Page 48 of Bride for Keeps

Her eyes glowed something like golden, wet with tears, but her mouth wasn’t that horrible desolate frown from the past few days, months if he was honest with himself. And boy was it time to be honest with himself, and her.

“I am so sorry for shutting you out. I know I hurt you, and I couldn’t see past my own hurt to see it in you.”

“And I didn’t tell you I was hurting. Not…really. We retreated into our shells, and I blamed you and you…”

“Being around you hurt, because I wanted… You are life,mylife, and I didn’t want to have to figure out how to live a life where I wasn’t his. But that was stupid. Because I’m yours, and you’re mine.”

Her mouth curved at that. “We should get that tattooed on our foreheads.”

He grinned in response. “Sierra, for you, I’d get it tattooed anywhere.”

But she looked down, some of that humor leaving her face. Still he held her, and he waited, becausethatwas marriage, and he was learning to be a hell of a lot better at it.

*

Sierra swallowed atthe nerves coating her throat. Just because she’d decided what to do didn’t make it easy.

She just had to say it. It couldn’t be worse than losing him. It couldn’t be. Itwouldn’tbe. She could choose to make it what she wanted it to be. “I don’t think I’m good enough for you.”

“I think that’s bullshit,” he returned emphatically.

She raised her gaze to meet his. She liked this new fierceness to him, and she knew she’d find some of her own. Becausethatwas love. She’d teach him fun. He’d teach her fierce. And so on, forever and ever, till death did they part.

Because she and he would choose to make this work. Here. Now. Doubts were for voicing, for talking through. Then they didn’t have any power.

“But your family doesn’t think it’s bullshit, and I know they’re your family, and I’m not saying you have to cut them off, but it’s hard to believe in yourself when you’re constantly dressed down by someone you know the person you love loves. If that makes sense.”

He listened to her carefully, and she knew the difference because he didn’t always. She was under no illusion that he’d start being perfect. She certainly tuned him out when he got going on about something medical she didn’t understand, but maybe if they learned to recognize it in each other, ask for the attention to be paid…

It was daunting all theworkthat would need to be put into her marriage now. When she’d said ‘I do’ to Carter she thought it would be fun and easy. She thought love was a cure-all for life’s problems.

Cure-alls didn’t exist, but love did cushion the blows. It held you up and kissed you and made you laugh, and if she had to work to have those good things when the hard times inevitably rolled around again, and again, it’d be worth it.

She’d somehow come to believe in the course of these past twenty-four hours it would be worth it. Some mix of Carter’s love, and Kaitlin pointing out Sierra already was a better version of herself, and then Beckett coming home and scooping up Ellie and kissing Kaitlin and looking at them both with suchawe.

She wanted that.

“I’m not sure how to handle my family,” Carter said, pained. “I wish I had a pill I could prescribe them to make them not be so hard. I wish…”

“I know it isn’t easy for you not to know exactly what to do.”

He smiled sheepishly. “Transparent, am I?”

“We should try to be.”

He nodded solemnly. “You’re right. Come on.” He ushered her over to the couch and they sat, curling into each other, reminding Sierra of those early days of marriage when they’d sat together and watched a show or made out happily until he’d scoop her up and take her to bed.

“I don’t have answers for my family, but we’ll find them. Together. I think everything that’s happened… It’s certainly made me aware there are times I need to, andcan,say no to my mother. To my father. I felt for so long I owed them this perfect son, and I’m not even surewhyI felt that way. Maybe it was just easy because it meantIdidn’t have to make decisions. I didn’t have to risk failure. I’m not sure I would have ever realized that if we hadn’t talked last night.”

“It was hard, and I’m sorry I ran away. You were right. I do it when it matters. When I think failing will hurt more than anything. But that’s silly, because it’s not like it’s life or death. I need to be stronger.” She reached out and touched his cheek. It was bristled with a day’s worth of growth now and he looked a little rumpled.

It felt right somehow, her perfectly tidy husband all rumpled and messed up. Because love meant being uncomfortable sometimes and not doing or looking or feeling like you’d choose to.

He grabbed her hand and pulled it from his face, then grabbed her other and held them together between his, so earnest and that fierceness still. “I want you to tell me, when it hurts. When you need me. I need you to tell me, even if I don’t get it. Even if you need to knock some sense into me. I need help, Sierra. Help to get it right. I never thought I did, but I can’t figure it all out on my own.”

“You’re right. I thought love would be easy, effortless, but that isn’t it at all. It’s the thing you work the hardest for because it’s the most worth it. But I need you to tell me when you’re hurt, too. I tried to reach out at first when you’d found out about your father, but you were so cold, so shut off. Then I found out you didn’t confide in me. Youliedto me and let me find out at that awful meeting, and I just… It hurt. It wounded me. I was afraid to say something because I thought that would end it, and then it ended anyway so that was stupid. And I know… Lookingback, I know you wouldn’t have pushed me further away if I’d told you it hurt me.”

“But maybe I would have,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Because I was so sure I had to figure out how I felt, file it away and know what to do before I could talk it over with you. With anyone. I didn’t want you to have to… I thought it would be wrong of me to lay that at your feet.”

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