Chapter 31
NOT REALISTIC
After what the two of them just experienced, Nelson thought for sure they’d be doing more talking than eating.
But here they were an hour later, sitting at the island, steaks on plates next to roasted potatoes and steamed broccoli.
“What’s going on in your head?” she asked. “I can feel your tension over here.”
“Did I deliver in the bedroom?” he asked.
She smiled. Slow, sweet, full of much more than humor.
He wanted it to be love. He wouldn’t know unless he asked.
“You know you did,” she said. “I didn’t shout out loud enough for you?”
“Oh, you did,” he said. “Drained me so much I was only working out at half capacity after.”
“Yay me,” she said doing a fist pump. She turned to look at his face. “It was wonderful.”
“It was,” he said. “Do you mind having a serious conversation?”
“We can. You rarely want to.”
He realized that now. That he added humor even when it wasn’t funny.
It was his way of masking his fears. Or that he even had any.
He had plenty, and the biggest one was staring at him waiting for him to spill his guts.
“One of those flaws of mine. West pointed out earlier that I always want people to guess or assume what is wrong and just fix it without me having to get my hands dirty.”
“That’s lazy,” she said.
“That too. I think it’s more about being hurt. But I’m learning that by staying silent, I end up being hurt anyway.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “But I never know the right time to talk. And sometimes I don’t want you to solve something.”
“I think most men feel that this is what they need to do.”
“You’re right. So don’t be common.”
“That’s funny.”
“I think it is,” she said. “I believe you try really hard to not let people see the real you. Or you try to be different from your siblings because it was so hard to stand out amongst them.”
“All of that is true. I’ll start with, I know and like that you talk to Lily so much. That she’s a shoulder and support system for you.”
“But...you’d rather I go to you?” she asked.
“I’d like that. But I understand it’s not realistic. Lily sees things from your perspective that I might never do.”
“Exactly,” she said. “But I’m not keeping secrets. I feel alone here.”
“I don’t want that,” he rushed out.
“I can’t change how I feel, but it’s not as great as it was weeks ago. It’s getting better. It’s not healthy for me to have no friends. No one I can call or talk to about things.”
“What about Bethany?”
“She still doesn’t know I’m married. I need to change that. My mother told someone and it’s going to travel fast. I planned on making the call tonight or tomorrow. It’s a lot of explaining to do. I’m not sure how much you want me to tell and we need to have that conversation.”
“I’d like to remove the part about me being drugged and robbed. We were both drunk and leave it at that.”
Even though he wasn’t.
“I can do that,” she said. “With Lily, I feel as if she’s not my boss’s wife; she’s my sister-in-law. She’s a friend I can call to talk to or lean on. Your mother has been sweet, but she’s your mother and not a friend I can lean on the way I’d need.”
He frowned. “How often are you talking to my mother?”
She laughed. “You don’t need to know those things. She fluctuates back and forth between your wonderful characteristics and annoying flaws. I don’t need to hear those things to know or change how I feel.”
He’d have to talk his mother into backing off some. Not that he thought she’d listen.
“Can you tell me how you feel?”
She reached for his hand, laid hers on top of his much larger one, but he turned it so their palms were together.
“Can I just talk for a few minutes first? My thought process and what I’ve realized since I’ve been here and my few conversations with my mother?”
“Absolutely. I want you to always feel as if you can talk to me about anything.”
She nodded, took a drink of her water and then said, “My parents’ relationship is theirs.
It works for them, or so I think. My father isn’t a soft, gentle person and has never professed or tried to be.
He’s caring and loving in his way. To him a good husband protects and provides.
When my mother went to work at the church, he felt he had failed.
But life is different, things cost more, the farm wasn’t making as much. ”
“Everything is harder and more expensive now than it was twenty or fifty years ago.”
“I know that. My mother tried to tell my father that, but he was very old-fashioned in his thinking. I wanted something better in my life than they had. As much as I disappoint them in my choices.”
“Because it’s not theirs doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” he said.
“One hundred percent. There is a tiny part of me that will always crave their acceptance, and I’ve got to get over that.
But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to make life easier for them.
When I get to a point I can do it, I’m going to try.
I doubt they will accept it, but I needed you to know, that if this thing with us… ”
“Marriage.”
“If our marriage works, I want to use some of my salary, after I take care of my debt, to figure out a better way of life for them. I’m not going to tell them what it is, I won’t hand over cash because they have pride too, but I want to get a plan for them.”
“That’s very honorable of you,” he said. “That’s how West was. We struggled for years. My mother had her pride too, but she knew she had to swallow it for the bigger picture.”
He remembered the fights his mother and West had. His mother didn’t want any money; she wanted West to make a name for himself first.
But his brother was selfless and put everyone first for over a decade. More than that.
“That’s what I hope happens also. I’m getting off course, but there is something you need to know and I don’t want you to solve it either. I’m not sure it’s even my job to solve it, but I will try.”
“Tell me,” he said, frowning.
“When I was packing to move here, I found some documents in my father’s office by mistake. He took a large mortgage out on the farm. I know times were tough and they never got better. My mother started working and that just about killed him to know she had to.”
“Do you think that is why he’s so uptight over your debt?”
“That’s my guess. My mother is the one more uptight over debt and I think that is why my father didn’t tell her.
I talked to him and said I knew. We fought, but I told him to stop judging me when he had his own secrets.
He hung up on me, but I just had to say it.
It didn’t feel right to me to have this burden of guilt when he was carrying it too. ”
“I’m glad you said something. Not that I would tell you to do that, but I would have. They are being harsh with you and maybe it’s because of his choices, but you’re dealing with yours and he has to deal with his.”
“I am. But I need to help them somehow because that is what family does. I saw one of your brother’s businesses put solar panels on farmland that isn’t good for planting.”
“That’s a great idea,” Nelson said.
“I don’t want any handouts. Nothing. If I think it’s a good fit for them, I’ll approach them to go through the process like everyone else. No favors. I don’t want them to know West owns it.”
He didn’t like what she was saying and wanted to argue. “Kenzie.”
“No,” she said. “Promise me. I have to deal with this on my own. I don’t want secrets or anyone to think I’m using your family connection. Not even my father.”
It wasn’t worth the fight now.
“You’re opening up and talking the way I hoped you would. Keep going.” He wanted to encourage her to go further, go deeper. Maybe they’d finally touch on what he wanted said.
Even if he had to be the one to say it first.
“My parents’ marriage isn’t really a happy one. Not that I can see. He tells her what to do. She does it. I think she believes she has to. I don’t want that. I don’t need that. I’m my own person.”
“And I want you to be,” he said fiercely.
“I believe that. I think that made it easier for me to come here. As much as you want to fix my problems, you’re also encouraging me to work on them myself. You gave me options not a solution. You don’t know how much that meant to me.”
He wanted to reach around and pat himself on the back over her praise.
Doing that would break the seriousness of the conversation, which he wouldn’t do.
“I was told what to do a lot in my life, but was equally given the same time and chances to figure it out on my own.”
“So you get it.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to put pressure on you. Please don’t think that. But what I feel for you. It’s growing. Fast. Deep. Strong. Stronger than I thought I could feel for another person.”
He laid his head on her shoulder. Maybe he could take the pressure off of her to get the words out.
“Are you trying to say you love me?”
“I might be,” she said. “I just don’t want you to feel as if you have to say it back. I don’t want you to do that because you think I might not stay.”
“Stop talking, Kenzie.”
“Okay.”
“I love you. I started to fall in love with you when you still lived in Utah. Why do you think I pushed so hard to get you here?”
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I thought it had more to do with not wanting to fail.”
“There is always going to be that,” he said. He tapped her on the nose, then gave her a gentle kiss on the lips. “But it’s about you. Us. I wanted to give ourselves time for this to work. I think it is. At least as best as it can be with all that has been thrown at us.”
“I think so too.”
“Then can you tell me the words back, or don’t you feel them?”
He had to be an idiot to put this on her, but if he couldn’t say it now, he didn’t think he’d find the courage to another time.
“I love you, Nelson. I’ll admit I don’t know if I did before I moved here, but I felt a lot. The greatest thing was hope. For me, you need hope for love. One has to lead the other.”
“It has,” he said. “Can we tell people we are married now?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “Let everyone just get used to us as a couple.”
He let out a dramatic sigh. He hadn’t really thought she’d agree to it anyway. “Can I at least come to your desk and get a kiss?”
“I suppose that will be allowed as long as my boss doesn’t give me a hard time over it.”