What Were You Expecting? (43 page)

His eyes watered as he looked down. She swallowed the painful lump in her throat as hot tears coursed down her face.

“But, my love,
mo muírnin
,
I
canna do
this
again. I canna watch you pull away from me and break my heart again. You say you’re doin’ it
for
me, but I dinna think it’s true, and even if it is, I canna bear it.”

She reached over and touched the back of his hand, running her fingers over the springy blond hairs that covered his tan, weathered skin. That same hand had held his child for a few minutes before saying good-bye, before turning his whole life into an act of penance, a shadowed memorial.

“Maybe you’re terrified to love someone again. Maybe you feel like you dinna deserve happiness. I understand that. Love is scary. No matter how much we love each other, we’re goin’ to fight sometimes and hate each other sometimes, and I’m not goin’ to live forever. Happiness is scary, too. You can only know heartbreak if you’ve known joy. But I canna wait for you anymore, Nils. Either we return to Gardiner and start our life together…or not. It’s up to you, love. I belong to you right this minute and you need to decide whether or not you belong to me. Today. Before tomorrow dawns. And whatever you decide, you need to commit to that decision and you need to live with it. In the simplest possible terms, either you belong to me—completely, Nils—or you let me go.”

Sometime during her speech, her tears had stopped and though her voice was soft and low, it was strong with conviction and truth. Every card she had was now laid out on the table before him. She had nothing else to add, nothing more to say or show. His eyes, red-rimmed and dazed, gazed back at her, but the rest of his face remained expressionless.

Breaking through the almost-sacred quiet of the car, Nils’s phone rang on the console between them. They both glanced down at it to see Mr. Lindstrom’s picture pop up on the screen. Nils swiped at his eyes, as if waking up from a dream and looked up at Maggie, silently asking her if he should answer. She nodded.

“Pop? Uh-huh. Where? Okay. The supermodel. Yeah. I’m an hour away. I’ll go get her. Yeah, Pop. Bye.”

Nils pressed the end button and Maggie raised her eyebrows in question. “Lars broke down coming back from a photo shoot in the park and he’s waiting for a tow. Pop’s in Bozeman for a pickup, so I need to get the supermodel back to her cottage.”

He turned the key and merged back onto the highway.

Maggie took a deep breath, rubbing her burning eyes and looking out the window, feeling utterly exhausted. Before opening the Prairie for the evening crowd, she was going to take a long nap, probably preceded by a deluge of tears. After everything she’d just said, he hadn’t responded. He hadn’t said a word. She could almost hear her heart breaking. She could certainly feel it.

As he pulled up in front of the Prairie Dawn, she turned to him.

“I love you, Maggie,” he said, and she could see in his eyes that he was telling the truth.

“I know you do,” she said softly. “But I need more than your love for this to survive. I need all of you.”

Then she opened her door, swung her legs out of the car and walked away from him without looking back.

Chapter 20

Nils watched her walk away then backed out of her driveway, heading south toward the park. Based on where his father said Lars and Samara Amaya were stranded, he had about a forty-five-minute drive in front of him. He loosened the tie he’d been wearing for the interview, pulling it out from under his collar with one hand and unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt. He turned off the air conditioning in the car and rolled down the windows as he zipped under the Roosevelt Arch, taking deep, restoring breaths of fresh air.

Damn it if Maggie wasn’t right.

About everything.

He ran his hands through his hair as he picked over her words:

You willna give yourself permission to be happy with me.

Maybe you’re terrified to love someone again.

Maybe you feel like you dinna deserve happiness.

He rubbed his eyes as the truth of her words sank in to the hilt, slicing his heart into pieces. For fifteen long years, he’d punished himself for what had happened to Veronica and Jens, blaming himself alone for their loss. But he realized as he drove deeper and deeper into Yellowstone that blaming himself wasn’t only about having the strength to take responsibility, it was also about fear; it was the perfect way to protect himself from ever being hurt again. As Maggie pointed out, if he didn’t know joy, he couldn’t know heartbreak. And yes, of course his heart wept for what had happened to his girlfriend and tiny son…but did he honestly believe that Veronica or Jens would have wanted his life to be nothing more than a shrine to theirs?

He thought of Veronica’s bright green eyes, laughing behind light green chemistry goggles. She’d been full of innocence and life, ready with smiles and giggles and an open heart. She wouldn’t have wished for him to stay frozen in time, emotionally truncated at eighteen years old. She would have wanted him to keep living, no matter the risks to his heart.

A tear tumbled out of the corner of his eye, whipped back into his hair by the rushing wind, as he remembered the slight weight of his dead son in his arms. And little Jens. He didn’t demand any promises from Nils. All these years later, Nils thought the promise that he made at Jens’s graveside as a mutual agreement, but there was nothing mutual about it. Nils realized, shamefully, that the promise had very little to do with poor Jens, actually. It was about Nils protecting himself from ever having to live through that sort of loss again. If he never loved a woman, never got her pregnant, he’d never have to face the abyss of loss.

And that worked fine for him for years. Living his life as a memorial to Veronica and Jens felt right—even more, felt righteous and respectable. But that’s only because no one had come along to reach through the layers of pain of suffering to touch his heart. No one had challenged his fear.

He hadn’t counted on Maggie.

Maggie had shaken him from his status quo, forced his heart to open, patiently demanded—in tender, quiet ways—that he make room in his life for her. Hearing that she loved him, telling her he loved her back, feeling her body moving against his like a prayer—all of these steps had led him to today. Today. Where he knew in every fiber of his being that his love for her was endless.

Could he take the final step?

Could he give himself permission to love her completely?

Could he take the risk that loving her with his whole heart, whole body and whole mind meant that the same love could also snap him in half if ever lost?

Could he decide that his fears were outweighed by the bounty, the blessing, the sheer, stunning, irrevocable beauty that Maggie’s love brought to his life?

Could he, after more than a decade of dusk, surrender to the bright morning light of joy?

His eyes stopped burning and his lips wiggled, trying to tilt up, as he felt the answer move through him. And almost as though Veronica and Jens were finally waving farewell to him, he took the first conscious step forward without fighting, ready to leave his past behind, ready for a new life to be reborn.

***

By seven o’clock he wasn’t back, she hadn’t heard from him, and despite an unexpectedly long nap, she was a bundle of nerves.

Was it possible that he’d really decide to let her go? Was it possible he’d really believe that it was in her best interest to be set free? How exactly did that look to him? She’d get her green card, they’d get a divorce and they’d go their separate ways? Could he possibly think that a life that didn’t include him would be bearable for her?

But from the beginning he’d kept her at arm’s length. Certainly during their friendship, but even later, during their truce—when he’d offered to sleep on the ground during their camping trip, when he hadn’t stopped in at the Prairie after sharing the story of his tragic past. He always seemed to be offering her an out she didn’t want. Always arguing with her that she deserved more, deserved better, than him. Even when he said he loved her, even when he said they’d stay married, still she had worried deep down in her heart because until he gave himself permission to love her—all of her, with all of him—she would always wonder if he would someday choose to walk away from her again.

The bell over the door jingled and her head snapped up to see Paul walking in. She waved hello from the table she’d reserved for their game in the back corner of the cafe, trying to calm the fierce thumping her worried heart. He sat down and she handed him a deck of cards and he started shuffling. Not even a moment later the bell rang again and Jane walked in.

Poor Jane, who had somehow managed to fall head over heels for Lars Lindstrom while he managed the details for her cousin’s magazine shoot, didn’t look very happy.

“Jane! You’re here!” said Paul as Maggie waved her over to the table.

“I’m here,” Jane answered, glancing glumly at the empty chair. “Where’s Nils?”

Where indeed
, thought Maggie, trying not to panic, trying to trust that whatever was between them was good enough, strong enough for him to choose it with his whole heart. Good enough and strong enough for him to show up tonight and tell her that he’d chosen her, not just for now, but forever. She twisted her Claddagh ring nervously. “I don’t know if he’s coming. Had to go get Lars.”

“Go get him? Is everything okay?” Jane asked.

“I guess he and your cousin broke down in his truck on the way back to Gardiner,” said Paul.

Jane’s eyes filled with tears and Maggie reached for her new friend’s hand, furious with the Lindstrom brothers for torturing the hearts of good women. Paul tried to convince Jane that Lars, who had hooked up with Jane prior to her cousin’s arrival, was not interested in Samara. But Jane wasn’t having it.

Unable to convince her that Lars still cared for her, Jane changed the subject and they talked about Paul’s infatuation with the internet girl from Mystic, but all the while Maggie’s belly swarmed with flutters.

What if he didn’t show up?

What if she should’ve been more patient with him and given him more time to decide how he felt and what he wanted?

She’d essentially given him an ultimatum in the car, and if she’d learned nothing from
Cosmopolitan
magazine over the years, it was that ultimatums rarely worked out in a woman’s favor. She tried to stay present in the conversation she was having with Paul and Jane, but as the second ticked by she became tenser, sadder, and was losing hope.

Suddenly the bell over the front door jingled and Maggie’s breath caught in her throat as she looked up slowly to see Nils walk into the café. His face didn’t give much away as he looked around for her, seizing her eyes and heading for their table.

“You’re here,” Maggie murmured, unable to look away from him, stunned by his presence, even though she’d been praying to see his face as every long, lonely minute passed in agony.

She searched his eyes, reading such a great deal in them: conflict, longing, love. And—
oh my God, there it was
, her heart thrilled, leaping and dancing—
surrender…and hope
.

“You’re here,” she whispered again, almost inaudibly, her voice breaking with emotion.

Trembling and overwhelmed, she looked down quickly to hide her tears from Jane and Paul. She wanted to get up and leave. She wanted to take his hand without a word, run upstairs to her apartment and make him say the words over and over and over again:
I choose you. I choose us. I belong to you.
But if she looked up at him, she’d start weeping, so she kept her head down.

***

“I’m here,” he said softly, staring at her bowed head. He could tell from her posture that she was on the verge of tears and trying to control herself. He decided it would be best for now to help her by deflecting attention away from her. He flicked his glance to Paul. “Did you deal yet?”

“All yours, brother. Everything okay?” Paul slid the deck toward Nils as he put his coat on the back of his chair and sat down beside Maggie. Every cell in his body longed to reach for her, to touch her, to pull her onto his lap, to grab her hand and race upstairs. He shuffled the cards instead, the thin cardboard in his hands a terrible substitute for having his wife back in his arms.

“Long day. Finally get back to Gardiner and I have to pick up Lars and drive Miss Amaya back to her cottage. Then I got to pick up that nervous, sweaty fella from the motel and take him over there to keep her company. These famous types sure are a lot of work.” He looked up and caught Jane’s eyes, looking away quickly. Maggie still hadn’t raised her head. He shifted slightly in his seat so that his knee grazed hers. Just that tiny bit of contact quieted his nerves, filled his heart. She belonged to him, and he…

He had shuffled the deck about ten times. He looked up at Jane and took in her surprised, and vaguely amused, expression. No matter what her cousin was like, Jane seemed like good people. Not to mention, he’d never seen Lars so upside-down about a girl. “Uh. Sorry, Jane. No offense. Present company excepted.”