Page 41 of His Christmas Star
The words Caleb said came back to me, and I let out a breath. He was right. I had lived thirty-two years without ever caring who my birth father was. Sure, I thought Daddy Nash was my grandfather, but I also knew my birth father was missing in action. Why I cared now, I didn’t know. Maybe it was because my father figure was gone, and now, I had no one to love.
I glanced to my left and sighed. I had someone to love, but I couldn’t find a way to tell her. I couldn’t find a way to tell Tobi Star that I loved her and wanted to be with her. I was afraid she’d say no. Logically, I knew it was dumb to let fear be the reason I didn’t get the girl, but no one said love was logical. Everything about love is emotional, and right now, I didn’t know if I was enough for her.
“Are you going to flop around like a fish out of water all night?” she asked, her words sleepy.
“Sorry,” I whispered, rubbing her shoulder to quiet her again. “Go back to sleep. I’ll go out in the other room.”
She grasped my hand with hers and didn’t let go. “I didn’t say you had to leave. I was just wondering why you weren’t sleeping.”
“Too many thoughts in my head, I guess.”
She rolled over to face me. “I’m probably to blame for that. I’m sorry I lost it out there,” she said, pointing at the wall before she dropped her hand and her head in shame. “I wasn’t expecting that tsunami to wash over me the way it did.”
I tipped her chin up and held it until she made eye contact. “You don’t have to apologize, baby. I completely understood that your grief and anger were finally directed to the right place. You were finally able to release all of that pent-up pain in your chest because you knew the truth. You knew why your brother died. I felt the same way.”
“I’m just so sorry, Joe. For everything. For the way I was. The way I treated you. The cruel things I said. My stomach and heart hurt so much because of the way I treated you.”
“Shh,” I said, holding my finger to her lips. “I’m not upset, okay? We let it go, remember?”
“We let it go before we found out the truth! Now that we know the truth, everything changes.”
“How does it change, Tobi? I don’t understand.”
She rolled to her back and held her hand to her forehead, the bruise finally starting to fade since her fall on the floor. “The only way to explain it is to say that I treated the man I adored and looked up to like garbage for years, when someone else was to blame for my brother dying.”
She adored and looked up to me?
“You didn’t know that, and neither did I, sweetheart. I still don’t hold it against you. If anything, it’s a relief to know I was there for you when you needed someone, even if the only emotion you felt was anger. At least that kept you on the straight and narrow to getting your degrees and finding a new life without your other half. I had enough years of maturity, and a father who explained it to me, to know that it wasn’t personal.”
“If it wasn’t personal, what was it then?”
“Situational,” I answered immediately.
She nodded for a long time, and I noticed a tear slip down her cheek. “It was certainly a situation I didn’t want to be in.”
“Besides,” I reminded her. “It’s not like you blamed me every day of our lives for the last twelve years. It wasn’t as though we didn’t share some good and happy times. Watching you walk across the stage to accept two degrees, like the rock star that you are, was the highlight of my life. I was so proud of you. I think my chest was puffed up to three times its normal size. Daddy Nash was next to me, just as proud. Having you find a job here, just a few miles from my ranch has been a lifesaver for me since Daddy got sick. Whenever I needed sunshine, I stopped here to see you.”
“Sunshine? Really?”
“We all have different definitions of sunshine, sunshine,” I said on a wink. “Seeing you, touching you, and getting a smile out of you was something to work for and to look forward to.”
“I’m glad I could do that much for you then, Jo-Jo.”
“Can I ask you a question?” She nodded, so I took a deep breath and went for it. “Do you like it when I kiss you?”
There was a pause, and then she nodded, but just as quickly, she shook her head before she went back to nodding. Her lip trembled, and a tear ran down her cheek. To say I was confused was an understatement.
“So you kind of like it when I kiss you?” I jokingly asked since I had no idea what else to say.
“I like it,” she said, her lips wiggling, “a lot. But that’s the problem with unrequited love, Joe. I know it’s going to end, so when you kiss me, I’m in heaven, but then I remember I’m still going to end up with a broken heart.”
My mind spun while I tried to make sense of that sentence. Unrequited love?
I took her hand, and she didn’t pull away, but she also didn’t squeeze mine in return. “Baby, unrequited love is a love that isn’t openly reciprocated.”
“I know what it is, Joe,” she said, sucking up a breath while she used her shoulder to wipe away a tear. I lifted the soft blanket and wiped her cheeks before I pulled it across her belly.
“Then you can’t say it’s unrequited.”
