Page 31 of Odin
My legs start juddering again. I have to press my hands tight to my thighs to try and secure my feet to the ground. I don’t want to go back to a world filled with artifice. I feel like here, I can be honest.
“I’m glad I’m back,” I say shyly, making eye contact. It’s important to me that he can see just how much I mean that. “When I was gone, all I did was think about coming back to Hart the whole time. It’s crazy how home didn’t feel like home anymore, and a city that was so familiar my whole life, felt strange. I didn’t feel better about any of it until I got here this morning.” The overabundance of nerves welling up causes me to laugh softly at myself. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt all of that. I’m just- just nervous.”
“It’s okay. You have a right to feel uncertain about uprooting your whole life. It’s a big change.”
He’s always so understanding and kind. It feels wrong that I know something that he doesn’t. I’m not trying to toy with him or hold it over him. I’m just trying to find the right moment.
“It’s not just Hart. Hart could be any other town. It’s the people in it. But… it’s… it’s mostly you.”
His lips thin out, but not in an unkind way. He clenches his teeth until his jaw clicks, then bites the inside corner of his mouth, all in an effort to hold back the swell of emotion he must feel. Did he truly think that he means so little that I could just abandon him? Does he find himself so fundamentally unlovable? Is he alone because he hasn’t met the right person, or because he thinks he has to pay some kind of penance for his earlier years? Does he have any idea how much he has to offer?I’m not here to tell him anything or try to convince him. I’m here because I want him in my life and because I want to be in his.
As friends.
As parents.
Even if I know he won’t let it be more than that.
On his birthday, I was the one who initiated. I could tell he wanted me just as badly. The next morning, it wasn’t awkward to drive back to Hart, or for me to gather my things and say goodbye. It hurt. Badly. I didn’t want to leave. Odin didn’t have to give me a lecture about how our time together was a one off. I understood. I wasn’t in a place where I could ask anything of him or give anything more myself.
I know that’s where we’re at. This wonderful man would literally give me the clothes off his back, any resources at his disposal, and whatever of the world he could, even though he barely knows me, if I asked him to, but if I tried to give him so much as a sliver of my heart, he wouldn’t allow himself to take it.
I do have one thing to offer him, and that’s my loyalty. To me, that word encompasses a great deal of emotion, time, friendship, and thought. It’s a vow in itself, a sacred promise. I gave him that before I left, and I’m here to make good on it, even if the shape of it looks different than I ever thought it could.
“I have something to tell you.” I need to touch him. To ground myself against him. I need to regain my equilibrium, or I might go floating off into the cloudy sky above.
When I inch my hand off my knee, towards him, he doesn’t hesitate to close his around mine. He holds it so delicately, like a bird that he’s afraid of breaking in his rough palms.Bloodstained.That’s what he said about his hands. Heapologized to me because they were rough, but that’s exactly what I adore about them. About him.
That he’s completely, unflinchingly, honest.
I want to make it my life’s mission to help him understand just how blessed I am that an unhinged cross country road trip ended with him.
“Don’t tell me that you’ve given everything up because you’ve fallen madly in love with me and want to start a torrid affair with an old man.” He doesn’t say it unkindly. He tries to use humor to dampen the pleading undercurrent in his words. He searches my face almost desperately.
I laugh because I know that he means to break the tension. “Not exactly.”
Some of the wariness leaches out of him, but I can’t let relief take over. What I have to tell him is far beyond any of his fears about me falling hopelessly into an impossible love with him and getting my feelings hurt. I’ve never been the stars in my eyes type. He knows that, but I suppose it could strike anyone, no matter how practical.
He’s worried about my heart, about my head, about all of me. Seeing his depth of emotion causes my heart to reel and race, but race ahead to a future that I’d like us to build together, even if it’s only as friends. Very good friends. He can’t tell me he’s too old and battered for that.
I hope.
“Yeah, not exactly,” I repeat on a mumble, just to buy myself a few more seconds to try and steady myself. I grasp his hand tightly. He has no way of knowing that he holds my heartand my future in his palm. I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life. “I came back to Hart because I’m pregnant.”
Chapter 11
Odin
“I- I know that it’s yours,” Willow rushes to say, the words rushing into each other she’s talking so fast. “It’s way too much information, but the relationship with Preston… it wasn’t that physical. Sometimes, there were weeks without, especially leading up to the end. I’m so sorry I have to tell you that, but I’m certain that it’s yours. You can take a paternity test when the baby is born, if you want.”
I’m holding her hand. The world narrowed down just to us as soon as she said that word.Pregnant.She’s pregnant. She has a baby inside of her. My baby. We had sex and I didn’t pull out, and in those moments of pleasure and intimacy—the greatest and most connected of my life—wemadea life.
I’m shaking my head, but it’s like I’m looking at myself from a distance doing it. “I would never ask you to get one.” The words are wooden, but only because that’s shock. “I trust you, Willow.”
She clenches my hand so tightly that electric fissures of pain spear up my arm. She’s had some time to process this. She made the decision to come back to Hart because she found out she was expecting a child. Mine. She came to tell me. The way she’s gripping my hand, a tiny, frightened smile playing at the edges of her lips, I know that she’s keeping it. She’s already decided. She could have stayed in LA. She didn’t even have to tell me.
But she did.
She came back to give me this news. She said she wanted to move here. Why would she do that unless she wanted me to be close?
