Chapter 20
Tessa parked beside the porch. Dillon’s truck rolled up behind her and stopped. Makayla burst out of the car, slammed the door, and was halfway to the porch before Tessa had her own door open.
“Mom—”
“Yes.”
“Can I—”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t even—”
“Whatever it is, the answer is yes, Makayla. Today is a yes day.”
“Then I’m going to change clothes and ride Murphy until the sun goes down.”
“Take your violin—or should I say fiddle—upstairs first.”
Makayla hugged the case to her chest, beamed at her mother, and disappeared into the house.
Tessa stood beside her car with the keys in her hand. Dillon’s door opened and shut behind her. She listened to the crunch of his boots on the gravel and tried, unsuccessfully, to slow her pulse down to something that resembled dignified.
“She’s going to ride that horse into the ground,” he said, coming to a stop beside her.
“She earned it.”
“She did.”
She turned to look at him. He had taken off his sport coat and slung it over his arm, and he had his hat in his other hand. He looked he’d spent his whole drive over here trying to remember how to breathe.
She knew the feeling.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Please.”
“If I offered you bleach right now you’d say yes, wouldn’t you?” she teased lightly.
“Yes. Yes, I would.”
“Apparently, it’s a yes day for everyone around here,” she observed.
“Let’s hope so,” he said under his breath quietly enough that she didn’t think she was supposed to hear it.
She headed inside hiding her smile from him.
The kitchen was warm and smelled like the loaf of bread she’d set on the counter to rise before she left for the school. She put the loaf in the oven, poured them both coffee, and handed him the cup. “Porch?”
“Porch,” he agreed.
The two chairs sat together facing the lake.
Tessa headed for Makayla’s chair but Dillon stopped her a light touch on her elbow. “One of can be comfortable and one sort of comfortable, or we can both be miserable. Sit in your rocker. I’ll grab a porch step.”
They sat there in companionable silence as the wind whispered through the willows by the lake.
A Canadian goose honked, and Bonnie and Clyde answered back.
Hamlet snored audibly through the living room window.
Makayla’s voice drifted out of the barn, telling Murphy all about the talent show and how much fun it had been.
Tessa took a sip of her coffee and looked at the man who’d built her chair.
“So,” she said.
“So.”
“Are we going to do this or are you going to pretend the last two weeks didn’t happen?”
He took off his hat set it on the porch boards beside him. “I owe you an apology.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’m not going to pretend I have a good reason for ghosting you. I had reasons. Just none of them were good. I did, however, figure a few very important things during that time.”
“Like what?”
He looked up at her and she saw, for the first time, the full weight of the past two weeks in his face. He hadn’t slept much. The skin around his eyes was tired in a way she recognized because it lived in her own mirror at the moment.
“When Makayla told me about Connecticut,” he said, “I heard Lexi in my head.”
“I figured.”
“The luxurious lifestyle you grew up in. Fancy music academy. All that money. I told myself the most useful thing I could do for you was disappear before you had to disappoint me.”
She set her coffee down on the arm of her chair. “Dillon—”
“I’m not finished.”
She nodded and let him continue.
“I told myself I was being honorable. Not making you choose between me and your kid and your kid’s future. The truth is I was a coward. I made a decision for you that was not mine to make. I assume I knew what you were thinking, what you were going to do, and then I hid from you. Straight up hid.”
Tessa looked out at the lake. A pelican was making a slow looping circle over the water. The willows had finished going chartreuse and were starting to settle into proper green. The willows had been leafed out for almost a week now and she had not noticed until exactly this moment.
“I would’ve liked to be asked what I was thinking,” she said.
“I know.”
“I was going to make my decision either way regardless of what you said. But I would’ve liked to talk it over with you.”
“I know that, too. Now.”
She took a breath and let it out. “Charlotte told me you called her and told her I needed my sisters.”
He looked down at his hands. “She wasn’t supposed to tell.”
“Charlotte hasn’t kept a single secret in her entire life.”
“Noted for future reference,” he replied dryly.
“When did you call her?”
“Yesterday afternoon. After Reno told me you’d said no to your mother.”
Tessa sat with that for a moment. He’d called Charlotte yesterday.
If he’d decided to stay completely out her life and never come back, he wouldn’t have bothered to call Charlotte.
That meant he’d decided sometime before yesterday afternoon.
Before he ever finished her chair. Before he sneaked across the property line in the dark to set it on her porch. He’d been coming back already.
“So, what did you figure out in the past two weeks?” she asked.
He exhaled heavily. “I figured out that Lexi never accepted me for the man I was. As soon as we got married, she set out to change me. Make me into the man she wanted. But we were very different people. Not just in what we wanted but in what we believed in and what was important to each of us. We were never going to work out as a couple. We were just too young and inexperienced to realize it.”
She sensed he wasn’t done yet and held her tongue.
Sure enough, he said slowly, “That stuff she said about me not having anything left for a woman wasn’t meant to hurt me. She just didn’t understand me any more than I understood her.”
“Then why did you listen to her for so long?”
“I was punishing myself for failing her. I didn’t understand why or how I failed her, but I convinced myself it must’ve been my fault because I always thought she was perfect.”
“And now?”
“Now I know she just a person living her life and doing her best. I expect she thought she was doing the right thing trying to change me into someone I wasn’t.”
“Did you figure out anything else?” Tessa asked.
“I figured out that I’m okay with being the man I am. I’m not perfect by a long shot, but I love my work and it makes me happy to help other folks. The trick isn’t the change to be what someone else wants. It’s to find someone who thinks you’re fine just the way you are.”
“Amen,” she said quietly but with deep conviction.
“I figured out one more thing,” he added soberly.
“Which is?”
“I’m miserable without you and Makayla in my life.” He looked into her eyes, and she saw nothing in his blue eyes but naked honesty and two long weeks of heartache.
“Dillon Steele,” she said firmly.
“Tessa Lawrence.”
“You are an absolute idiot.”
The corner of his mouth tugged up and he fought it valiantly before finally giving in to a rueful smile. “Yes, ma’am, I am. But maybe tell me why you think so?”
“You could’ve just called me.”
“I could have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He thought about it. He took a sip of his coffee. He set the cup back on the porch floor. He looked at her the way he had across the auditorium, like he was surrendering not to her but to himself.
“Because,” he said, “you needed to make your decision in a room with no one in it but you. And when I called Charlotte yesterday, I knew you’d already done that. The only thing left to do was come back and stand in that room with you, if you wanted me there. And I wasn’t sure you did.”
Her eyes filled with tears again, but at least she’d cried off all her mascara during the talent show and there was nothing left to smear on her face.
“I’ve wanted you in that room with me,” she said slowly, “for a long time.”
He stood up out of Makayla’s small blue rocker.
He stood up slowly. Set his coffee on the porch rail. Came over to her chair. He knelt in front of it, both hands resting on the wooden arms of the rocker he had built for her, and he looked at her intently.
“Tessa?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
Words deserted her. Thought deserted her. She couldn’t have spoken if both geese attacked her on the spot.
“I think I’ve loved you since the funeral. Since you called me the worst veterinarian in Montana to my face.”
“I called you the least useful.”
“I stand corrected.” He smiled a little. “Anyway. I love you. I would like, if you’ll have me, to keep showing up here for as long as you want me to. Forever, if that’s what you want. I don’t need you to say anything back. I just needed you to know.”
She reached out and took his face in both her hands.
His skin was warm and slightly rough from wind and sun and the day’s stubble, and his eyes, those blue, blue eyes, gazed at her in adoration she wasn’t at all sure she deserved but for which she was exceedingly grateful. She leaned forward in the chair he’d built for her, and she kissed him.
It wasn’t their first kiss. That had been a surprise kiss, seasoned with the salt of her tears, a kiss she had been carrying inside her like a held breath weeks. This one was different. This one wasn’t sad or stolen, and it didn’t have to end before someone’s phone rang.
This one was hers.
She kissed him slowly and thoroughly, leaving no doubt in either of their minds as to how she felt about him. His hands came up off the arms of the chair to her face. The chair rocked backward gently as their kiss deepened.
When she finally pulled back, his eyes were dazed but also elated.
“I love you, too,” she said softly. “In case that wasn’t clear.”
“It was,” he said with a smile. “But it’s nice to hear.”
She laughed, but it got tangled up with the tears, and Dillon stood up, gathering her out of the chair and into his arms. They stood there on the porch like that for a long time, their arms around each other and their hearts beating next to each other.