Page 33 of Bride for Keeps

“He doesn’t think you’re trash, and what’s more important, I don’t.”

“Is it more important when you respect him as much as you do?”

A hard question to untangle because he didn’t respect his father, or non-father, the way he had. He wasn’t sure it had ever been respect, exactly. Awe. Yes. He’d wanted people to react to him like they reacted to Gerald. Was that respect? Were respecting him and loving her mutually exclusive?

“Come eat,” he said instead of figuring that all out. His father didn’t have anything to do with this. This was about him and Sierra.

She glared up at him, though there was something other than anger in her expression. He couldn’t read it—reading expressions was not his strong suit—but even beyond that he thought she was trying very hard to hide whatever it was.

“You can’t keep me here forever,” she said, not making a move to get off the couch.

“No, I have tomorrow off work, but then I’ll have to be back at the hospital.”

She rolled her eyes, flinging the blanket off her lap and getting to her feet. “Of course.”

“Was I working too much? Is that it? Getting too wrapped up in the hospital? Because that’s an easy fix, Sierra.”

“No, that wasn’t it, jackass. I wasn’t afraid to ask you to stay home. I’m not afraid to ask for what I want.”

He mulled that over in his head. He’d always thought that true. Sierra was so forthright and, well, volatile at times, he’d always figured if something was wrong, if she needed something, she’d voice it.

But clearly that wasn’t true, no matter what she said about herself. Because there was something he’d done or something she’d needed that he hadn’t given her, something that was making herunhappy—miserable was the word she’d used—and she refused to tell him what it was.

She sat down to the soup and sighed, but she started to eat so he did the same. He watched her while he did. She didn’t look up at him. Not once. She was focused on the soup.

The thing was, he’d been in a kind of fugue state almost these past few months. They’d barely interacted and that was all on him. In trying to fix things, in wanting her to explain what went wrong, he wasn’t ignoring the fact he’d made some grave mistakes. But he was trying to understand why it had gotten so bad.

Sitting across from her didn’t feel wrong. He hadn’t suddenly woken up to find a stranger. She was the same as she ever was. The woman he loved with all of his being. He’d treated her wrong, yes, but that hadn’t meant he didn’t feel the same.

In fact, it wasn’t her at all.Hehad changed some. He was a little different. He wasn’t sure why, maybe finding out his life had been based on a lie made him pay a little more attention to the world around him, to more than McArthurs and what he was supposed to do. Even more attention to the woman who’d been his not supposed to—that he’d promised to love and cherish forever anyway.

She loved him. She’d said so herself. But something was missing, and she didn’t want to fight for it. She didn’t want to dissect it and figure out what it was.

There was a kind of pattern in that. Subtle, definitely, because Sierra always seemed so confident. She’d never withered under his mother’s cruelties. She’d oftentimes given right back. Carter had assumed it was because she was secure and didn’t care what his mother thought, which had made it easy not to intervene.

But Sierra had a habit of giving up on hard things she actually wanted. He hadn’t noticed it over the past few months, but there was a pattern in their year together. An art scholarship he’d urged her to apply for—she’d gotten halfway through the application then given up on it before they’d been married. She’d quit helping her sister out with a project at the florist shop where Kaitlin worked when they’d bickered too much last summer.

He’d known all those things separately, but he’d never put them together. Doing so now was painful. Not just because he’s missed it before, but because he saw a hint of vulnerability in the woman he’d seen as strong and capable and a storm no one dare cross.

But she needed crossing. She needed more from him.

Because he wasn’t letting her walk away from this when he knew she loved him, when he knew she was afraid of reaching out for good things.

They just had to find some better way to communicate these things. Some way to talk that gave her the freedom to either realize it about herself or be willing to acknowledge it or whatever it was that was holding her back.

“I had this friend in college,” he began, trying to sound casual. “English wasn’t his first language, though he was a proficient enough speaker. Still, sometimes he’d really struggle with a word or concept. That reminds me of us sometimes. Like we’re speaking different languages.”

“Gee, sounds like a perfect couple. We should totally stay married and keep making each other miserable!”

It shouldn’t be funny, but he’d always found Sierra’s somewhat scathing sense of humor just that. Even in the darkest of circumstances. But the smile died slowly becauseshehad never made him miserable. “If people never tried to understand each other, we’d be awfully isolated and lonely.”

She scowled into her soup. “I’m familiar with those feelings,” she muttered.

“So, maybe we should try to understand each other. Maybe we should talk about that instead of run away from it.”

Chapter Nine

Having hope sucked,and Sierra wanted to hurt Carter for trying to infuse it back into her. Hope only ever made people miserable. Dad had hoped he’d make enough money to be comfortable and not have to work so hard. Mom had hoped Dad wouldn’t take all the stress of trying to make ends meet on himself. Luke had hoped Dad would be kinder, gentler about his dyslexia. Kaitlin had hoped Carter would notice her and marry her.

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