Chapter 20 #2
“When I came to Alabama, I didn’t feel connected to nature like I once did.
I was struggling to feel as if I belonged, but I do now.
Working on the farm helped me with that, and being here, learning about the Cahaba lilies, was the last piece.
” I turned to look at him. “Thank you for bringing me here. Thank you for helping me feel this connection to nature again. Thank you for inviting me to work on the farm with you.”
“Thank you for saying yes.” Jackson kissed my neck before saying, “I’m not surprised you feel such a connection here.
After I said to my uncle that real men don’t work with flowers, the first thing he did was bring me here, and by the end of the presentation, like you, I couldn’t wait to see them.
I couldn’t believe that such a flower existed.
They thrive under the worst conditions and survive when they shouldn’t.
They bloom despite everything. They’re a reminder that nothing’s impossible.
” Jackson paused and looked out at the lilies again. “That’s you, Leigh.”
“Me?” My voice trembled in disbelief.
“Yeah…you shouldn’t be here. Just like the lilies shouldn’t be here. But they are. And so are you.” He paused. “And you bloom, just like they do.”
The comparison left me breathless. I didn’t know if I’d ever been likened to something so extraordinary.
The realization that Jackson saw me that way filled me with a sense of wonder, grounding me in the moment, as if everything I had struggled with had led me to this place, this person, this connection.
“I…I don’t know what to say, Jack,” I said, tears forming out of not sadness but the way his words made my heart swell.
“I’m glad you’re here, Leigh,” Jackson continued. “That you made it. That you made the choice to not let what happened to you hold you back.”
I leaned into him as the tears fell. I had never felt more seen, more understood. More alive.
Jackson held me for a moment, and then, in a quieter voice, he said, “When my aunt gave me this quilt and explained why my grandmother made it for me, she said I’d know who to give it to. I never wanted to give it to anyone. Until you.”
“But this is your marriage quilt,” I said.
Jackson’s gaze never wavered. “Does that scare you?”
My eyes widened. It was the one topic we’d never covered. The future. “Is that something you’ve thought about?”
“I think about it all the time,” he continued, his lips brushing my neck. “I want you to stay on the farm with me. I want to build a life with you. One day get married and have a houseful of kids.”
“A houseful?”
“However many you want,” he said with a chuckle, hope lifting his words, “but at least two, a boy and a little girl who will be the spitting image of her mother. She’ll have your beautiful eyes, curly hair, and that feistiness of yours.”
I stayed quiet, his words painting a picture I could never touch. A future that wasn’t mine to live. It wasn’t a formal proposal, but it carried the weight of one, a promise that lingered in the air. I had come to learn that Jackson didn’t say anything he didn’t mean. He wanted to marry me.
“I guess that makes sense because…” Jackson’s voice faltered as he stood, extending a hand to help me up. He looked unsettled, like a stiff breeze would blow him over. “I love you.”
I stared at the ground, unprepared by the force of those three simple words. Jackson lifted my chin, his eyes earnest and vulnerable.
“I mean it. I don’t say those words often, and I haven’t said them in a very long time. But it feels so damn right to say them to you now. I love you, Leigh. I’ve loved you longer than you know, longer than I’ve wanted to admit. I love you. I want you. All of you. For the rest of my life.”
“Jack…I—” I never thought hearing those words would hurt so much.
Before I could respond, Jackson said, “You don’t have to say anything now. Tell me when you’re ready.”
“I love you too, Jack.” The words tumbled out unforced, a heartfelt confession that needed to be spoken.
Jackson scooped me up in a hug, lifting my feet off the ground. The world spun as he twirled me around, his laughter mingling with mine, his joy contagious.
“As a matter of fact…” His voice trailed off, the playful tone fading into something deeper, more intimate.
He set me down, his hands lingering on my waist before he slid my sweater off my shoulders.
His lips followed the trail of fabric as he kissed the exposed skin of my collarbone.
“Let’s start on that family right now.” His hands cupped my face, and he kissed me with a hunger that left no doubt, only the feeling that he was ready for what came next.
For the future he’d spoken of, the one he now wanted to create.
I was too shaken to embrace the moment. “Jack, we can’t. Not here.”
“There’s no one out here but us.”
He kissed me again, unzipped my dress, and unhooked my bra.
We tumbled uninterrupted to the ground, and Jackson rolled me on my back.
The remaining sun warmed my chest and bathed my face in amber.
And yet that heat paled next to the fire radiating from Jackson’s soft kisses on my neck, breasts, and stomach.
I wanted to stop him but decided sex would be a welcome distraction.
If we were making love, we couldn’t talk about children, the future, or the fact that he loved me.
That I loved him. That the life he envisioned for us was not possible.
And so, I gave myself to him, and he covered me with his love.
There was no place I would rather be, no moment I would rather live.
A lifetime of decisions, of tiny, unnoticed choices, led me here, to the place of my hard-won happiness, a place where joy didn’t feel like an illusion but something real, earned, and deep.
There was no longer a world of impossibilities—only this.
This day. This man. And the clarity of the now where our love took up all the space and every breath.
We made love with the urgency of never again.
With abandon. With the fullness of our emotions.
That day I forged my own reality. And Jackson, the man that I loved, stood at the center.
The next day, I floated to meet Tibb, still lost in the afterglow of our trip to see the Cahaba lilies.
But happiness rarely lasts, and it was time for it to all come crashing down.
I arrived a little early to find Tibb pacing the area restlessly, his steps rapid and uneven.
I had never seen him like that. He clutched a crumpled piece of paper in his hand, his brow furrowed deeply.
When I approached him, he suddenly turned toward me, pushing the paper at me.
My eyes fell on it, and my breath hitched in my chest. On it was a face I both knew and didn’t: my own.
The picture stared back at me, a version of myself that now looked like a stranger.
The edges of the paper shook in Tibb’s hands.
“Please,” Tibb begged, “tell me this isn’t true. Tell me this is some kind of a joke.”
Tibb’s words blurred together, distorted by the rising panic in me. My vision spun, the world tilting beneath me. I staggered, my knees buckling under the stress of the moment.
Tibb shook his head. “No…this isn’t it… No…it can’t be.”
I remained silent, my mouth dry, my chest too tight to even breathe.
“Oh,” he said, laughing, the sound jagged and hollow, as if it had been ripped from him.
There was nothing funny about this moment; it was him cycling through a range of emotions.
“It makes sense. Appearing from nowhere. The broken wrist. The bruises. It is you, isn’t it?
” Tibb’s voice broke through the fog, his eyes wide with disbelief and desperate hope. “Tell me it’s not true.”
Words still eluded me. Instead, I nodded, a helpless and grim confirmation. The taste of bile surged up my throat, sour and acrid. The space around us suffocated me, as if it were collapsing inward, my chest tightening with each strained breath.
“You survived a bus crash. Holy shit! You survived a fuckin’ bus crash. The article said the bus went off a cliff, and you survived that? How?”
I swallowed hard as the memories of that day come flooding back. “I can hold my breath for very long periods of time.”
“What the fuck, Leigh? What the fuck?” Tibb’s voice crescendoed into a frantic pitch as he resumed his pacing. “Wait…that’s not your name, is it?” He glanced back at the paper again. “Leandra. Your name is Leandra.”
“Tibb…” I began, my voice faltering, my throat tight, but I pushed the words out anyway. “Where did you get this?”
I braced myself for the answer, my mind whirling with possibilities. The enormity of the moment loomed over me like an oppressive cloud.
Tibb stopped pacing and took a deep breath. “I was online, ordering seeds and supplies, and when I finished, I was just clicking around, and this article caught my eye. Hard to scroll past a headline about an escaped convict. I didn’t expect to see your mug shot.”
“What else does the article say?” I asked hesitantly.
Tibb breathed loudly, his tone leveling. “They know that you didn’t die in the bus crash. They searched for your body and didn’t find it but found traces of you around the river.”
I stared up at the sky, a bitter taste of reality settling into my chest like a stone.
I had been a fool to think that to be forgettable was the same as being invisible.
That feet didn’t leave footsteps and fingers didn’t leave fingerprints, that you can erase an existence. And now the truth was out.
“Does the article say what I was convicted of?” I asked.
“No, just that there’s a reward of fifty thousand dollars for information leading to your capture and arrest. They are looking for you.”
“Does Jack know? Did you tell him?” My heart raced in my chest, fear intertwining with the very air I breathed.
Tibb looked at me for a second, his mouth agape, before closing it. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about Jackie and not of being recaptured.” He stepped closer. “They’re looking for you.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“You should care! If they find you, you’re going back to prison. Even longer this time.”
I shook my head. “I can handle prison,” I said, though it felt like a lie. But the thought of that cold place, the endless silence, the concrete walls closing in—none of it scared me as much as losing Jackson. “I can survive it. I can’t handle losing him.”
Tibb’s face flickered with anger, but underneath it, I could see fear. His eyes were wide and his voice cracked as he spoke. “It’s prison, damn it! I’ve been there. That’s years of hell. The kind of hell you won’t get another chance to walk away from again.”
“I know,” I whispered. I didn’t want to talk about prison. Jackson was the only thing that mattered. “I know what prison is.” My breath hitched. “I love him, Tibb. But I can’t be in there knowing I hurt him.” I exhaled and held it. “Have you told him?”
Tibb stepped back and paced a little, then stopped before answering. “No.”
“Why not?” I asked, the air returning to my lungs in ragged gasps. “Why haven’t you told him?”
“Because it would destroy him.”
My heart ached at that bit of truth. “I’ll leave today.”
Tibb’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Just like that? You’re going to leave? You just said that you loved him. Did you hear what I said? It would kill Jack.”
“I can’t stay here. I can’t jeopardize the farm, Jack, and you all. I have to go.”
“And where will you go?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not a plan, Leigh…” He stopped and regrouped.
“After Jackie left me in foster care, I ran away five times. The last time was when that bastard got drunk and hit me and I jumped on him. I almost killed him, Leigh. I saw the blood and I ran away. They caught me two weeks later. You know why? Because I didn’t have a plan.
I ran without thinking about where I would go and what I would do.
I wasn’t prepared. So I’m asking you: What’s your plan? ”
“I don’t have one!” I shot back, frustration boiling over. “I didn’t plan any of this. I thought…I would stay in Camden long enough to make a little money. But then I met Jack, and he offered me this job. He brought me here and I met all of you. Then me and him… I didn’t expect any of this.”
“So you thought they would never find out that you didn’t die in the bus crash? That you could remain hidden forever?”
“I hoped so, I guess. Isn’t that what you did? What Luke did? It was easy to forget who I was out here, to hide.”
“Are you serious?” Tibb was speaking more loudly, irrationally repeating his question. “Did you think you could just hide out here forever?”
I thought of Jackson’s face, his love. “No,” I said softly.
“You can’t just leave,” Tibb said firmly, his voice filled with a mixture of anger and anguish. “Not before the opening. Tell him. He deserves to know. From you.”
“I can’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because,” I whispered. “what if I tell him the truth, and he can’t handle it? What if he sees me for who I really am—what I’ve done—and it’s too much for him?” My hands shook. “I can’t lose him. Not like that. Not knowing I pushed him away because of what I did.”
“He knows who you are. I watched him fall in love with you. Not the woman you used to be. Not Leandra. But Leigh.”
“Leaving is the best way. Telling him would put him in the position of having to choose between me and the farm. I can’t…
I won’t do that to him. Have him make that choice.
I’ll leave after the grand opening,” I said, not sure if I was protecting him from the truth or protecting myself from the pain of losing him. Either way, it didn’t matter anymore.
Tibb didn’t respond immediately. He just stared at me, weighing the cost of what I’d just said. His expression softened, and sympathy flooded his eyes. “You can’t protect him from the truth forever.”
I didn’t say anything because there was nothing left to say. Instead, I turned and walked away, knowing I was walking into the unknown.