Page 51 of Elijah's Hope
“I only have to worry about commuting the two weeks I’m on shift. Not going to lie, sometimes those shifts run fourteen, sixteen hours. Days like that I’ll need to stay at the camp. Living up here, it’s not easy. I already gave you a sense of what winter is like, but you can’t understand it until you’ve lived it. You decide you can’t make it through the winter, and we’re still strong, I have no problem walking away from this place.”
That caught my breath. “Eli, you would leave your job? Your friends? I wouldn’t let you do that.”
He turned to me and caught my chin in his hand. “Shelby, I didn’t think I wanted anything more out of life. A job. Good pay. Some guys to shoot the shit with. I couldn’t think beyond that. Now I want… I want something more. I didn’t even know it until you got off that plane wearing that too-thin dress with your big smile. Now I realized, I want this. I want to eat dinner with you and talk with you and make love with you… Have you ever thought about kids?”
Kids. Babies. Boys with their daddy’s good looks and girls with my sass. I could feel the tears well up in my eyes and I had to brush them away. Then I nodded. “Yes, I’ve thought about having children. I think… I think I would be a very good momma.”
He cupped my cheek then and kissed me. “Then stay. For now. We’ll need to call your father. Your brothers, too. They will want to talk to me. Get a sense of who I am, what I’m about. And if they need to come here, to meet me and see that this is real, then we can arrange for that, too.”
“I haven’t said yes yet,” I pointed out.
“Fair enough. We’ve got two days. Think about it. Think about what it would mean to your plans. I get you have to do that. But, Shelby, I also want you to think about how you’re going to feel walking away from me and how I’m going to feel watching you go.”
“It would break my heart,” I said honestly. “I know it would.”
He kissed me then. So gently.
“Then don’t do it. Don’t hurt us both.”
I closed my eyes and let him kiss me. I couldn’t speak because I knew ultimately I was going to do that anyway. Hurt him. I just hoped that when I did, he would give me a chance to explain.
Because there was no getting around it now. If I was even considering staying, then I was going to have to tell him the truth. All of it. I thought of doing it now. Blurting out the whole sordid story, but I was a coward. I really had no idea how he was going to react. I knew one thing for sure, if his reaction was awful, then I was going to lose him.
I wasn’t ready to lose him. At the very least I had two more days and even if it was selfish, I was going to take them.
* * *
Later that night
Shelby
We were snuggled under the covers, naked, sweaty and sated. I thought I had never been so happy but as soon as that feeling overcame me, the other one followed behind. The feeling that I might lose this. That I might lose him.
“Eli?” I whispered. “You asleep?”
“Hmm. No, baby, I’m here.”
“Have you ever done something you needed to be forgiven for? I mean, a time when you were really wrong.”
He sniffed against my neck and tugged me closer against his chest. “I suppose.”
That meant he hadn’t. Because if he’d done something really wrong, something he needed to be forgiven for, he would have remembered.
“Why are you asking?” he muttered, and I could tell he was already half asleep.
“It’s important to me. To have a man who has forgiveness in his heart. I think in order to have that, you have to know what it feels like to be forgiven.”
“Hmm.”
“What’s something you wouldn’t forgive?”
He huffed out a breath. “I don’t know. Cheating, I suppose.”
“I would never cheat on you.”
“Same, babe. Never been one to go looking for something when I had everything I needed right here.”
Okay, I thought. That wasn’t so bad. He didn’t have a long list of sins he would consider unforgiveable. I settled back into his body and decided to let him sleep. I would tell him tomorrow. First thing. All of it. And then he would understand there are sins that have to be forgiven.
