Love Me Gently (Deer Creek #1)

Twenty-Eight

Trina

What a wild few days it’d been. Dinner and the evening with Ashley and Robbie had gone so much better than I’d anticipated. Like dinner with Cole’s parents, it’d been awkward. Memories were shared that had made me laugh along with them, but for most of the evening I sat back and watched. It was clear their bond had tightened in the last twelve years, and there were moments I wasn’t included at all.

The only dark moments came when the football game came on. I should have known they’d want to watch, considering Cole had said that’s why they’d planned on getting together. Cole and Robbie had loved football. But for some reason, it had taken me by surprise.

I’d frozen, watching the television screen across the table from me in my line of sight to the open living room as the announcers and Thursday Night Football music started. That it wasn’t Georgia playing helped some.

But when I hadn’t been able to relax a few minutes into the game, Cole reached over and hit the remote, blanking out the screen.

“Game isn’t important,”

Robbie had said, watching me again with that wariness. “Teams suck anyway.”

He’d flashed me a gentle smile, and I’d excused myself. The kindness, plus the pity, was almost too much to bear.

But dinner hadn’t sucked completely. I’d eaten what felt like my weight in pizza, something that had made Cole smile at me in a strange way. The pizza might have been days ago, and I’d probably eaten since then, but considering what I was doing now, I swore everything I’d eaten in the last few days settled like an anchor in my gut, forcing my feet to stay in place.

And that place was on the sidewalk, wrapped in a thick, heavy coat in the icy cold breeze, arms wrapped around my stomach, unable to move another step forward.

“I can go first,”

Cole said, next to me, taking in the house in front of both of us.

Was he remembering the things I was? The afternoons we spent bike riding around this neighborhood all the way to the gas station to grab candy? The snow forts we built by the sidewalk that the plows would eventually smash as they went by and cleaned the roads after a snowfall?

Was he remembering the first time he kissed me? The night he and I went to Boone for our first solo date, and he’d driven me home in his old truck. One hand holding on to mine, the backs of my thighs sticking to his worn leather seats beneath my cutoff jean shorts. His air conditioner hadn’t worked then, and it was the height of summer, so my hair was sticking to my neck, and the hot leather seats had burned my skin when I first sat down, but I’d smiled at him almost the entire way back to Deer Creek, his hand in mine, his smile occasionally flickering in my direction.

He held my hand as he walked me to the door and then stopped me before I reached for the handle. And it was there, at the door right in front of me now, where he bent his head, brushed his lips over mine, and told me wanted to be my boyfriend.

“What?”

I swore he said something, but I was lost in memories. Good ones this time.

Ones I’d thrown away and forgotten until I was forced to face them again.

“I can go first,”

he said. “Talk to them if you need me to.”

“No.”

I shook my head. “I have to do this.”

Cole was getting his kids back tomorrow. My dad would probably be at the church working on his sermon. Kari could be anywhere, and it was because of her I hadn’t called to give my parents a heads-up.

I needed to see them, but Kari would be too much. She and her perfect life and her own kids and husband. She and I had never been close growing up. She was older than me, our age separated by multiple miscarriages my mom had, so she’d been too old to be my friend, too old to share clothes and yet she was too young to babysit me like other older siblings. We were separated by that perfect gap where I was always the annoying little sister who invaded her perfectly clean room and irritated her when she had friends over.

She got straight A’s and went to a small Christian college.

I struggled to get B’s and wanted nothing to do with school after college.

She wanted to stay in this town forever and have babies and raise them in the church she grew up in.

I murdered mine and fled town to worse decisions.

No, I couldn’t see Kari. Not yet.

“Are we going to do this today?”

Next to me, Cole bumped his hip against me.

“Yeah.”

I laughed and shook my head. “I’m surprised neighbors haven’t called or shouted at us.”

Who knew how long I’d been standing on the sidewalk after getting out of Cole’s truck? Granted, it wasn’t like anyone could recognize me with the coat and my hood pulled up, but they’d undoubtedly recognize Cole.

“I’m scared,”

I muttered and started walking forward.

“Keep being scared and keep moving. The fear will go away.”

He’d become wise in the years since I was gone, and I wasn’t always sure how to handle this new, bigger, manlier, and calmer version of Cole, but right then, as I started up the sidewalk, I was thankful he was next to me. So thankful I reached out and grabbed his hand. He tightened his grip on me immediately, and I let that warmth rush through me again.

“Thank you,”

I rasped. “Thank you for saving me.”

He tugged on my hand, and I glanced up at him. “I helped get you out of a bad situation, Trina. You’re the one saving yourself. Take the credit where it’s due and own it, okay? You’re strong enough to do all this. You’re brave enough to move on.”

Great. Just what I needed. To be crying before I even saw my mom. “Sometimes you look at me, and then I look in the mirror, and I’m so confused because I don’t see anything you do.”

“Then you’re not looking close enough.”

He bent down, got his face close to mine. Close enough I could count the whiskers growing on his unshaved cheek. Close enough I could see the gold flecks that rimmed his pupils. “When I look at you, Trina, I see everything.”

“Oh my…God! Praise the Lord!”

I whipped my head toward the front door. The now opened door. Only a glass storm door separated me from the woman who had her hands clasped in front of her mouth, her hair much grayer than I remembered with grooved lines around her eyes, but they were the same eyes.

It was the woman who’d always loved me beyond reason. The woman I’d turned my back on out of fear and shame.

I flashed her a shaky grin and held onto Cole’s hand with all the strength I had.

“Hi, Mom.”

And then I burst into tears.

I wasn’t sure how it was possible to have more tears in my body. I was certain I’d poured them all over my mom’s shoulder as soon as Cole opened the door and guided me into her arms. Without him there, it was possible we’d both still be crying on opposite sides of the glass partition.

It felt like a lifetime ago, but only minutes, and yet between the time lapse, my father had walked in the back door, jolted at the sight of me and then more tears fell.

“My daughter has come home,”

he kept repeating, murmuring it while he held me in his arms.

“Dad—”

I was definitely sure that was the only word I’d spoken. Mom. Dad. I could say nothing but who they were. No explanations. I hadn’t even gotten around to the apologies yet, or why I was there.

Cole was never far away, keeping an eye on all of us, bringing me tissues. Refilling waters.

My mom cupped my cheek where I was sandwiched so tightly in between them it was like they were afraid to give me an inch of space for fear I’d vanish. “You’re so beautiful,”

she whispered, “and you’re here.”

“I’m here,”

I repeated.

I was in my childhood home. Wrapped in the loving arms of my parents, and I closed my eyes, believing that if I opened them, all the stains of my past would be wiped away.

If Mom could see the still-fading bruises beneath my smeared and wiped-away makeup, she didn’t show it. If she knew the horror I lived with for so long, she didn’t balk at it.

I’d hated Jonathan for many years, despised the lies I’d believed and the foolish and disgusting choices I’d made to prove something in my life, but it was in this moment, between my parents, that my anger with him rose to the surface.

I clenched my hands together in my lap and forced down that searing pain rushing through me.

He’d taken me from these people. From people who loved me and wanted the best for me. I’d let him, but he’d done it.

He’d sliced off all the good things in my life, even if I’d put up the blockade years before we ever met. He’d completed the task.

All so I’d have no one to turn to when I was ready to be free of him.

And I’d let him.

“I’m so sorry,”

I rasped and shoved my face into my mom’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

“No apologies, sweetheart.”

I was wrapped in her arms again and squeezed tight. I wanted them to keep squeezing. Squeeze all the ugly, tarred regrets right out of me.

“Someday you can tell your story,”

my dad whispered in my ear. “But today is not that day. Today is a day to celebrate. Our daughter we’ve missed so much and felt so much worry for is home, and we’re so thankful.”

My mom pulled back, eyes shimmering with more tears. It was a wonder we hadn’t flooded the house.

I laughed at the thought and bit down on my lip.

“You are home, right?”

She brushed wet, stuck hair strands off my face and her chin trembled. “You are home, right?”

I nodded, swallowed a ball of tears in my throat and glanced at Cole before looking back to my mom. “Yeah, Mom. I’m home.”

Something warm rushed through me, trickled down my spine and spread through my veins.

I was home.

Now, I had to figure out what to do next.