33. 33
33
Hettie
T ema falls asleep on the drive home and the driver/security assigned to us offers to carry her in for me.
“I’ve got her, thanks,” I tell him, throwing my bag over my arm before I gather her up.
After I picked up Tema from Abigail’s parents, the car dropped Abigail off at Spencer’s office.
They’re meeting for a drink.
“What’s going on with you two?” I asked before she jumped out of the SUV in the centre of town.
“What’s going on with you?” she countered with a wink.
We talked about everything while Tema played with Mr. Locke—the pros and cons of returning to Victoria, the benefits of staying here. I did my best to leave Bo out of the equation—I left Bo and me out of the equation. Moving forward, I know he’ll want to play a part in Tema’s life, but he can do that from a distance.
It’s not like the castle can’t afford a few plane tickets.
But it would be best for Tema not to be spread between the west coast of Canada and the east coast of Laandia.
And now that I don’t have Timothy waiting for me back in Victoria, the truth is there’s not a lot waiting for me there. The same goes with Abigail .
We don’t make a decision, but it’s understood that we’ll do this together, like we’ve done everything so far.
I’m a little excited but I need to talk to Bo first. I meant it when I told him he needed to work on himself, but if the first session with the therapist went well, there might be others.
If he was off to a good start at forgiving himself, then maybe…
I’m excited about the maybe.
The castle door opens for me, and I’m surprised to see Bo there. “Did someone tell you I was back?” I ask suspiciously.
“I sensed you.” It takes a moment for me to realize Bo is joking and by that time, he’s taken a sleeping Tema from me.
“I can manage,” I tell him.
“I know, but I can help.”
I follow him up to our room, unable to stop myself from watching the way he walks up the stairs.
Watching how one particular part of him moves.
Two parts—the way he holds Tema pulls his flannel shirt tight across his back, which is also nice to look at.
Bo is a beautiful man. That’s undeniable. The royal family of Laandia is a very attractive family. But what people don’t realize is that Bo is beautiful inside as well—and gentle and tender and kind and generous. There is a softness inside his strong, oh-so muscular exterior. And it’s not that he’s weak.
Bo may be one of the strongest people I know. He believed in something so whole-heartedly for so many years that he let it destroy something he loved. And now he’s trying to fix that.
That takes strength and courage.
I open the door of my room and Bo takes Tema straight through to the bedroom and lays her on the bed .
Such a simple action makes my heart flutter. What if this was something he did all the time? What if we could have a real marriage—a real relationship with love and trust? Without guilt?
What if we could love each other and our daughter? Could it be as simple as that?
“Will she be okay by herself?” Bo asks as he follows me to the other room. He doesn’t have a clue what’s going on in my head.
How happy I am just to be here with him.
“For five minutes,” I say with a grin. “If I leave her for six, I’m not sure.” Bo looks at me strangely. “That was a joke.”
“I know. You just… We didn’t joke before.”
I frown. “No, I guess we didn’t. I never realized we weren’t funny.”
“It’s not that we weren’t funny… Weren’t we funny?” He begins to pace, his long strides taking him from one side of the room to the other in record time.
“Maybe not.” I do know we weren’t lighthearted. We had deep thoughts on issues. Our lives revolved around family, and neither of them were very funny. “But things change,” I decide. “And from the looks of you, something has really changed.”
For maybe the first time ever, Bo looks ready to burst. I can tell he’s got something important to say to me.
He pauses for a moment. “I talked to the therapist.”
“And?” I hold up a hand. “It’s personal. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“I think I want to.” He shakes his head with a shy grin. “It’s exhausting, talking about myself.”
“That’s because you never do it.”
“I didn’t really have a choice this time. She got me talking about my brothers. Lyra. We didn’t even get to my mother.”
I hold my breath. “Is that for next time?”
Bo nods. “Tomorrow. She said we could wait for next week, but I didn’t want to. If this works, I don’t want to wait.”
“What do you want to work?” I ask. “What are you hoping to get out of this, Bo?”
“I want to forgive myself. To…to love myself, so I can love you. Properly.” His blue eyes meet mine and hold. “The way you deserve.”
I press my lips together so he can’t see my smile. I really hope he can’t tell that I’m about to melt right now, melt straight into a gooey pile on the rug because Bo is soft and sweet and…
And he loves me.
It’s there on his face and in his eyes, and in every move of his body.
He loves me.
“Tell me how it went,” I prompt when all I want to do it rush into his arms.
He starts to pace again. “It was… good.” He looks surprised to admit it, maybe as much as I am. “She made me feel like a selfish idiot about some things, but I needed to hear it.”
“That’s great. Not that you felt like an idiot but—”
“I know. But there’s something even better. I talked to Lyra.” He grips the back of his neck as he looks at me. “About the accident. She said—she remembered Mom was happy.”
“She was happy?”
“She wasn’t upset about anything. She told Lyra that I was home, that we would have dinner that night. They were singing. ”
“Bo.” My hand covers my mouth and relief washes over me, leaving my arms and legs tingling.
He turns to the window, hunching his shoulders. “She wasn’t upset with me,” he says and it’s like he’s finally believing it. I want to clap my hands. I want to dance with joy. I want—
I want to hug him.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he continues, talking to the window as much as he is to me. “She might have been… maybe she was happy about us.”
Three steps and I have him, winding my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek against his back. Bo turns around and then my cheek is pressed against his chest and that is so much better.
His hands slide up my back, stroking like he’s touching me for the first time.
It feels like it.
It feels like the first time Bo kissed me in the parking lot of the high school before class. The snow was falling, his hand was warm on my face, and then he leaned in to kiss me.
Just like he’s about to do now—
“Wait.” With a shaking breath, I step back. “Wait.”
“Do you love him?”
There’s a raw, vulnerable look in Bo’s eyes, and it makes my heart stutter with alarm. I stopped Bo from kissing me because I need to tell him about Timothy, but what do I tell him? And can I honestly say I don’t love him?
I loved the idea of Timothy in Victoria—the thought of having a good man, handsome and funny, in my life. It’s not that I need someone to take care of me, but I won’t deny the thought of having a man around, a parent to share the workload, was tempting .
But does that mean I’m in love with him? Like I used to be in love with Bo? Like I’m—
I don’t know how to describe how I feel about Bo.
And I didn’t take the time to figure that out before I got on that plane with Tema and Abigail. I flew home without giving much thought to whether there are strong enough feelings for Bo to give it a try.
To fight for him. “I—”
“Because if you do,” Bo says without giving me a chance to sort my thoughts. “If you love him more than you love me, I’ll let you go. I’ll give you the divorce, but I want to be in Tema’s life. On your terms, whatever works for you. It’s the least I can do for you. I never fought for you.”
“No…”
“But I didn’t fight for myself either. I let myself drift. But now…” He rubs his big hands down my arms, sending shivers racing through me. “If I had known… if I had thought it through—if I had talked to Lyra sooner and known my mom wasn’t angry with me, then—” Bo gazes down at me with regret.
There’s a wetness in his eyes, but as soon as I catch my breath, he turns away, swiping a hand across his cheek.
“We wasted so much time,” he says, stalking across the room, his hand fisted on the back of his head. “And it’s all my fault. If only—”
“You can’t think like that,” I stop him. “You don’t know what would have happened if I had stayed. We were so young, Bo. Maybe we should have waited.” He turns with an incredulous expression and I move to him again, like he’s a magnet and I’m a helpless piece of metal. I rest a hand on his chest, feeling the comforting beat of his heart. “Maybe we needed to grow up first. It was so intense with you. We might have burnt out.”
Bo shakes his head. “No.”
“You don’t know that. We can’t go back and relive the past. We just take what we learned and what we’ve become and move on.”
“And do you really want to move on without me?”
I raise a hand, tracing his strong jaw, hidden by his beard. I only have a vague memory of Bo without a beard, with hair curling around his ears in need of a haircut.
But the memory of how he looks at me—how he’s always looked at me—has stayed firm in my mind. Maybe I didn’t figure out my feelings for him before I came back because I didn’t need to. I knew all along what would happen when I came back and saw him. Spent time with him.
“Bo,” I begin but a knock on the door interrupts.