Page 89 of Plum

“You can turn around and go back where you came from.”

“I’m here to fix the floor. I said I would. Are you going to let us in?”

“I don’t need your help.”

“I’m told fixing a sagging floor is a slow job. Takes a long time. I’m going to have to screw the jacks up a turn or two every month or so.”

“I said my piece yesterday.”

“I’m going to keep coming back, Jo-Beth. You’re my home. You are where I belong.”

The wind kicks up, and I have to hold my T-shirt down so I don’t flash the whole crew. Truth be told, I’m happy to have something to do with my hands. I don’t know what to do or say.

I can’t give in. My heart can’t take it.

But oh, hell. My heart can’t take turning him away, either.

I sink down on the top step, tug my shirt down over my knees. Adam’s closer now. He’s maybe three feet away, and we’re face to face.

“How am I supposed to believe you?” I ask quietly, and Gus and the rest have the good graces to take a few steps back and start chatting among themselves.

“You don’t have to. Just let me in. I’ll take you where you are, Jo-Beth. I’ll take whatever you’ll give. Let me in.”

God, it sounds so perfect, so impossible to be true. “Bullshit. You stood there in that ballroom and said you could ignore what I was. Like you were doin’ me a favor.” Echoes of that hurt unfurl, tearing up my insides. “That ain’t takin’ me as I am. That’s conditional. As long as you can pretend I ain’t who I am, everything’s fine. But what happens next time you can’t ignore who I am?”

“Are you planning on throwing it in my face again?”

I bristle, about to get pissed, but something in his look dissuades me. There’s torment in his blue eyes. I cut him deep when I rubbed Dan in his face.

I rug my palms down my shirt, uneasy with the power I have to hurt him. “No. And I am sorry I did that. But you didn’t answer my question.”

He sighs, low and long. “Shit, Jo-Beth. I don’t know how to accept it.” His face darkens, and he shifts. “I don’t know how to be okay with the fact you were alone so long, and you could have been hurt—shit, youwerehurt—and what pointless shit was I doing?” There’s real distress in his voice, and even though I’m still mad and wary and heartbroken, I want to soothe him.

I ease over so there’s room for him to sit. “You didn’t know me then. It’s not on you.”

He waits a second, as if to make sure I mean it, then he lowers himself to the step beside me. “It still makes me crazy. And that’s not helping me or you, and I know it.”

“I ain’t gonna feel bad about who I am. Not for you or anyone.”

He grabs my hand, drags it to his mouth, pressing kisses on my knuckles. “You got me wrong. I don’t want you to ever feel bad. God, Jo-Beth, I love you.”

“Why? Why me then?”

He gazes down, burning me with those blue eyes. “Because you’re tough. You’re a fighter, and you’ve been a fighter your whole life, and you’re still standing. I want to be that strong. You make me want to be my own man. You make me believe I can be. You’re real, Jo-Beth. I want to be real, too.”

I want to ask him to say those words again. And then again. Slowly so I can remember them. My skin heats until the brisk wind feels good on my bare legs.

He’s wrong about being strong. I’m weak for this man. Maybe it ain’t a bad kind of weak, though. Maybe soft’s a better word.

I am soft for this man.

I rise to my feet, still holding his hand, and jerk my chin at the men congregating under my acorn tree. “You runnin’ with Steel Bones now?”

The flood of relief, the pure joy on Adam’s face is almost enough to turn me to jelly, but my pride won’t let me leap into his arms.

“Seems so. Are you letting us in?”

“I guess.”

---