Chapter 21
My heart almost exploded when I read that you were shot at. I need you to come home to me, or I’ll never be home anywhere. What would I do without my hero?
—A letter from Perry Bramble to Carson Wilder
P erry wished that she had someone to talk to about what had happened.
About what was changing. She only had Carson.
And that was sort of her eternal problem.
So when Carson walked into the florist shop right after she closed, she felt relieved, and of course a little scared, because her friend was the one she was having a whole situation about.
Her friend was the one she’d said I love you to, and he hadn’t said anything back.
Still, she just wanted to be with him.
He opened up the door, and there was a tension on his face that she couldn’t quite read. There was definitely something on his mind.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said as he went to her, his mouth crashing down on hers, the kiss so deep and hard, it made her lose her breath.
“Very hi,” she said, her heart fluttering.
Maybe there was nothing to worry about. Or at the very least, no real problem to solve.
“Let’s go for a walk, Perry.”
“A walk?”
“Yes. I want … I need to talk to you.”
Her heart did freeze then, right in her chest, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to walk on the street where anyone could see them, not when she didn’t know what he was going to say.
But she took his hand and let him lead her out of the florist shop, down the street toward the house that she was still planning to sell.
There was a large hedge in front, with flowers on it, and he stopped and picked one, turning and tucking it behind her ear.
Just as he had done down by Outlaw Lake, when he had almost kissed her, but didn’t.
This time, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in for a kiss. It was long, leisurely.
“Oh,” she breathed when they parted.
“I keep giving you flowers that are probably just weeds to you,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I grow flowers. I make bouquets for people. You know, no one ever gives them to me. Except for you.” He looked stunned by that. “That’s what makes flowers beautiful, you know. That somebody thought to give them to you.”
“I’m going to keep giving you flowers,” he said, his voice rough. And that felt the closest thing to a promise that anyone had ever made her.
Her heart was pounding hard. She felt dizzy. This was so sweet and beautiful. And almost everything. Almost.
“I need to talk to you about something important,” he said.
“What’s that?” He looked so grave, and that wasn’t him. Not usually. But last night, what had passed between them had been something beyond friendship, beyond passion. She had given words to it, but he hadn’t.
Last night, things had shifted irrevocably.
At least inside her. She was ready. She was ready to move forward.
There was so much garbage in her past. She hadn’t chosen to grow up the way she had, she hadn’t chosen a great many things, but she had chosen to live holding pain to her chest. She had chosen to hide parts of herself, and she just didn’t want to do that anymore.
“I want to marry you,” he said suddenly.
She felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. “You what?”
“I mean it.” He looked so sincere. Bright-eyed with his intensity. Her best friend. Telling her that he wanted to marry her. He was standing there next to that flower bush, looking like the whole world, and she didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to do with that.
“I thought you didn’t want to get married again.”
“This is different. This isn’t just two people deciding to get married.
Perry, we share so much. So many years. So many changes.
So much of who we are. I have never wanted to protect or care for anyone as much as I want to care for you.
I made some decisions about how to go about that and they were wrong.
Because this probably should’ve happened years ago.
It should’ve been us. Let me give you this huge ring. Let me give you a good life.”
“Oh …”
“Please. Be my wife. And my Perry. The way you have been. And I’m going to be the man you need me to be. I promise. I’m going to be someone you can be proud of.”
“Carson. You have always been mine. You’ve always been a man that I could be proud of. You.”
He cut her off, kissing her. Hard and deep. And then they parted, and with shaking hands he put the ring on her finger. She clung to him. “I …”
Something held her back. Something made it hard for her to speak. She should tell him again that she loved him. Because she did. He spoke with casual ease; he always had. But not her, because it was so bound up in other feelings.
“But I … I’m leaving Rustler Mountain.”
“Don’t leave.”
“What?”
“Or let me go with you. I don’t care.”
“But that’s not … don’t … you don’t want to get married again,” she repeated. “You said it yourself. You said that you didn’t want to get married again,” she said, recalling the words he’d said to her at the beginning of all this.
“I know. But I changed my mind. Because this is how I can take care of you, and I want to do it. No holding each other back, no codependency. We can have a wedding. A big wedding in a church. Or we could get married down by the lake where we met. I don’t care.
I don’t care where the fuck we get married, as long as we do. ”
“Why?”
“Because I need you,” he said.
His voice was so guttural, so sincere. She didn’t doubt it for a single moment. He drew her close, cupped her face with his hands. “I will give you whatever you want. I will give you whatever fucking thing you want, Perry. Anything.”
“Love me,” she said.
Because it was as simple as that. As simple and as impossible as that.
It was the one thing she had never asked for.
It was the one thing that she knew she needed to push for.
Yes. Loving him meant loving him in spite of the decisions that he had made in the past. Loving him with an acceptance of those things.
But that didn’t mean she had to accept less than she deserved.
It didn’t mean that she had to accept less than what she truly wanted, which was for Carson to love her as wildly and madly and deeply as she loved him.
She wasn’t hiding anymore. Now that she had made that decision, she couldn’t.
There was no way. She couldn’t possibly hold herself back. She couldn’t possibly keep herself from saying what she wanted now. What she needed.
“Perry I …”
“Carson, I told you. I said it to you last night, and you didn’t say anything back to me. I love you.”
“I do love you,” he said.
“I know. You tell me that. But not the way I want you to mean it. Carson, I love you. I think I … I think I always have. It wasn’t until I was sure that I could love you without hanging on to the things I was upset about that I felt I could say it.
But I finally did. You married Alyssa, and I’m okay with that. You had feelings for her first. But …”
“Perry … I can’t do that. I already told you that. I’m not built for that kind of love. I’m not built for anything of the kind.”
“No. That’s not true.”
“It is. And if they were just words, Perry, I would give them to you. If all they were was words, I would just say them. Because I have said them. To her, to you. I said them. But the thing I cannot do, the thing I will not do, is lie. I won’t say yes imagining that I’m going to sort all of it out later.
I just won’t. I won’t say that I’ll marry you and promise you things I don’t know I can give.
But I know that I want us to be forever.
I need you with me. Whatever that looks like, whatever we call it.
And I’ll spend my lifetime sorting all of that out.
I swear it. But I’m not going to lie to you. ”
She felt … devastated. This was not what she had hoped for. Not ever. And this was why she had never said anything before. The truth was, she hadn’t been strong enough back then to weather this. Oh, poor young Perry, this would’ve killed her.
Thirty-two-year-old Perry wasn’t a fan, but when she had made the decision to love Carson with all of herself, she had also sworn she would walk away if she had to.
It wasn’t her. She wasn’t the problem. Before, she had believed she might be.
Maybe she wasn’t good enough. Important enough.
But standing there, looking at Carson, one of the most wonderful men she had ever known, telling her that he couldn’t love, she realized that the world was just a broken place.
It was broken, and that was why her father behaved the way he did.
It was broken, and that was why her mother fought for a love that only hurt her.
It was broken, and that was why her principal had made it clear that her father was more important than Perry.
That what he did for work, who he was in the community, mattered more than the safety of a little girl.
The world was broken. And that was why Carson didn’t know what the feelings inside him meant, and worse, didn’t want to have them because they scared him.
He wanted to be an invulnerable mountain, and she was asking him to do the one thing that frightened him.
“I don’t need you to be a hero,” she said.
“I have to be,” he said.
“No. I never needed that from you. You are enough for me all on your own.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. I … I’m not good enough.”
“I do. I was your best friend while you were running around kicking up trouble in town. I was your best friend while you were getting in bar fights. I know that you’re human.
I love you all the same. I don’t need you to do this thing that you’re trying to do, where you act like a locked box. I don’t need it. You need it.”