Chapter Thirty-One
The Grand Gesture—when one protagonist does something expensive—in time, money, or pride—to show the other protagonist the depth of their feelings.
It’s time for the auction, and we’ve drawn a bigger crowd than I expected. Several people that are here were also at the book signing, and it makes me feel bolstered, because I’m not just running an auction cold. I feel warmed up after the book event.
The whole forest is beautiful, and everyone here had a chance to look at the trees they liked and write down the numbers for what they want to bid on when it comes up.
I look at my list in front of me and begin. “The Route 66 Tree, by Get Your Kicks Diner.”
Bidding starts off strong. As we get deep into the auction, it’s starting to get astronomically high. I’m shocked. Shocked that it’s going so well and people are so invested in doing something great for the community.
Each tree starts fetching more and more money. My opening bids are starting over $200 almost every time.
The mermaid tree goes. The John Deere tree. The avocado tree, the kitten tree, and the peacock tree follow. Then there’s a tree all done up with Elvis, one with Marilyn Monroe wrapped in glittery ribbon.
There’s a tree covered in candy, and one in tropical flowers.
My favorite is the one the kids made.
Each one is a labor of love for the community. Work that the people who live here put in to rebuild this place we’ve chosen to call home.
Finally, it’s time for the Pink Flamingo tree. It’s so pink. So obnoxious.
So me.
I see Chris, pushing his way to the front row, and he raises his hand. “Five hundred dollars.”
My eyebrows shoot up. It’s a high opening bid.
He gives me a slight apologetic smile, and I’m frozen for a second. I guess since I didn’t take his apology, he wants to give money?
“One thousand dollars.”
I turn and see Nathan standing there, his arms crossed.
“One thousand dollars,” I repeat.
“Fifteen hundred!” That’s from Christopher.
Everyone in the crowd is watching them, all eyes fixed on the two men trying to outbid each other.
“Twenty-five hundred,” says Nathan, looking over at Christopher like he might start a fistfight with him.
I blink. I feel like I’m in the middle of a Hallmark Christmas movie showdown. Much like every love triangle I’ve ever seen, it really is no competition. I know Christopher doesn’t want me back. I know that’s not why he’s doing it.
But still.
“Three thousand dollars.”
There’s an audible gasp from the crowd.
All I can think of is that Christopher is going to have to explain to his fiancée that he bid this much money on his ex’s Christmas tree if he wins.
I don’t hate that for him, though I don’t want his life to implode. Not when my life is going so well. But I wouldn’t mind if his life were a little bit of a trial for him on occasion.
“Ten thousand dollars.” Nathan looks straight up at me as he says that number, and I cannot believe it. It is by far the highest bid anyone has seen here, and if I had ever begun to doubt he was a millionaire New York Times bestseller, I don’t now.
The crowd is cheering, people shoving at each other, shoving at Nathan.
He’s definitely won. It’s definitive. It’s not just a bid, it’s a grand gesture.
The grandest of gestures.
So I decide to give him one of my own. I step off the stage and straight into his arms. “Sold,” I say.
With that, I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him.
People cheer. It feels like exactly what it is. That magical moment when things couldn’t go better. As if it were written , and not a scene from life.
We part, and Nathan looks at Christopher. I can feel thwarted male pride emanating from Chris—love that for him—and triumph from Nathan. Love that for me.
Then Christopher turns to me. “I’m glad it’s working out for you, Amelia. Take care.”
“You too.”
Just like that, Christopher Weaver walks out of my life again, but he takes something with him. Whatever power he had over me. It’s just gone.
I look up at Nathan. “You realize that was over the top, right?”
“Yep,” he says.
“Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to beat him. I wanted you to win. I wanted to give money to the town.” None of those reasons are a declaration, but I like them all the same.
“I support it, but that was a lot.”
“It wasn’t too much for you,” he says. Then he clears his throat. “Would you like some mulled wine?”
“I would,” I say.
We get our hot drinks, and we keep on walking, until the crowd thins out, until we’re well away from them.
I know it’s time. Time for me to tell him.
Time to make my grand gesture. My declaration. Because everything has changed for me.
He changed it.
“I thought this was the main event,” I say. “I thought this was what the month of December was building to. Me finally having to confront my past in a way I haven’t wanted to. I’ve done my very best to leave it all behind. Honestly, since you came back ... everything has changed. Everything in me has changed.”
My drink warms my hands, but suddenly I feel cold. A little bit afraid. I’m making the decision. I’m doing it. I’m not letting life push me around. I am not adrift. I know what I want. I came here wounded, unable to see the future. Unable to even dream. I’m dreaming now . I want to keep on dreaming.
I want to write the rest of my story, not just let it happen around me, not sit there staring at a blinking cursor, on hold because I’m scared.
“It’s like I was frozen,” I say. “For all these years, because it was just too painful. The problem was, I was stuck in a thought that I had to heal from everything or heal from nothing. Where I thought I had to sort of deny everything that I had been through, or I was going to have to do this incredibly impossible work. But I don’t have to get over it. I don’t have to get over the pain. It’s there. It’s part of everything. It’s part of love, it’s part of life. It’s part of being happy. When I look at the faces of all my darling old ladies, I see the lines. From happiness, from anger, from sadness. It’s all there, and it’s all part of them. We don’t get out of life without it.”
I take a jagged breath. “You have to do the work of healing. You just do. Because if you don’t ... then all you have is the pain. It’s there, beneath the surface, whether you want it to be or not. I thought I had come here and run away from it all, and then all it took was me being handed a baby to dissolve. All it took was hearing that my ex was going to come and speak at this event, and I felt broken.
“It comes for you eventually. Even if you don’t want it to. It can be a fire in your safe haven, or your ex invading your new life, but it will come. I wasn’t building to a confrontation with Christopher. I was building to this moment where I could stand in front of you and say that I want more.”
He freezes, the expression on his face one of near terror. “Amelia ...”
“I don’t want you to leave and never come back. I don’t want to never see you again.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can. You aren’t dead. And neither am I. We’re alive, and that means not having to face the great and terrible truth that we can never see each other again. It is our choice. Because this is our world. It’s the one we have.”
“I can’t give you anything,” he says.
“You just bid ten thousand dollars on my Christmas tree.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m broken. I can’t fix myself for you. I can’t do it for anybody.”
“Maybe I don’t care if you’re broken. Because I’m not. I’ve decided. It’s bullshit. I didn’t choose to have the parents I had. I didn’t choose for my mother to be a narcissist. I didn’t choose for my dad to move away. I didn’t choose to invest years in a man who was just a bait and switch, one who never loved me the way I did him. And I didn’t choose to lose my baby. I didn’t choose it. So I will be damned if I won’t take a chance and choose good things when I have the opportunity to do it. I am not choosing broken. Not when I can choose whole.”
I shake my head. “Nathan, we’re not writing this, and I know ... I know why you don’t want to drain all the poison out at once. I know. Please do it. For us. Because I think you can be the hero that I’d write. I think you ... I mean, you’re real. We’re real. I think we can have a happy ending, but it’s up to us to make it happen.” I take a deep, gasping breath. I need him to understand. “It is real, Nathan. It’s realistic. I’ve written it over and over again. People have to fight for it. They have to heal for it. But it’s real.”
My heart is pounding so hard it hurts, and my throat aches. I want to beg him, because I care that much. Because I want this for us that much.
“Amelia,” he says. “You are extraordinary. I don’t ever want you to doubt that. I’m not like you. I’ve been through loss one time, and it’s enough times for me. I can’t find that hope again. I can’t even write a romance—how am I supposed to live it?” He takes a jagged breath. “I don’t think you get to do this twice. I lived my whole life feeling like the odd one out. Feeling like I was speaking a different language to the people around me, and then I met someone who was fine with it. That is something you don’t get to do twice.”
“If you don’t care about me enough, you can say that.”
He looks wounded. Maybe he needs to be. For me, and not for anyone else.
“I can’t take a breath deep enough, not anymore. I can’t have a feeling that goes that far. I can’t ...”
I see the fear. Real, deep fear. He is terrified. At this moment, of me. Of himself. He is terrified, because his world ended. And to dream, to hope, to wish, to build something new is extraordinarily terrible, and I know it. It’s also the only way. The only way to find a life that isn’t shrouded in darkness, that isn’t defined by loss.
“I’m glad you had that,” I say. “Nathan, the most beautiful thing about your love story is that she had you. You were her happy ending, Nathan. She had you until her end.” Tears make my words sharp. Short. “I am so glad. But you didn’t end when she did. So you have to decide what your life looks like. You have to decide what else there is. I don’t really want to be second best to someone who isn’t here anymore. Who does? I’m not asking you to promise me forever. I’m not asking you to promise me everything. I’m just asking you not to end it entirely. Not to cut us off. I’m asking you to leave the door open.”
He moves toward me, his eyes desperate, his hold on me rough. “When you leave the door open, there are too many things that can get through it. I can’t do it.”
He is desperate now. I think I’m even more desperate, though.
“I love you. I love you. I’m very clear on what that means. I’m very clear on what it could cost. I am very clear on how badly this could hurt me, but I am strong enough to handle it.”
This is my third world, really. There was Bakersfield, the one where my parents broke my heart. There was LA.
Now there’s Rancho Encanto, and I’m on the cusp of being shattered again. I already know I’m not going to run away afterward. I already know that whatever happens after this moment, I’m not going to burn myself to the ground and start over.
This place nearly burned to the ground. It survived. It will thrive because of all the love and care we’ve poured into the community.
So will I.
I love this place, because my family is here. My residence, my motel. My life.
It really is mine. That was why those other lives were so easy to leave—they mostly belonged to the other people in them.
But not this one.
“I’m telling you this, as a woman who really knows who she is now. I’m telling you this, and I’m scared. I am scared, because it’s going to break me if you leave. I’m still going to keep breathing. I already know what we can survive.”
“So don’t,” he says. “Don’t do it again. Not for me, not for anyone. Don’t do it again. Protect yourself. That’s ... If we only get one chance at love, then we only really have to have our hearts broken one time.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper. “It just isn’t. Because your heart can break in a thousand different ways. When the sun rises too beautifully, or a child that isn’t yours cries. When you drive by a house that you’ve never lived in, but you wish that you did, or you see a life that makes you ache, even though it could’ve never been yours. When you hear a song that breaks your heart. When you look around at what you didn’t do . It hurts so much more than any of the things you did. Because life goes on. And on and on. There is nothing you can do to protect yourself if you actually want to live and have there be any point to it. Your books are so good, Nathan. You put all this great emotion into them. You put your belief in heroes and put goodness into those stories because it’s who you are. If you cut yourself off, you’re not going to be able to feel it anymore. Maybe that’s what you want.”
“It is,” he says.
“Why,” I ask. “Why? When you could have ...”
Everything. I realize I’m calling myself everything. I feel like what he and I have just might be the brightest, most brilliant star in the sky. When I feel him withdraw, when I realize he’s going to turn away, I understand. I had thought a while ago that we might only ever have a happy ending of a kind. I told myself that to comfort myself, but for me that’s never going to be a happy ending.
It’s bullshit.
Continuums are bullshit.
I want him to be my happy ending forever, and anything else just feels sad.
Yes, knowing him made me better.
No, I’m not going to go right back to that devastated place.
But I hate this.
“I’ll say this,” I begin, “from one person who has known real loss to another. You have got to accept that this is your life. Maybe it doesn’t have to be with me. I wish it was. If you don’t love me enough ... Hell, Nathan, maybe you had a love that was so much better than ours, so you can never feel it again if it’s not big enough. I understand that. So maybe I’m feeling all of this alone, but someday, you’re going to arrive at this moment again, and maybe it won’t be with romance, but it will be with something. Something that pushes you past this protective little cage you put yourself in. I want you to remember this then. This is your life. It can be beautiful. You can honor her not just by putting out a book about her life. You can honor her by living yours.”
His face is hard like granite, and I see all my heroes in his green eyes.
I see everything he’s done to prove to me he could be mine.
“You caught Gladys when she fell,” I say, my voice trembling. “You rescued Wilma’s necklace and fixed the washing machine, even though they faked that. You danced with Wilma when she asked, you were a donkey for the kids.” A sob climbs my throat. “I have never met a man who tried so damn hard to not be the hero of the story. You could be the hero, if you were just brave enough.”
Then I’m the one who turns away from him. I said everything I needed to say, everything that exists inside me. It’s not closure, because it’s going to take a long time for me to get closure from this. In these stolen moments over the last few years, Nathan Hart has made me feel more than any other man ever has.
If I was confused about love, I’m not now.
I’m also strong enough to walk away because he’s not giving me everything. I know what I want. I’m not asking him for everything; I’m just asking him to try, and he won’t do that, so there is no more conversation to have.
He doesn’t stop me. He doesn’t call out for me. When I stumble out of the grove of trees, I run into Elise and Ben, who are in fact making out underneath some mistletoe.
“Well, it’s about damned time,” I say.
Then I burst into tears.