“You need to leave, Boone. This isn’t the time or place to be making a statement.” Dad pointed his chin in the direction of the driveway. “Now go on and get.”
Boone’s hand flexed around mine, so strong it made me wince, but he loosened his grip a moment later. “Because you are the father of the woman I love, I will let that one go, but if you order me to leave her again, I won’t be so willing to overlook it.” Boone stepped forward, taking me with him. “I might have been a stupid-as-shit boy back then and listened to you when you told me to leave, but I’m not making that mistake again.”
“And we’re supposed to believe you’re any less stupid-as-shit now than you were then?” Ford nudged my dad, trying to garner a chuckling companion, but my father’s face stayed cemented in hard lines.
“You think you know about love, but the truth is, all you’ve learned is how to run away from it when life gets tough,” Dad said. “I won’t ask to be forgiven for wanting more for my daughter than some man who’s going to cut and run every time life puts the pinch on him. You don’t deserve her, Boone, so don’t try strutting in here and hoping to convince me otherwise.”
“You’re right. I don’t deserve her.” I shook my head, about to object, but Boone kept going. “And I know there’s nothing I have done or could do or could do in my next ten lifetimes to deserve the woman standing beside me, but fuck deserving and fuck the past. I love her.”
Dad didn’t blink. “You mistake love for infatuation.”
“No, you’re mistaking the two. I’m all clear on the subject.” Boone stepped in front of me, turning his back on my family and Ford. His hand stayed in mine, and he stared at me like there wasn’t anyone around for miles. He stared at me like there weren’t a good twenty sets of eyes staring at us without blinking. “I love you. So much. And I’m sorry I’ve been too scared or proud or stupid to say it, but it’s the truth. I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you. I always will.”
“If this is the part where you add something about being born to love her, you can save it, son. Clara Belle’s all grown up and not some impressionable girl anymore.”
Boone didn’t glance back at my dad, but he shook his head, still staring at me. “Not born to. Just made to.”
A sharp huff came from my dad.
Boone continued to stare at me, waiting. “You haven’t said a word.”
I felt my collapsed lungs struggle to fill. They couldn’t. “That’s because it’s been difficult to get a word in.”
“You don’t have to say anything, Clara Belle,” my dad piped up, his forehead drawn into so many lines it looked like an old washboard.
For once, I saw feelings on his face. Concern. Worry. Nervousness. He was afraid I was going to fall for Boone all over again, get hurt, and be wrecked just the same way I had been before.
My dad . . . cared about me. In more ways than just how I influenced the Abbott family image?
A lot was coming at me, and none of it was slowing down, but instead gaining speed.
“I’ve got my thumb on Sheriff Cooley’s number. Give the nod, and he’ll be here as fast as his cruiser can send him.” Ford lifted his phone, quirking a brow at me.
“You’re still not saying anything.” Boone guided us a few steps away from everyone, pressing the pads of his fingers deeper into my cheek. Reaching around his back, he fumbled with his shirt before pulling something out and holding it in front of me.
My eyes cut from him to what was in his hand. It didn’t seem possible. I’d seen it shatter. Hell, I’d been responsible for it shattering. I was sure I’d never see it whole again. I was sure I’d never see it again at all, yet there it was, pieced back together, within my grasp.
“What once was broken can be fixed.” Boone lifted the angel with the number eighteen at her feet. I could still see every crack from the break, but she was fixed. “It’ll always bear the scars, but at least it’s whole again.”
When he held it out for me to take, I did. Carefully. Looking at it, a person’s instinct was to believe it was extra fragile due to the breaks. It seemed more delicate, not as strong or able to withstand as much as it had before being fractured.
“People say we’re weak where we’ve been broken, but I say we’re stronger.” Boone traced the long jagged line running right down the center of her. “We’re stronger because we know our weak spots and can protect them more carefully the next time.”
I nodded as I turned the angel over in my hands. Miraculous was all I could think as I inspected every fissure and crack. They had all been repaired. They would always be visible, but the angel had survived the crash. It wasn’t perfect anymore, the innocence of it had been lost, but that was life’s policy. The good came with the bad, the highs brought on the lows, the idyllic days were balanced by the ones that made us want to give up and crawl into a hole.