After We Fall(96)

 

But I hadn’t been alone for long.

 

For a few months, Margot and I had dated long distance, but by Thanksgiving, I’d asked her to move in with me. She already spent several days a week up here, had clothes in the closet, a toothbrush in the bathroom, a table she used as a desk in a spare bedroom.

 

Hell, she had a horse in my barn.

 

I loved when she was here and hated when she left. My days were always better when I kissed her good morning, and my nights were always better when I held her close. I still battled anxiety and nightmares sometimes, but Margot took it all in stride. She was my calm, my rock, my haven. She pushed back when I needed it and let me breathe when I didn’t. She understood me. She loved me.

 

And I loved her.

 

Silently closing the kitchen door behind me, I remembered when we first said the words, not too long after we began dating seriously. She’d come up to help me move into the house, and after a long day of cleaning and hauling and unpacking and organizing, she said she had a surprise for me.

 

It was a bubble bath.

 

I had to laugh as she undressed me and told me to get in the tub. But the scent of those bubbles and the feel of her wet skin beneath my palms took me back to a night months before, when I’d felt close enough to her to tell her everything.

 

Something in me must have known even then.

 

And as she rested her body on mine, her head on my chest, I wrapped my arms around her and felt an overwhelming sense of peace and warmth and gratitude that I was alive and well and here with her.

 

“I love you,” I said out of nowhere.

 

She went completely still and then picked up her head. Her eyes searched mine and saw I was serious. “Jack,” she whispered.

 

“Those are words that have never come easy to me, and I probably won’t say them nearly as often as I should, but I want you to know that I do.”

 

Her eyes filled. “I know. And I love you, too.”

 

Margot didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t say the words much, even though I thought them—felt them—all the time. In fact, she told me she liked that it wasn’t something I threw out there casually. It meant more to her when she heard them, she said, knowing that they didn’t come easy.

 

And maybe the words didn’t, but the feeling sure as hell did. I’d only loved one other woman, and I’d known her so long I couldn’t remember falling for her this way—fast and hard and head over heels. I’d loved Steph deeply, but I loved Margot with a kind of intensity that shocked me. I hadn’t known I was capable of it.

 

It made me want things—a ring on her finger, my last name on her driver’s license, a house full of kids.

 

I’d never be rich, never be able to give her all the things she’d grown up with, never own a vacation home in L’Arbre Croche or a Mercedes Benz. But I knew Margot well enough by now to know that she didn’t care about those things as much as she cared about me. About us. Oh, she was still a city girl, even when she wore her jeans and boots, but dammit, she was my city girl, and I loved her beyond words.

 

I smiled as I let myself into the chicken coop and slipped my hand into my pocket.

 

I didn’t like surprises, but Margot did.

 

I wanted to give her the surprise of her life.

 

 

 

Margot

 

 

 

I woke up and reached for Jack. He’d promised me he’d stay in bed a little longer this morning, since it was kind of a special day—the anniversary of the day we met.

 

Sometimes we looked back on that day and laughed at the way we’d stood there staring at each other across the kitchen, him broody and mean, me trying to be charming. “Was it love at first sight?” people sometimes asked us.

 

“Hell, no,” Jack would tease. “I didn’t want any rich city girl hanging around.”

 

“And I couldn’t stand him,” I’d say. “He was dirty, sweaty, and rude.”

 

But we belonged together, and it hadn’t taken us that long to figure it out, all things considered. I’d gone back and forth for a while, but I’d been thrilled when he’d asked me to move in. Farm life was a bit of an adjustment at first—the smells, the early mornings, the never-ending list of chores to be done—but I grew to appreciate things about living in the country. I loved the quiet mornings, the lack of traffic, the charm of the small town, the sun rising over the lake and setting over the trees, the skies full of stars at night. When I missed the shops or bars or salons or restaurants, I’d zip down and meet my friends for an afternoon or evening. But I found I didn’t miss city life too much, and I loved being around horses again.