So he looked up at her, and he tried. “I don’t know if I’ll be a good dad,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to be a good husband. I have lived in absolute fear for so long, Tansey. For so long. Because when I was a kid, I knew my sister was sick. Of course I did. We spent all that time in hospitals, all that time around doctors, and it wasn’t like my parents didn’t try to prepare us. But you don’t understand dead when you’re fourteen years old. And you can’t. It’s just the most absurd thing. I had a sister. And she was wonderful. The cutest kid. The sweetest... And why? Why? It never made any sense. That I could never... I couldn’t live with what it made me feel. I had to figure out some way to stop it. I couldn’t help Boone with what he felt because it was killing me. As if my own pain wasn’t enough, I had to watch it torture him too. I had to watch it torture everybody, and that was what broke me. It absolutely broke me into pieces. And that was the man that met you.”

He sat there, his words so heavy. Everything so heavy. “I have told myself that I did not have it in me to give anybody the support they needed if they were going through a hard time. That I didn’t have it in me, because of the way I reacted to Boone. But when you said that... When you said you loved me just now... It was like you shone a light on all those dark places inside of me, and I can’t pretend I don’t know what it really is.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Fear. I’m afraid. I’m a coward. Because you’re a gift. A beautiful, lovely gift. Too perfect to be real almost. And more what I want than I ever wanted to admit. More than I ever wanted to want. And suddenly it terrifies me. Like the sky might cave in and take you away from me.” He cleared his throat. “When you told me that you thought you might be pregnant... It was the ferocity of what I felt that shut me down. Because it was like...hope, with teeth. It’s the best way I can describe it.”

“I know all about that. About hope with teeth. Every time I’ve ever looked at you, Flint. And wanted to believe that we could be something that we were never meant to be. Because you were that cowboy, the one that I was supposed to stay away from. The one that I was never supposed to love. You were that cowboy. And I knew better. But something in me didn’t want to know better. Because it just wanted you. What I really wanted was you.”

“I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t know. But I know that I can’t walk away from you. Not again. Not ever again.”

“I can’t walk away from you either. I need you too much. I need us.”

“I... I don’t know if I can. I don’t know... But I want it. I want to do whatever I have to do to figure this out. To fix myself. So that I can be what you need.”

“Flint...”

“But you were always enough,” he said. “It was me. It was always me. I was the one who couldn’t cope. I was the one who flinched. You were always enough. What your father couldn’t do was fix himself. I want to. For you. For us. For the future. I’m glad you wrote that song. I’m glad you told the truth about what I did to you. Because I needed to know. I needed to really know.”

“But what about you?”

“It ruined me. Broke me. And now... You put me back together. I’m still not quite in perfect condition. But I’m trying. I want... I want forever. Please.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am dead serious. I know that I don’t deserve that level of trust. I know that I don’t deserve for you to give that to me... But damn, I want you. More than I’ve ever wanted anyone or anything. And I want you more than I want to be the kind of safe I’ve been all these years. Because it was too late. The minute I caught you outside that gate, the minute that happened, it was too late. Too late for me to keep doing what I was doing. Too late for me to hang on to all the ugly stuff. All the broken stuff. I tried. And I nearly broke us both. So now I just want to surrender to it.”

“I had accepted... I had accepted the idea that there was no way for us to have a happy ending. That I was going to have to accept that it was going to be another kind of happy. You know, the kind when you walk away, but at least you learned something.”

“It’s the easy way,” he said. “This... What I want with you... It’s going to be the hard way. Because I’m not perfect. And I am certainly not perfectly healed all of a sudden just because I want to be. This might be hard. Deciding to be together instead of just deciding to walk away wounded. I know that. I get that. But I think it’s worth it. You and me. I think it damn well will be. Those endings... Those endings where people are apart, it’s not better. It’s not deeper. It’s just easier. Because it’s easier to walk around with your own shit and never have to deal with it. It is so much harder to have to take someone else’s on, and I got to ask you to take on mine.”

Her face went soft. “Well, you’re gonna have to take on mine too. I’m not exactly in perfect working order myself. I couldn’t tell you what I wanted then.”

“Tell me what you want now. I will do my damnedest to give it to you, because I love you. Because you are worth it to me. Because you are everything. You are everything and none of it matters. Because there is no protection worth having, there is no piece of my soul worth preserving, if you are out there in the world and I’m not with you.”

Tears started to fall down her cheeks. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t want this to end. I want you to be the father of my children. I want you to be everything. I fell in love with you, Flint, even knowing that I shouldn’t. I fell in love with you even though it wasn’t what I wanted. I was afraid, but I knew that loving you was worth the risk. I just did somehow. These last two years I questioned it, and I tried so hard to call it something important. To call it something worthy. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t need that fairy-tale happy ending. But I wanted it with you. It was never enough to not have you. When you sent me away, I was devastated.” She wiped tears away from her cheek. “I waited until I got to a motel six hours down the road, and then I cried. For days. And then...”

“Do you think you were pregnant?”

She nodded slowly. “Probably. Even if we would’ve stayed together, I think I would have lost it.”

“But I could’ve been there for you,” he said. Everything in him felt wrong. Sad. Angry at himself for the choices that he’d made. For the ways in which he hadn’t protected her. The ways in which he had protected himself instead. “I wish that I would’ve been there for you. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that I cannot promise you a life without pain. It’s something I’m coming to accept. The fact that I can’t escape it no matter how much I might want to. But I can promise to be there for you. And I can promise to help try to carry the burden if it’s too heavy. And to carry you if I have to.”

“Yes,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “But I need you to do something.” She put her hand on his chest. “I need you to forgive yourself. Because our relationship shouldn’t be a penance that you’re paying. Our love isn’t you making up for the past. You did the best you could then. I just want you to do the best you can do now.”

“I promise you that,” he said, his heart about ready to pound through his chest. “I promise.”

He felt raw, and exposed. He felt fundamentally changed. His whole world felt like it had been tilted a bit. Or maybe like it had been put right. It was a lot, to recognize that he was afraid, and had been all this time.

And he was going to take a long time to sort through it; he knew that. But he knew one thing now. And he knew it well.

“I love you.”

Chapter 12

Of all the things Tansey had thought she would hear from him as the sun was just beginning to rise over the tops of the mountains...that was not it. The night had not turned out the way she had expected. Because she had been certain they would be parting from each other in the morning, again.

She had even been ready for it.

But she kept thinking about what he said. About how redemption, change, was the hardest thing.

She knew it was true.

Forgiveness, and the choice. The choice to just love.

To believe that it wasn’t her that was broken, but her father. To believe that she was enough all on her own.

But that she really wanted to be with Flint all the same.

She had accepted that she might say she loved him, and not have a life with him.

She had never imagined this. The chance to have a life with him.

And suddenly, none of it mattered. If she ever wrote another song—but she was pretty sure she would. It just all felt like...there was more now. More than striving. More than trying to show people that she was worth something.

More than trying to be the best. It was the strangest thing, but loving him, being in this moment, it made her feel like she might be able to live for herself for the first time.

And living that way with him...

It was a happy ending that was somehow beyond anything she had ever fantasized about.

“I love you too,” she said.

“Marry me. The whole thing. Everything. The forever thing.”

“Just like that? Just like that you aren’t scared anymore?”

“I’m terrified. Fucking shaking in my boots. It’s just that now I know it doesn’t matter. I would rather love you, and live every day with some kind of fear that I might lose you, than not have you in my life. I would rather feel everything. Be damn near overflowing with it, than live comfortable and empty without you.”

“You make it sound awful.”

“No.” He smiled. “It’s wonderful.”

And she thought what she had concluded earlier. That they were some kind of fate. Even if it was a bloody, hard-won fate. And she knew that it was even more than that. Because they had the chance to be the kind of fate that she had imagined briefly earlier tonight. The kind that was bittersweet and sad.

But they were choosing to be more. The kind of fate that was more. The kind of fate that was everything. She realized that this kind of fate involved a whole lot of choosing. Because you could fall right into a man’s arms, but unless you chose each other, you might not end up together. Unless you decided to let go, of all kinds of things, of hurt, of fear, and embrace hope...

Hope with teeth.