“You read the letters?” After everything, he’d finally opened them.
“I did. And I’m sorry. I should have responded. I should have come. I should never have kept it from you. I’m so incredibly sorry for the pain I caused you, and there aren’t enough words of remorse to express how I feel about costing you Ryan.”
I stopped pacing. “Beckett, I don’t blame you for Ryan.”
His eyes shot up to mine. “How can you not?”
“How can I?” I sat next to him on the wide edge of the footboard. “It wasn’t your fault. If there were any chance you could have saved him, you would have. If there were any way you could have changed the outcome, you would have.” I recited the words from memory.
“Ryan.”
“Yeah, Ryan. What happened to you over there, that’s not something anyone should have to go through. You didn’t intentionally kill that child. It was an accident. I know you, Beckett. You wouldn’t hurt a child. Accidents are horrid, and awful things happen with no reason and no blame. It wasn’t your fault. What happened to Ryan? That’s not your fault, either. You’re no more responsible for that than an African butterfly is a hurricane.”
“It’s not the same.”
“It is. There are ten thousand ways to blame Ryan’s death on someone. It’s my parents’ fault for dying, for changing his life that way. My grandmother for not putting up a bigger fight when he wanted to enlist. Terrorists for making him feel like he needed to get out there and do something. Me, because I prayed for so long that he’d come home without detailing what condition I wanted him in. But none of that matters. He volunteered to go on a mission, and my guess is that he would have volunteered to go even if you had been there, because that’s who he was. He’s the same as my father—it just took me years to see it. If you want to blame someone, you blame the men who pulled the trigger, because that’s the only blame worth placing.”
He dropped his head. I turned, took his beard-rough cheeks in my hands, and lifted his face to meet my eyes. “Sometimes bad things happen. And there’s no blame to be placed. You can’t reason with the universe, no matter how sound your logic is. If everything made sense, then Maisie wouldn’t have cancer, and my parents would be alive, Ryan would be here. You never would have grown up the way you did. We are imperfect people made that way by an imperfect world, and we don’t always get a say in what shapes us. I do not blame you for Ryan. The only person who does, is you. And if you don’t let that pain go, it’s going to shape the rest of your life. You have that choice.”
“I love you. You know that, right? No matter what’s happened, or how badly I screwed this up, I love you.”
I dropped my hands, swallowed the lump in my throat, and nodded. “I know. And I wish that love and trust went hand in hand with us, but somewhere they got separated, and I don’t know if they can ever find their way back. I have to be able to believe the things you tell me, and that’s broken. Maybe if Maisie weren’t sick, and I was a little stronger…but I just can’t. Not right now, at least. And I know that you love the kids, and they love you. And I was wrong to cut you off from them. I was hurt and made some lame excuses in my head. But the truth is that I could always trust you with them. I mean, you’re their father.” I gave him a side nudge.
“On paper.”
“In reality.” Something clicked in my head. “This is why you didn’t press me to tell them about the adoption, isn’t it? You knew the truth would come out.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t want them in that position.”
“Yes.”
I stood and began pacing again. “Do you want a role in their lives?”
“God, yes. I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me.”
He’d said those same words after the first time we’d been together. He’d lived them since he arrived in Telluride, always given me the choice on how far I’d let him in. He’d never pushed his way in, never demanded anything more than I wanted to allow.
It didn’t matter how badly he’d hurt me, Beckett was still the same guy I’d fallen in love with. The same man my kids loved and needed. The only thing that had changed was my perception of him—of us.
“Okay, then here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll just act like we’re divorced.”
“We were never married.”
“A minor detail. What I mean is that people who have one-night stands manage to share kids. You and I love each—loved each other. We can figure it out. If you’re serious about staying—”
“I built a house, Ella. What more do you want?”
“Are you still in the military?” I knew the answer, of course. He couldn’t get out, not while we needed the coverage for Maisie. But I also knew that once she was well he wouldn’t be able to handle settling in one place now that we weren’t together anymore, when all that kept him here was the kids. His nomadic soul would itch to move on.
“That’s not fair.”
“Yeah. I know.” I sighed. “Okay, if you’re sticking around…for now, then the kids can come over whenever they want. If you want to keep up the soccer stuff with Colt, we’ll work that out. If you want to hang with Maisie on the weekends, or whatever, we’ll see what works for everyone. You can have access to them, and them to you. We’re adults, and they’re kids. So we need to act more adultier than the kids. You need to speak up for your rights, and I need to give them to you. And I don’t want to hide the adoption from the kids, so maybe once Maisie is out of the woods, if you’re still here and everything, we should tell them that you’re really their dad. I mean, that’s what I’d intended before—”
I’d barely paused in my pacing, when I found myself enveloped by warm, strong arms and pressed against a hard, familiar chest.
“Thank you,” he whispered into my hair.
He smelled so good and felt so right. Maybe if we stood here long enough, nothing else would matter. We could just freeze the moment and live in it, surrounded by the love we had for each other.
But we couldn’t. Because he’d put me through hell for over a year, and no matter how much I loved him, I wasn’t sure I could ever trust him with my heart again, ever trust him to tell me the truth when it came to our relationship.
“You’re welcome. And I’m sorry for cutting them off from you. You always joke that you don’t have any relationship experience, but I don’t either, really. I handled it all wrong. But I’m going to be better starting now.”
“I’ll be here,” he promised. “I will show up for them and for you. I know you don’t have any faith in me, and that’s okay. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll earn back your trust one millimeter at a time. You won’t regret letting me adopt them, I swear.”
“I’ve never regretted that,” I said, wrapping my arms around him for a hug and then stepping out of the security of his arms before I did something stupid like believe what he’d just promised. “Want to tell the kids?”
“Yeah.” His face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.
We found them at the cleared kitchen table, and they stopped their conversation immediately to look up at us.
“Did you fix it?” Colt asked.
“Not in that way, little man,” Beckett said softly.
“Did you say sorry?”
“I did, but sorry doesn’t fix the unfixable.”
Then Colt glared at me.
“Nope.” Beckett stepped forward and bent down. I always loved how he brought himself level to my kids. “You don’t get to be mad at the person who got hurt, or judge them for it, because only that person can tell you how deep the cut is, got it? This is not your mom’s fault. It’s mine.” He looked over at Maisie, who had tears in her eyes. “It’s mine.”
He stood back up and came to my side.
“So, we’re not together,” I reiterated. No good came from confusing kids. “But I know you guys love him, and he loves you. So from now on, as long as everyone is on the same page, you can come over whenever Beckett says it’s cool. Soccer, treatments, phone calls, visits, we’ll work it out.”
Maisie’s mouth popped open. “Really?”