Chapter Twelve
I’m trying not to think about how Boone’s sheets are wrapped around me, how I lost a fight about who got the bed while my fingers were covered in sticky dough while forming cinnamon rolls, or how in the span of hours, a stranger figured out how to remove my armor of fast-talking honesty to find flesh and feelings beneath it all.
It’s why I can’t go to sleep even though I’ve had my eyes closed for what I calculate is at least forty-five minutes.
It’s why when I hear Boone enter the bedroom, I keep my eyes tightly shut.
Even when I can feel him near me. Even when he quietly kneels beside me.
Even when he gently rubs the area around the gash on my head as if his thumb is a feather.
But then his hand is heavy on my arm, my arm that I am using all my brain power to send a signal of instruction to relax, to tell it that it’s supposed to be slumbering, that it can under no circumstances flinch or flex.
Boone sighs, and I feel like I’m in a moment that I shouldn’t be in. That this is more about him than it should be about me. Or maybe I want it to be more about him than it is about me, but either way, I wish I was truly sleeping and not just faking it.
His gaze is practically piercing through my skin. I imagine him studying my every pore, every wrinkle, every scar from the ignorant teenage phase I went through where I stabbed my pimples open with a safety pin.
Minutes go by that feel like hours, until his sigh grows wearier, and I hear the subtle sound of his lips parting.
“Lord, I’m going to start with the easy.
Place your healing hand on Kate, physically and emotionally.
I can tell she worries more than she lets on, that she’s searching for answers just like I am.
Wondering what is real and what is not. I don’t know her, and yet I feel like I do.
But Lord, You sure gave her a few more words than most when You made her. ”
Without seeing Boone, I can hear the way his lips curve out in a soft smile, and I try my hardest to still every goosebump that has raised even the smallest hairs on my skin, to calm my heartbeat that has begun to pound hard against my chest. This man is praying for me, and I’m not sure I’ve been prayed over since I lost my dad.
“Now for the hard,” he whispers into the space around us that has somehow grown heavy and light at the same time, this moment imprinting itself on my very soul.
“Lord, You know I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason.
There isn’t a reason You can give me that is good enough for losing Becca, but maybe some things do happen for a reason.
Maybe Kate happened for a reason. Maybe, if only to remind me that I have a lot of life left to live.
For her to remind me that the time she had with her dad was a gift, and she was grateful to be loved by him for that long. ”
Then his hushed voice cracks, and Boone is soon crying.
I can feel it in the way his hand softly shakes against my arm.
It’s subtle, but it’s there. And I fight every urge I have to pop open my eyes and pull this emotionally exposed man into an embrace.
But I also know how much that could complicate things.
How that intimate experience could rip the quilt I’ve constructed of my life in neat little squares into shreds.
“And maybe, Lord, maybe Kate happened for more. Lord, you know I’m fine staying stuck right here until my last breath leaves my bones, but if I’m not meant to be here, help me find the footsteps forward.
And let Kate find confidence in her footsteps forward, too.
She’s special, and she deserves to know that and walk that out. ”
The floorboards beneath Boone’s knees groan as his body shifts. His thumb rubs gently in circles, making the soft fabric of the thermal pajamas he lent me scratch against my goosebumps.
And then Boone sighs, “Amen,” and the heated friction of his hand is gone, along with the rest of him.
But what doesn’t leave me is that Boone just told God I was special.
Out loud.
And I don’t know what to do with that. I haven’t felt special in a long time.
Not to anyone. Not even to myself. And if Boone thinks I’m special, then he’s not trying to figure out if I’m interesting.
He already thinks I am, and that’s a problem because if I’m honest with myself, I’m not trying to figure out if Boone is interesting either. He is.