“You thought I just ditched you, didn’t you?”
“Pretty much. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but you weren’t in your room, you’d given me a bum phone number, and finally when I went to the front desk they confirmed you’d checked out. And I never heard from you again. You never called me once. Believe me, I watched my phone like a hawk for weeks. Months.”
I reached out and took his hand. “Candice, the girl who I was staying with that you met, knocked my phone into the toilet that morning when I was in the shower. My SIM card was destroyed. I had to get a new phone and a new card and load everything on it from my computer back-up. That’s why I didn’t call.”
He lifted my hand up to where he could see it and played with my fingers. “Would you have called me when you got back … if you hadn’t dropped your phone in the toilet?”
“Yes. Maybe.” I had to think about it for a few more seconds. “I’m not sure. I didn’t remember we were married. And when I got back … I guess I just tried to start my life over. Get it back on track.”
“You had a plan, you said. You talked about it a lot that night.”
“Yeah.” I smiled bitterly. “My lifeplan. I thought it was the answer to everything, but now I’m starting to think it destroyed any chance I had at being happy.”
“You’re only twenty-seven.”
I pushed on his hand with mine a little. “How do you know how old I am?”
“I know you were born on the fourth of July and consider all fireworks being set off in your honor. You are an only child. Your mother lives in Seattle and at some point spent a lot of time with men who made you a very unhappy person. And I know you used that lifeplan to get your life on track and headed in a direction that made you feel good about yourself.”
My stomach clenched with fear. Having someone know me this well was nothing short of terrifying. Why was he still with me? Why hadn’t he told me to get the hell out of his life? “You know a lot. You remember a lot. I know this sounds terrible, but the only thing I remembered about you was your eyes, your face, and your hat. Oh, and that belt buckle you wore.”
“Well, that’s better than nothing, I guess.” He smiled sadly, making me want to punch myself.
“Luceo non uro,” I said, struggling to find something to make him feel better. To lessen the hurt I’d caused. “I remembered those words. And then when I saw them on your ranch gate out there, I remembered waking up in my room that morning without you. I thought you’d left me.”
“Shine not burn. Ain’t that the truth.”
“How so? What does it mean?”
“Literally? Luceo non uro means I shine, not burn. To me, though, it means that I have a choice. I need to balance the bad with the good, make sure to avoid the things that could burn or scar me but get close enough to the heat that I feel life and really experience it. Until I met you, I’d never really embraced that idea. I walked around my life just being there, but not really feeling it or being actively involved in making it worthwhile. Then there was you, and suddenly it all made sense. I grabbed onto what Fortune was offering me that night and ran with it. I was shining that night, for sure. Brighter than the Vegas strip.”
“And look where it got you.” I was so sad that I’d somehow been involved in him getting eventually burned by my carelessness. “Burned.” I stroked my thumb over his hand, wishing I could undo the pain for him.
“I don’t regret it,” he said, lifting my hand and kissing my fingers. “It might have felt like getting burned for a while, but you’re here now. If I hadn’t done what I did, we wouldn’t be getting this second chance. It feels like shining to me, not burning.”
I pulled my hand away and sat up, tears close to the surface. “It’s not a second chance, Mack. It can’t be.”
He sat up next to me and pulled me to his side with his arm across my shoulders. Touching his head to mine he spoke in a low voice. “Yes, it can. We’re still married. Why can’t we just take a shot at making it work like a real marriage?”
I felt and sounded desperately freaked out. “Maybe because we live across the country from each other?”
“That’s just geography.”
“But I have work and a life.”
“So, I’ll come live with you.”
I pulled my head away and stared at him, my heart slamming in my chest. “You’d give up all this for me?” I looked around the meadow and up at the mountains in the distance. Heaven on earth.
“Sure. In a heartbeat.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. This was such an impossible situation. “I couldn’t let you do that.”
“The hell you couldn’t.” He stood and took me by the hands, leveraging me up to stand. Once I was in front of him, he took me into his arms. “I’d go live in a trailer park in the middle of the Mississippi swamps if it meant I could be with you and give this a shot.”
“That sounds miserable,” I said, laughing sadly into his chest.