“Okay. I was reading the MIBG papers in the hospital with Maisie, and I remembered what you’d said about your insurance not covering it. So I looked through the hospital website, and they take my insurance, and not at your coinsurance rate. The whole thing is covered.”
“Good for you. Now you can get treated for cancer.” How the hell could he just suggest that we get married?
“I’m not done explaining.”
I wanted to throw him back in his truck and off my property, but there was the tiniest spark in me that lit up at the thought that Maisie could get the treatment she needed. And that little spark was hope. Man, I hated hope.
Hope fooled you, gave you the warm fuzzy feelings just to yank them away again.
And right now, Beckett was a big slice of warm, fuzzy hope, and I hated him for it.
Taking my silence for acquiescence, Beckett continued.
“If you marry me, the kids are covered. All of Maisie’s treatments are paid for. No more fighting with the insurance people. No more generics. She will get the best possible treatments.”
“You want me to marry you, to become your wife, sleep in your bed—when you won’t so much as kiss me—all for insurance? Like I’m some kind of pros—”
“Whoa!” He interrupted me, waving his hands. “We wouldn’t have to actually…you know.” His eyebrows rose at least an inch.
“No, I don’t know.” I crossed my arms over my chest, knowing damn well what he meant. If he had the balls to suggest marriage, he could certainly lay out the terms.
He sighed in exasperation. “We’d only have to be married in the legal sense. On paper. We could live separately and everything. Keep your name, whatever. It would just be to cover the kids.”
Oh my God, the man I loved was really standing in front of me, proposing marriage, not because he loved me back but because he thought it would save my daughter. Now I loved him even more, and hated both of us for it.
“Only in the legal sense? So you don’t actually want me? You only want to protect my kids?” Great, now I sounded pissed that he didn’t want me in his bed. If my emotions could just pick a side, that would be great.
“I thought we covered this already. I want you. That just doesn’t play into me asking you to marry me.”
“Can you actually hear yourself? You want me, but you don’t want to marry me. But you’re willing to marry me to cover the kids for insurance, as long as we don’t actually live like we’re married.” All of the legal entanglement, none of the love, or the commitment, or the sex.
Which left us with the only aspect of marriage I was really familiar with: the part where the husband walked away.
“Exactly.”
“Okay, this conversation is over.” I turned, and then spun right back around to face him. “You know what? It’s not. Marriage means something to me, Beckett! Or at least it used to. Maybe it’s not the same for you, or you think because of the way I let Jeff divorce me that I think it’s just a piece of paper, but it’s not. It’s supposed to be a lifetime of love, and commitment, and loyalty. It’s supposed to be all those vows about sickness and health, and better and worse, and loving someone even on the days you don’t like them. It’s not, hey, let’s sign this piece of paper and join up while it’s convenient. It’s supposed to be about building a life with the one person on earth who is meant to be yours. It’s…it’s not meant to be temporary. It’s supposed to be forever.”
He stepped toward me and then stopped himself, tucking his thumbs in his pockets.
“It’s about love, Beckett.”
“And I love your kids. No supposed to be about it.”
The intensity in his voice, his eyes, hit me smack in the heart. “They love you, too,” I admitted. So do I. Which was why I couldn’t agree to this. It would destroy them when it ended. Signing myself up for the hurt was one thing, but my kids? That was where I drew the line.
His whole posture softened, like my words had taken some of the fight out of him.
“I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize them, or you. I’m just saying that if they were mine, legally, or half mine, Maisie could get the treatment she needs. This could save her life.”
That spark of hope flared, shining too much light on everything the kids and I had been through. All the sleepless nights. All the medical bills that piled up on my desk, threatening to bankrupt us. The overwhelming knowledge that if she didn’t have the MIBG treatment, she most likely wouldn’t live.
But what happened to her once Beckett was done playing house?
“I don’t know you nearly well enough for this—not in the ways that matter.”
His eyes flared with pain, and those defenses went back up. “You know me well enough to have given me decision-making rights for Maisie, right?”
“That was for a few hours so I could go to Colt’s graduation, and only for the worst-case scenario!”
“Reality check, Ella. Your entire life right now is a worst-case scenario.”
Ouch.
“Yeah, well you said it yourself: you’ve never been in a relationship that lasted more than a month. You weren’t even willing to kiss me because you said you’d screw it up and that would hurt Colt and Maisie.”
The anger vanished from his face instantly and was replaced with an overwhelming sadness. “You don’t trust me.”
My heart wanted to. My heart screamed that he would do anything for the kids. My head, on the other hand, wasn’t backing down from his own declaration that it wouldn’t last.
“I thought I knew Jeff. I loved him. I gave him everything, and the minute that everything turned into the twins, he walked. I never dated again. Not once. I swore that I’d never put my kids in a position to let someone walk out on them again.”
“I would never walk away from them, or you. I will always show up, Ella.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me. The men in my life have a habit of promising with one hand and packing with the other.”
“It wasn’t a lie the first time I said it, and nothing’s changed. It’s a vow.”
“That was for soccer! Not marriage! You can’t stand there and promise me always when two weeks ago you weren’t even open to the possibility of a relationship.”
“It’s just on paper, Ella!”
“It’s not! The way you’re proposing that I depend on you—that my kids depend on you—is not on paper. That’s very real. What if you walk away while she’s midtreatment? They’d stop it! How is that any better than me struggling right now to find the money? If anything it would be more damaging, because at least I know what I’m up against right now. Do you know what a long haul this is? Even if she beats it, the relapse rate… You don’t understand the long-term implications of what you’re offering, as well-intentioned as it may be.” And it was; it was the most heartfelt, genuine offer I’d ever received. But life had taught me long ago that intentions were worth nothing.
“All I can give you is my word, and the promise that no matter what happens to me, they’d be covered. Maisie would live.”
“You don’t know that, either.” My biggest fear slipped out as if it were nothing, but I should be used to it by now with this man. He had a way of stripping away my defenses, leaving me open to the elements. But I didn’t know how to trust the appearance of sunshine after living in a perpetual hurricane. Not when there was the overwhelming possibility that he was simply the eye of the storm.
“I don’t,” he admitted. “But when she asked if she was going to die, I promised her that it wasn’t going to happen on my watch, and this is the only way I can think of to keep that promise.”
Ice ran through my veins, chilling me from the heart outward.
“My daughter asked you if she’s going to die?”
“Yeah, when we were in Montrose—”
“And you’re just now telling me this?” I stalked forward until I was only a breath away from him, glaring up at his stupid, perfect face.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And you promised her that she wasn’t going to die?”