Page 89 of Mountains Divide Us

It was all coming out. But now I wanted Samantha to know. I needed her to so she could understand me.

I needed her to know everything in my head so she’d know how much I loved her and how much I needed her to let me.

“All these years, I’ve been so angry at her. Still am, I s’pose, but I think I understand her better now. She was wrecked when my dad passed away overseas. It was like there was no light on inside anymore. And I always thought she was so damn selfish for that. But now? Now I have you? I understand. If I lost you like she lost him, I’d die inside too.

“It’s no excuse for doin’ drugs and abandonin’ her kid, but I guess it makes more sense now.”

“Baby, I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that. Man, she missed out on the best son in the world.”

I smiled. “Yeah, she did. You know, Mama K and my dad, Eugene, beg me to be in their lives. They call and write. They love me, but I never let ’em in. But do you know, since our first date, I’ve been rethinkin’ things, tryin’ to understand why I pushed ’em away for so long? You did that for me. You made me wanna be loved again.”

“I did that? How?”

“You made me laugh. You made me want somethin’ different than my stupid rules, day in and day out. There’s a light inside you. You’re like the sun, and you warm me up. All this time, I’ve been tryin’ to prove to you that I’m not too old, but I think I proved it to myself.” I laughed under my breath. “I’m old, Samantha, but I ain’t too old for you. I’m just right. And you’re just right for me.”

She bolstered herself, straightening her shoulders and taking a deep breath, but she didn’t take her eyes away from mine. “I can’t have children, Frank. I will never have them. The miscarriage took the use of my only properly working ovary and fallopian tube, and it damaged my uterus beyond repair. The only reason I opted to not have them removed was so I wouldn’t go into early menopause, but I may still need to have a hysterectomy at some point. My body still makes hormones, so I have a period, but I am infertile.”

I squeezed her hands in mine, and tears began to well in the corners of her eyes. “Stop that now. None of that matters to me. I’m so fuckin’ sorry you had to go through what you did. I’m sorry for what you lost, but it doesn’t change a thing for me. It doesn’t make me love you less. And I do, Samantha. I love you.”

“But you said you wanted—”

“Yeah, I know what I said. I wish it’d never come outta my mouth, but you never bothered to ask me what my definition of a family is. Yes, it’s true, I said I wanted a family, and I do, but the only person I need is you. Two make a family, don’t they? And there’s other ways to have kids in our lives, if that’s what we choose. It don’t matter to me how we do it. As long as we do it together, that’s all I care about. Think about it. Next year, I’ll be fifty. If we could get pregnant and had a kid right now, I’d be almost seventy years old by the time they graduated high school. No, I think there’s a better way.”

She released a huge breath. “Good. I’m glad to hear you say that.”

I smiled, but I was confused. How had we gone from despairing Samantha to this? Had I missed something in the night?

“You’re glad?”

“Yeah,” she said, sliding off the couch and crawling into my lap. “I noticed something about you recently; you became really fixated on finding Murphy.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, it’s a personality flaw. When I get somethin’ in my head, I just can’t let go. Like you.” I kissed her nose.

“I do that, too, sometimes. Obviously.” She rolled her eyes but then smiled. “But I have another question.”

“Okay,” I said carefully. “What?”

“Could you ever believe in true love?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Girl, I believe in it now. I’m lookin’ at it.”

The smile on her face blinded me. It put this hopefulness in my heart that had me wanting to move mountains to be with her.

“I love you, too, Frank. I think I’ve loved you since our first kiss on my Gramps’s front porch. I was so worried about letting you down. I was terrified of disappointing you if you knew about me not being able to have kids, but after Murphy, I think maybe everything I went through happened for a reason. I was meant to come to Wisper, and I was meant to meet you. To love you.”

Pulling her even closer, I kissed her. “You really think that? You really think we were meant for each other? This is like somethin’ outta your books, ain’t it?”

“Yeah. It is. And I do believe you were meant for me. Wanna know why?”

“I’m on pins and needles, darlin’.”

She wrapped her arms around my neck. “My parents hate each other, but they still managed to raise a good kid. Imagine what two people who love each other like we do could give to kids who need a family?”

“You read my mind,” I said, and you couldn’t have wiped the smile off my face for anything.

She loved me, and she made me feel like everything bad that had ever happened in my life was worth it. Every lonely night. Shit—every lonely day. Every dream I’d had that I thought had died.

In that moment, I felt like I was sixteen again with my first girlfriend. And what did a young man do when he found the girl he wanted to be with forever?

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