the warmth of his shoulder being equally comforting, she realized she had never really stopped being that softhearted person who rescued impossible men, and old houses and orphaned dogs.
She had just tried to hide all that was soft about her, because it felt as if it left her open to hurt.
But now she felt soft all over again. She felt soft to her soul and the hard armor around her heart had fallen away, leaving it exposed.
And acknowledging she was those things—someone who believed, still, in the power of love—did not feel like a weakness.
It felt like a homecoming.
Kayla felt as close to David as she had ever felt to another human being. Close and connected.
She tilted her head and looked at him. Really looked. He turned and looked back at her. She saw the most amazing thing in his eyes.
Wonder.
As if he knew he had seen her at her rawest and most real, and still liked what he saw.
In David’s eyes she saw a truth that stole her breath away. If she were standing with her back against the wall, with the enemy coming at her with knives in their teeth, he would stand beside her.
If they were on a ship that was going down in a stormy sea, he would make sure she was safe before he got off.
If the building were burning and filled with smoke, he would be the one finding her hand and leading her out into the cool, clean air.
He was the one who could lead her to life.
Her newly softened heart was so filled with gratitude that she leaned toward him. She did not know how else to express the magnitude of what she was feeling, what she was awakening to, what she knew of herself that she had not known ten minutes ago.
Kayla found the courage to do what she had wanted to do since the moment she had first laid eyes on him again, after the bee had stung her.
If she’d been dying, she wanted to taste him, to feel the soft firmness of his lips tangling with her own.
Why would she not feel the same way about living?
He read her intent. And instead of backing away, he moved his hand to the small of her back and brought her in to himself. He tilted his head down so that it was easy for her to reach his lips.
And then they touched.
She touched the soft openness of her lips to the hard line of his. Only his lips were not hard.
Not at all.
The texture was velvety and plump, like a peach, warmed by the sun and ready to be picked.
At first the kiss was gentle, a welcome. But it quickly deepened to reflect the hunger between them, a long-ago fire that still had embers glowing.
Kayla’s sense of being alive intensified thrillingly. Her blood felt as if it were on fire. It was more than she remembered from that night long ago, because they were both more.
More mature, more aware, more experienced. And it felt as if they both brought everything that they were to that kiss, left nothing behind, gave it all. Heart and soul and blood and bone. Hurts and triumphs and all of life.
Her dog woke in her arms, getting squished between them.
Bastigal growled, and then barked and then snapped at David’s hand, missing by a hair.
They drew apart. Kayla laughed nervously. “I’m sorry. He’s never done that before.”
But did David look faintly relieved as he reeled back from her and ran a hand through his sun-dried dark hair?
He was a man who liked a plan. How would he react to the spontaneous passion that had just erupted between them?
It was an earthquake, and he could feel something shifting between them, or the shift in her heart. He let go of Kayla’s hand and stood up abruptly. “I should go home and change.”
At first she thought he was rejecting her after all. But she couldn’t have been more wrong.
“But then I’ll come back,” he said softly, watching her steadily, letting her know he had seen her and he was not afraid and not scared off by what he had seen, or by what had just leaped up between them, igniting both their worlds.
“You will?”
David nodded. “I need to fix that chair in your kitchen. When I was standing on it, reaching the ceiling, it wobbled pretty badly. I don’t want you to get hurt the next time you stand on it to pour something down HAL’s throat.”
But with her newly opened heart, she saw it wasn’t about the chair, really. Maybe it wasn’t about her or that kiss, as much as she hoped, either. She saw the look he cast toward his own house.
Something in her said to let him go—but it was the old part, that part of her that somehow had stopped believing that good things could happen and that it was okay to be happy.
The newer part felt stronger. Kisses aside, Kayla could see David wanted to have an excuse not to spend time in his mother’s house.
He did not have a home to go to, at least not the one next door. She realized he was looking for reasons not go back to the house he had grown up in, not the way it was now.
And whether he knew it or not, or could acknowledge it or not, something about what had just passed between them had let him know she would stand by him.
That she had his back.
Just as she had become so aware that he would stand by her, no matter what.
Kayla had seen the pain and desperation in him this morning. She had nearly wept when he had spoken about how the way his mother was now was threatening to wipe out everything that had happened before.
And she saw the truth. This morning she had been a different person than the one she was now. When had she become that person? The one who would turn away from someone in need to protect herself?
That was what the hardness inside her had done. That was what the bitterness of her marriage had done. That was what being so unforgiving had done.
But those were things that had happened to her. Only she could decide if they could change who she really was.
Really, did anything change the essence of who a person was?
Once, a long time ago, she and David and some other kids had hiked in to Cambridge Falls, not far from town.
But when they had gotten there, someone had left garbage along the edges of the jade-green pool at the bottom of the falls.
She had been incensed, but David had simply picked up the trash and stowed it in his backpack.
“It’s temporary,” he’d said, seeing her face. “It can’t change this.” He gestured at the beauty of the fall cascading into the greenness of the glade.
“Even if I didn’t pick it up,” he’d insisted softly, “five years from now, or twenty, or a hundred, the garbage would be gone, and this would remain.”
This would remain. The essence. Water hammering down over moss-covered rocks created a cooling mist and prisms of light, falling into a pool that was the deepest shade of green she had ever seen. Like emeralds.
Like her eyes, David had said.
The essence: what was at the heart of each thing in the universe.
And Kayla felt the garbage had kept her from seeing hers. Now, just as then, David had seen past the garbage, to who she really was.
And had allowed her to glimpse it again, too.
Kayla could feel something fresh and hopeful unfolding in herself. And it made her want to be a better person, even if that meant taking risks.
Surely she could trust herself to be the friend David needed just as he had been the friend she needed this morning?
Or could they ever be just friends after what had just transpired between them?
She drew in a steadying breath at the thought. She remembered his mother in her pink winter boots and her gaping nightgown, and him sleeping on the lawn.
She guessed he was sleeping out there, not just because he didn’t like it inside the house, but in case his mother got out again.
He was a warrior protecting his camp, and somehow Kayla had fallen inside that ring of protection.
The tenderness she felt for this strong, strong man who was having his every strength tried nearly overwhelmed her.
Kayla drew in a deep breath. If she could help him get through that, she was going to, even if it meant putting herself in danger.
And being around him did make the very air feel as if it were charged with danger. She was just way too aware of him right now: the rain-fresh scent of the lake clinging to him, his wet shirt and shorts molding the fine cut of his muscles.
And then there was the way his lips had felt on her finger. And then on the tenderness of her lips.
In fact, the place where his lips had tasted her and touched her and claimed her felt, still, tingling, faintly singed as if she had been branded by the electricity of a storm.
“I’d appreciate it if you could fix that chair,” she said. “You’re right. I would have stood on it to put the cream in HAL.”
He nodded, knowing.
“And while you fix the chair, I’ll see if I can rescue any of the cream from that machine. We might have homemade dandelion ice cream yet today.”
She was pleased that her voice sounded calm and steady, a complete lie given the hard beating of her heart as she recognized a new start, a second chance, a return to herself.
A homecoming.
He shot her a look. “Stay away from HAL,” he warned.
“I’m going to rescue my ice cream from the jaws of HAL,” she muttered, and heard his snort of reluctant laughter.
“Okay, but don’t do it until I get there.”
She should have protested at his controlling behavior. Instead, knowing it might be a weakness, she savored someone caring for her.
And she savored caring for someone right back.
“Aye-aye, David,” she said, and gave him a mock salute. His grin was sudden, warm, spontaneous, completely without guards; it was the cherry on top of the sundae of what they’d just shared.
“I prefer the French pronunciation,” he said, “Duh-veed.”
It was an old, old joke between them, a leftover from their high school days, a reminder of the people they both had been, and perhaps, could be again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“AYE-AYE, DUH-VEED,” she said, and her laughter felt rich and warm and real as she watched him cross the lawn between their two houses. Then she turned and went around her walkway to her back door, Bastigal tucked close to her heart. She was aware of the dog’s heart beating. But even more aware of the beating of her own.
Life.
She was aware she was alive, and glad of it.
A little while later, feeling joyous with her dog back in his little basket watching her, Kayla tried to decide what to wear and what to do with her hair.
Momentarily, guilt niggled at her. What was she doing?
But she brushed the guilt aside and decided right then and there that she had had enough guilt to last her a lifetime. David had said guilt and happiness could not coexist. He had said fear and happiness could not coexist.
When was the last time she had just taken the moments life gave her as a gift? In the past days, lying out under the stars, getting sprayed with yellow globs, swimming fully clothed in the chilly and refreshing waters of the lake she had felt something she had not felt for so long.
Happy.
And then when she had given in to the temptation to taste his lips?
Alive.
And if it was some kind of sin to want that feeling, to chase it, even though it was connected to him, well, then she was going to be a sinner.
She had tried for sainthood for the first twenty-some-odd years of life. She was going to try playing for the other side.
And so, she looked at her wardrobe with a critical eye, and she passed over the knee-length golfing shorts and the button-down blouse.
She put on, instead, shorty-shorts and a tailored plaid top that she left one button more than normal undone on.
She scooped up her hair into a loose bun, letting the tendrils fall out and curl around her face. She dusted her eyes with makeup that made them look like they were the color of emeralds, and she dabbed lip gloss onto her lips and admired how puffy and shiny they looked.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She felt attractive and womanly for the first time in how long?
“What the heck are you doing?” she whispered.
Given the hunger David Blaze made her feel, and the happiness, what the heck was she doing?
It was obvious. She was playing with fire. And she was startled by how much she liked it, especially when she let him into her house a half hour later and saw the deep male appreciation darken the brown of his eyes to near black.
And then he turned his attention, swiftly, to her rickety chair, and to the heap of tools he had unearthed at his mother’s house and brought with him.
For a moment she felt an old wound resurfacing: his turning his attention so deliberately away from her made her feel the same way she had felt after he had kissed her all those years ago, and then turned away.
Suddenly, she wondered about that. Had he turned away then because he felt too little? Or because he had felt too much?
She reminded herself that she had invited him here for him, not for her.
And for now she was going to free herself from all that; she was just going to enjoy the moment. She would navigate the other stuff when it surfaced.
And hope that it didn’t blow everything around it to smithereens!
“There,” he said, a half hour later, righting the chair, resting his hand on the back of it and looking supremely satisfied with himself when it did not wobble. “Done.”
“That’s great, David. Hey, do you think you could mow my lawn? I’ve let it get too deep. I can’t even push the mower through it.”
He shot her a look like he was going to protest. She deliberately busied herself rescuing the remains of the Dandy Lion ice cream, then snuck a look at him.
As she suspected, David looked nothing but relieved that she had given him another excuse not to go home.