Page 70 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

“Kate.” He pushed up on his elbows to stare down at me. “I’ve had a lot of orgasms, and not once have I thought I was in love. I’ve never said those words to anyone. That’s part of how I know it’s real with you. I couldn’t not say it.” He tilted my chin, forcing my gaze to his, and looked at me with green eyes that practically glowed with feeling. “I love you, Kate.”

I closed my eyes against all that verdant hope and tried to order my thoughts. He had never said that to anyone before? How was I supposed to feel about that? The weight of it sat on my chest like a brick. My breath came in shallow pants.

“Do you want me to get you a paper bag to breathe into?”

“No.” I cracked an eye open to see him watching me with dark amusement. “This wasn’t the plan.”

He sighed. “No, it wasn’t the plan. And it’s…messy. I like plans and I hate mess, so this is pretty much the opposite of how I expected things to go. The thing is, I don’t care if it blows up all my plans, and I don’t care if it’s messy. I love you.”

“Max,” I said quietly.

“I know this wasn’t your plan either. I’m supposed to be a practice boyfriend, to get you ready for the real thing. Get your friends and family and all the people who live here in Hart’s Ridge used to the idea of you dating instead of being a widow.”

“Then you understand—”

“I understand that we were both dealt shitty hands. Bad things happened to us, and we had absolutely no control over it. I understand that we made this plan to take back control and make something different. That’s what it was for me anyway. A plan to make my life what I wanted it to be.”

He stood up, facing me, completely naked. “The plan worked, just not in the way I expected it to. Because I found love, Kate, and I think that’s what I was really looking for all along. I thought I wanted a wife and kids and a house with a picket fence, and yes, I still want all that, but none of it means anything without love. None of it means anything without you.”

I clenched the sheet in my fists. How could he stand there like that, completely naked, and bare his soul as though it was the easiest thing in the world? Max, who always kept his feelings buried deep. It terrified me.

Because I wanted Max to be happy.

But deep down, I knew he couldn’t be happy with me.

I was supposed to be his practice girlfriend. The one who prepared him for the real deal. A wife. I had already been that and failed miserably.

“I can’t give you any of that,” I said brokenly.

“I’m not asking you to,” he said. “If Jessica is it for you, okay. I want children, I do, but at the end of the day, I have plenty of kids to care for without making my own biologically. Kids are negotiable. What matters is being with you, and what that looks like is something we can figure out together.”

I took a deep breath, but it did nothing to stop the rising panic. “Max, I can’t. You’re ready for a real future with someone, but I’m still dealing with the past. George’s commemoration and—” I broke off, unsure of how to explain the roots that twined around my ankles, locking me in place.

“Are you still in love with him?” His words were rough and pained.

“No, I’m—” I shook my head. “I’ll always love George, the same way you still love a friend after they die. But I’m not in love with him in the way that you mean. Not the way a wife is supposed to love her husband.”

I looked down at my fingers, wove them together, twisted them. It was time to come clean. It was the only way he would understand. “I don’t know when that changed for me. From in love to love. But I know, for George, it changed before he died. Maybe for him, it changed to something that wasn’t love at all.”

Max scrunched his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“We fought a lot, after Jessica was born. He was gone for basic training and then deployed. He wasn’t home much, and when he was, he wanted to be with his friends. He loved Jessica so much. I know he did. There’s no doubt in my mind about that, but he wasn’t ready to be a dad, and he definitely wasn’t ready to be a husband.”

His entire demeanor changed at that, tensing as though he was preparing to reach for me. Which was the last thing I wanted. I didn’t need his kindness. If I let him touch me, I would shatter into a million pieces.

“I wasn’t ready to be a mom or a wife either, but it’s different when you’re the one making the decision. I don’t regret having Jessica. Not at all. She’s the light of my life. But I think…maybe my decision was based more on what would prove my mom wrong than what would have been best for me or George. And that is so…” I made a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “Juvenile.”

“Kate—” he started, then broke off with a shake of his head. “Pregnancy is something that, in the end, has to be your choice because it’s your body. He didn’t have to have sex at all, and no court is going to force a father to see their child, even if they do enforce child support. You didn’t force him to marry you, Kate. That was his choice. So many steps along the way were his choice, too. It wasn’t just you calling all the shots.”

“I told him he didn’t have to be her dad. My parents weren’t going to throw me out, so Jessica would always be taken care of. But he told me if we were going to do it, then he was all in. We were in love.” This time, the sound I made was all sob. There was nothing funny about it. “But being married to me killed that love. The week before he died, George told me he wanted a divorce.”

That seemed to knock him back a step. “A divorce?”

“No one knows. I never— I couldn’t bear to tell anyone, after he died. They all thought we were this amazing, tragic love story. His death changed the way everyone saw me. Before, I was a teen mom who should have kept her legs closed, and George—well, it was different for him. No one expects boys not to have sex. He joined the military to support us, so he did the right thing. Unlike me.” I grimaced.

“But after he died, suddenly all my sins were washed clean. The town saw me in a different light. I wasn’t just a teen mom, I was a military widow. I was doing it on my own—which isn’t even really true, because my parents and his parents helped me a lot—and I was doing the right thing. Like George did.” I looked down at my hands again, my knuckles white from twisting them together so hard. “And I want to keep doing the right thing. For myself and for George and Jessica and everyone else.”

“And being with me is…not the right thing.” A muscle in his cheek twitched. “That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? I’m not good enough for the town sweetheart.”

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