Page 102 of Her Christmas Wish
Gray’s eyes were staring at her. Then not, as Leigh pushed to get down and run after the puppy.
What in the hell had just happened?
Feeling as though she was hallucinating, she was afraid to move. To wake up and find that she’d hit her head and was dreaming.
Gray didn’t seem to be suffering the same malady. He walked up to her, holding her gaze the whole time, took the mattress bag out of her hand, dropped it to the floor and held both of her hands. Peering right into her soul.
“It wasn’t the resentment,” he told her. “Or the responsibility.”
She didn’t get it. “It wasn’t?”
He shook his head. “Truth is, turns out, I’m a coward, Sage. I didn’t get it until just now. Leigh told me.”
She really had to be losing it. “Leigh told you you’re a coward?”
“No, she told me she was afraid of being alone.” He spouted some stuff about her daughter taking the few minutes she was gone to ask Gray if he was her boyfriend. Involving Jeremiah.
“She never said a word to me.”
He nodded. “It had to do with something Sarah said. The broked home thing. If something happened to you, she’d be all alone and have to go to services.”
She was getting further behind. “Okay, since you’ve managed to make her feel better, good job by the way, I’ll deal with her in a second...” She heard her words and stopped. “No, maybe I won’t. You already did it just fine,” she corrected herself. And continued right on with, “Now, about you being a coward...”
“It hit me smack in the face...when I saw the raw fear on Leigh’s usually happy features. Why aren’t we getting married? Other than that we’d now own two cottages, that is. But otherwise...why? And yeah, I learned some tough lessons growing up, and clearly wasn’t mature enough to get married ten years ago, but why not now?”
She wished she had that answer. Wished every single night.
“Because I’m afraid of loving, Sage. Weird, huh? The idea of being tied to you, and you getting sick, or something happening, and having kids and not being able to be there for them...it scares me to death.”
Understanding dawned. Her mouth opened to say the right thing. And she had nothing. There was no cure for life’s limitations.
No guarantees of the kind he needed.
“I looked in Leigh’s eyes, and I saw something else,” he told her.
Pray God it wasn’t more unsolvable vagaries of the universe. “What?”
“Trust. You and I both know that there’s a chance we could be run off the road and be gone, while she’s with a sitter. There aren’t ever guarantees. But she trusts that as long as she’s loved, she’ll be okay. Even if it’s just that that love will see her through, give her strength to carry on.”
Staring at him, Sage was holding on to a vestige of control with everything she had. And used it to ask, “She knows all that?”
“Well, maybe not in so many words. Not knowingly. But what she showed me is that losing the chance to have that love, the chance to live fully, because of the fear of loss...”
Sage pushed herself up against Gray. Without hesitation. Didn’t care that her daughter was present. Kids needed to see their parents hugging sometimes. To be aware of the love not only for them but surrounding them. “You aren’t a coward, Gray,” she told him, loudly enough for Leigh to hear. If, indeed she was listening.
Which she usually was.
“You had a chance to start up one clinic, or dare to risk more to get back everything you lost,” she told him. “You didn’t let the fear of a second loss stop you.” And then she asked, “Grayson Bartholomew, will you marry me?”
“Who’s Grayson Barfew?” Leigh asked, coming up to stand beside the two of them.
“It’s Mr. Buzzing Bee’s other name,” Sage told the little girl, with her arms still wrapped around Gray’s waist.
“But, if you want, you can call me Daddy.”
With one arm wrapped around Sage’s waist, Gray bent down to pick up Leigh in the other, bringing them together in a circle. Seemingly unaware of the tears pouring down Sage’s cheeks.
“Yes,” he said, looking between the two of them. “I will marry you. Both of you.”
