After I nurse Zara, Barb takes her again, and she and Lucy convince me to take another nap. Kane, it turns out, is having some kind of super-intense business conversation with Gabe in the Airstream, so I can’t apologize and beg his forgiveness yet.
It’s dark when I wake up, and I’m not alone in the bed. Kane is curled up behind me, an arm draped over me. I peek over and see Zara, sound asleep in the bassinet.
Kane stirs, startles, then says, “Hey.”
I roll so I’m facing him. He looks wary, a little worried, but not anything bigger. I feel a rush of relief.
We both open our mouths at the same time, but I get my words out first. “Hey. I’m, um, really, really sorry.”
He shakes his head. “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have walked out. I should have stayed and talked about it.” The corner of his mouth pulls up. “But Amanda says it’s good I didn’t, because when Heath tried that when Anna was four days old? Amanda threw a shoe at his head, and he had to have stitches.”
That makes me laugh. It sounds rusty and creaky, but it’s definitely a laugh, and it transforms the quirk of Kane’s mouth into a full-on smile. “I guess compared to that I’m pretty tame,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “It just freaked me out. Because—”
I touch his cheek, stubbly from days of rare showers and no time for shaving. “I know why. And I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like it sounded. I want to stay.” I take a deep breath. I think of what Barb said, about how the hardest thing for someone who’s been left is letting herself be loved. And I know exactly what I need to do.
“I love you.”
It’s the first time I’ve said it to him, and it’s not easy. The last person I said it to drove out of my life in an RV and never came back. After that, I didn’t much want to say it—or feel it. But Kane hasn’t given me a choice, and neither have the rest of the Wilders. And hell yes, I love them for it.
“I love you, too,” he says. “I didn’t say it sooner because I thought it might freak you out.”
“Yeah. Probably would have. A little. But I’m not freaked out now. Your mom pointed out that it’s hard, when you’ve gotten left behind, to let people love you. She said—”
The tears start again. Apparently this is just how it’s gonna be for a while. Okay. I can live with that.
“She said all I have to do is stay put and let you and the rest of your family love me and Zara.”
He smiles and cups a hand around my cheek. He leans in and kisses me, soft, warm, and sure. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, claiming me, and despite the fact that the key organs still hurt like hell, I feel the faintest stirrings of need for him.
But that, obviously, will have to wait.
When he pulls back, heat in his eyes—that will, unfortunately, also have to wait—he says, “She’s right. That’s all you have to do. And I promise to do my part. In fact, I couldn’t not love you if I tried. I mean,” he says quickly, “that wasn’t a challenge.”
I giggle.
“And you can do it a day at a time, too, you know. Just like we’ve done these last couple of months. No big promises, no huge commitments, just you, me, and Zara. You stay, and it turns out okay, just like it has all along. You good with that?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m super good with that.”
“But my mom left one thing out. An important thing. There will be days, like this one, when it feels like you can’t. And that’s okay, too. If you wake up in the morning and you don’t feel like you can stay put?”
My heart pounds when he says it. I don’t want him to paint that picture now. I want to rest in his assurance that it won’t happen, that day by day by day we can string together months, years, the rest of our lives together, surrounded by his amazing family and all the love they can’t help giving.
But he doesn’t say exactly what I thought he was going to. Instead, he grabs his phone from the nightstand and starts swiping around and tapping.
He holds it up so I can see the screen.
It’s a listing for an Airstream classic. A bigger one than mine. My eyes flick to his face, trying to understand what he’s telling me, then back to the listing. The classic has been renovated and revamped for living with small children, with bunks that can be converted to use as toddler beds or even cribs. It’s made for seeing the country with little ones in tow.
My eyebrows raise—because apparently, great minds think alike.
“Amanda made an offer on it,” Kane says. “And they accepted it.”
I’m laughing now. “You’re kidding me!”
His brows draw together. “What’s so funny?” He sounds a little hurt.
“I told Amanda I wanted to sell my Airstream. And you—you told her you wanted to buy a bigger one?”
We look at each other, then burst out laughing.
“Do you think she…?”
He taps out a text to her.
“Yep,” he says. “She offered your Airstream in trade for this one,” he says. “She got us both what we wanted.” He shakes his head in admiration.
I look at his dear, beautiful face—the hard lines and steely bone structure all Wilder, the tenderness all Kane. “What I wanted was for you to know I’d never run,” I tell him.
The creases in his forehead deepen, his eyes soft and warm on me. “And what I wanted was for you to know that if you ever needed to run, I’d go with you.”
My breath catches in my throat.
He smiles. “I also told Gabe that I was going to need more time off to travel for my photography work, and that in lieu of doing igloo camping and snowshoe cocoa trips, I’d be happy to incorporate nature photography lessons into any other Wilder trip. He was pissed about the time-off thing, but whatever. Gabe’s always hot under the collar about something.”
“You did that?” Because it’s still new to me to imagine that someone could change their life around to make room for me in it. The last person I loved… well, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t, which amounted to the same thing.
But that was her loss, wasn’t it?
That was her fucking loss.
I straighten up and put my hands on my hips, a silent acknowledgment that it’s time to stop hiding from love because of what she couldn’t give me.
Kane wipes a stray tear off my cheek. “After you told me your life was on the road, I kept seeing it as your either-or. Either you stayed or you went. And meanwhile, I had to keep being who I’ve always been—the peacemaker, the boy next door, the easy brother. And there was nothing I could do about it. I’d trapped myself in that version of the story.”
He strokes a hand down one side of his face. I can hear the rough of his palm on the days of stubble he hasn’t had time to shave away.
“Then I Googled the quote on your bracelet. The Tolkien quote. Do you know the whole thing?”
I shake my head.
He pushes a strand of hair off my forehead.
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
“Oh!” I say.
“Right? It doesn’t mean at all what I thought it meant, either.”
“Deep roots are not reached by the frost,” I quote.
He nods, a wry smile tugging up one corner of his mouth, putting a dimple there. “And I realized that my whole idea that it had to be one way or the other—stay put or go—was absurd and predicated on the idea that the only way I can be the man I’m supposed to be is by doing exactly what my brothers think they need me to do. By working full time for Wilder. And that’s just not true. In fact, the only way I can be the man I want to be is to change the way I’m doing things so I can spend time on my photography—and, even more so—be with you and Zara.”
I’m crying again, of course, as he wraps his arms around me, kissing away the tears. Our mouths find each other, a long, sweet reunion—until Zara fusses in the bassinet next to me. Then Kane gets up, changes her, and brings her to me, and we lie in the bed together for a long time, being a family.