Page 58 of How to Say I Do
Noël’s agony was a lighthouse for mine. I reached for him, slowly, giving him the chance to reject me, but he didn’t. Instead, he collapsed into me, burying his face in my chest as he let out a body-shaking sob.
“Wyatt, I didn’t know. I didn’t know, I didn’tfuckingknow—” He could barely breathe, and he couldn’t get anything else out. He curled into a ball, hyperventilating as he wept.
I murmured quiet nonsense, my lips moving in not-quite-kisses against his hair. He huffed me in like I could sedate him, drawing deep lungfuls of me inside him. I was doing the same thing, taking him in like I could keep a part of him with me forever.
I was too worn out from my self-castigation and my runaway heart to fight this, or to even figure out what this was. And Noël, I thought, was still teetering on his emotional tightrope, his fiancée dumping him on one side and a man who he’d had a no-strings fling with on the other wanting something from him he couldn’t give. Throw a superstar wedding and Fashion Week and a maybe-partnership at his firm in the mix? I wouldn’t still be standing, that’s for sure. I held him as tight as I could, my eyes closed like I could push reality off if I just didn’t look at it.I’m here, I wanted to say.I’m here, if you want me to be.
Eventually, wrapped around each other, we pitched over the edge into an exhausted unconsciousness.
The view from the sunroom is breathtaking, easily my favorite room in the house. Lori likes to read here, or sit on the wicker couch on her laptop while she whips the finances into shape. I played the piano with Liam when he was a baby in this room, using the heels of his chubby feet on top of the keys. I taught Wyatt how to read here, too. Every night, he’d sit in my lap while I scribbled in my journal, until, armed with a fistful of crayons, he asked to help. My firstborn son, my best friend. My pride and joy, always and forever.
Tonight, Lori and I are sharing a bottle of wine and some well-earned peace and quiet. There’s so much change, inside the family and out. Our boys are growing up. Our ranch is evolving, shifting into the outline of what’s to come.
Those worries are for tomorrow, though. Tomorrow, when Wyatt and I will hit the vines and work the earth, and Liam and Lori are going shopping for his high school dance. I’m going to have to talk to my youngest about how to show a woman you love her, and how making love is a commitment with your heart and soul, one you don’t take lightly. I told Wyatt the same thing this year, trying to impress upon him that he is worth everything, and another man needs to recognize that before Wyatt lets him into his heart.
Tomorrow.
I pour another glass of wine for Lori, and we sit back on the couch, arm in arm as the sun sinks. Our eyelids droop, until we’re drifting away.
There’s a whisper of sound, a boot sole sliding on hardwood, wind rustling through a crack in an open door. Then a cold circle of steel bites into my temple, and a cruel voice in my ear hisses, “Shhh—”
I woke roaring, brawling unseen ghosts and brutal nightmares. I tumbled off the couch and hit my knees, my palm to my temple, where I still felt the barrel of a .45 boring into my skin.
Noël flung out his arm, trying to hold on to me. “Wyatt—”
But I’d been in that room long enough. Too long, far, far too long. I stumbled up and careened toward the door, then pinballed to the back porch and out into the yard.
Evening had come and gone. The moon hung swollen in the sky. Night noises floated around me—owls hooting, tree branches creaking, and a soft, lone moo from a distant cow. I breathed in and out, trying to pull myself back to the present day and away from that unspeakable night.
The back door opened and shut. I clenched— No, those were tentative footfalls from a high-end sneaker, not boots.
It wasn’t that night. It was now. Now, and that was Noël.
He stood beside me with his arms around his waist, drawing his cardigan tight like a blanket. He’d always had armor—his personality, his way with words, how he could be dismissive and endearing at the same time—but thanks to his resort-branded wardrobe in Mexico, I hadn’t appreciated how clothes were another layer of defense. I saw it now, though, how those labels were shields he used to gather distance.
“That was the room where it happened.” My voice sounded alien, not of this world. I cleared my throat and tried again. “My dad. My mom. That’s where they—”
Noël laid his hand in the center of my back and turned his face into my shoulder. “Wyatt,” he breathed. “I’m sorry.”
I slung my arm around him. He shifted closer. My heart was still rabbiting. I held Noël until my breathing leveled out, and he stayed glued to me, his fingers looped together behind my back.
When he spoke, his voice was as soft a feather against my skin. “Will you show me the stars? The ones your dad took you to see?”
It was like Cancun all over again. How could one man know me so well? How did he know what to say and what to do to banish that nightmare? I wanted to weep. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to fast-forward to the end of whatever this was and know how it was all going to turn out because I couldn’t handle another hammer swing to my heart. Not again, and not from him.
I took his hand. “It’s a long walk to the back pasture.”
He nodded. “I’m ready.”
We walked for hours, stopping to sit in the fields and watch the stars before we turned around, looping through the vines and block 6 and back to the house. We watched the sunrise on my front porch, still holding hands.
We weren’t saying much. Talking had gotten us twisted up, and words didn’t seem trustworthy anymore. I wanted to believe in him and me and what we were to each other in the quiet moments and the silent spaces, when our hands were locked together and he leaned into me.
I cooked us breakfast and we ate at the kitchen island side by side. Noël’s to-do list lay forgotten. Yesterday seemed far away, like it belonged to two different people.
“We’ve got so much to do.” Noël sighed. “You’re very brave, you know. Taking on a wedding contract like this.”
“Why did you suggest my ranch to Tessa Yarborough?”
