Who gives a sh—snit what they want? It’s your life, not theirs.
Her heart clutched from the sound of Cain’s voice in her head, but she ignored it as she always did and opened her eyes. “And we will. Someday.”
“You happy, baby?” Woodman asked, turning his head to look at her. His eyes dropped to her pajama top, which had remained on while they’d had sex, and he frowned before looking back up at her. “Tell me the truth, you happy to be marryin’ me?”
“Course,” she said.
“’Cause sometimes you don’t seem . . .”
She took a deep breath and held it, knowing what was coming.
He shrugged. “You don’t seem . . . into it.”
“The weddin’?” she asked.
His cheeks flushed. For all that he’d spent his childhood watching horses breed, when it came to talking about sex with her, he was clumsy. “No, baby. Us.”
She hated this conversation. She hated it because the wall of cloudy glass that she’d erected was very thin, and tapping on it too much could break it, bring it down, force them to face the truth that Gran was right and they were wrong—there was a place in human life for a marriage based on friendship, but it wasn’t when you were twenty-one years old.
Her stomach turned over. “Wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t want to marry you.”
“But are you happy?” he’d asked again.
“Yes. God,” she’d said softly, turning away from him to stare at the ceiling. Her voice was annoyed, but she was too tired to make it warmer. “I’m happy, okay?”
Thinking back on their conversation now made her sad, and she didn’t want to feel sad. She was a bride headed to a cake shop to taste cakes and choose one for her wedding. She’d made her choice. She’d chosen Woodman. End of story.
As for children? Well, mostly she was too tired to fight the expectations of her parents and fiancé; it was easier to acquiesce than push back. But if she didn’t hold the line, that meant she’d wake up in five years married to Woodman, with at least two kids, trapped living a good, decent life in Apple Valley. And maybe it was wedding jitters getting the best of her, but there were moments—small flashes of time—when she just wasn’t sure that’s what she wanted. Yes, it’s what she’d wanted at eighteen, when she was a girl barely out of high school. But it just didn’t feel as . . . right anymore.
As a rule, she didn’t allow herself to think about Cain, and when she did, she preferred to think of him as dead. But she knew, through the very occasional news Woodman received from his cousin, that Cain had taken six months off after his first contract and ridden around Europe on his motorcycle. Many, many nights she’d dreamed of his jet-black hair blown back, his bike curving around mountain passes in the Alps and through valleys of olive trees in Italy. She could almost feel the wind through her hair too, the way her arms would wind around his torso and her hands would clasp over his heart. The word wanderlust would stick on her tongue, bittersweet as anything, and she could almost taste the way she wanted a little adventure of her own—something to look back on when she had a bunch of kids yelling “Momma” years and years from now.
But there was always morning. And in the light of every new day, with Woodman snoring softly beside her, she reminded herself of what she couldn’t have and what she could have. And gratitude reigned. She would be loved and cared for all the days of her life by a man who thought the sun rose and set in her eyes. It would be enough, wouldn’t it?
“It’s all you get. It has to be enough,” she whispered.
She turned from Main Street onto General Lee Lane, stopping in front of the adorable storefront that looked like something out of Candy Land. She straightened her pearls, ran a hand through her blonde waves, and opened the door.
The tinkling bell overhead announced her arrival, and four sets of eyes—her mother’s, Miz Sophie’s, Charm Simpkins’s, and the baker’s—looked up from a fancy photo album with pictures of wedding cakes, each a mile high.
“Why, Ginger!” said Miz Simpkins. “You’re barely late at all!”
“Hello, Miz Simpkins,” she said softly, pausing just inside the bakery door, a trifle apprehensive, uncertain of her place with so many other ladies in charge of her wedding.
“Afternoon, Ginger,” said Earline Ford, the premier baker of Apple Valley, looking up from the album and offering her a warm smile. “Almost ready to be a blushin’ bride? Just three more months!”
She felt her lips twitch into a small smile for the baker who’d been sneaking her mini cupcakes under the counter since she was four. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Come take my seat, honey. I’ll get another chair.”